Pebbles' Program Page

Pebbles' Program Page - FAQ

1. What is POLUtils anyway?

POLUtils is a collection of utilities related to PlayOnline, Square/Enix' online gaming framework.
It currently contains:

an audio manager (with POL, TetraMaster and FFXI support - would add FMO support if I could get someone to give me the info)
data browsers for Tetra Master and FFXI
an offline macro editor for FFXI
a configuration editor for FFXI

2. What are the system requirements?

Well, POLUtils requires the .NET Framework 1.1 to be installed, and the Audio Manager has an additional dependency on Managed DirectX (part of DirectX 9 or higher) if you want audio playback (and that's a rather essential element of that particular tool). Unfortunately, Managed DirectX is not automatically installed along with DirectX - you can find a suitable installer for it on the downloads page.
As for Windows version, any version of windows that can install those two dependencies should do (which basically means Windows 98 or later). Future versions of POLUtils may use the 2.0 framework, which will probably require Win2K or later.

3. I get an exception saying Invalid Codepage - why is that?

FFXI uses a text encoding based on shift-jis, and it seems the .NET framework relies on a Windows code page to process shift-jis. However, the shift-jis codepage isn't installed by default. You can easily install it in one of two ways: either you enable support for East-Asian languages (Control Panel\Regional and Language Options\Languages), but that requires 230MB of disk space, or you can just make sure codepages 1250, 1251 and 932 are checked on the Advanced tab of the same control panel applet.
As of version 0.5.0, POLUtils uses a handwritten encoding handler for FFXI, so no additional codepages should be needed.

4. Why isn't POLUtils available in <insert language here>?

Easy - noone has volunteered to help with the translation yet. If you want to provide the translation, let me know; all help is appreciated.

5. Is POLUtils going to steal my passwords or destroy my PC?

I sure hope not ^^. POLUtils currently never ever connects to the internet, so your passwords are safe. As for destroying your PC, that's unlikely as well (of course, the .Net framework is Microsoft technology, so you never know).

6. Will you make a WinAmp plugin for .bgw/.spw files?

No. I considered doing so, but decided against it since a) there already is such a plugin, and b) the WinAmp SDK is, well, crap (I never realized how great the foobar APIs were until I saw the WinAmp SDK).

7. The menus in the Macro Editor only show little squares instead of symbols, but I do have East-Asian supprt installed. Help!

This probably means you're using an older (pre-XP) version of Windows. POLUtils has no control over the font of its menus; that's handled by the system. Try setting the menu font (via the Appearance tab of the Display properties in the Control Panel) to Tahoma, that should work. If running on Vista, also try setting POLUtils to run in XP SP2 Compatibility mode.

8. What is that EngrishOnry thing?

EngrishOnry is a utility to help out those people playing the JP version of FFXI who would like most of the game to be in English. It will translate many of the game's assets to make that happen.

9. There's a game patch coming up! How will this affect my use of EngrishOnry?

Good question. If there is a patch, you must take two steps to avoid your game becoming corrupted: 1) Restore all translations BEFORE applying the patch, and 2) Delete EngrishOnry's backup folder ([FFXI Install Dir]\EngrishFFXI-Backup). If you fail to do the first step the patch may fail, and you may be forced to reinstall the game. If you fail to do the second, EngrishOnry will be unable to Restore the original file (it will restore the file from BEFORE the patch) - again, possibly forcing you to reinstall.
Note: in some cases you may be able to force a full file check + redownload of corrupted files by deleting the "patch.ver" in the FFXI installation directory. But this is by no means guaranteed.