" Crafty "patching system for Unity projects.

I'm using beta 1.4.0b6, which is why I'm using json and not the txt file (explained in crafty_beta.txt) -- did we go back to the txt file?

edit: ah, yeah that works now.

 

No, versions.txt was used only in 1.3.2. At 1.4.0 config.jason and versions.txt can be used to set up the server.

Please write your server set up to our programmer krzysztof@hexte.ch , he will guide you step by step, as Crafty 1.4.0 Beta 6 is still in beta stage and proper documentation which will be available via our website before the official release is not yet complete.

 

Writing my own launcher, updater says "updater cannot run directly" after it finishes extracting.

OSX 10.10.3 Unity 4.6.2

Code (CSharp):

1.     void ExtractDone()
2.     {
3.         _l.setCurrentVersion( _l.getAvailableVersion() );
4.         if( _l.ForceCheck() == 1 )
5.         {
6.             launcherGUI.SetStatus(Launcher.Status.waitingToUpdate);
7.             _l.setOnDone( DownloadReleaseNotesDone );
8.             _l.setOnProgress( null );
9.          
10.             _l.DownloadReleaseNotes();
11.         }
12.         else
13.         {
14.             launcherGUI.SetStatus(Launcher.Status.rebooting);
15.             _l.Finish();
16.             Application.Quit();
17.         }
18.     }

From what I can tell, the example code sets the state to 5, which the GUI reads and quits. I also tried waiting a frame to quit (thinking Finish() needs a frame to finish), but it didn't seem to make a difference. I can't look at Finish() to know why it might be failing..

 

Our programmer is not checking the forum as often as me, if you want direct help in creating your own launcher you need to write to him directly on krzysztof@hexte.ch ( his email ) he will help you properly write your own launcher and fix any errors you could make in mean time.

 

Thanks. Emailed him last night. Also upgraded to the latest version of 1.4.0b6 (28th) and it has the same issue.

Tested on Windows 7 VM, Updater just sits at 0%...

Is 1.4.0b6 supposed to work?

edit: actually booting into Windows 7, it does work. Weird.

 

Did you send him your modifications ? You wrote that you are creating your own launcher, we need to know exactly on what modifications you made to deduct what could be wrong.

The best step would be just to send him entire script with the modifications, so that he can go threw it and fix any errors.

 

It happens with the example scene, too.

OSX 10.10.3: updater cannot run directly
Win7(VM): Updater sits at 0%
Win7: Works fine

Going to test it in a clean project

 

We will test OSX 10.10.3 to check the error.
Win7(VM): It is possible that your game cannot connect to the server threw the Virtual Machine and cannot download the patch that is why it sits on 0 %.

We tested Crafty on Windows 7 , 8 , 8.1 and Mac 10.9 we didn't on OSX 10.10.
I will inform our programmer to get in touch with testers that use OSX 10.10 and we will do our best to find the issue.

 

Found the problem for osx "updater cannot run directly" -- if the app filename has spaces, it breaks updater. Put in underscores, works fine. Should be easy for you guys to fix though.

Nah, it downloads/extracts -- when the game reboots, Updater sits at 0%

 

This is very weird we fix that already...
I need to check the Crafty beta builds its possible that by mistake we added the test script by accident.

 

I saw someone mention product name (that you set in Player Settings), but to be clear I'm talking about the osx executable file that Unity builds -- that file can't have spaces in the filename (in both versions of 1.4.0b6). My windows test didn't have whitespaces so I'm not sure if this is a problem with osx updater or all versions of updater.

 

Thanks for the clarification we don't use AT ALL OSX around here unfortunately, as we don't have constant access to it.
We will check this out as fast as possible.

 

Feature request for PatchieAPI:

Patchie.API.AddVersion() should let me specify filepath for the build to add. I assume it reads from _current, but my game is multiplatform and my build pipeline builds Win/Mac/Lin at the same time (into their own folders) so requiring me to move builds to _current one at a time is very inconvenient and makes the api pretty useless for my needs.

 

You can just select _current folder while building any of your builds you don't need to manually send them BUT this feature should not take long to implement so i don't see the problem to add this for you.

I will prepare the request report for programmer later tonight.

 

Right, but I would have to build them one at a time (build windows to _current, add windows version, build mac to _current, add mac version, build linux to _current, add linux version) -- that would really slow down my build pipeline.

Looking forward to the next update

 

Like i said we will add this feature for you as fast as we can .

 

JTown,

Your requested feature is already created and added to the GUI beta update that should be released soon.
You will have access to it the moment new beta appears on our website.

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

I'm starting to regret spending $50 on this.

You mentioned this UI 4.6 update would be ready a week ago, then you release an update without the UI 4.6 example which is at best annoying and at worse misleading. If you can't release the update when you say you can, the WORST thing you can do is continue to string your customers along. Then I come back to find that there are functionality issues with the latest version of the product anyway - if this were $20 I'd shrug and move on but I paid $50 for this!!!

Now, I'd write a UGUI example myself and share it here if your code wasn't so cryptic; looking at that previous example I can't say I'm expecting much - can you call code with precious few comments an example? Not where I come from.

You are well on your way to a 1 star review from me and maybe even an e-mail to Unity customer support: A truly terrible performance.

 

Hello fieldrequired, i'm the main and only programmer of Crafty Patching system.

For the last few months GUI was the least important part of the Crafty system as we focus mostly on creating patching system not GUI. We are adding features requests from programmers and developers who have little to no interest in GUI.

We always work hard to make Crafty much better way of patching your system without focusing on making it pretty. But i understand that new GUI system in Unity is much more improve way of creating proper GUI Art.
The update of GUI 4.6 was set back for a week as we felt that it requires few improvements so that Mac and Windows developers will be satisfied with the update we also added 3 requested features in the mean time and improve the quality and speed of patch creation.

We were told on many occasions that developers prefer much few but much bigger updates rather than every day with a minor change. We also work with many developers threw Skype and Team Viewer to improve their project personally, as you see its a lot of work for a single person.

The GUI 4.6 patch is ready for the last few days, but because of the lack of MAC machine we cannot make proper testing and usually have to wait for third party members to help us with testing. I will do my best to release GUI update today with few additional changes that i planed to add and one more requested feature.

Sorry for the inconvenience but as a single programmer on this project i already work more than i thought i could.

 

@Wasikuss, It's been unexpectedly slow going, maybe, but I feel you guys have been honestly and faithfully working toward a much better product for all purchasers.

You may get a lot of nasty comments from time to time in this thread, but I appreciate your efforts and I doubt I'm the only one.

 

Yes but look at todays arena that your product will be used in, anyone with half a brain would have flung Unity GUI to one side at the sniff of UGUI's arrival. It would be OK if you actually included the graphical launcher you are showing people on your store page but we're not even getting that.

This is nice to read, really and I hate to be the bad guy here but really - I'll appreciate it more when I have what I paid for, I was miffed to find no UGUI example when I purchased and can be patient, but now it is effecting the timeline for my own project as you perpetually dangle this annoying carrot in front of me and I am really starting to look at the other alternatives but am anchored to this by the $50 I have spent.

If you can't test the OSX version then just mention that in the patch notes, you are marketing the thing as beta anyway and there are people here waiting to integrate this into their games! (and have paid you a healthy price for doing so!)

This might be true, but we were actually told to expect it on day X - then there was a delay for some reason, then there was signs you would use your bosses mac to test, then more excuses. It's all just very annoying for me.

You might have a reasonable product under all of this, but it is useless without a proper example and shouldn't be sold in this state - sort it out!!

 

I can see where people get upset when it affects their timelines.

I'm not in that situation, as right along I haven't considered Crafty to be where I want it to be yet, and am waiting for the upcoming big release before I start to include it in my plans.

So ... different expectations.

But this is different from other notorious asset store products, in that clearly the devs are answering questions and working on the product in a timely manner. It's just that there have been complications stretching the development phase out beyond what some customers planned for.

 

We cannot share someones else work we were allow to show it but not used it. We develop Assets for Penkura but their art is not for us to give away sorry.

We often say on what we were able to test Crafty on and sometimes we do say that we are not able to test on Mac.

There is already an Unity GUI example few of them in the Crafty they are using the older version of course not the new one which our programmer should release today as for the requested made by you.

Let me make everything clear this is Crafty Patching system. In the original state it was not even suppose to have launcher but a way to create binary patches as tiny and as RAM light as it is possible. We added Launcher because of the many requests and in the future most likely we will add connection to the web server password login and other things that were requested by developers.

I am very sorry for making you wait but i cannot control Wasikuss health status and he is the only person he can work on Crafty currently i'm doing my best to get additional programers to help with the Crafty.

 

'UGUI' refers to Unity 4.6 GUI / 'Unity GUI' refers to 4.5 and before, I can see why you're getting confused because it's a little silly but it is what Unity themselves refer to it as so we should adopt the correct terminology.

Once again you attach a definitive point in time, the carrot is back in front of me - I hope you can meet this expectation because once more you are setting me up for disappointment.

Yes but then it was probably made clear to you that this is effectively a useless product without a method to extract the game from the updates in a meaningful way. Even so, if you had likely stuck to that original plan we would likely be armed with a document detailing your DLL's API which would have told us exactly how to make our own and we likely wouldn't be having this conversation.

No ones asking you to work magic here, just:

• Don't promise things when you can't deliver
• Understand that we understand what BETA means, so you can release it with untested elements
• Use the correct terminology, else you errode confidence and make it look like you don't know what you're talking about.
• If the programmer is sick, don't tell us that 'It's coming tomorrow everybody'

As it stands I've had to leave you a bad review, this whole thing is just a catalogue of fails in my eye's - if you turn it around i'll change my review.

 

You see I would argue that to give people false assurance is far worse than offering no assurances at all.

I tracked the previous conversations and they seemed like passionate people and I took them at their word and purchased the product because of that. Now it's nearly two weeks later, I could sit by like you and wait patiently, it's not a massive deal at the end of the day - but I'm offering my input in the hope that they can improve their level of service.

I don't enjoy getting like this with people, but I'm doing them a favour really by indicating just what isn't acceptable when it comes to managing expectations. I hope I haven't ruined yours (or any onlookers) day dude, not my intention at all.

 

I didn't knew that thank you for clarification.

Problem is that programmer health is not something he can control him self. One second he is ok confident working on release the second he is driving to hospital.

Most people don't understand that 1.4.0 is BETA that is the entire point. We were bash here many times because someone found an error in beta that is why we put this on our website.



GUI like it is stated on the product description works and is show in few examples. UGUI ( GUI 4.6 ) will be added with the next beta release. I'm sorry that it takes so long and believe if i could i would sit with the programmer and work with him on this but only he knows how to properly build an entire engine that creates tiny patches that will not crash your RAM.

 

Hehe, OK buddy well hopefully you can make it happen.

 

Yeah, I don't mean to argue. It's just that I read a lot of threads on the forum, and outside of the Candela thread, this one seems to get the most negativity from customers. Some of it may be deserved, but a lot of it isn't. Other threads, like, say, the Skyshop thread, are filled with complaints about this or that not working right, and there are always tons of bugs and late responses from the dev, and the product is more expensive than this one, and yet it never seems to get as nasty sounding as it does in this thread.

I don't mean to single you or your issue out, or to make light of the problems you're having. Other devs get sick and are slow for months (one of my plugin devs even had a heart attack, IIRC), or get they another job, or they simply disappear and there's not as much negativity as what I tend to see expressed in this thread. And here the devs are answering and working.

Mainly I just wanted to say something to support these guys. I think the next big update (and the inevitable bug fixes to follow) will be very good for everyone. The feature set will be more complete, the interface should be better, and it ought to be a lot easier for customers and the devs to manage.

Hopefully we get there some time soon.

 

Cant watch all this negativity to Hextech guys while knowing what they gave up for this product.

First of all:

Crafty is THE ONLY product that creates patches on asset store that will not " crash your ram " all of the patchers i tested complitely and uttery destroyed my PC RAM when game is bigger than 5 GB.
I test Crafty on 9 GB project and it NEVER failed or froze Unity which is amazing.

Second of all:
Few months ago Hextech guys had an offer from a company to fully focus developing Crafty only for one game. They refused because they would feel like betraying all other developers no matter what money they would give.
This one thing made me give 5 star to Hextech and never i will give lower than that. 95 % of developers would say screw you all and just take the money but those guys stayed and help everybody.

Third.
Its a joke how cheap is Crafty. You have binary patching on windows, mac linux support, launcher patcher. Light and fast true there are bugs but developers work there asses off to provide better product.
Look at them they created an entire page dedicated to provide beta assets of their product to make sure everybody could test it. They accept calls on Skype i got helped twice threw Team Viewer ( i prefer team viewer over skype screenshare ). Hextech support is incredible polite, proffesional and do their best to help us developer.
I would give a lot to have such people in my team that work on a product even with health problems and no time to spare.

I really would be not suprise if one day Crafty would kill out all patching softwares around here.


Oh and btw i was the guy that offered them money. They impress me that day because no matter what i wanted to give they always said " no " .

 

I'm touched they have such rabid supporters, I'm not interesting in starting a riot and yet my commentary still stands.

I look forward to the examples using the new UI.

 

I think an easy way to ease the tension is for the Crafty devs to be more accurate with release date estimates. They often give concrete delivery dates and miss them. Missing dates is understandable, but still disappointing -- especially if someone is scheduling their plans around those estimates.

So my suggestion would be to either

• Pad the estimated delivery date; tell us it'll take 2-3x as long as you actually expect it to -- that'll help account for unexpected delays and there's no harm done if you delivery early
• Don't give precise estimates -- just keep us up to date on what you're currently working on.

It can be tricky to give estimates -- something I've learned doing freelance.

 

I agree that it is best to avoid giving dates, even when people are asking for them. Any time you give a date, you'll be held accountable for that date.

 

Hi

I purchased Crafty and would like to grab a copy of the latest build but your website appears to be down.

 

Hello JTown the problem is before Wasikuss health problem we were not only always on time but we had enough time to send Crafty personally to everybody threw email. We want to go back to it as it was something that Wasikuss was proud off. But you are right we will not say any dates from now on.

Hello NightShade2109. Yes we know our website and email system is down because of the Canadian Server Service is doing maintenance. They say it was non service interruptions but 2 our of 3 website we use are down.



Wasikuss is talking with them for the last few hours to repair their connection.

Edit: Guys at " Cloud at Cost " said that server and emails should be online around 14 CET if that is indeed true than Crafty will be available on our server as usually )

 

standalone still being worked on? or should I just give up hope (was promised since last year with a prediction of 2 months work, and it's now been a year!)

 

I have the same problem. Guys, could you check the website, pls?

 

Hello everybody i will update everybody on whats going on.

First of all about the website. The " non service interruption " maintenance made by Cloud at Cost indeed didn't interrupt any of our website but broke the connections between all the websites and servers that we were using to give out beta of Crafty and few other assets and Alpha project of the Penkura team.

Because we don't have access to them they are doing everything to repair their server. Emails are also down so for now please don't use them. From what i understood Cloud at Cost will fix the issue today max tomorrow ( at least that's what they told me threw their support )

I already put new beta Crafty on the server so the moment website appears everybody will be able to download it.
I also didn't waste any time and created all the requested features made by all the users.

So in new build besides new API new UGUI there will be also a way to showcase news in the same form as you show patch notes, everything is controlled from the server so you can manually change the information of the news without making any modifications to the UGUI. Few tweaks to make Crafty work faster and started to rewrite entire documentation as 1.4.0 will have so much new features that compare to the 1.3.2 it is almost new program.

About all the delays from my part. 8 months ago i fell sick that at the end effect my hearth. I never talk about my privet things but this is unfortunately hurting my work process as sometimes i can sit down to work and in matter of seconds just crash on laptop and woke up few hours later. This Friday i will be in hospital for i don't know how long that is why Thomas will take over for now Crafty till i come back. I will do my best to help him and do my best to work on my laptop in the mean time.

Thinker will also be unavailable as he will help me with my private business that cannot wait but Main Designer of Penkura project will take over after him to keep everybody nicely inform about everything that is going on around here.

Crafty Standalone is near finish unfortunately because of my health that status had not change in the last few months. Most likely because of that we will soon release it with full source code access to the Launcher Creation part as this is the only part i didn't finish. A lot of people should make this news happy but please don't be worried we will also create Launcher Designer for Artists that don't know coding.

I'm doing my best to release Crafty updates Standalone and 3 other projects as fast as i can and believe me when i say i don't make delays because i want to but because my health stands against me for the last few months. Development of Crafty will not slow down at all as Thomas and John will work as much as we did, so please do not be worried.

 

I would like to thank you for all that you've done for us with Crafty, Wasikuss. I hope your stay at the hospital brings back your health and I wish for you a speedy recovery.

 

Finally our site is now working and Crafty 1.4.0 b7 has been released! LINK

- Added new example project: New Unity UI ( untested on Mac OS X - waiting for results)
- Patchie ( API and EditorWindow )now supports making patch from external builds
- Fix: Launchie onProgress and CraftyResult in Callback API are called twice on 100%
- Fix: Launchie onProgress and CraftyResult in Callback API aren't called when progress is 0%
al builds

External builds:
To make Patchie fetch data from location other than PROJECT/Patchie/ just do following steps:
1) make empty folder in PROJECT/Patchie
2) rename it to name of build
3) create new file "_path.txt" and write path to external location of folder

example

Code (Contents of 1.0\_path.txt):

1. D:\1.0\

Code (Contents of 1.1\_path.txt):

1. D:\1.1\

//edit:
Also you can use PatchieAPI

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. // public void AddVersion(string name, string externalPath)
3. Patchie.API.AddVersion( "1.0", @"D:\1.0\" );

 

does this work with Unity 5?

 

All releases are tested with newest Unity. Additional tests include other platforms ( Linux and Mac OS X ) with Unity 5 and Unity 4.6.

 

any idea when updated docs will be released? for the beta version

 

Today we started building new docs/wiki. It will include materials how to get started with Crafty, whole API reference, examples and tutorials for beginner/advanced users. Public access will be granted as soon as possible and then docs/wiki will be updated regularly.

//edit:
I forgot to say a word about incoming issue tracker/feature request. Docs/wiki will be moved to http://hexte.ch and merged with system allowing submit bug or feature request more easier then via email. It will prevent from sending the same requests from other developers.

 

ok thanks

 

I hope you get better soon.

 

So does this mean that you will be moving the Downloads for CRAFTY to hexte.ch website too?

Keeping things all in once place would be easier for the customer to know where to go and for you to keep all things in one place.

 

Hello everybody,
I'm John and i am the Main Designer of the Penkura project. For the time being i will be taking over after Thinker as he will be busy with privet businesses.
I will go threw entire forum and all the emails to keep my self up to date on the status of development and who what is doing exactly. I am very happy to help Hextech team which already help a lot Penkura project i will do my best to be as often as possible.

Yes we are moving everything to one place. Documentation / Wiki, Support , Bug Reporting , Beta download , Video tutorials everything that is about Crafty will be put on Hexte.ch, this is not only done for all the clients but also for the Hextech team to keep everything clean and in correct order.

Now i will post what is being work on right now.

- Hexte.ch website ( time to move Crafty from Penkura website to their own location so they can provide more access to the Crafty Clients ).

- Documentation / Wiki ( we decided that simple PDF is just not enough to showcase all the information on Crafty and all of its examples. There is just to much information also we don't want people to go threw pages of info just to find one thing. It will be similar to Wiki which will show case all of Crafty functions by simple search commands ).

- Bug Report system ( It's about time to build our own bug report system that not only will be public to everybody ( so all the clients will be able to see whats wrong and what is currently developed but also a template for all the clients to know how to properly report a bug. Reporting by Email is just not good enough anymore after reaching hundredths of developers that use Crafty daily ).

- Improve beta sharing ( Our beta sharing on Penkura is very good but we can do better by providing more info about the builds and previous builds, this will be of course added to Hexte.ch )

- Video Tutorial ( this is the last thing we will be working on when releasing newest Crafty but its also nice to provide video tutorial and not only written one )

For now that's about it. Once again i will do my best to be here as often as possible and keep everybody up to date.

 

Hey Lionard, nice to meet you. Glad things are still being worked on. I am looking forward to taking a look at the wiki and new docs you are working on , as well as what future features Crafty will have. The new UI build is great, thanks for that.

Cheers,
-Andy

 

After creating a patch it'd be nice to get a summary of what changes were included and how big each change is in terms of file size. My patches are larger than expected and I'm curious why.

edit: actually... these patches are basically the same size as a zipped full client even though there's not a lot of new art or sounds etc -- just some code and scene changes and one small 3D mesh was changed (667KB).

Full Windows build zipped: 121.6MB
Windows patch (512 packet size, binary method, zipped by patchie): 120.4MB
Windows patch (16 packet size, binary method, zipped by patchie): 119.2MB

edit2: binary method doesn't seem to make much difference for file size. Is binary method still only for Windows target platform? Does it make a difference if the patch is made in Unity OSX?

edit3: OSX Updater now just crashes... will have to do more testing, but for now I'm just sending out full builds again.