CaveEditor again (beta, maybe alpha)

Cause Vista sucks. so CE... you got my point.
period.

Now come and flame me. I accept your challenges.
The Problem with CE is that it does almost everything for you, without giving you a clue whats happening.
will the next release clean my ass after I took a shit?

Don't get me wrong, but the GUI is just awkward

 

/VVVVVVVVV\
Schokobecher

There, you've been officially flamed.

You're right it does do a lot for you but so does any good editor. Remember, this is being designed to be an editor not a hacking tool. You're not supposed to have l33t skillz to use it. Even so, you still need to understand a bit of what's going on to use it. I mean, the reason anyone designs an editor in the first place is to make hacking the game that much easier. The only thing it does is organize and translate game data into useful information for you to use and modify. Ultimately when the NPC and weapon behavior editing portion is complete you'll still have to know assembly to use it. I don't plan on writing a miniature compiler to convert pseudo code into hex for you or anything.

I agree though the GUI could definitely use some work but you get what you pay for. Hell, I didn't learn any of this crap in school its all basically self taught. I'd love to use OpenGL for the graphics, and add some keyboard shortcuts but I'm still figuring all that out. Regardless, everyone has their preference in how they want to do things.

@GIRakaCHEEZER
-I can't seem to reproduce your freeze/crash when editing events greater than 1000. Does it happen when editing the script after the event number or when exactly?
-Wow a 30,000 character script. That's crazy. I thought I read somewhere that there was a 14,000 character limit, oh well. I'm still working on that right now. It'll open the script from WTF story now but it won't allow any additional characters to be added. I need to figure out why.
-I fixed the 24-bit tile set issue. Silly bit of duplicate code I didn't copy. (I'll upload a fix by the end of the night.)

 

Hi Wistil, nice that you're back
I'm working on SW now
So... That maybe makes us rivals :>
Well anyway, I have to admit though that Schoko is right about the GUI, it could really need some work :>

 

@GIRakaCHEEZER
-I can't seem to reproduce your freeze/crash when editing events greater than 1000. Does it happen when editing the script after the event number or when exactly?
-Wow a 30,000 character script. That's crazy. I thought I read somewhere that there was a 14,000 character limit, oh well. I'm still working on that right now. It'll open the script from WTF story now but it won't allow any additional characters to be added. I need to figure out why.
-I fixed the 24-bit tile set issue. Silly bit of duplicate code I didn't copy. (I'll upload a fix by the end of the night.)

Ahh, sorry I wasn't specific enough. It freezes when you add an event like this to a map script:

#1100
<MSGThis is a message<END

I can add the event, but when I try to save the script, it will freeze.

Also, there is a character limit embedded in the executable (doukutsu.exe), however it can be changed with a simple hex edit. I think Lace was the one who gave me the offset, it's somewhere in the WTF-story thread probably (where Lace told me what the offset was).

 

Thanks SP. It's good to be back.

I guess it does make us rivals.
I hope that makes us both more devoted to making updates.

Oh I just figured out the script size limit problem. I don't see an easy way to make it unlimited so I set it to 500,000 characters. It takes a while to open large script files due to the inefficient way it does the highlighting. I'll look into fixing that.

 

My god Wistil, thank you so much for this background fix.
I'm going to use Cave Editor more frequently now, but still
making the maps using SW, going along with GIR's technique,
using 2 .exe's.

This is a dream come true having SW and CE being back in the
works, thank you soo much Wistil and Gardebiter.

 

Wistil, take your time.
Garde won't be finished with SW till the year Neunzehundertelfundzwölfzig.
He is a lazy bitch.

 

Ok I found the random scripting crash bug, which I believe is the same bug as the event greater than 1000 bug. It had to do with not ending the script with a blank line (as a habit I always do).
I've uploaded an updated zip file (no new source). FYI I won't be able to check the forums tomorrow and probably won't get too much more work done on this until later in the week.

Edit: I'll take my time but I'd figure I'd get these easy bugs out of the way.

 

Well.
After replacing a large handful of missing DLL's required to run this, I tried it only to discover, to my dismay, it doesn't like my mod.
It loads, but won't load any of the maps or the (slightly modified) NPC.tbl hitboxes.
T_T

However, that said, I might suggest an option for changing which map is the intro map (if you can do such a thing) or an option for changing the map number (ie. so you can have a map #72 even if you only have 20 maps of gameplay.

But, so far, apart from a random failure (Grrr... *.dll, I hate thee...), it looks pretty well off on it's way.

 

Sorry about all the dll requirements. I think I tried making the exe based on static libraries before but it didn't work.

As for it not liking your mod, I tried to load The Dark Platform into CE with some success. The NPC.tbl hitboxes appear correct to me. Is there a specific entity it breaks for or all of them?
The maps did mix up CE a bit. I wasn't expecting to see empty maps in the exe like that. I do get an error when trying to load any map with the name (/empty). I'll have to add a check for those. It loads the maps that are there fine though.

Good idea on the intro map request. I'll have to find where it hides the map number to make it editable. Shouldn't be too hard.

 

If you want help with finding NPC frame rects, I should be able to help with that. Also, great editor, I haven't used the new version, but next time I get a chance to mod, I'll definitely try it out.

One suggestion: I don't really like the way you have of selecting NPC's for the NPC table editor, would it be possible to just have a box that you type the ID of the NPC you would like to edit in?

 

Sorry about all the dll requirements. I think I tried making the exe based on static libraries before but it didn't work.

As for it not liking your mod, I tried to load The Dark Platform into CE with some success. The NPC.tbl hitboxes appear correct to me. Is there a specific entity it breaks for or all of them?
The maps did mix up CE a bit. I wasn't expecting to see empty maps in the exe like that. I do get an error when trying to load any map with the name (/empty). I'll have to add a check for those. It loads the maps that are there fine though.

Good idea on the intro map request. I'll have to find where it hides the map number to make it editable. Shouldn't be too hard.

Hmmm...
Is funny, cause when I try to load maps (even in virgin CS) all I get is the grey window.

A few other things that don't load include the spriteset, tileset and background editors (maybe I missed a note on them not being implimented yet, IDK), as well as the "Add map" function infroms me that "./data/stage/[mapname].pxm was not found" and the grapical display for the hit and graphics boxes doesn't seem to want to work.
I dunno.
lol
I tried filling in TDP with maps up to 94, but I had the same issue with the map editor.

On another note, I recently endeavoured to figure out what the remaining TSC commands do; we (myself, Lace and someone who's name escapes me) managed to figure out every command but <CAT. You can find a link to a nicely organized HTML page in my sig. May come in handy. ; 3;

And thanks for liking my idea. I'd go as far as to suggest adding the abillity to drag maps to a different ordering; so you can try different orders of events without massive script overhauls.

Finally: Arm or Core? Land, Air, Naval or Artillery? Powerhouse or Spam? :3 (Good to see a fellow player of such a groundbreaking game.)

One suggestion: I don't really like the way you have of selecting NPC's for the NPC table editor, would it be possible to just have a box that you type the ID of the NPC you would like to edit in?

I'm inclined to agree with dooey (Le gasp!). It's be nice to have a little way to group them (like, regional enemies) and allow you to pick a bunch of enemies from a couple spritesheets and then select the group in the map editing mode. You know, save a handful so you can quick-access what you need. :/

 

I seen it.

Oh, I've seen your problem somewhere else before, Boots....
Someone had the same thing going on, but I can't find the thread anymore...
Anyways, it's something to do with your computer itself, nothing's wrong with CE.
They went through a lot of fixes {Vista updates, graphic tweaks, stuff like that}, but I can't remember which one worked...

At least you should be able to find the thread, somewhere.....
;

 

I seen it too. o.o;

Oh, I've seen your problem somewhere else before, Boots....
Someone had the same thing going on, but I can't find the thread anymore...
Anyways, it's something to do with your computer itself, nothing's wrong with CE.
They went through a lot of fixes {Vista updates, graphic tweaks, stuff like that}, but I can't remember which one worked...

At least you should be able to find the thread, somewhere.....
;

...But I can't remember for the life of me where.

 

Maybe it's a missing dll requirement or something in that direction?

 

And history repeats

Nope.
Someone else had the same problem, and re-dled CE thrice, to no avail.

It's not CE, it's the computer itself.

 

Thats what I said.

Well.
After replacing a large handful of missing DLL's required to run this,

maybe you need some other ones.

 

It was Giga that had this problem. I tried looking for where he said he had resolved it. It wasn't in his original thread but somewhere else...
He basically ended up reinstalling windows... If I had to guess, I'd say its related to the the ATL libraries not working correctly (which would prevent the images from drawing but not the green boxes). But then that wouldn't cause a problem with the bounding/hit boxes in the NPC.tbl...

The only thing I can suggest if you don't want to reinstall windows (and who does) is this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9B2DA534-3E03-4391-8A4D-074B9F2BC1BF&displaylang=en
It's the Visual C++ redistribution libraries (I just googled it).

I'll look into making the NPC.tbl easier to navigate. It won't be the highest priority but its on the list.

 

Hmmm

Actually, someone before Giga had the issue, and it was maybe a year or so ago..
I think it was X-Calibar, but I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday, so meh.

~10 minutes later~

And now I just finished searching all 537 of X-Calibar's posts, and found only a few mentions about Cave Editor....
I'll keep searching for the thread, but I think it got put into the archive or something....
The Hacking/Modding forum seemed to have gotten really small a few weeks ago....

EDIT:
And now I just searched the archives for Mod Showcase and Hacking/Modding...
I still couldn't find it...
{Though I did find a bunch of other interesting mod-related stuff ;}
Is there a Search Function for Archives? I didn't see one and so mostly just searched by thread titles....
But I know that thread's here, somewhere....

 

It was Giga that had this problem. I tried looking for where he said he had resolved it. It wasn't in his original thread but somewhere else...
He basically ended up reinstalling windows... If I had to guess, I'd say its related to the the ATL libraries not working correctly (which would prevent the images from drawing but not the green boxes). But then that wouldn't cause a problem with the bounding/hit boxes in the NPC.tbl...

The only thing I can suggest if you don't want to reinstall windows (and who does) is this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9B2DA534-3E03-4391-8A4D-074B9F2BC1BF&displaylang=en
It's the Visual C++ redistribution libraries (I just googled it).

I'll look into making the NPC.tbl easier to navigate. It won't be the highest priority but its on the list.

Well, in 3 months I'm re-installing Windows anyways.
(Yay for having a legal copy of XP-SP2 + SP3 on flash drive!)
I might just do that.
But I'mma try the C++ library-majiggy; I know there is SOME damage to my system from installing Windows. A few of the files were skipped, a lot of *.chms' and such. Maybe a few system files. I dunno.
I'll get back to you when I can.

EDIT: So I installed the C++ Library-jiggy; makes no diff.
I dunno anymore.
Although, I can say that overall I like what the interface offers, the way it's laid out and such.
Now if only I had function, lol.
^^;