Mac Editor v1.0.5

[Niemand]

A new version of the editor with a couple of minor fixes:

 

1. The correct dialogs should always display for the Change Height tool and the Add Height tool.

2. Terrains are shown with icon adjusts in the 2D tool palette

3. Items are intelligently marked as contained when placed on container terrains, crates, or barrels. Item containments change automatically when an item is moved onto or off of such terrains or objects.

 

Find it on my utilities page as usual.

[Ephesos]

Yay!

[Enraged Slith]

Any chance for a port to Windows?

[Niemand]

*Covers head with arms*

I have no time! no time!

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Enraged Slith:
Any chance for a port to Windows?

You asked that the poor man already at least five times, you know that?

[nikki.]

Quote:

Originally written by Thralni:

Quote:

Originally written by Enraged Slith:
Any chance for a port to Windows?

You asked that the poor man already at least five times, you know that?

It's an important question is why.

[Lazarus.]

I think I still hold the record on hounding Niemand to port stuff to Windows-- and I'm not usually that polite.

[Enraged Slith]

Quote:

You asked that the poor man already at least five times, you know that?

I honestly don't remember, but I think it's creepy that you've kept a record of this.

[Callie]

Why are these utilities only available for OS X? I'm completely left in the dark with my old iMac.

 

So yeah, I'd support a Windows port as well, even though I abhor the Windows operating system, I still have one nonetheless.

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Enraged Slith:

Quote:

You asked that the poor man already at least five times, you know that?

I honestly don't remember, but I think it's creepy that you've kept a record of this.

I didn't. It was a random number generated on the basis of my recollection of you guys asking about this every single time Niemand brings out a new version. Yes, I understand you all that you want the port (As a Mac user I'm confronted with that question almost every single time I see a Windows program on the shelf of computer store), but the guy just doesn't seem to have the time. If you want it that badly, why not help Niemand and make a Windows port?

[Nioca]

Because he uploaded the source code in .SIT format, which Windows users can't open?

[Niemand]

There seem to be some misconceptions here. It's true that the source is available in sit archives, but since any windows user can open them if he or she really wants to and no windows user has shown any interest in actually helping me do a windows port, they remain that way.

As to classic mac OS, that is even harder to support than Windows because I lack any of the tools required to create CFM binaries (especially since the better ones are not free). Furthermore, it is infeasable to support all version of OS X, much less classic as well. While I sympathize with anyone who likes classic Mac OS and/or can't get a newer computer or OS, there's nothing I can do to help them.

 

The above being said; I have already started work on a subproject to aid a possible windows port; namely creating annotated diff files to document the changes that I have made to the Mac version. Even when those are ready, however, there will still be a great deal of work to be done to implement equivalent changes in the Windows version. I would advise that the best route would be to tackle them incrementally; starting with the undo system which is both very useful to have and is entirely portable in its existing implementation. Trickier tasks like rebuilding the function button and object palettes should be left for later.

[Nioca]

While I express interest, my C/C++ programming skill is mostly limited to the commands printf and scanf. So... yeah. It'll be some time before I can do much more than create a command-line calculator or an error.

[Nioca]

Quote:

Originally written by Niemand:
There seem to be some misconceptions here. It's true that the source is available in sit archives, but since any windows user can open them if he or she really wants to and no windows user has shown any interest in actually helping me do a windows port, they remain that way.

Maybe the reason no one is interested in doing a port is because it's uploaded as a .sit format. After reading up on the Windows version of Stuffit, I'm not touching that thing with a fifty-foot pole. If even a fraction of what I read is true, it's a piece of crap (which is appropriate, considering the archive extension is one letter away from profanity).

It isn't that hard to compress something as a .zip, and is rather inconsiderate of you to try and make interested parties jump through adware-filled hoops just to get the source code.

[Ishad Nha]

Many Windows users lack any real programming ability, starting with me. I assume that we really can't give you any meaningful help unless we can program.

[Tyranicus]

While we're bugging Niemand for stuff, I think I'll ask for a Leopard-compatible Graphic Adjuster again.

[Dintiradan]

Echoing what Nioca said - isn't the usage of StuffIt supposed to be deprecated now anyway?

 

And while I would probably be capable of hacking out a Windows port (at least, I'm capable of learning new APIs, which I'd have to do for GUI programming for Windows), I'm currently Bogged Down™. Oh, the joys of mapping out a process's available memory by trying a read/write on every single page and checking to see if a segfault was caused. I'd still be doing it, but apparently the BSD servers shut down at 12:30.

 

Maybe I'll have More Time In The Summer™.

 

--------------------

Next up: testing whether blunt objects make your head sore by repeatedly striking your head with a mallet! Guaranteed a good waste of a student's time!

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Tyranicus:
While we're bugging Niemand for stuff, I think I'll ask for a Leopard-compatible Graphic Adjuster again.

Weren't you on the way of understanding the problems GA had in 10.5, Niemand? I remember you speaking to Jeff about some differences in how 10.5 handles graphics...

[Niemand]

I am working on a new version of Graphic Adjuster, but because I've had so much trouble trying to get the the current version to recompile properly anymore just on my system and because I've always hated some of the things I had to do to make it (you don't want to know how it handles multiple documents), I've started on an all new Cocoa based version. So far it can load and display the graphics in a file, but no more. It'll take me some time to reproduce the features the older version has, particularly since I want to seriously rethink the user interface.

 

As to use of Stuffit, we've all agreed that we should move away from it for scenario distribution, etc, but it's hardly a pressing matter. I do intend to go through my site and replace sit compressed archives with something else, (probably tar.gz, I'm thinking), but I haven't gotten there yet, and I can't say it makes me feel like doing it any faster to hear people complain that they don't like what I've got when it isn't near the problem some make it out to be. I'll get to, just not right now.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Quote:

Originally written by Niemand:
It'll take me some time to reproduce the features the older version has, particularly since I want to seriously rethink the user interface.

This is probably not a bad thing. The current interface is... rather odd, at best.

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Celtic Minstrel:

Quote:

Originally written by Niemand:
It'll take me some time to reproduce the features the older version has, particularly since I want to seriously rethink the user interface.

This is probably not a bad thing. The current interface is... rather odd, at best.

In fact I quite like it. The only problem I usually had, was that I didn't really understand how the actual graphic adjusting worked. You click one icon instead of the whole sheet, while the actual adjustment appears to be for the whole sheet. Then you have to copy-paste it into your sheet again, and this struck me as odd: wouldn't it have been easier to simply add a "paste into cmg file" button?

One thing I do want GA to have: a way to paste custom sounds into it. You have no idea how that would ease the addition of custom sounds in scenarios. It's true windows users can't have the custom sounds, but I don't think that should stop us (you?) from implementing it. At least the Mac users can have them then.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Does the play sound function accept out of range parameters? I mean, out of the range of the built-in sounds?

[Niemand]

Thralni, the preview function deliberately shows the adjustment for the entire sheet, this is for previewing things like creatures, for which it would use way to much memory to generate all of the adjusts but it's often important to see the effect on all of the icons at once. Besides; it's pretty pointless to just copy a simply adjusted graphic into your cmg permanently when the game can do the adjust for you.

 

Believe me, I'm working on sounds. The trouble is that the ancient style sounds Jeff uses are very hard to work with; indeed I haven't been able to find a way to load or save them in a modern program.

 

Minstrel: Yes the Mac version accepts one out of range sound, number 174. Also, because of the cleverness of the resource manager, sounds in the cmg file override built-in sounds with the same numbers. That was how I replaced the party death sound in Stairway for the Mac version.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Yes, I noticed that, not with the sound resources, but with the graphics.

 

And... only one unused sound slot? Oh well... I probably wouldn't use custom sounds anyway...

 

I think Rezilla can load the System 7 sound resources. Maybe you could check out its code. (Of course, it's Carbon rather than Cocoa...)

[Niemand]

That's a good point; I use Rezilla but I hadn't thought to look at its code. Of course there's still the problem of pasting and saving sounds, but they may have solved that too.

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Niemand:
Thralni, the preview function deliberately shows the adjustment for the entire sheet, this is for previewing things like creatures, for which it would use way to much memory to generate all of the adjusts but it's often important to see the effect on all of the icons at once. Besides; it's pretty pointless to just copy a simply adjusted graphic into your cmg permanently when the game can do the adjust for you.

Believe me, I'm working on sounds. The trouble is that the ancient style sounds Jeff uses are very hard to work with; indeed I haven't been able to find a way to load or save them in a modern program.

True, true. Thanks for reminding me that BoA can do it for me. I had already forgotten about that...

I'm glad to hear you are working on the sounds. The way I got them working in BoA is by using three programs to do a very specific task in a chain of several steps. You might find it worthwhile to contact the maker of the program "SndSampler", since that program's all about making snd formatted sounds and putting them in resource files.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Quote:

Originally written by Dintiradan in "The Future of Blades of Avernum":
[QB]On the difficulty of BoA's scripting: would it be of any use if I made some type of script preprocessor? For instance, you give a SDF a name at the top of a script, and the program would replace all instances of that name with a get_flag or set_flag call depending on the situation. That would be the extend of how far we could alter the scripting without changing the code.

This would be a very nice feature to have in the AScript editor. If you made use of regular expressions, it would probably be fairly simple. The only other thing to consider would be reversing the process – translating SDF references back into names.

Is this at all feasible? If I had time sometime, I would consider investigating the possibility myself.

Speaking of AScript, when will it be out of the Beta stage?