JSGME (Jonesoft Generic Mod Enabler)

[Mikemike47]

Originally Posted by mike9606

Well, I'm having issues with JSGME on my Copy of SH4 (With U-Boat Missions). For some reason if I try to activate large mods (TMO, FOTRS), it just freezes up. If I run as an administrator, it can partially activate it (Tested with FOTRS) but it still freezes, forcing me to verify the files via steam to fix my install. I am running the latest version and before it worked fine, so I don't know why it is messed up now.

JSGME will show a message at the top "not responding" with big mods or a large number of mods. It is not freezing, give it time. Look at the windows task manager to see its' slow progress!

[Rockin Robbins]

Agreed. Our Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Edition is 3.3 GB last I checked. That is going to take a LONG time to install.

I have a separate thread in the Wolves of the Pacific forum about making multiple installations and a lockbox so you never have to reinstall SH4 again. It uses a separate JSGME.exe in each game directory, along with MultiSH4 and Large Address Aware to show how to make completely separate save game and settings folders in /documents. It's a step by step video tutorial that doesn't skip any steps. If you'd like to link to it you're welcome to.

JSGME even works in my Ubuntu Linux installation (where this post is coming from!) under WINE.

A bit of history. Mr Jones quit developing JSGME back in the nastier climate of Subsim past, where he was, as was the custom then, ripped to pieces by jealous and petty people. Many, many top modders quit during the same time period and I hope Subsim never again descends to the level of sometimes nastiness that prevailed in those days. So if anybody's wondering why RFB, TMO, GWX4, RSRDC and many other mods are no longer maintained, remember, sometimes it would momentarily make you feel better to be nasty but sometimes there is a permanent price to pay. And the whole community must pay that price. Appreciate your modders!

[torpedobait]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

A bit of history. Mr Jones quit developing JSGME back in the nastier climate of Subsim past, where he was, as was the custom then, ripped to pieces by jealous and petty people. Many, many top modders quit during the same time period and I hope Subsim never again descends to the level of sometimes nastiness that prevailed in those days. So if anybody's wondering why RFB, TMO, GWX4, RSRDC and many other mods are no longer maintained, remember, sometimes it would momentarily make you feel better to be nasty but sometimes there is a permanent price to pay. And the whole community must pay that price. Appreciate your modders!

[Rockin Robbins]

And in tribute to the quality of Mr Jones' work, I just used JSGME to load up Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate 0.40 Public Beta, a giant 3.6 gigabyte mod. It loaded and ran flawlessly. Mr Jones never dreamed that his handiwork would be used to load up a mod that large.

In part due to insecurity about how JSGME would work with such a huge mod, GWX used an installer to mount the mod, giving up some considerable advantages of using JSGME, like using or not using the mod at will. GWX gold is only 1.33 gigabytes, according to the Grey Wolves' website. JSGME could have handled it!

Not only that but the Silent Hunter series is far from the only use for JSGME. It can be used to patch just about any game out there! Many, many modding communities know nothing about JSGME and would be incredibly enhanced if they used it.

Salute, Mr Jones! I'm sorry we didn't value you until you were gone from the community that you made possible.

[Jimbuna]

Oh Jaesen is still about elsewhere....I'll send him this pearl of positivity

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

And in tribute to the quality of Mr Jones' work, I just used JSGME to load up Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate 0.40 Public Beta, a giant 3.6 gigabyte mod. It loaded and ran flawlessly. Mr Jones never dreamed that his handiwork would be used to load up a mod that large.

In part due to insecurity about how JSGME would work with such a huge mod, GWX used an installer to mount the mod, giving up some considerable advantages of using JSGME, like using or not using the mod at will. GWX gold is only 1.33 gigabytes, according to the Grey Wolves' website. JSGME could have handled it!

Not only that but the Silent Hunter series is far from the only use for JSGME. It can be used to patch just about any game out there! Many, many modding communities know nothing about JSGME and would be incredibly enhanced if they used it.

Salute, Mr Jones! I'm sorry we didn't value you until you were gone from the community that you made possible.

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Oh Jaesen is still about elsewhere....I'll send him this pearl of positivity

Jaesen has asked me to pass on the following reply.

"Please pass on my thanks and appreciation."

[Rockin Robbins]

Salute to him!

Now I've been playing with JSGME lately to figure out some inconsistencies. And I've entered....the twilight zone. Of course we expect weirdness in a mod as large as Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate, and we get it. One of our team members innocently suggested I try it on GFO, a small supermod.

So here was the procedure:

• delete everything out of my SH4GFO directory
• copy everything from my SH4Pristeen directory to SH4GFO to ensure I have all stock files
• write enable everything. Run MultiSH4 and Large Address Aware, then JSGME
• do a snapshot of game files
• install GFO mod only
• uninstall GFO mod
• compare files

I came up with all files matching original files. Cool! Let's do it again.

• install GFO
• uninstall GFO
• comare files

Either 7 or 9 different files! I'll post the video and you can see for yourself. That will have to be tomorrow. I'm living in the Twilight Zone! A program should execute exactly the same twice in a row, isn't that a reasonable expectation?

Please wait until I post the video just in case there's a stupid human trick in there that explains it, but if we find no error in the test procedure I'd like others to test and see what they get.

[Rockin Robbins]

Just to get the first video up as quickly as possible. Disclaimers: this is the first test with something other than FOTRSU. I used GFO because I understand it and it is the smallest of SH4 supermods. I surely have not eliminated all possible variables here: it's a first test. More will follow.

But what happens here is quite extraordinary. It's not a Windows problem because I don't run Windows. It could be a memory availability problem and I'll be eliminating that variable next. I'd say the likelihood is very low that it's a memory problem but until I eliminate that as a factor we have to consider the possibility.

It's pretty scary. The music (?) is too loud. Yada yada. But the results of this straightforward test are extraordinary. Here's what happens:

• I enter my SH4GFO installation, delete all game files and transfer a new copy from SH4Pristeen. These are now certified original game files
• I write enable everything after stupidly stabbing the cancel button by mistake and being unable to execute MultiSH4.
• I run MultiSH4 to make SH4 save settings and saved games in the \documents\GFO folder
• I run Large Address Aware to make \ubisoft\SH4GFO\sh4.exe use more than 2 GB of memory
• I start up JSGME and save a snapshot. Then I quickly do a compare of the files against the snapshot to show that says no changes......because.......we know no changes were made. That validates JSGME's save snapshot and compare snapshot functions
• I install GFO, then immediately uninstall it without passing GO or collecting $200 (or playing the game).
• I do another file compare. Tada!!!!! They're identical and JSGME has restored the original game Yay!
• Let's go for seconds: I install and uninstall GFO again, just as I did the first time, without passing GO.
• File comare results: 7 files different from stock. Go figure.

Please see if you can spot any errors in the test procedure. And I welcome suggestions on how this test could be altered or other tests made to help understand what happens here.

[propbeanie]

I've been wondering about maybe copying the JSGME files after the snapshot is taken of Stock, and moving them "off-site" out of the directory, so that the JSGME executable can't see the original copies, then do a file compare utility on the copy and the actual JSGME files after the 2nd round?... Does JSGME need to be LAA'd?... You follow? Do a compare of the compare yourself, if it's even possible.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Let's go for seconds: I install and uninstall GFO again, just as I did the first time, without passing GO.
File comare results: 7 files different from stock. Go figure.

What are the 7 files that are different?

If JSGME had been developed longer, a needed improvement would have been to allow you to go directly to the "changed" file (NEW; DIFFERENT; REMOVED) to see them in a list, without needing to scroll through the 20,000 plus files that Silent Hunter has.

Other than that tweak. JSGME is an excellent program that has improved our modding community as much as S3D has.

Thank you Jaesen!

[propbeanie]

You probably already know this, but you can "sort" the list by clicking on the column headings, such as "Detail" and get the list sorted together that way, which would bring "Changed" up top and all together. Click a 2nd time, and you get "Same" up top. You'll have to do a bit of scrolling to find the "Removed" sometimes, but they'll all be together...

JSGME still makes life a lot easier than it would be without it, and I think we're actually pushing it beyond were it was ever intended to go, and it still does a good job, just that there's a few things to look-out for and be aware of. I've done some "fake" mods, with text files with different naming conventions, and I cannot get it to fail. Of course, my experiments have only been with maybe 1k of data, not 3+gig... One thing I'd like to see is a copy-able list, where I can select filenames in the list, and copy them to the clipboard for use elsewhere. As an aside, here's 3 lines from a snapshot, and it looks like CRC is used to check the files against each other:

E:\Ubisoft\FotRS Ultimate\um.dll 8a984e947532dfd9bf3c2ae31e5af5a6
E:\Ubisoft\FotRS Ultimate\Utils.dll b9fd268e57834298c2e17809d0ee4997
E:\Ubisoft\FotRS Ultimate\zlib1.dll 80e41408f6d641dc1c0f5353a0cc8125

I wonder if that is what gets implicated in this?... who recognizes how big of a CRC is used here? 8-bit? 16?? It checks for flipped bits in the files for the compare. Comparing one bit in some big files is way less than comparing a human sneeze to their lifetime...

I also would also like to again thank Jaesen for his app, and the spirit with which it was made and distributed.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

You probably already know this, but you can "sort" the list by clicking on the column headings, such as "Detail" and get the list sorted together that way, which would bring "Changed" up top and all together. Click a 2nd time, and you get "Same" up top. You'll have to do a bit of scrolling to find the "Removed" sometimes, but they'll all be together...

I show that in the video, clicking on the header and bringing the changes to the top.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

JSGME still makes life a lot easier than it would be without it, and I think we're actually pushing it beyond were it was ever intended to go, and it still does a good job, just that there's a few things to look-out for and be aware of. I've done some "fake" mods, with text files with different naming conventions, and I cannot get it to fail. Of course, my experiments have only been with maybe 1k of data, not 3+gig... One thing I'd like to see is a copy-able list, where I can select filenames in the list, and copy them to the clipboard for use elsewhere. As an aside, here's 3 lines from a snapshot, and it looks like CRC is used to check the files against each other:

E:\Ubisoft\FotRS Ultimate\um.dll 8a984e947532dfd9bf3c2ae31e5af5a6
E:\Ubisoft\FotRS Ultimate\Utils.dll b9fd268e57834298c2e17809d0ee4997
E:\Ubisoft\FotRS Ultimate\zlib1.dll 80e41408f6d641dc1c0f5353a0cc8125

I wonder if that is what gets implicated in this?... who recognizes how big of a CRC is used here? 8-bit? 16?? It checks for flipped bits in the files for the compare. Comparing one bit in some big files is way less than comparing a human sneeze to their lifetime...

I also would also like to again thank Jaesen for his app, and the spirit with which it was made and distributed.

That's right. This is not a gripe session or a JSGME sucks session. We're seriously asking this program to do things that are pretty extraordinary and seeking to understand why we're getting effects we see.

JSGME's snapshot and compare functions appear flawless, and they make any errors quickly correctable. This is the mose reassuring takeaway from experiments so far.

I'm going to try using Large Address Aware on JSGME itself and see if we're dealing with memory overflow problems.

[Rockin Robbins]

Attention!!!

JSGME is not able to deal with large mods. However, I just ran Large Address Aware on JSGME.exe. I then installed and uninstalled GFO three four times in a row without any mismatches in the stock game files. If you are running a 32-bit operating system, anything GFO size or bigger will not work for you. If you are running a 64-bit operating system the fix is in!

Next, back to FOTRSU--3.6 GB of monstrous gobbeldygook--a tad more than 10,000 files.

[propbeanie]

Are you tired of testing RR? excellent news though...

[Rockin Robbins]

Tomorrow I run FOTRS Ultimate through the Large Address Aware JSGME Gauntlet of DEATH. Several times. I won't be making a video of that one.....