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Koen

TibEd 2 refocus (experimental version inside)

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I'm rethinking some things in TibEd 2 right now...

1) Support for BFME will be dropped and won't return. One day last January I stopped playing it, and have not worked on the editor for this game since. I investigated 2 full weeks during the previous Christmas holiday into asset.dat, which were then wasted when EA released a (weak) tool for it.

2) Support for BFME2 is not planned. BFME 1 did not take off modding-wise and I'm not sure BFME2 will. It has ships though, and games with ships become hits (RA1,RA2). And it no longer has stupid build limits. Still, I'm not getting my hopes up. I need a new computer for it to play at all...

3) Generals/Zero Hour will not be the focus of the next release. Instead, I will try to finish the core of the engine on an editor for a new game. I cannot disclose which game this will be, but it will be a strategy game and it has been released in 2005.

4) by not trying to update the Generals/BFME editor while I make breaking changes, I hope I can get it right this time

5) TibEd 2 will drop Pascal Script as its internal scripting language, it's too brittle. It will be replaced by Python.

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Guest Rabbit

Well, good luck with the change. I wonder how many people even edit BFME anyway...

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Hmm, interesting. I kind of only looked at the Deezire BFME forums.

 

6) Make an editor for one game good, and not two mediocre editors. Once I get one right, others should be easier. I've been spending way too much time updating editors for every change I make because internals weren't finished yet.

 

Merry Xmas :)

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7) Internals are starting to go back to a principle in TibEd 1.x. The unification of lists, key-value editors and editable lists into one giant DataProvider framework (which is basically a database-like table) has been dropped. There are now read-only ListProviders again. One main reason for the unification failure is the notification system and the need for querying: getting them right meant lots, lots of code. While in the EditTree, one really only needs read-only ListProviders with a change notification if the list needs to be reloaded.

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5) is done. PascalScript is no longer compiled in with TibEd 2. Build 87 made it so. ListProvider has been implemented and now provides services to the EditTree and the list editors. All list editors and edit tree lists need to be ported. Key-value editors are offline. Saving backend not functional. There's plenty of work left :roll:

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Build 88 removed more dead weight. The entire DataProvider infrastructure is gone. A very nice side-effect of the new architecture is that after you add an item to a list (or remove it), the list is *not* updated in the edit tree. But if you open a new window, it will be reloaded. This is much better than the old behaviour, where a cache reset was needed to make it work (would not show in new window unless everything was reset, which was done).

Point 3, not focus on BfME/Generals: I do not know what the focus of the next release will be. We'll just have to wait and see.

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Build 89: brings back exporting to BIG files. I have decided to focus on Generals. I will not commit to any new games, simply because it can bite me later. And BfME2 is not an option until EA releases a Mod SDK - who knows if they include a tool for editing INI files (I guess they do not, because of the general lower quality of the INI files - lots of errors).

I'm still a fan of the new architecture, but it does mean that all GUI things have to be redone:

- edit tree list: 50% done (don't know if powerful enough for Object INIs: are enough variables introduced?; InlineData not done yet)

- list editor: 70% done (add, remove is all there, but option to change the name of the added item is not yet in, and neither is string editing)

- key/value editor: 0% done (this is a real showstopper for a release)

Also, there is an annoying bug in the parsed file system at the moment; it throws an error when you exit TibEd, but it is in FinalizeUnits. Only happens after actually editing something. Will need to track this down to make sure everything is solid. The plus side is: TibEd can now actually *save* again :)

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Build 91: bugfixes all over. The instability on shutdown has been fixed. This is present in current release versions as well and it is a nasty bug. Thanks to FastMM I was able to track it; it was a double free bug. Fixed the automatic import system to work with list editors. Generals language version is now automatically detected. :)

Nothing has changed on the UI side yet, but I feel that this new build is a lot more solid than the previous one due to all the bugfixes. I'm sure there are plenty left though. :roll:

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Build 92:

- string editor is back (100%)

- list editing is done (100%)

- edit tree is quite far (80%), need to add modules and ObjectCreationList back in but should not require extra coding, only datafiles.

- key/value editor is still at 0%

- created the installer script to package TibEd 2 beta 4. It grows from 1.4 MB for beta 3 to 2.8 MB for beta 4. I think it is worth it.

 

TODO:

- key/value editor

- bring Generals/Zero Hour editing to a feature level similar to beta 3

- project metadata editing

- testing

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Build 93:

- key/value editor is back (only changing of existing keys, no new keys yet), several editors have been deactivated (30%)

- download grows to 3.0 MB because of inclusion of the editors

 

TODO:

- key/value editor

- bring Generals/Zero Hour editing to a feature level similar to beta 3

- project metadata editing

- BIG importing

- testing

 

We might see an experimental release in this thread soon 8)

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Build 94:

- key/value editor works mostly, only adding new keys does not work

- download down to 2.5 MB by leaving out unneeded files

- Zero Hour support is back

- BIG importing

 

TODO:

- fix key/value editors so you can add keys

- List editors for objects, key/value editors for Objects and ObjectCreationLists

- project metadata editing

- testing

 

Do not use this version if you still want to seriously use TibEd 2. It has not been tested at all, and certain features really needed are not in (adding of new keys in key/value editor).

You can try out the experimental version here.

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Starting with build 95, updates are in this topic. We're getting closer to a release.

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