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Firework Gadget

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Posted by

Shadowfyr USA (1,792 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #15 on Thu 13 Nov 2003 10:45 PM (UTC)

Message

Well.. I already went hunting. If you want to capture your 'own' messages you can subclass the window. However to do it for someone elses you need a hook. The problem is that hooks 'must' be dlls apparently and everything I have seen indicates that VB creates some sort of dll that isn't compatible with message hooks. I don't feel like digging into C++ just to make a dll that only gives me such a hook and the only one I have found so far that someone else made stops working after 30 days and they want $80 buck for it.

This logic I don't understand... You design a system component that thousands of people are probably going to use, virtually guarrentying that you will make a mint off it anyway, but no one can afford to use it because you charge them 4-5 times what they plan to sell their own product for?!? If I could slap down $20 bucks, I might be willing to buy the rights to use such a thing, but I refuse to pay $80 - $200 just for a component that is useless without the thousands of lines of code 'I' have to code to use it for anything.

This is like telling someone they need to pay you $50 for a chip to go in an electronics project, because you figure they are too stupid to buy two 50 cent chips and build the circuit themselves. I may be a bit lazy, but I am not completely stupid. lol

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #16 on Thu 13 Nov 2003 10:58 PM (UTC)

Message

Well, I see your point, but in the meantime you're not actually using anything at all... :-) So the money they charge you is more for the convenience factor and the "it's already done" factor, than for the actual components themselves.

This is how it works for *tons* of software applications. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to license Quake3's graphics engine, and how much you make off the sale of one product?

Also, think of database applications. Obviously a database for C++ is useless without the thousands of lines you'd have to write. But does that make it stupid to sell the database? Granted, we're not talking about the same level of complexity, but still...

I think even Nick had to pay more to license his spellchecker than he makes by selling individual copies.

Heh, it's kind of hard to read your posts, because you use single quotes to emphasize things, where single quotes are normally used to quote things and asterisks are used to emphasize... so I keep reading your text as you quoting things (and thereby intending that I don't take it literally) when what you actually mean is to underline/emphasize that word. Follow conventions! :P

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #17 on Thu 13 Nov 2003 11:00 PM (UTC)

Message

This seems to be exactly what you want, by the way... a way to intercept the messages that Windows is sending you:

http://www.thescarms.com/vbasic/subclassform.asp

My search was "visual basic hook message" and it was in the first 10 results...

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

Shadowfyr USA (1,792 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #18 on Fri 14 Nov 2003 12:33 AM (UTC)

Message

I wasn't aware there was such a convention... I see a lot of different ways people emphasize things, I just happen to use ''.

As for your link.. It is exactly the stuff I already found. It is useless for trapping the events from Mushclient's window, since you can only subclass a window which is in the same thread as the application doing it. In other words, you can only capture events for your own application, not anyone elses. There is a way to hook into the system somehow and do it, but I haven't found a single example of how to do that and the technique requires the process providing the hook to be a seperate .dll. However, as I said before, apparently something about the way VB creates dlls is incompatible with this method, even assuming I could find an example of using such a system hook.

In any case, making all this stuff work is complicated and a major mess, even without trying to trap such events. Since a great many people are likely to design stuff like this for Mushclient over time, it makes sense to me that such events should be trappable in Mushclient, where there is no need to worry about all the complicated work arounds. Odds are good that programs like zMud, which provide specialized plugin code to tie into user made dlls probably provide such information when request anyway. They would have to for such plugins to work right. I personally believe having the client provide these things makes a lot more sense, especially since there may be things you want to do like say:

sub OnClientMinimize
World.send "afk Sorry, but I had to leave for a moment."
end sub

Currently you can't even tell it happened *in* Mushclient, let alone pass that info on to an external program.

----

I do understand in a general sense about the cost of items though, it doesn't bug me that they charge money, just the scale. While I admit that in this case the problem is hard to find the solution to, since subclassing is useless in this case, the actual code is probably less that 20 lines total. If it did a dozen other things it *might* be worth it, or maybe not, since then I would be adding the bloat of all the extra junk as well. I expect to pay say $50 for a book on programming, I don't expect to pay $80 for a three page pamphlet. This is in my opinion not that different from what these people are trying to do and it loses them customers, not gains them, especially for something like this which is quite frankly easier to do other ways when developing complete projects and is at best a nitch product.

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Posted by

Magnum Canada (580 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #19 on Fri 14 Nov 2003 01:25 PM (UTC)

Amended on Fri 14 Nov 2003 01:26 PM (UTC) by Magnum

Message

At ShadowFyr's request, I have separated the Fireworks graphical program, and the plugin that uses it, into two separate files for download. Also, ShadowFyr sent me an update to the plugin.

Currently, you may download:
mc_firework.zip v.1.0 (The main graphical program)
aod_firework.zip v1.1 (The plugin for use on Ages of Despair MUD)

...from my website. http://www.magnumsworld.com/muds/

Get my plugins here: http://www.magnumsworld.com/muds/

Constantly proving I don't know what I am doing...
Magnum.

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