Modding Tools
 

This is a message to all you folks with brains

WE NEED MODDING TOOLS and plenty of them

Modding SF is hard and long work

Also, SJ, whenever I try to run storemodder.exe I get an error message
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Re-d/led the exe and still the same
Am using Win2k Pro

Re: Modding Tools
 

Funny, I have Win2k pro too and SlotModder works fine. I wonder how anyone can do their models without it?

I once edited one ship directly from the txt file. I just changed few firing arcs and added two weapon slots more. It took an hour and gave me a headache.

My current programming skills are so bad that I cannot help creating new modding tools but I'm studing information technology so in the future I might be able to help.

Re: Modding Tools
 

Storemodder... not slotmodder http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Modding Tools
 

oops. My bad.

Re: Modding Tools
 

I get the same error: Component 'COMDLG32.OCX' not correctly registered: file is missing or invalid

I get it with both the slot modder and the store modder. Any help would be apprecieated!

I'm running WinXP.

[ June 15, 2004, 03:14: Message edited by: Bunnysteve ]

Re: Modding Tools
 

It's an old VB custom control file. Try searching for it on Google and you should find a plethora of sites to download it from. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Modding Tools
 

Thanks for that

For everyone else

Goto http://www.ascentive.com/support/new...e=COMDLG32.OCX to sort this problem out

Now back to the fact that we need more modding tools http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Modding Tools
 

I could use some graphical system editor which would make the planet placements easier. nothing fancy. Just something that shows the coordinates in the cursor's locations. I realize this can be done with any image processing program but still somekind of system editor would be nice. I guess it could use the same program hull as the slotmodder.

Re: Modding Tools
 

Okay. Here's the deal, folks.

I can create graphical tools for creating mods and campaigns.

The problem is for the next month or so, my off-work time is going to be at a premium and hard to predict.

Hosting the tool(s) will be another issue entirely.

Re: Modding Tools
 

Hosting can be arranged fairly easily..

Re: Modding Tools
 

I will say this now

If anyone has ANYTHING related to game modding that they need hosting, and its not too big (ie. nothing over the top)

Then just email it to me at
chrisnewton.at.lfhost.com
and state you want said file hosted on PXS
Also, feel free to add me on MSN damonsteel.at.msn.com

Failing that, Im sure Fyron or SJ would be happy to host it

And not to forget, I work for a webhosting company http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (though our restrictions will prevent you hosting programs, you could still host sites there while hosting the program else-where)

And moose, lets limit the blood shed with the programs (*refers to your signature http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

[ June 16, 2004, 15:43: Message edited by: DeadZone ]

Re: Modding Tools
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd... consider wearing body armor during the installation if I were you.

... just in case.

... oh, no reason...

Re: Modding Tools
 

LOL

So, when can we expect the first program?

Re: Modding Tools
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">When it's done, I'm afraid. I wasn't kidding about the tight schedule for the next month.

I'll probably start with components, then ships, then slots. (I'm not looking to duplicate work or anything, but these things do tend to tie in together.) After, I'll do systems, planets, then stores. Campaign specific data will come afterwards. After that, well, we'll see.

Re: Modding Tools
 

One question

Once you have done a few, will you look into combining them as one, or leaving them all as seperate programs

Re: Modding Tools
 

If you're using .NET, I've written a class that will read (and maybe write, I can't remember) SE4 or Starfury data into a "field" structure for use by a program, and SJ has done something similar with VB5, so let one of us know if you need our code! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Modding Tools
 

That could be useful since I finally got Visual Studio 6. I planned on doing a map editor of some sort. I have previously done a simple rally manager game with my friend with VB but now I have forgotten almost everything I knew.

Still if you could give the code of the field structure thing that would help a lot. I mean why invent the wheel for a second time?

Re: Modding Tools
 

If you invent the wheel for a 2nd time, you might make it more round than the first http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Seriously though, yeah, if you could also send it too me I would be happy
I know SJ has the VB5 classes hosted on his webspace

[ June 17, 2004, 15:29: Message edited by: DeadZone ]

Re: Modding Tools
 

Well, my code's in C#, and while I could convert it to VB.NET, that wouldn't do much good as you're using VB6 which is radically different... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

But basically, I have a structure called Field, which contains 2 strings, Name and Data.

Then to read the next field from a data file, I use this function:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">/// &lt;summary&gt;
/// Reads a data field from an SE4 text file and verifies its name if the
/// name parameter is not null.
/// &lt;/summary&gt;
protected Field ReadFieldText(string name)
{
string line;
Field field;

// Read lines until a non-blank line is found
// Note that this is &quot;nicer&quot; than SE4's parser, in that
// extra newlines between lines are simply ignored, and the
// later entries are still read
// Find the first delimiter
int delimiterPosition;
do
{
// Read the next line from the data file
line = textReader.ReadLine();
delimiterPosition = line.IndexOf(delimiter);
} while (delimiterPosition &lt; 0); // read until good line found

// Create the field
field = new Field(line.Substring(0, delimiterPosition).Trim(),
line.Substring(delimiterPosition + delimiter.Length).Trim());

// Verify if necessary
if (name != null &amp;&amp; field.Name != name)
throw new ParserException(&quot;The field name \&quot;&quot; + field.Name + &quot;\&quot; was found where \&quot;&quot; + name + &quot;\&quot; was expected.&quot;, line);

return field;
}</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The ParserException is just an exception class I created so I can tell a parser exception from any other type of exception.

This particular implementation will verify that the name of the field is some specific value, so you can make sure the fields are in the right order. Or, if you pass a null reference (does VB6 have those?), it won't verify and just return the next field no matter what.

Would you find everything I've worked on handy, even though it's in C#? I can post it on my website if you want... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Modding Tools
 

Well I've done dozens of programs that reads a list of some sort. I'm more interested in how do you make the program realize the empty spaces between the text and the := mark.
For example:
Obj name := qwerty

Like that. Can you just make the program read it line by line and checking if the line matches the required text. Like in Obj name. Then jump over the spaces and take the obj name and save it to objname table for example.

Re: Modding Tools
 

To answer the inherent questions:

1) It'll be gradually rolled into one program. Since everything is essentially interconnected anyway, it makes more sense to have everything in one place. That way a change in one area can be "seen" to affect others.

2) Because this is going to involve a great deal of string handling and dynamic allocation, but not require much in the way of efficiency, I'm going to be using the Last fully stable Version of an older (somewhat obsolete) language I can get the most out of using the least progging time.

It's gone through a number of naming incarnations, but you can find the product here: www.emediat.com if you're curious. With all of it's excentricities, it's the best language I've ever encountered for string handling.

It's going to work, and work bloody well, but it's going to look dated and nowhere near as slick as something you might get out of .net SDKs.

3) Exan, you might look to see if your Version of C# or C++ supports the strtok function in the string.h header package. It dates to ANSI C, so it should be there. That's probably the most effective way to parse a line for text, but the extrenious spaces in the text might make it more difficult to use.

As for dealing with spaces, you can first locate the :=. Every non-leading/terminating space character before it is your variable. Every non-leading/terminating space character after it is your data.

Substring type functions can make this convenient to code, but it's not necessarily going to be particularly optimal code.

Still, that isn't going to matter in this type of application. You only need to worry about it if you were writing something real-time in tighter processing conditions.

I may have some time to code this weekend, if there are no additional surprises.

Re: Modding Tools
 

Yuck!
Please don't post long-line code in code tags http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Anyways:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM

You can browse down the tree to SF/Tools and grab my stuff.


-----

Handy things like Get/Set Value, Get/Set stringValue, increment/add/multiply/exponent value
and get/set Nth Value which is very handy for damage at range in SE4.