Booster's Lab - It's Pretty Good Now

In other words, closed source secrets.

Nobody can use or edit a 2x mod. Unless they have explicit permission from Noxid.

This is why you cannot use BL to edit a 2x mod unless you press 500 invisible buttons in random places, save a TSC file with a very high quality ASCII art drawing in it, and write a C compiler inside the contents of your Java classpath.

 

However, you are free to make your own programming language or install something such as Jython (Java Python) to serve as your plugin language.

Pseudo-TSC plugins. It must be done. ;P

 

Small update today to fix some kind-of important things
see OP for changelog

 

Mind if I request a feature and a bugfix?

At the moment BL reorders the map list when a map is deleted. This would throw out all <TRAs to any higher map numbers than that map and break the mod. While this makes sense for maps at the end of the list (something CE never considered) it makes more sense to leave a blank slot marked as empty like what CE does. Just shorten the map list if the list ends in deleted entries as the result of deleting a map slot.

A way to move or copy a map to a specific empty map slot (Move to../Copy to..) would also be helpful. Currently the only way to move mapdata to a specific numbered slot (say for example map 63 to empty map slot 31) is via a hex editor. This is not terribly fast or efficient. This feature (moving/copying map slots) would help streamline the mod porting process in my case and allow the modder to make full use of unused map entries. They can choose where the mapdata is copied to.

That or auto-rewriting <TRAs when a map is deleted or moved.

Some other minor requests are a way to close tabs, delete maps with the DELETE key and zooming with CTRL+MOUSEWHEEL.

Your editor is amazing btw.

 

Sometimes Noxid is such a good programmer that he finds it much easier to use Java regexes to rewrite every <TRA in a mod's TSC files than to simply leave a blank space in a certain list of Strings.

 

Those sound like good things to have.
RE: the mapdata shifting thing, I believe i made the mistake of conflating implementation and interface, that really should have been how I did it all along. Well, it probably won't be that hard to change.

e: or actually maybe I *could* rewrite the <TRAs. I mean I already have some things that scan through every TSC file anyway. that might even be easier tbh >.>

 

Though if you change <TRAs you'll need to be mindful of the contents of open script tabs.

 

I just want to say Booster's lab is sexy.

EDIT:
Also, the "oh god what do i do" button is much more useful than those boring life help buttons

...Seems like it is safe to switch over to Booster's Lab from Cave Editor? No black mesa accidents should probably occur?

 

...Seems like it is safe to switch over to Booster's Lab from Cave Editor? No black mesa accidents should probably occur?

That's the same thing I want to know. I'm still using Cave Editor currently, but I do want to switch over to Booster's Lab. I can safely assume I can switch over without any bad things happening, but what are the biggest advantages to switching over?

 

@xcalibar nothing bad should happen, but I'd still advise keeping an old back up because you can never be too careful. Some people have reported some problems with deleting many maps, so that's something I'd advise against.

@tpcool It's like CE, but better. For the most part. Grab a copy, try it out on something safe, and see for yourself. The major selling point is the purported user-friendly-ness

@andwhyisit I forgot to mention, you can close the currently active tab with ctrl-w. I looked into adding little "x" buttons but I couldn't see any way to make that work nicely in Java while still being cross-platform and not complete bullshit to program. Next release will auto-modify TSC scripts when a map is deleted, and allow multi-delete of maps. Delete key prompts to delete maps if map list is currently focused item. Working on a "move map" feature as well before I update. Will try to implement scroll-wheel zooming.


e: Updated to 0240, looked into the scroll zooming thing and it was a bit too much hassle so you'll have to live with ctrl-plus and ctrl-minus for now. But I did most of the other stuff. Didn't really test it much so lemme know how it crashes.
Also output will go to some log.<number> files so if you have weird issues have a look in there and maybe it'll give you a hint at what function I made crash.

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11553112/how-to-add-close-button-to-a-jtabbedpane-tab

Don't worrying about using Java to reinvent the wheel when you can just steal someone's code without asking them use the power of free and open source software.

 

e: Updated to 0240, looked into the scroll zooming thing and it was a bit too much hassle so you'll have to live with ctrl-plus and ctrl-minus for now. But I did most of the other stuff. Didn't really test it much so lemme know how it crashes.
Also output will go to some log.<number> files so if you have weird issues have a look in there and maybe it'll give you a hint at what function I made crash.

By god this is awesome! What once took me half a day now takes half a minute. Thank you so much!

 

I don't think this has been addressed?

Spoiler

The map editor cuts off the ends of the maps on all sides.

Also, is it possible to make the editor save your "misc" settings in the map editor? "Show entity names", "show entity sprites", et cetera?

 

That is intentional, to mimic how it actually displays ingame.
as for the settings, I'll see what I can do.

 

My apologies, I didn't realize/think of that.

Thank you.

...

I think I actually need to convert to BL now.



Oh, another thing.

When searching a tsc script, if there aren't any more results for your search, it just selects some unrelated code near the beginning.

Example:



Search inquiry: "5000"

Result 1: "<FLJ5000:0500"
Result 2: "<MSGI have 5000 friends!<NOD<CLO"

Result 3: "<MNA<FAI0004<CMU0005<END"

:I

 

That's a counting error related to how newlines are interpreted differently by the thing that finds the text and the thing that highlights it. I have a hacky little fix that somewhat mitigates the problem, but it doesn't work very well when the search wraps for some reason that I forget. For the most part it's not a problem, and I preferred this "bug" to not being able to wrap search text at all, so I mentally classed it as a low-priority fix.

 

I'm probably having an awful noob problem, but I can't save anything. It says: Couldn't save E:\Cave Story Tester\Test Of Booster lab Do we have write permissions'
And that is bad T_T

 

1. Make absolutely certain it's not read-only
2. Try saving it in somewhere other than your E drive cause I have no idea where that is

 

Dang D: Another question: I know this may not be compatible with Sue's Workshop, but it is compatible with Cave Editor? Thank you very much!

 

Yeah CE is fine