How to get Sola Rola working. (Was: How to almost get Sola Rola to work - very close.)

To get Sola Rola working, follow these instructions.

You need to edit your hosts file to point www.gimme5games.com to 216.104.46.66 – if you already know how, then great. If not keep reading:

1. Open your hosts file (this step requires Administrator or superuser rights). The link has instructions for a variety of operating systems.
2. Add the following line and save it:

67.212.163.74       www.gimme5games.com

3. Test it by pointing your web browser to www.gimme5games.com. If you were successful you will see a message from zAlbee saying so, and you can go ahead to the game. But if you see the gimme5 homepage then it didn’t work and there is no reason to try the game. If things didn’t work see below for some ideas.

Note: This procedure redirects all requests to www.gimme5games.com towards the new server. To undo, simply remove the same lines from the hosts file, or add a # in front of the line to comment it out.

The IP address above is for the server zalbee.intricus.net. It is unlikely but possible that the IP will change, if it does please send me a message so I can update this post.

If it should happen that the server is no longer reachable (who knows what will happen years from now), then please see further down this thread where I have a posted a copy of the necessary files, and you can host it yourself.

PS. When you play the game please +1 my comment inviting people to this thread, so that the comment stays at the top.

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If it doesn’t work:

Some things to try – once you see the success message from zAlbee you can continue to the game:

• Restart your browser.
• Go to http://www.gimme5games.com/ and press shift-reload.
• Ping www.gimme5games.com and see if the IP address matches the line above.
• Clear your cache (Not your cookies!!)
• Reboot your computer.
• Try a different browser.
• Read this thread starting at about the middle of page 3 – maybe someone posted a suggestion that will work for you.

If you get the success message but the game doesn’t work:

• Go to http://www.gimme5games.com/solarola/levels/levelList.xml and press shift-reload. You should see the XML, or your browser may try to download the file. Let it, then delete the file (you don’t need it, you just want the browser to have a fresh copy).

Any other ideas? Let me know by posting a reply to this thread, and I’ll add them.

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To Kong admins:

Are you able to host the Sola Rola files on a kongregate server? They have a fixed directory structure. If you can, please let us know, so that zAlbee doesn’t have to host the files forever.

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Why this works:

The game loads the level pack from external files that used to be hosted on www.gimme5games.com – however those files were deleted. zAlbee managed to reverse engineer the file format by reading the source code for the game. But we still needed the actual data that used to be there.

In a moment of awesomeness zAlbee wrote an editor for the levels. And then other uses of this site helped by viewing a video walkthrough of each level and creating the levels. zAlbee then assembled those levels and uploaded them to his server. (The IP address above is to his server.)

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The original post when this thread was started:

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Sola Rola doesn’t work.

The problem is that it needs these two files:

http://www.gimme5games.com/solarola/translate.xml

http://www.gimme5games.com/solarola/levels/levelList.xml

But both are gone.

If you edit your hosts files and redirect www.gimme5games.com to a webserver you control, then create empty files in those locations the game will almost start.

You’ll get the dialog part of the game – which will be blank since translate.xml is empty. But if you wait long enough it will eventually stop.

Then you can actually get to the level page. But because levelList.xml is empty none of the levels will load.

That’s as far as I was able to get.

If you go here you can see some of the source code for the game. Maybe someone can read it and reverse engineer what needs to be in levelList.xml?

Interesting work, thanks!

Unfortunately, looking through the source code, it loosk like levelList.xml is not the real problem — the level data itself is also stored on the same server, so even if you could reconstruct levelList.xml, you’d still need to get the level data itself.

I’m suprirsed that Google can’t find other copies of this, but I’ve so far come up empty.

I’m hoping if we can figure out what the format for levelList.xml is then we can recreate it based on the walkthrough videos.

Given the name, levelList probably links to multiple other XML files.

I have been talking to askon, and I am pretty confident we will be able to get Sola Rola working again using the hosts file redirection.

I studied the source code for this game during the past two days and I believe that I have worked out the XML format of the levels. You guys are correct that each level has its own XML file. Here’s a preview:

More details to follow…

I will kiss you guize if you can get that game working again so I can finally get MY LAST EASY BADGE!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA *coughs* ha

Edit @ below – This is easily the highlight of my week! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

First level recreated:

Level complete screen:

Kong API appears to be working (see high scores on the right).

Oh my god, please continue! :,)

This is HUGE! Keep going, guys. I want to be able to play this game and ultimately achieve the hard badge, and I’m sure many others will appreciate your work as much as I do.

Hey guys, there are 48 levels in total, so it’s going to take a while to recreate them all from Youtube videos. If you’re interested, here’s where you can help.

Instead of writing the XML by hand, which is tedious and error-prone, not to mention hard to explain, I made a level editor. :)

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How you can help:

1. Post in this thread which level you are working on
2. Find the level video here
3. Go here: Sola Rola Level Editor
4. Create the level to match the original.
5. Generate the XML, copy/paste it into a text file, and send it (preferably as an attachment) to zalbee at gmail.com, along with the level number and a screenshot of the level editor. (This is just to make it easier to verify in case something goes wrong.)

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UPDATE 9/27: All level XML files have now been created, but many of them have small errors (missing walls, switches, or wrong coloured wall, etc.).

The following lists which levels have been created:

1 – zAlbee/Lebossle – verified 1/1
2-4 – hamuka/Lebossle – verified 3/3
5 – zAlbee/Lebossle – verified 1/1
6-10 – Lebossle – verified 5/5
11-15 – Danaroth/Lebossle – verified 5/5
16-20 – snipahar/Lebossle – verified 5/5
21-32 – Lebossle – verified 12/12
33-35 – JimmyCarlos – verified 3/3
36-39 – askon – verified 4/4
40-44 – saneiac – verified 5/5
45-48 – Danaroth – verified 4/4

Verification: 48 checked, 48 passed (100% complete)

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Here are the completed XML files

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UPDATE 9/29: All levels have been verified completed. See the following post:
Instructions to get Sola Rola working on your computer

That’s awesome.

I can confirm it works!

I’m hoping kongregate will be willing to host the necessary files once they are all done, but if not we’ll figure something out.

I don’t know if zAlbee will be building all of the level files himself, but in any case, it seems to me that what is needed now is a screenshot of each level.

Edit never mind :)

I found walkthroughs for every level here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Regrin84/videos?sort=dd&query=sola&flow=list&page=1&view=0

Make sure to post a copy of use the START of each level before anything moves!

PS. I suggest you post in form when you are working on/finished a level so we don’t duplicate work.

Very good work, I look forward to seeing it get up and running again; you guys are amazing. (especially zAlbee)

I’m working on level 37 (picked randomly). And zAlbee the level editor is amazing! You really outdid yourself here.

Level 37 done.

Thanks :)

I basically started after lunch and coded 5 hours straight. Whew.

I posted a comment on the game telling people to come to this thead. If everyone wouldn’t mind +1 it so it ends up on top, so people will see it when they go to play the game.

ok I take 45-48; will give in a while.

I remember playing this game before and really enjoyed it. :D I hope we’ll be able to get this game back up again. I’ll take levels 10-20.

zalbee +1

LOL. I don’t mean to tease, but I was having a bit of fun with the level editor, and just had to share XD

http://youtu.be/NoLnHBgnPVs (see around 1:15 for hilarity)

Also, I am working on putting text back into the game via translate.xml. That’s what I originally intended to show before I got carried away. Yup. :D

^WTF XD

Also, used RNG to pick, but I take level number 2.

EDIT: This went super fast. Sending in a matter of minutes.

Sent levels 36, 38, 39.

Sending number 3 and 4.

I’m working on all levels, you can get my progress on my Dropbox

Originally posted by Lebossle:

I’m working on all levels, you can get my progress on my Dropbox

It’s not a bad idea for each level to get done twice by different people, then they can be compared to make sure there are no errors. And that page is quite colorful.