SS1src: Modding Tools: InkyBlackness

[67426ffec7c14dertseha]

Thank you for the requests. Adding text-input fields would probably address a lot of this, yes.
As for the different units for height/rotation: That's because the engine itself uses different base units for these things (Plus, these sliders are for both new archives, and savegames). Only degrees are the "common" abstract unit here.
I'm adding the requests to the list of usability, which I'm now working on - slowly.

[67426ffec7db7dertseha]

HackEd v1.6.0 has been released and it now remembers the last editing state! So, no more tedious loading of static assets and the active mod every time.

Finally tackling the oldest feature request in my backlog (from 2018), this is the first one to follow up on various pending user requests.

I can't say which ones I'll go handle next, I only know that I was working on this released feature on and off during the past weeks, starting early September.

[67426ffec80913RDplayer]

I already pinged you on the NDS discord. I'm not a fan of centralized settings files in any software ever. I prefer instanced workspaces rather than this. Where the setting file is located in the same folder as the executable. Hopefully there will be a solution that allows instanced workspaces in the editor versions going forward.

[67426ffec821bvoodoo47]

you mean not all the application files being located inside its root folder? I couldn't agree more, avoiding this would be much more more preferable - hunting cfgs/saves/whatever all around the hard drive is definitely not on my favorite things to do list.

[67426ffec83efdertseha]

...and as answered on the NDS discord: One of the next steps is to have a project selection within the editor. I'd like to avoid the need for users to copy around the binary files.

My goal is to get most the things for one project be in its own folder, so that it can then be version controlled. I needed to start somewhere. Right now we have an "undefined" project that the editor needs to store. As soon as the concept of a project is implemented, then its details can be saved wherever you want, and the central place points there as the "last project". A project is more than just a mod path, so that's not the same.
I took this inspiration from the Sublime Text editor, where you can have some "undefined" project, that is restored when reopening the editor. When you save that project (in a folder of your choosing), then you can close that project and open another.
Right now HackEd only supports "undefined" projects, which is more than it had previously.

I believe we are on the same page as to what the editor should be doing eventually. Sadly, with only a few hours per month available for this pet project, the steps are small ones.

I hope that the benefits of the current solution still outweigh the drawbacks it currently has. For example, I doubt that the different workspaces you currently have need a different list of static files.

[67426ffec8607dertseha]

HackEd v1.7.0 has been released.

As promised, this one now allows to save and load projects as dedicated files. The central file stores the settings as long as they weren't saved as a dedicated project file. After that, the central file only points to that project file, as a "reopen last project" feature.
This now allows to have everything in one place, and the recommended project layout has been updated.

Furthermore, as a first showcase of project-specific settings, it is now possible to document and modify parameters of game variables, such as names and enumerated values. These names are now shown in object properties.

And slider controls allow manual entry of numbers - as this one was easily added as a by-product of other internal changes.

See the linked release notes above for pointers to further documentation.

Project files are one precondition for the requested feature of "prefabs", but there are further dependencies that have to be implemented first - such as copy/paste and drag'n'drop movement of tiles and objects. Still a lot on the list of open usability features.

[67426ffec879edertseha]

HackEd v1.8.0 has been released.

This one is again in the light of usability - with a lot of internal rewiring going on.

It's been sitting for several months already and I wanted to include more, yet I should rather do smaller releases (and more frequent) than sitting on several features at once. For instance, I wanted to include a better orientation view for level objects - though I failed to nicely show this - especially since various objects don't make it easy as to what their default orientation is. Cameras, for example, are oriented West by default, while buttons are oriented South.

And no, so far I do not intend to create a mini-renderer, showing a 3D section. There are way more features (and internal refactoring) pending before I enter the third dimension in the editor.

[67426ffec888fVDubs93]

I know it's been like 10 days, but it seems like the 1.8.0 release on github still points to 1.7.0.  Is this intentional?

[67426ffec8973dertseha]

Oops. Thank you for the heads-up. I seem to have uploaded the wrong binaries.
I'll update as soon as I get to my dev laptop

[67426ffec8c09Xkilljoy98]

We need an update tutorial for this mod editor, only two exist and both are for an older version of the editor with a different UI and don't explain some things very well.

To this day I still can't figure out how to get custom logs to work.

[67426ffec8d56TheNate]

How do I find and extract the weapon sprites? I looked through bitmap and texture windows, but I couldn't find them

[67426ffec8fdbdertseha]

TheNateIf you are referring to the sprites of objects that you see in the world, those are in the "Objects" window.
If you are referring to the "2D" graphics of the muzzles, those aren't available in the editor. You'd need one of the exporter/importer tools for that.

[67426ffec9397TheNate]

TheNateIf you are referring to the sprites of objects that you see in the world, those are in the "Objects" window.
If you are referring to the "2D" graphics of the muzzles, those aren't available in the editor. You'd need one of the exporter/importer tools for that.

What would be the best tool to extract those?

[67426ffec9509JosiahJack]

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=113.msg1053#msg1053

[67426ffec962cTheNate]

Tried this just now, but the extracted sprites seem to be really low-res and I was also looking for a way to import into .RES files too

EDIT: Apparently that's what they're supposed to look like? I guess EE just uses the Mac sprites or something by default

EDIT 2: I'd also like to know how it manages to do the palette cycling animation on graphics like the Rail Gun and the Ion Beam

[67426ffec97b1JosiahJack]

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NightDive-Studio/shockmac/master/ShockMac/Game%20Src/PALFX.C

The textures are indexed meaning each color refers to one of 256 index values (0 to 255).  The 256 colors are not static.  A few colors at the end are changed dynamically at run time such that, say, index 252 will change colors.  The texture used by a wall or sprite is the same, always drawing the indexed color at 252, it's just that the color there changes with an up down fade at a regular rate.

There's probably a better topic for this somewhere.

[67426ffec98b1dertseha]

ss-specs have them documented: https://github.com/inkyblackness/ss-specs/blob/main/media/Palettes.md#pixel-animation--palette-looping

[67426ffec998eTheNate]

And like I mentioned before, I'd like to know how to import custom files into RES sprites too

[67426ffec9ae6dertseha]

The one tool I know of (heh, I built it) is "chunkie" - https://github.com/inkyblackness/chunkie
It is part of the now deprecated "deck" release: https://github.com/inkyblackness/deck/releases/tag/v1.3.2

I've never come round to provide all the import/export functionality into hacked, so there are still some functions here and there in "deck" that aren't supported by hacked.