Quick And Easy Software

I’m continuing to work on USB Disk Ejector when I get time. This post is just to let people know where I’m up to and keep you all informed.

I’ve added many fixes and features since the last beta, these include:

• Detecting card readers
• Allowing card media to be ejected without the USB device itself being ejected
• Better notifications for successful and unsuccessful removal
• Automatically closing explorer windows for the drive (helpful in Vista)
• Closing programs running from the drive (nicely or brute-force)
• Proper firewire support
• Window autosizing
• Window positioning fixes
• Miscellaneous other tweaks.

At the moment I’m fixing bugs and making sure that the new features all work correctly. Once that’s done I’ll release beta 2. My intention now is to release beta versions as often as I can. If I again find that I’m unable to work on the program for a long time, people will still be able to try the new features, without having to wait for a full stable version.

You can see a screenshot of the current build below, the icons are likely to change as I cant identify the author of the card reader icon to request permission to include it.

USB Disk Ejector 1.2 beta 2

As the observant among you may have noticed, I haven’t been releasing many updates to USB Disk Ejector recently. I am very busy at the moment and just haven’t had the time to work much on the app.

I’ve been thinking recently, of fully open sourcing the app and putting it on Sourceforge. However I’m not sure its worth the bother, its only worth doing if people would actively contribute to and work on the app.

Read the rest of this entry »

Telltale Music Extractor had a few bugs in the previous version. I’ve now fixed these and released Telltale Music Extractor 1.3.1.

Music from Sam and Max: Whats New Beelzebub now dumps correctly and a potential bug with some new format music files has been fixed.

I’ve had very little time to work on USB Disk Ejector lately. I’m still continuing to work on it when I get chance, I am aware though, that its been a while since the last release. With that in mind I’m releasing a beta of the next version (1.2). Its not feature-complete and there are still unfinished bits but it should be usable until I am able to make a proper release.

Please remember that this is a beta version - not everything will work correctly. It will also only be posted here - not on the software page.

New in this version:

• Options dialog added - options can now be set and saved. Click on ‘more’ then ‘options’ to show it.
• Added options to:
  • Start the program minimized
  • Remember the last size of the program window
  • Remember the last position of the program window
  • Enable/disable balloon notifications
  • Close to the system tray
  • Minimize to the system tray
  • Enable/disable eject notifications
  • Use the standard windows eject notifications
  • Close the program after a successful ejection
  • Minimize the program after a successful ejection
  • Control the adding and management of hotkeys
• Hotkey support. Not yet fully implemented.
• Added popup menu to system tray icon.
• Added an ‘about’ form.
• Firewire devices can be ejected via the command line switches - I still need to add settings to enable/disable this in the GUI.
• Added ‘NOSAVE’ command line switch - when used the program will not save settings to a file and will ignore any existing settings file.

Download the beta version.

Read the readme.

Please report bugs in the comments, some (such as the incomplete hotkey support) are known, but there are bound to be others.

I’ve just released new versions of the Telltale Music Extractor and Telltale Speech Extractor. In both tools, support has been added for Sam and Max Season 2 and Strong Bad games.

The speech extractor has had a number of bugfixes: its decoding problems are now fixed, so all voices should sound just as they do ingame, annotations have been added for all games and the annotations for Sam and Max Season 1 and CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder are now 100% complete. Many thanks to Aeon for completing the Sam and Max annotations.

[Edit - Telltale Music Extractor has been updated again to fix a problem with the music in Sam and Max: Whats New Beelzebub. Please download the new version if you are having problems]

Get them here:

Telltale Music Extractor

Telltale Speech Extractor

Hoanzl has taken the source for my Grim Fandango and Escape From Monkey Island installers and used them to make DVD installers for the games. This means that you can build your own Grim or EMI DVD and keep your originals in a safe place. You also get the benefits of my original installers (install under 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows, uses my launcher program).

Remember I did not create these, so do not contact me about any problems. You can post in the comments though and I’m sure he’ll address any problems you have.

You can get both installers here.

I’ve just released another update to the USB Disk Ejector. Its a minor update and fixes a bug introduced in the previous version. If a computer had a network drive that was inaccessible then the program would produce an error message and wouldn’t show any USB drives. Version 1.1.2 fixes this.

Many thanks to Michael Carman and Victor Rades for reporting and helping me fix this error.

Download it here.

I’ve released a small, interim update to the USB Disk Ejector. It fixes a bug where the /Showeject switch was ignored when combined with /Removethis.

In order to justify a new release I’ve also included two requested features. Firstly, proper Windows 2000 support. I know some people were disappointed that the old version didn’t work on Win2K - well now it does (for real this time). Secondly, displaying disk/volume labels. If you’ve given a disk a name it will now be displayed in bold and you can see an example of this in the screenshot below.

I still don’t know exactly when the next version of the program will be released. I don’t have much free time at the moment but I’m still slowly working on it. You can see a mind-map containing all the proposed features for the next version here.

As always, feel free to get in touch with me via my contact form if you have any problems or feature requests that aren’t on the mind-map.

Download it here.

[Update] It seems that some people have issues using the program when they have network drives that aren’t accessible. I think I’ve identified the problem and I’m just waiting for a few more people to test the fix. I’ll be releasing an updated/fixed version soon.

I’m now hosting some patches that allow Sam and Max Season 2 to run under Windows 2000.

Just to make it clear - I didnt make these patches, Maks Verver did. I am just hosting them on his behalf.

Also note that these are unofficial patches that are not authorized or supported by Telltale Games. If you encounter problems running one of the games on Windows 2000, you should reinstall the game on a supported operating system before contacting Telltale Games for technical support.

Get them here.

Wow. I wasn’t expecting that. Over the last few weeks, various big sites linked to the USB Disk Ejector. Many thousands of people have now downloaded the program and I am thrilled at the thought that one of my programs is in use by people all over the world.

Many thanks to those that have donated, I really appreciate it. You should all have had a thank you email, if you haven’t received one it may have been caught in your spam filter. Thanks also to those that commented or emailed me about the program. All feedback is useful and although I may not be able to implement every suggestion I will do my best to fulfil most requests.

A list of the ideas and proposed features for the new version can be found here. It was compiled from all the requests people sent me, along with a few ideas of my own. Work on the next version is happening slowly; unfortunately all the interest in the program coincided with a very busy period of my life. I have very little free time at the moment and this will be the case up until the end of April. After that I hope to be able to put in a lot more work on the program and get a new version released fairly quickly.

Until then, you can subscribe to my RSS feed here and please feel free to get in touch with me via my contact form if you have any problems or requests that aren’t featured on the list.

I’ve now uploaded the source code to all the programs released this week. I offer no guarantees on its quality, some of it is based on 5 year old code from when I was learning programming and a lot of it is ongoing development code, peppered with todo’s. Much of it shows a disregard for coding conventions and I haven’t yet found the time to refactor and clean it up. In short, your mileage may vary.

Download it here.

Quick and Easy week is now over, many thanks to those who’ve offered words of encouragement. Should you want to show your appreciation and support my work, you can do so via a paypal donation. The ugly paypal button on the right of the page will let you do this. I hope that people find the tools useful; as always people can contact me via the forums or my contact page if they have any problems or suggestions.

Quick and Easy week comes to a close with the USB Disk Ejector.

This was originally a program that I wrote for my own use and released just to see if anyone found it useful. Apparently people did and it was surprisingly popular.

In response to user requests I’ve now beefed it up significantly. This new version has been completely re-written and has many new features. It now works on Vista, can run as a command line application and can eject drives from the command line based on drive letter, drive name or partial drive name.

The new command line options make it especially suitable for use with a flash/pen drive, especially if you use a menu such as PStart or the Portable Apps launcher. Eg. I have PStart setup to run the program with the command line option “/EJECTTHIS’. When I run it, the program loads silently, ejects the pen drive and exits. This works regardless of the drive letter that Windows assigns the drive. I strongly recommended that you check out the readme for more information on the new command line options and how they can be used.

New in version 1.1:

• Now works on Windows Vista. It’s only been tested on XP and Vista but should work with earlier versions of Windows too.
• Changed to ’silent ejection’ by default. There are now no messages shown when a device is successfully ejected, messages are only shown when there is an error and the eject fails.
• The keyboard can now be used to eject drives (press enter).
• Completely reworked the command line options, the old ones were removed and new ones added. See the rest of the readme for more information on these.
• Drives can now be ejected entirely from the command line. You can specify a drive letter, drive name, or partial drive name.
• Mobile mode has been removed, its now automatic. The program will restart itself in mobile mode when appropriate.
• Completely rewrote the drive scanning code. USB devices that dont identify themselves as removable disks can now be managed by the program.
• Uses Vista fonts when running under Vista.

Download it here.

Day 6 brings the last of the launcher and setup programs.

Escape From Monkey Island Launcher has been updated to version 1.5. The resolution patch has been reworked to make it much faster, the 6 different language versions of EMI are now better supported and Vista/64 bit Windows support has been added. The full list of changes can be seen below:

New in version 1.5:

• Resolution patch reworked: It’s now much faster. On most systems it will only take 1 or 2 seconds to apply - compared to 30 seconds in previous versions.
• Added support for the 6 different language versions of EMI: The launcher will now download and install the appropriate patch when prompted. Previously only the English patch was supported.
• Added features from the original Lucasarts launcher. Added buttons to switch between Direct3D/OpenGL and 16 bit/32 bit colour. The original launcher now wont run on some systems so it was necessary to include these features.
• Cosmetic changes: Interface redesigned, text and icons made clearer, changed the launcher images.
• Vista compatibility: The launcher now automatically prompts to run as administrator when its started, the program icon now includes all sizes up to 256×256.
• Fixed a small memory leak.
• Now uses the excellent EMI icon created by Thanius.
• 64 bit versions of Windows are now officially supported. The launcher has been tested on XP64 and Vista64.
• Old versions of Windows are no longer officially supported. Versions before XP (95/98/ME/2000) should be fine but the launcher hasn’t been tested with them.

Download it here.

Escape From Monkey Island Setup is a new tool. Its a replacement installer (setup program) for Escape From Monkey Island. The installer that comes with the game can be problematic with newer versions of Windows and refuses to work at all on 64 bit Windows. This installer doesn’t have those problems and comes with the above-mentioned Escape From Monkey Island Launcher.

Download it here.

Day 5 features two tools - one updated and one new.

The Curse of Monkey Island Launcher has been updated. Its had a slight redesign to make it easier to use, has full Vista compatibility and now supports 64 bit versions of Windows. The full list of changes can be seen below.

New in version 2.5

• Cosmetic changes: Interface redesigned, text and icons made clearer, changed the launcher images.
• Vista compatibility: The launcher now automatically prompts to run as administrator when its started, the program icon now includes all sizes up to 256×256 and if running on Vista the launcher now uses vista fonts.
• Fixed a small memory leak.
• Now uses the excellent CMI icon created by Thanius.
• 64 bit versions of Windows are now officially supported. The launcher has been tested on XP64 and Vista64.
• Old versions of Windows are no longer officially supported. Versions before XP (95/98/ME/2000) should be fine but the launcher hasn’t been tested with them.
• The cutscene fix feature has been removed: Newer versions of DirectX and newer versions of Windows mean that the fast cutscene bug no longer occurs.

Download it here.

Curse of Monkey Island Setup is the new tool. Its a replacement installer (setup program) for the Curse of Monkey Island. The installer that comes with the game can be problematic with newer versions of Windows and refuses to work at all on 64 bit Windows. This installer doesn’t have those problems and comes with the above-mentioned Curse of Monkey Island Launcher.

Download it here.

Thursday’s tool is the Psychonauts Saved Game Editor.

There’s been some minor cosmetic changes, Vista compatibility has been tweaked and 25 new common tasks have been added. These allow you to change the ammount of ammo you have, give yourself items such as the cobweb duster, enable/disable Raz’s powers and much more. Many thanks to Bosam and Tobi Lukefisher for sending me these new tasks.

Download it here.