Author Topic: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.  (Read 6632 times)

Blacjac84

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 37
Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« on: December 16, 2008, 10:08:41 PM »
I've used Herostats before with no problems, but that was with my previous computer before it died a 'death by fried capacitors'.  I had to get a new computer that has Vista.  My game works well with the computer, but for some reason, Herostats is not working or acknowledging the CoH is running.  I have Glycerine running, and it works fine.  So I'm wondering if there's something I need to do to, like configuration or such.

Thanks for any help that's offered.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2008, 03:05:10 PM by Blacjac84 »

Blacjac84

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 37
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2008, 10:12:31 PM »
By the way, it's the recent version of Herostats, 4.4.0.0

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2008, 11:27:12 PM »
Well, Vista is allot more strict than previous Operation Systems. I'm going to assume you know what I'm talking about since you know how you fried your old rig... you probably have some understanding of how computers work.

With Vista, applications that don't SEEM to work while another window is open, simply right click the .exe or the shortcut your using to open any .exe goto properties, click the "Compatibility" tab and near the buttom of that window is a check box "run as administrator" or something along those lines. (if it is grayed out than you are an admin so I wouldn't worry about it...)

Restart the HS application if you need to using the shortcut you just edited... if you edited the actual application .exe than you won't have to worry about where you open it from.

If you're grayed out or your problem persists after this method, let me know and we'll get Skip over here asap to see what's up.

Let me know if you need more involved directions, as these are just assuming you know your stuff.
~Steinerd

Blacjac84

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 37
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2008, 03:05:59 AM »
Thank you very much for your reply. :)

Herostats now works, but it still does not show up on my screen with my game.  Not a gamebreaker for me, but I like to see how much time I have on certain powers.

I have noticed other compatibility choices.  Compatiblity Mode apparently allows me to run a program under previous Windows versions.  Would this work?

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2008, 03:50:15 AM »
Possibly, HS is based off of XP mindsets... isn't really "Next Gen" framework yet.

Also, remember to download the newest version of .NET Framework, (3.5... vista should come loaded with it). HS has an "in game" companion tool that SHOULD be what you're looking for.
~Steinerd

blontz29

  • Underling
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #5 on: December 17, 2008, 01:55:53 PM »
I too have Vista installed.  I could not get Hero Stats to display on CoH in full screen mode.  What I did find is that if I put CoH into windowed mode, Hero Stats shows up fine.  I have my task bar set to auto-hide, and have the window expanded to fill my entire screen.  With this set up, I no longer have to ALT-TAB out to check CIT.  I just hover near the bottom of the screen, the task bar comes up, and I can quick launch my web browser to check Paragon Wiki and CIT.

SuckerPunch

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,608
    • Titan Network
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2008, 02:01:11 PM »
I'm on Vista and always run windowed, and HS has always appeared properly.  I've never tried running HS and CoH together without being windowed... so I'll try that and see if I can confirm that being the issue.

Janrith

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 25
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2008, 05:57:48 PM »
I run CoH in full screen on both our XP machines and in our Vista boxes... Yes we need to run in Admin mode on Vista in order for the application to be able to access the same memory space as CoH.  It's also configured to run in XP SP2 compatability mode, although I don't know if that's actually helping our cause any.

I've filed a bug on HeroStats not consistently z-ordering to the top window location under Vista, but to my knowledge they've not yet figured out the fix.  I do know that Vista changed the z-ordering rules somewhat and they (the HS team) were looking into that.

The work around I've been able to do (totally hacky, but it works) is to start HeroStats first.  Then once it's in "in-game" mode, I start CoH, and when the splash screen is displayed, I click on it w/ my mouse periodically (like every 2 seconds or so) until I get the login prompts.  I haven't nailed down where specifically I need to reset focus during the CoH load, but it appears that it does have to do with how the game loads.

Anyway YMMV, but that's how I've gotten HS to stay at the top of the z-order.

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2008, 04:28:16 PM »
Much to the same degree of Ventrilo's overlay scripts, vista just doesn't like them.

In operation systems z-ordering is known as modal, and it really hasn't changed much between the two OS's (XP, Vista).

The only reason we're having trouble with these things keeping their modal is that I THINK HS is written in C and therefore doesn't have the easy OS manipulation that Visual Basic apps do.

This is just speculation obviously.

If more users would just move to Vista ( It's been 4 years!!! Vista is fixed! (mostly)), maybe Skip would upgrade to .NET Framework 3.5 and makes HS even more unbelievable. HAHAHA, Ya'll XP users won't have a choice when Windows 7 is launched, it's Vista on rails, so it runs as smooth as XP but with all the fun of Next-Gen scripts!

.NET Framework 2.0 FTF (For the Fail)
~Steinerd

ineffablebob

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 62
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #9 on: December 21, 2008, 11:42:44 PM »
I know there's issue with Vista, and I'd like to fix it, but as long as CoX is still supported on .NET 2.0-only OSs like Win95, I'd like to keep HeroStats functional on them as well. Maybe I'll try compiling a release with .NET 3.5 and see if it helps the Vista users. It should be possible to use both versions.
Skip

Character List
HeroStats Developer
Proud Member of Legion of Valor and Fallen Legion

SuckerPunch

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,608
    • Titan Network
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #10 on: December 21, 2008, 11:45:01 PM »
I know there's issue with Vista, and I'd like to fix it, but as long as CoX is still supported on .NET 2.0-only OSs like Win95

Is it really supported on Windows 95?  I mean, really supported?  Microsoft doesn't even support Windows 98, why would any game company support it?

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #11 on: December 22, 2008, 12:18:44 AM »
I can verify this, I played beta on 98+ (old arse computer)
~Steinerd

SuckerPunch

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,608
    • Titan Network
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #12 on: December 22, 2008, 12:19:44 AM »
Beta was what, 5 years ago?

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #13 on: December 22, 2008, 12:22:18 AM »
...ya.... it was a Compaq Presario 3200(?) 16MB video card and a HUGE 755MHZ intel 2. LOL
~Steinerd

ineffablebob

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 62
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #14 on: December 22, 2008, 12:29:34 AM »
I had a few minutes tonight so I downloaded VS 2008 Express and compiled the HeroStats code against .NET framework 3.5. You folks that use Vista, try it out and see if it makes any difference.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/herostats/HeroStatsUnstable-4.5.0.10.exe

I'd try it myself, but I don't use Vista. XP is fine for me. I like my old unsupported hardware.
Skip

Character List
HeroStats Developer
Proud Member of Legion of Valor and Fallen Legion

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #15 on: December 22, 2008, 12:48:20 AM »
Seems to be running rigid.

Usually HS causes my Theme to change from Aero (which is the resource hog of vista, but I have 16GB so w/e), but this time it didn't.

Nor did I need to change compatibility or run as admin for it to make proper use of the DLLs, however the admin part might have something to do with my UAC settings, so that one might still be a required step with OpenSource apps like this.

Lets see what the other vista uses say, because things might change based on simple overlooked variables. My computer is a walking developers environment... hell one of my folders is a fully function apache server running ubuntu so I can test php scripts locally, lol... so almost any application will function on my setup.
~Steinerd

ineffablebob

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 62
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #16 on: December 22, 2008, 08:31:53 PM »
Well, that's a start. Thanks for checking, Steiner. Anyone else with Vista want to try it out?
Skip

Character List
HeroStats Developer
Proud Member of Legion of Valor and Fallen Legion

ineffablebob

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 62
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #17 on: December 26, 2008, 04:12:54 PM »
I know there's issue with Vista, and I'd like to fix it, but as long as CoX is still supported on .NET 2.0-only OSs like Win95, I'd like to keep HeroStats functional on them as well.
So I just checked and it turns out that CoX actually isn't supported on those old OSs any more.

http://help.plaync.com/cgi-bin/plaync.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=462

So I'm going to look into releasing a HeroStats version that uses .NET FW 3.5. I'm not entirely sure it'll fix the on-top issue, but it certainly can't hurt. I've been running the .NET FW 3.5 version locally on XP for a while and haven't had any issues.
Skip

Character List
HeroStats Developer
Proud Member of Legion of Valor and Fallen Legion

Steiner

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,602
    • Steinerd.com
Re: Herostats not showing up on screen during the game.
« Reply #18 on: December 26, 2008, 04:15:45 PM »
good to hear, :D
~Steinerd