Introduction

NearInfinity (NI for short) is an Infinity Engine browser and editor. You can read more about it on the NearInfinity Wiki.

Hide NI DOS is a program that quietly runs NearInfinity with the specified Java Virtual Machine (VM) options, which may be necessary if NI runs out of memory. Hide NI DOS also provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for NearInfinity’s optional command-line parameters. You can read more about the various options and parameters here.

This utility was built using the AutoHotkey scripting language, and as such will perform best on newer Windows operating systems. It has been optimized for Windows 10.

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Installation

Installation is very simple: just extract the contents of the archive (including relative paths) into any directory and run "Hide NI DOS.exe".

The first time you run the program, the Configuration GUI will be displayed with some reasonable defaults already selected. Set the various options as desired, and make sure to select the full path to the NearInfinity.jar file you wish the program to quietly run in the future. When ready, you can select "Run" to run NI with the selected options but leave the Configuration GUI open, or you can select "OK" to save your selections and close the GUI. Subsequently running Hide NI DOS will run NI with the options you saved without displaying the Configuration GUI.

To reopen the Configuration GUI again later, run Hide NI DOS.exe with the "-Config" parameter. In other words, save

"Hide NI DOS.exe" -Config

to a .BAT file and run it. Similarly, you may also run

"Hide NI DOS.exe" -About

to view an About dialog with copyright information. Both such Windows Batch (.BAT) files have already been set up for you.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is this program needed?
A: Basically, the default memory allocation settings (which are platform-dependent) are just not high enough, especially when using a 32-bit version of Java. NearInfinity can run out of memory if used for long periods of time, causing it to freeze or give OutOfMemory errors. The best way to counteract this is to allocate more memory for NI to use at runtime. Hide NI DOS is better than commonly distributed .BAT files because it makes it easy to adjust more than just the maximum size of the memory allocation pool. More importantly, it hides the command prompt window through which NI is run.

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Credits

  • Thanks to all the people who contributed to the NearInfinity project over the years. Your contributions are very much appreciated by the Infinity Engine Modding Community.
  • Thanks to ScuD for originally telling me which command-line arguments he uses when running NearInfinity.
  • To view the "About" dialog, run Hide NI DOS.exe with the "-About" parameter.
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Version history

22 July 2010 - Version 1.00:
  • Initial release
28 July 2010 - Version 1.01:
  • Added option to config to create a shortcut on the current user’s desktop.
15 September 2011 - Version 1.02:
  • Replaced writing, running, and hiding .BAT files with corrupt’s CMDret function.
  • Fixed input parameters so that "-about" and "-config" can be used at the same time.
  • Added option to enable logging of console output (disabled by default).
  • Added support for specifying additional custom parameters. See Introduction.
12 January 2012 - Version 1.03:
  • Fixed a bug where the Hide NI DOS process did not close when the NearInfinity window was closed.
  • Replaced corrupt’s "CMDret_Stream" function with his "CMDret_RunReturn" function, as it is more appropriate and likely performs better in this situation.
  • Greatly improved logging. The output should actually be readable now :-) . It is still disabled by default.
  • Many other minor code improvements.
09 October 2022 - Version 2.0.0.0:
  • Complete rewrite of codebase
  • Support for NI-specific parameters
09 October 2022 - Version 2.0.1.0:
  • Correct logic error in CreateShortcut()
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