Tree Magic ?

Ok I know Tree Magic has disappeared into the Game Creators but can anyone help me?

I have Tree Magic 1 and Tree Magic Pro (or whatever the second version was clalled).

NEITHER work on my pc anymore. I guess it's a DEP problem but I don't know.

Has anyone else come up against such a problem with their installations?

IPete2.

Did they ever work on this particular computer? There was a bug discovered a little while ago where incorrectly sized textures wouldn't work on newer video cards. This was fixed in later updates of Blitz, but that problem would of course still be apparent on any exe's compiled on an older version.

Yes they all worked on this PC although I do have a new gfx card it is an nvidia GeForce 6600 256MB.

I thought it would possibly be a dep problem as I now have SP2 installed.

Tree Magic starts to boot up - I see the Tree Magik window open and an image appears "please wait loading" appears and then I get an illegal memory address.

Tree Magik Pro give a Memory Access Violation.


IPete2.

I seem to remember that was the very card that had problems with non-pow2 textures.

:(

So please, what can I do about it anyone?

IPete2.

Not saying this is the problem, but IF it is, you could try manually re-sizing/scaling (in PhotoShop, or whatever) all the textures used so that they're pow2.

I'd backup all the textures before doing so, though. :)

I would recommend altering the source texture sizes to ^2 anyway as it will save you having to do it each time you produce a tree.

Yes I woke up this morning and that thought was in my head too - I shall look into the texture sizes and see if that is the problem.


[EDIT]

Ok so the media is all locked away in a file I can't get to so I guess I am totally screwed! Ah well.



IPete2.

I'll investigate this tonight IPete2, I have Tree Magik 1, Plus, and Pro. I haven't looked at them for a long time, so am curious if they still work on my new system.

I had a problem with DEP and tree magik pro I made a tutorial on turning DEP on for applications if you need it let me know.

Might be useful ckob, can you post it here?

Wrote it for another community a few months back but here's the link.
http://www.mattlavoice.com/tutorials/DEPtut/main.htm

What's DEP?

no matter, I used my initiative ... and suprisingly still found the answer !

Thanks ckob! :)

lol @ Banshee

DEP = Don't Eat Peanuts!

Data Execution prevention :P

Thanks ckob

Thanks I have applied the DEP fix and it still has memory Access violations.

I have discovered though that TMPro allows the user access to the media so I may try adjusting the textures as shown earlier in this thred.

I'll keep you posted.

IPete2.

Is there a reason you don't just email the guy who created Tree Magic? I imagine he'd want to fix this, and it's so trivial to do; he just has to update to the latest version of Blitz and then recompile the exe.

Well, speaking for myself, I prefer to try and fix problems on my own first, before resorting to hassling the author. In this case it's doesn't seem to be DEP causing the problem anyway.

Sabata washed his hands of it which is why he sold up to TGC, it's a long story and i've not much positive to say about the man but what is fair comment is that he doesnt check his emails much any more and is distracted by his house building project. TGC are looking at the current range of products, they have the source code, and are considering what to do with each of the lines but they're unlikely to have archives of older editions ... I wouldn't know for sure on that.

Joe,

I knew that TGC had taken over handling of Tree Magic, I have been speaking to their technical support for nearly 5 weeks on and off. They were "looking into the problem" last I heard.

I decided to try here - in case someone had suffered similarly and was able to help.

From what Bansee says I would be pretty much useless trying to contact Sabata anyways - and as it's not his responsibility anymore I would be waiting a long time for a result.

I did consider upgrading, but I have already bought two of the versions - the pro was enough for me if only I could get it working again. I am saddened when software is NOT properly supported, especailly as I tend to support authors such as Sabata in the first place.

I had hoped TGC would come up with a result but so far that is not the case, and last I heard I was case 54 in a queue.

IPete2.

They inheritted many hundreds of outstanding support and missing sales issues, I was lucky enough to achieve a satisfactory result with my year+ old problem after TGC took over.

Data Execution Prevention

It's a new(ish) mechanism that prevents your computer from launching executable code from memory blocks that are not explicitely labeled to contain executable code.

both your CPU and OS need to support it for it to work, but basically it adds a layer of protection against buffer overrun exploits because in most cases the corrupted memory in question wouldn't be labeled as executable and therefor the exploit would be shot down rather than be able to do damage. A side-effect is that older programs that sometimes generate executable data on the fly and call it from elsewhere in the program no longer work.
The older B3D and B+ both have some issues on computer with DEP enabled, although some time ago a patch was released for both to address this.