Notrium Mod Viewer

[Dorten]

It is now at a very beginning stage of development. Unpack in Notrium folder and run.

Does it worth continuing?

[Amarth]

Interesting. Definitely worth continuing!

I suppose the lower part of the default view is a "problems detected" list? I really like that...

[harwe]

Holy kickass useful!!!

[Dorten]

OK... Continuing.

Next steps:
-Loading and viewing of:
--Areas
--Animations
--Particles
--Races
--Dialogs
--Songs
--Terrains
--PlotObjectDefinitions
-Editing and saving...

Not that much, I must say...

[ZeXLR8er]

Hi Dorten, RE PM:

Does anything after ';//' really means something, or it can be dumped away?

No, as far as I'm aware, everything after the ";//" is just for annotation purposes. That said, if you're thinking of making this into an editor, it would be fantastic if it could work in such a way that would preserve what is after the ";//". There was one a program similar to yours called "Jan's File Viewer", but it was unsuitable for real use as every time you used it to edit a file, it would strip the file of all annotations, making it impossible to mod it by hand later on.

Are spaces at the line beginnings really needed, or I can rearrange them differently?

I'm not too sure what you mean by that... do you mean something like:

Code: Select all

   1.5;//blah blah

compared to

Code: Select all

1.5;//blah blah

that? In that case, I can't see that the spaces would have any purpose at all. The only exception I can think of may be the journals files, but even that is unlikely.

Last, but not least: there's the -0.3f00000 entry in float field even in default mod, but the game doesn't crash on it. Does it mean something, or is this a typo?

I have never seen that before, and never used it, so I'm fairly certain that it's a typo. Ville may have to confirm that for you, but for now I'd guess you can probably ignore it.

Questions of my own: I'm not sure that your program is picking up many of the values in the files correctly. For instance, if you load up the "default" mod, and look at the very first entry in plot objects, "Replicator cell", your viewer tells me that the object will be deleted after -1000 seconds and vanishes after dropping 1000000 of [Unknown (13000000)] in 0px area.
When I compare that to the file however, the ";//time to delete object in milliseconds" is actually "-1.000000", which is the "don't delete" indicator. And the "effects" dialogue tells me that it drops 1 unit of item 13, rather than 1000000 of item 13000000. Maybe simply out by a factor of 1000000, or it's not recognizing the "."?

That aside, this tool has great potential, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

[Amarth]

Last, but not least: there's the -0.3f00000 entry in float field even in default mod, but the game doesn't crash on it. Does it mean something, or is this a typo?

That would be a typo. Considering the atof() documentation, atof("-0.3f00000") has the same value as atof("-0.300000f") because the part from the first non-valid character (the 'f') onwards gets stripped away (thus even "-0.3banana" should work - testing confirms this).

EDIT: also, I assume the "//" parts designate a comment, as in C or Java. Thus the actual data as far as Notrium is concerned only goes to the ";", the "//blabla" part after that is only for humans reading the data files. As such, it is possible to insert lines with extra comment anywhere which are just seen as blank lines and discarded (testing also confirms this).

[Dorten]

Questions of my own: I'm not sure that your program is picking up many of the values in the files correctly. For instance, if you load up the "default" mod, and look at the very first entry in plot objects, "Replicator cell", your viewer tells me that the object will be deleted after -1000 seconds and vanishes after dropping 1000000 of [Unknown (13000000)] in 0px area.
When I compare that to the file however, the ";//time to delete object in milliseconds" is actually "-1.000000", which is the "don't delete" indicator. And the "effects" dialogue tells me that it drops 1 unit of item 13, rather than 1000000 of item 13000000. Maybe simply out by a factor of 1000000, or it's not recognizing the "."?

I'm not sure, what's going on here. For me it says:

[Replicator Cell]
class: [normal object (0)]
uses [Unknown (0)] definition
8 instances are placed at random at all areas
effects execute at map creation (conditions not checked)

------Effects------

Vanishes after this:
drop 1 of [Replicator Cell (13)] in 0px area.

I'll see into this. For now, try changing your Windows locale settings to use different decimal separator (point instead of comma or vice versa) it might have something to do with it.

[Dorten]

And what to do with comments?

Possibilities are:
simplest one: Ignore them. (not good)
simpler one: Load them when loading mod and save back after that. New entries are created without comments. (very simple to make)
medium one: Always save the default comments, custom ones discarded. (will have to write down all defaults )
harder one: load and save custom comments, allow editing them, new entries are created with default comments. ( )

[Dorten]

Bit of update. Skipped Animations for a time being, I want to finish more uniform entries first.

Triple post

[Aegis]

Very good! I fixed up tonnes of errors in my mod.
And now I get to see how many errors I made in my first mod ever!
119 errors, and there's more because I got lost a bit!

[ZeXLR8er]

I'm happy to report the latest version works perfectly for me; no more strange disappearing decimal places.

simplest one: Ignore them. (not good)
simpler one: Load them when loading mod and save back after that. New entries are created without comments. (very simple to make)
medium one: Always save the default comments, custom ones discarded. (will have to write down all defaults )
harder one: load and save custom comments, allow editing them, new entries are created with default comments. ( )

Could you please elaborate on the difference between the simpler and simplest options? To me, the medium one is looking good... while the harder one would be perfect, the balance would have to be found between what is best and what is do-able.

[Dorten]

My initial intention was to make editor like this: Each object is a bunch of fields, some fields being a lists of other objecsts (blocks). So, when editing an object you will be presented with a number of textboxes for single fields and for lists - buttons, which open the very same list form but for subobjects. There's the comment options:

simplest - ignore on loading AND writing (no comments in resulting files);
simple - save comments on load and write back on save
medium - ignore on load, write defaults on save
hard - have comment textbox near each of the fields

Last evening, however, I got another idea, which would be simpler to implement: to edit an object you are presented with a single big textbox, which has all the contents of the object as it is stored in the files, and the button - parse, and save if all is all right. This way the problem with comments in not even raised (you can write all you want), and editing will be much faster and less clumsy, but:

I'll have to rewrite the description code to show all the fields, not only the most unclear
It may be not as simple to mod for beginners
I won't be able to add some fansy stuff like picking image and sound files with open file dialogs or whatever later

Of course, there's always an option to use BOTH editor interfaces ! But the question is: which one will be the first to make?

[ZeXLR8er]

My initial intention was to make editor like this: Each object is a bunch of fields, some fields being a lists of other objecsts (blocks). So, when editing an object you will be presented with a number of textboxes for single fields and for lists - buttons, which open the very same list form but for subobjects. There's the comment options:

simplest - ignore on loading AND writing (no comments in resulting files);
simple - save comments on load and write back on save
medium - ignore on load, write defaults on save
hard - have comment textbox near each of the fields

So, if I have this right: the "simple" option will take the comments (everything after the ';//'s) from every line of the file, save them and then add them back to the file it creates when editing? If that's right, that sounds fairly perfect.

And I prefer the ideas above to the second one; even though it would be fine for people who can already proficient at modding, the main reason your editor would be used is for people who either can't mod, or who want the process streamlined and made easier. I'd love to be able to edit my mod using drop-down boxes and number/text fields.

I won't be able to add some fansy stuff like picking image and sound files with open file dialogs or whatever later

Another reason I'm leaning towards the first options. That would be fantastic.

[Dorten]

OK, only Object definitions and polygons, before I leave viewing alone for a time and focus on editing.

I've reworked description building to be more or less automatic, with a possibility to use custom representations (default is 'Field: Value'). So, I'm gathering suggestions on what should be made more clear in descriptions.

[ZeXLR8er]

One feature I was thinking about recently that would be of huge assistance is this: is it at all possible to add in some of the files a list of all the places/things that access the item ('item' as in the non-Notrium definition )?
For example: I have a weapon X. Because I have over 100 items, 100 creatures and 100 scripts, it becomes quite difficult to keep track of exactly what is using what, and I would like to know exactly what is accessing weapon X. So, I open up Notrium Mod Viewer, open Weapons and check weapon X, which beneath the main data box will display a second box, a la:

Code: Select all

Accessed by:
       - Creature 4 (weapon)
       - Creature 45 (death effects)
       - Item 76
       - Script 32

I'm not sure if this is at all possible, so give me your thoughts. As above, it would not need to be for every file, the most important ones I can think of would be the Scripts, Weapons, Items, Plot Objects, Object Definitions and maybe Lights and Particles.

Brilliant work on the latest build by the way.