GURPS Character Assistant under Wine for Linux

[panton41]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Likely there will have to be at some point. Of course, who knows, MS might blink and include VB6 support in Win8; or the world might end before that in 2012...

What might be more likely is something similar to "Windows XP Mode" or it being supported in "compatibility mode." Though I think it'll just be dropped entirely. It's already officially not supported and there was a question of whether Windows 7 would support it and the official Visual Basic 6 is entirely devoted to migrating to VB.NET.

[tmedwards]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

... rather than rewrite their in-house character creation program for GURPS 4th Ed.

Eric is correct, if you're referring to GCB. GCB was written by Bruce Kvam/AlterEgo Software. IIRC, it was mostly a customized version of his MetaCreator product, or the precursor to it, whatever.

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

(My vote's been on VB.NET with a focus on a .NET subset compatible with Mono.)

Same here. Armin likes VB-style syntax and has given no indication that he plans to switch to another style of language—just the opposite, actually. So, unless something else comes along and seduces him, his choices are pretty much between either VB.NET or RealBasic. Of those two, VB.NET is hands-down the best choice long-term, even though it'll likely be more work porting to it, rather than RealBasic, in the short-term.

Regardless, if a non-VB6 version of GCA is completed one day, that day likely won't be any time soon. Mores the pity in that.

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

What might be more likely is something similar to "Windows XP Mode" or it being supported in "compatibility mode." Though I think it'll just be dropped entirely. It's already officially not supported and there was a question of whether Windows 7 would support it and the official Visual Basic 6 is entirely devoted to migrating to VB.NET.

Indeed. VB6 was officially declared defunct during the lifetime of WinXP and has been supported for the remainder of its lifespan as well as the past two OS releases, WinVista and Win7. Continuing to support it natively is counter to their goals for .NET and Windows.

Native support for VB6 has been dropped from Win8, and I find it unlikely that they'll change their minds about that. That said, it should work in the WinXP compatibility VM just fine—that's not something that should be counted on long-term though, the WinXP VM I mean.

[Scrye]

I mightily appreciate your thread, gca was giving me all sorts of problems and they are no more, mostly. For some reason the cursor is out of sync and I have no clue how to fix it. Example: I usually have to click the area around the buttons until eventually i find the right spot. Do any of you have any ideas on how to fix it?

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Scrye

I mightily appreciate your thread, gca was giving me all sorts of problems and they are no more, mostly. For some reason the cursor is out of sync and I have no clue how to fix it. Example: I usually have to click the area around the buttons until eventually i find the right spot. Do any of you have any ideas on how to fix it?

I'd need to know a lot more than just that.

For starters what distro of Linux are you using, what desktop environment and what version of Wine?

[Scrye]

Right, my bad. I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 with the standard environment, and Wine 1.3. It occurs to me that, perhaps, I should use the stable release, 1.2, instead of the beta.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Scrye

Right, my bad. I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 with the standard environment, and Wine 1.3. It occurs to me that, perhaps, I should use the stable release, 1.2, instead of the beta.

The beta is actually more useful than the stable release. Wine has a habit of going years (or close to it) between stable releases and in the mean time add more and more features that improve stability and usability. GCA less so than actual 3d games which tend to benefit greatly from almost weekly DirectX improvements, but GCA has benefited from the beta updates in the past.

Are you using Unity or Gnome 2.x?

[Scrye]

Hmmmm. I'm using Unity right now. Thanks for looking into this, btw.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Scrye

Hmmmm. I'm using Unity right now. Thanks for looking into this, btw.

Let me try to set this up in a virtual machine and see what's happening. I'm running Windows 7 these days, but I maintain this out of the kindness of my little black heart. I won't rush into saying it, but it wouldn't surprise me if Unity is to blame. (Unity, Gnome 3.0, KDE 4.0 and the fact Microsoft got a clue is the reason I run Windows 7 these days.)

[Scrye]

I also dual boot, but I'm using a different box till my refund at Newegg processes so I can get a machine that works right. Meanwhile, I'm running a game right now and don't have the option of running on 7. Under no circumstances should you buy ASUS's G53-SW: the power button is hosed. The first one didn't work, and the replacement had the same problem.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Scrye

I also dual boot, but I'm using a different box till my refund at Newegg processes so I can get a machine that works right. Meanwhile, I'm running a game right now and don't have the option of running on 7. Under no circumstances should you buy ASUS's G53-SW: the power button is hosed. The first one didn't work, and the replacement had the same problem.

I have an Asus G73Jw and have had no major problems (though Linux not supporting USB 3.0 properly is another reason I use Windows) and their chassis are virtually identical other than display size.