i have problem, i recently downloaded this tool and when i unzipped it and launched the playcii.exe my computer sayed the api-ms-win-core-pathl1-1-0.dll and c:/win/temp/mei*****/python is missing. how to fix it?
Hi, I'm looking into this. I'm guessing it's because the last Windows build of Playscii was built from my Windows 10 desktop with a version of PyInstaller (the program I use to turn my Python into a runnable Windows EXE) that changed something about its compat status. I no longer have access to any machines running Windows 7. I'm going to search PyInstaller's issue tracker thoroughly and file a ticket with them if I don't find anything.
Obviously Windows 7 is no longer an officially supported-by-MS OS but I'd like to exhaust every other option before I tell everyone Playscii for Windows requires win10.
Sure, see these two sections from the documentation, which is also accessible from within Playscii if you press F1: http://vectorpoem.com/playscii/howto_art.html#customcharsets
Creating a custom character set is a bit trickier than creating a custom palette, but that should explain what's needed.
Could you provide some text info for me? Try running the program so you get that api-ms-win-blahblah.dll error, and when the dialog window is up, press Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V it into notepad and/or a text field post here.
If the error text doesn't appear in a window and you're running from a command line, pasting the same text from there here would do the same.
Thanks!
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playscii.exe - System Error
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The program can't start because api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
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OK
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This is from Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
Oh, and a second error after I hit okay on the first one.
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Fatal error detected
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Error loading Python DLL 'C:\Users\Joe\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI365282\python39.dll'.
LoadLibrary: The specified module could not be found.
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OK
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Okay, I'm not sure this will fix the issue, but try this build:
http://vectorpoem.com/playscii/playscii_win32-9.17.1_20210419.zip
It's using the latest version of Python, PyInstaller, etc; I want to make sure I'm using the latest before I file a bug with the PyInstaller project.
If it gives you an error and the error is any different, let me know.
You might also try running playscii.exe from the Windows command line, and see if any meaningful error text results.
Thanks for your patience!
Okay, I think the PyInstaller folks correctly identified the issue, which is simply that Python 3.9 dropped Windows 7 support. I've added a new download to the main page here for a version 9.17.1b (note the b) made with Python 3.8.10. Please try that and let me know if that runs on your system. If so, I'll make sure to do future builds with 3.8 for as long as I can (Python says they'll support 3.8 until 2024).