SRL Archive - NOTA

Just got a taste of how bad setting up Simba and getting it running can be. Oh. My. God.

Let me back this story up a bit…

Simba, and in particular MSI has been a bit wonky lately. Today when I ran the VE Miner it just stood there by the rocks moving the mouse around randomly. Fed up I decided to clean it off and start fresh.

I copied my scripts folder off somewhere safe, uninstalled Simba, nuked the directory, grabbed the Simba installer from the Simba homepage, installed, and copied my scripts back.

First up an update to the program itself because the installer hasn't been updated to the latest version. Nice! Well that's no biggie.

Next up enable the extensions and update all the includes. Appears to have worked. But not so. Complaining about missing dlls. Hmm. Having a look I see the plugins did not in fact get installed. But Simba thinks they are, and won't let me reinstall them. Copied the dlls from a working machine. Now suddenly Simba thinks there is an update for the plugins and updates. Odd. Well thats sorted out: off to the races.

Or not. At this point I realize I forgot to copy/save my players.txt file for MSI so I copy that back from the working machine. (This is the same players.txt file that has been working for weeks on end) MSI now crashes and burns without even displaying the form. "Out of range on line 2371". Doesn't mention what file though. Wow is that not helpful.

So I delete the players.txt file and manually enter 1 player just to test it. Up next: the infamous "bitmap does not exist" error and it corrupts the player file.

Fed up I copy the entire folder from the working machine except for settings.xml (they are installed in different paths on the 2 machines). Aaaaand we are back to "error on line 2371". F*ck me.

Poor newcomers no wonder they are left bewildered. Getting things running is not the simple process promised on the how to threads.

Maybe something is wrong currently, but I've freshly installed Simba quite a few times in the last couple of months, and it works pretty easily every time.

Wow, I've never had that issue, that's not good. Also, Coh3n has posted a possible fix for the Bitmap error. I can't remember where he posted it exactly, but it's in the MSI Bugs section.

2371 problem is when players.txt file gets messed up for some odd reason.
It's good practice to make extra copies of it.

As for bitmap errors
1) Cohen is remaking the entire player form
2) don't use the form, it's super buggy, just manually enter settings.

Iunno.. someone ask Wizzup? if Simba is statically compiled.. if it is, you shouldn't have that MSVCRXX.dll problem as all the DLL's needed would be embedded into simba..

The other stuff is easy.. the developers or normal users can fix them :S The bitmap error for MSI just needs a try catch statement.. if the bitmap isn't found, catch the exception and continue to load the form (I think?).. I've never used MSI so I have no clue how it works at all..

O.o I have re-installed multiple times, always rather quick and painless.
Perhaps it was just that one try :P

I've gotten it working since then. The actual point of this post was…

wait for it…

Cut the newcomers some slack. Maybe just maybe not all of them are just being lazy when they post on here asking for help because it doesn't work as documented in the guides. Things can go horribly wrong for no apparent reason.

I'm the guy they run to at work when Machine A locks up when you use the KVM but only if a specific version of Word is open at the time (true story: track that down!) so I just shrug if off, roll up my sleeves, and go looking for the issue. But I feel for the poor new guy who has no clue where to begin and just gets slagged on here when they say it doesn't work.

(Long story short: 2 hrs to reinstall Simba and get it working) Fuuuuun.