Animated Model Viewer version 1.1.1.6

[DarkWrath]

Actually not , as I had tried merging them and it's still crashing.

[Stevio]

strange

[Deleted User]

You've merged them into one cat, & removed the false-mods
08.cat & 09.cat from the main directory, & it still doesn't work?

Are you using Cycrow's 'X Script Manager' to do this (ie can I reproduce this myself),
if not can I download the merged cat from somewhere?


It looks like the combination of false-mods that reference/interelate
with the main mod is what is giving my code problems. The false mod 08/09.cat
parse-in as part of the 'standard' dataset, which would normally present no problem
if no other mod was required to 'complete' the set (apart from the prog showing the mod
ships as if they were part of the standard set).

Gives me something to try & solve, ie how do I know which main mod a false-mod
should relate to. This is not a problem in-game since you choose a mod with which
to play, but my prog tries to show all mods at once.

But this raises the question: if you've got Xtended false-mods present can a player
just select another mod and expect it to work? EDIT or even change back to vanilla (no mod selected)

Do players have a pristine X3 installation for each (possibly) incompatible mod, or
do most try to switch between them in one install directory (which would presumably
require renaming the save game directory - this is something I do with XFP,
I've got two save game sets & rename the '....Egosoft\save' dir to 'saveXFP' and
'....Egosoft\saveVanilla' to 'save' when I want to try XFP for a bit EDIT (other way round)
- I haven't played XFP much yet -I'm right at the start at present).


The 'No Civilians v1.0 + CockpitCallback 1.02' mod seems to be OK on it's own,
mainly just ship-stats changes (eg Mammoth has tractor beam), but the mod's Xenon
'unknown object' (sargon_scene.pdb) won't load for some reason, doesn't cause a crash though.
I can't see why the mod would give a problem, with or without Xtended, but maybe I've missed something.
EDITJust realized of course if you select the latter mod, the Xtended mod looks 'incomplete' to my prog
- although I think I should have more fault protection code, reading all of this.
Interesting technique, moving the mod to the main dir.

[DarkWrath]

The merged mod is what I'm testing for the next release , so it can't be downloaded(sorry for this).

Trust me , I've tried every possible way to make it work with XTM , and it's still not working.

I will try to upload a merged 06.b , just give me a few minute to merge it.

EDIT:

The merged 06.b is working , but not the one I'm testing for the new release. I must say that the new one has around 250 mb , could it be a problem from this?

[darkelfsin]

in order not to switch mod so frequently and loose a lot of cool feature, i have to put some mod cat in the main folder ,it works so well.,such as mini hud mod.view instance mod etc ,if they have no conflict with each other.......well, we hope to merge XTM ,DDR XFP alltogether

anyway we are awaitng for the new version birth of dave's powerful classic viewer..and the best 1.0 xtm mod....

[Deleted User]

DarkWrath

Glad the merged 0.6b works ok

I have PM'd you with a diagnostic version of the my program, maybe it can
find where it is are falling over with 0.6c.


darkelfsin

The viewer prog will probably display ships from those mods you put into the main dir,
as if they were part of the 'standard' set, which could be a little confusing to look at.
Anyway, as long as you know, you should be OK.

Good luck with that mod merge

[DarkWrath]

Thank you , this solved the problem , this version loads.

I can't see any errors while loading except that it's not find a lot of scene files (vannila scene files while loading the XTM dataset), maybe this was causing the crash in the last version.

[Deleted User]

Great, that's a relief.

Problem for me now is that I ought to get that diagnostic version out as
a release sooner than I thought. I will put a few other requested features
in & re-test then re-issue soon(ish).

The 'errors' you were seeing during XTM loading were really just
indicating that the prog will look in the vanilla dataset for those files -
so nothing to worry about.

Probably I've inadvertently fixed whatever the bug was, while putting in
code for the new version,
but it's still not going to cope with mixed main & false mods for the same mod set (atm).

This was a useful bit of feedback, thanks.

[Earthpilot]

Well i noticed this program just a few days ago.

However I am not seeing anything after installation in X3 directory.

According to the readme it says that the program reads through the cat/dat files to create some sort of config file.

Then it sprang to me: I have no cat/dat files, i am running X3 in pure raw mode .

So what do i have to do in order to see all the things (scenes, bodies, values and such) ?

[Deleted User]

I didn't know about being able to run the game without the cat files,
how is this done, what is 'pure raw mode'?

This prog assumes the presence of cat files to read, so that it
can display a selection of ships & factories.
However, if it has not crashed, and you have extracted the cats
(with doubleshadow's XModManager), you should be able to directly
open a scene file or model file (.bod/.bob) using the 'file-open' command.

[DarkWrath]

Raw mode means extracting with DS ModManager , so it does work with the open file command(I have a instalations like this and it was able to read all the files)

[enenra]

First: REALLY great viewer. Made some minutes before this.

Then: could you edit the viewer that it's able to put a .jpg pic in the background?

[Deleted User]

Ok, I'll add that to the list of things to add to the next version,
I must admit the plain black (or single colour) background does give
it a bit of a sterile look.

At one point I was thinking of adding the 'sector of your choice', as an environment,
but that might be a bit ambitious / over-the-top for the main purpose of
this prog.

Cheers

[Earthpilot]

I didn't know about being able to run the game without the cat files,
how is this done, what is 'pure raw mode'?

This prog assumes the presence of cat files to read, so that it
can display a selection of ships & factories.
However, if it has not crashed, and you have extracted the cats
(with doubleshadow's XModManager), you should be able to directly
open a scene file or model file (.bod/.bob) using the 'file-open' command.

You are right: pure raw means without all cat-files.

And yes, i am able to open scene or model files.
However, when opening a scene file, the bodies are not loaded with it.
And when loading a body, I do not see textures on it.

I have an idea:

Could you implement a window where the users can insert the locations of their directories, like

Path to your DDS-folder: _______________ (maybe open dialog? )
Path to your types-folder:_______________

The program then could look at my tships in the types-folder und get all the data needed to display my Xenon M0, for example.

P.S. Here is how my X3-folder looks like in raw mode:

X3
- dds
- f
- L
- loadscr
- maps
- mods
- MOV
- objects
+ cut
+ cuts
+ effects
+ ships
+ ...
- profiles
- recording
- s
- scripts
- shader
- soundtrack
- t
- tex
- textures
- types
- v

[Deleted User]

Sorry to take so long to reply, but I had to have a look at this, & I'm amazed,
I didn't know the game could run like this (a bit shakily though, & I got a lock-up).

[I haven't been involving myself very closely in modding & scripting in case I really got sucked-in ]

Anyway, this opens up the possibility of easier viewing of modifications, as you are suggesting.

If the dir structure you showed is 'standard', then I could get the program to switch to this mode if
if it finds no cat files, so you probably wouldn't need to specify the directories, unless there's another
reason for doing so?

Yes, I'll do this then, since I guess it might be a common way of working while creating mods (?)


The viewer prog does already have the ability to 'load from extracted file if possible'
(look at the prog. help .doc file for more details) - this shows as a red square in the top of the
window of the model/scene being viewed, this allows direct comparison of original (cat) & modded (extracted) files.
But the extracted files have to follow a strict directory structure
(i.e. the same as in the cat files, pretty much as you showed, but they must be within a directory that matches the cat file name),
this feature is not (yet) perfect though, I think sometimes it gets compenents mixed-up due over efficient caching of objects (meshes).


By the way isn't the directory 'v' a subdirectory of the 'objects' directory?, if not then I'm a bit confused.

Cheers

[Earthpilot]

That may be.
I made some directories myself, but that is a DBOX/X2 issue (this v-folder is one of them).

The directory structure is almost fixed.
I'll post my objects directory structure:
X3
-objects
+ cut

+ cuts

+ effects
* engines
*explosions
* menugfx
~gui
*weapons

+ environments
* asteroids
~reduced
~sourcefiles
*nebulae
~...
*others
*planets

+ intro

+ others

+ ships
* argon
~ cockpits
* boron
~ cockpits
* Earthpilot
~ Argons (see my Argon Elite MkII in the creative section )
~ Erde
~ Paras
* EM2
* khaak
~ cockpits
* others
* paranid
~ cockpits
* props
* split
~ cockpits
* teladi
~ cockpits
* terran
~ cockpits
* xenon
~ cockpits


+ special

+ stations

+ v (this is the correct one, the other one is mine)

+ weapons

As you can see the structure is not quite fixed when you do your own stuff.

[Deleted User]

Ok, I understand now, so being able to specify a different (top level) directory would be useful.

There's already a lot of searching/remapping going on in the prog.:
e.g argon_m3.bod, Material6 line, diffuse texture = unique\unique_argon_M3_diff.tga, ends up mapping
to dds\unique_argon_M3_diff.dds, so telling the prog. that DDS files are at another location shouldn't be a problem,
If a file isn't found in the new dir. the prog. can fall back to the orginals anyway
(this goes on a lot in the prog. as well, since most mods use a lot of 'vanilla X3' files).

The user-definable directories would be:
types
t
DDS
objects (I'm hoping you wouldn't also want to be able to specify different subdirectories eg ships/stations/cut etc as well ?)
maps
shader
tex (possibly so not useful)

any others?

And I'm thinking you would need/want to specify more than one extra dir for each of the above ?
(e.g. if you have several new DDS dirs),
then the prog. could search all of these (in order of entry I guess).

Is this close to what you're thinking of?

[Earthpilot]

Ok, I understand now, so being able to specify a different (top level) directory would be useful.
...

The user-definable directories would be:
types
t
DDS
objects (I'm hoping you wouldn't also want to be able to specify different subdirectories eg ships/stations/cut etc as well ?)
maps
shader
tex (possibly so not useful)

any others?

...
Is this close to what you're thinking of?

That is pretty close, yes.

The tex-folder - or to be more specific - the tex\true-folder contains the textures used by X2 ships ( at the moment all of my ships are using X2-textures ) and some special bodies in the plot afaik.

I think top-level is ok.

However , some hints ( i think you already know them but it could be a good idea to post them anyway ) :

- Some times, an entry in tships will not read \objects\ships\argon_m1_scene but 4159 . X3 will then look in the folder objects\cut for that particular scene.

- Same thing may happen in scenes as well.
If an entry is read P1; B 806; C 1; X3 will then look in the folder \objects\v for the body file (in this case, the X2 capship bridge).

- Textures are either placed in DDS-folder or in tex\true, depending on material values.

So much for now.

Some private questions:
- What are you programming with? C++, C# ?
- Have you implemented other types-files like components.txt and cutdata.txt ( since some entries in ship- and station-scenes are redirected to other bodies via those files, for example the launching bays) ?

[Deleted User]

Good, I'll start on this then (have already actually).

Yes, the searching for matching files that is done by the prog. copes with those locations,
(and some others) so I (currently) don't need to explicitly map in a one to one fashion as you've outlined.

It's written in C++ not C++++ (C# or sometimes a little bit blunt), it could be converted to C# if there was a reason.

The only 'substitution' files I've handled are Components.txt and Dummies.txt (for guns a least),
the launch bays / docking arms are currently a missing feature , but hopefully not for long.
There's other things I think I should be substituting as well, I'll get there bit by bit,
I really should be handling scenes-within-scenes somewhat more generically. that's also high on my do list.

Cheers

[Earthpilot]

How are the data stored at the moment?

( I am programming in C++ as well, but I am using Borland Builder 6 ).

Did you make an array where the paths are stored or did you put them into a class structure?


Btw, check DeadlyDa's topic "External Docking sorted..." it may give you some help.