Fractal Terrains Pro .... beta (?)

[guyanonymous]

I recently read, in the ProFantasy.com forums, a post about the rivers-gone-wild issue with FT Pro.

One respondent mentioned a beta version that fixes the problem and suggests contacting tech support to get a copy.

A message to tech support last week resulted in no reply, and my message today resulted in them forwarding two copies of their email reply from a totally unrelated question I sent them early last year. (grr.)

Are any of you familiar/able to comment on such a beta version? Does it exist? Does it fix the rivers problem? Does it fix any other of the crashing issues? Save issues? etc? And what is the best way to actually contact tech support since their email form is having probs and/or their are with replying to messages?

Merci buckets!

p.s., here's the link to the thread with a nice image showing the rivers problem http://forum.profantasy.com/comments...&page=1#Item_0

[waldronate]

I can comment on such a beta version. It does exist, I have a copy, and it seems to fix most of the critical bugs with FT including some crashes, painting problems, and the river routing problem.

I'm not sure I'd trust that jslayton fellow; he seems like a bit of a snippy blowhard.

ProFantasy tech support is usually pretty good about responding to e-mails. I'm surprised they haven't gotten back to you. I recommend sending them an e-mail with the forum reference and description of the problem.

[Steel General]

I'm not sure I'd trust that jslayton fellow; he seems like a bit of a snippy blowhard.

*Chuckle, snicker, chuckle*

[guyanonymous]

Thanks Waldronate....

Is there a better way to contact them than the form on the website (i.e., a direct tech support email address)?

Thanks!

[su_liam]

Drop by their house and mention the problem while your hanging out drinking a Coors?

[Mark Oliva]

I'm not sure I'd trust that jslayton fellow; he seems like a bit of a snippy blowhard.

Hmmm. Ya (or Ja, like we write it here). Could be. But then again, he is the guy who programmed the thing. Hmmm. P0nder. Ponder.

[Mark Oliva]

Thanks Waldronate....

Is there a better way to contact them than the form on the website (i.e., a direct tech support email address)?

Thanks!

Sure. Bug Simon Rogers:

mailto://simon@profantasy.com

or Ralf Schemmann:

mailto:ralf@profantasy.com

Be sure to tell 'em I sent ya!

[guyanonymous]

I just tried through the techsupport submission form on the website. If that doesn't work, I'l use the emails. Thanks muchly!

Fixing the river issue would really make my day - and take away the major frustration I have with the program since I use it almost exclusively for very large maps.

[guyanonymous]

Mark,

I've emailed Ralf (in case he asks you about it). Simon's email was bounced (just so you know).

I really appreciate your providing some off-site support of this sort...thank you!

David

p.s., I sent the last email using the profantasy tech-support form on Friday...no response yet (Thursday).

[guyanonymous]

Ralf helped me out! Thank you.

The good news:

Rivers look better. There are fewer long, straight rivers and fewer long, straight, parallel rivers. This is a win! Great job. I haven't seen evidence of the rivers gone wild issue as yet.

I can also save a .bmp up to 8000x4000 pixels. Going above this (9000x4500) causes a crash right at the end of the process. It seems to calculate everything fine, but when it goes to actually create/save the file, crashing occurs.

A bigger problem for me, though, is now the multiple-file saving doesn't work. What I should say is that it no longer actually saves the image files. It saves .fcw files everytime, and when HTML is turned on, creates and saves those files and the support (gif) files + fcw files. But no actual image files (jpg or bmp). Any ideas or suggestions? This wasn't a problem before.

I'd ultimately started running FT in admin mode, finding it more stable under Vista 64 (this could have just been my imagination though). With the beta installed, though, I found that I also had to activate compatibility mode (XP/SP2) to be able to save ftw files without crashes. At least after opening the program and then immediately 1) save as 2)choose .ftw as file type -> big crash (asking if I want to report problem). This wasn't something that happened before. Turning on compat. mode fixed this for me.

So now - if I could keep the river fixes (which are great) AND get saving as multiple files to work again, I'd be in FT heaven.

p.s., one new question: is there a way to simply export the river overlay still in a resolution independent vector format that can be read in other programs?