dll list for the various sites

[HeatherL]

I recently discovered that lang-zkl covered almost everything listed in langza01 & za02, so I took them out of my zoo file. Everything loads much smoother now.

The only single-use .dll's I have left are for the lumberjack theme pack and Mngwa's small exhibit pack (which I love!).

[Fern]

Which lumberjack pack are you using? The original or the one from Tek? The reason I ask is that the lumberjack theme pack was originally in one of DJ's setup.exe and had its own langlumberjack.dll. jane modified the ztd to use a new set of ids and put those ids in the Phoenix dll.

Mngwa's small exhibit pack is in the ZA01.dll

[HeatherL]

I am using the lumberjack set with the setup.exe, I didn't realize the one at Tek was different.  I will have to check that out. 

Since everything else I was using from ZA is in the langZKL, I decided it made more sense to clean out a bunch of stuff and streamline.  Turned out the only thing not included in the ZKL file was the Small exhibit pack .dll and I was happy to see that it had it's own.

 

 

[Fern]

Trouble with the setup.exe files was in some cases they altered an ingame dll and in others it added files where it shouldn't.

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

This is a very helpful discussion, gals.  I do understand Fern what you are saying with keeping now gone site .dll files for their own integrity.  

 

Concerning the 3 buildings that are in so many .dll files, can those be removed from some of the static/final .dlls, so that they are only in one .dll?  I did not realize that there were repeats of some programming in various .dlls, but I can see how that could happen and perhaps bog down the game.

 

Is there a set plan to clean up .dll files?  That may be low priority, but might be a good thing to do, especially those early .dll files that changed in-game files.  Although that is technically tampering with the author's work, it is more like fixing a problem that was not revealed at the time of creation.

[HeatherL]

I removed the lumberjack setup.exe from my zoo files-  it appeared to include the above lang and a lumberjack pack that I found in Updates.  Is there anything else I'm not seeing?  Does this .exe change any in-game files and, if so,  where do I get them to reinstall (just re-install the game?)

[HeatherL]

5 hours ago, savannahjan said:

Concerning the 3 buildings that are in so many .dll files, can those be removed from some of the static/final .dlls, so that they are only in one .dll?  I did not realize that there were repeats of some programming in various .dlls, but I can see how that could happen and perhaps bog down the game.

Before removing ZA01 & 2 from my zoo file, my game was taking 15 minutes to load up to the start menu, often it would freeze before getting to that point. 

I printed all three .dll lists, compared them side by side, and started crossing off the duplicates.  Then I checked for individual .dll's for the items that weren't duplicated.  There were only 3 or 4 non-duplicates in the 2 ZA files.

[Fern]

HeatherL, this is what Jay has to say about the old setup.exe files:

First, a general precaution. Running downloaded ".exe" files can potentially be dangerous because they could include malware, either deliberate or unintended. It is even more dangerous for setup.exe files and for downloads where source code is not available.

In the case of setup.exe files for ZT, there are potentially other problems. Some of those setup.exe files will patch (change) the ".dll" files that came with ZT, which can cause ZT expansion packs to crash sporadically because those patches were often made before the ZT expansion packs came out. Some setup.exe files create ".dll" files that are patched versions of ZT ".dll" files, which can also cause ZT expansion packs to crash sporadically. Some setup.exe files modify the Windows Registry. So I always recommend that people do not run setup.exe files for ZT. In the case of the lumberjack theme pack, the setup.exe did not appear to do anything bad. It appeared to only extract langlumberjack.dll and LumberjacksThemePack.ztd. But because it is generally bad to run setup.exe files for ZT, LumberjacksThemePack.ztd was put into a ".zip" file at Phoenix, without including a setup.exe. However, that was not done as efficiently as it could have been. The message IDs used in the original LumberjacksThemePack.ztd were not in the form that was used by official ".ztd" files. What should have happened was to use a couple of the original message IDs, and to move the remaining ones to their corresponding message IDs. Instead, all of the IDs were moved unnecessarily to new IDs. That means that langlumberjack.dll is needed if one wants to see messages when using the original LumberjacksThemePack.ztd. But if one is using the updated LumberjacksThemePack.ztd that is at Phoenix, LANG--Phoenix.dll instead of langlumberjack.dll is needed to see the messages.

[HeatherL]

I thank you and Jay for your time regarding this.  

The updated Lumberjack Pack is working fine in my new zoo.

[(Trustee)ZooGrammy]

I've used the Lumberjack pack in my latest zoo.  I really like it and have never had a problem.