In-Game Model Viewer : Preview Ships At Shipyards (v1.2.0.3 - 26 Aug 08)

[Malakie]

extra functionality? the pHQ...its basically a shipyard too...and there is now the has blueprint command

Hi, sorry been busy in RL lately.. Anyhow, I will put together the ship xsp files I use and get them uploaded somewhere for you to download... will post when I get that ready...

Really would like to get this working.. LOL Even tonight while playing I am finding myself wishing I could see what I ship looks like before I buy the dam thing.

* Also I was wondering something.. would your utility maybe work in Cycrows window utility he has created? It basically hooks into DirectX also to allow dialog windows, animation windows, movie playing and more... There is a thread about it that is pretty active... Just wondering if this might help or make things work better...

[exogenesis]

I wondered where you'd gone, I was about to send out a search party

The xsp would be good for testing, Cycrow's GUI & this together is possible,
but would need some integration, so probably not right now I guess .

Still looking on & off at HQ.

[Thraxwhirl]

Hi there.

This looks very exciting, and I'd like to test it, but one thing puts me off. You say it creates a new .exe in your game dir, yes? However, won't that mean that this is not compatible with Cycrow's GUI? That too creates a new .exe, and so I'm concerned that this will conflict. Am I right?

Edit: Doh! Sorry, I was reading page 1 when I posted this, and didn't realise you'd addressed the point on this page. Sorry.

[Cycrow]

i plan to add DLL support into my gui, meaning this could effectivly be made as a plugin for it.

however, i've had very little time to do any work on the GUI so far

[exogenesis]

Thanks for clarifying that,
I was about to launch into a full description of the hook mechanism &
why only one 'D3D hook' can be made a time (using this MS 'official' mechanism at least).

But as Cycrow said if at some point his Custom GUI supports the Viewer dll, then there'd be no conflict.

In the meantime the app/dll in this thread is just something that allows model viewing,
ie yes it's one or the other atm (I think), due to MS having pre-named the dll
that actually does the hooking (Direct3D-Hook.dll),

There are more 'direct & dirty' API-hijack mechanisms (e.g D3D dll replacement)
that I could use & even then I doubt if both would work together without cooperation.

[Cycrow]

my GUI currently uses API-Hijack and a custom DLL file that i made, it might be possible, but i realyl wouldn't want to pass through 3 DLL's for the game

[exogenesis]

I agree with that,
is this current conflict a problem Thraxwhirl ?

[Thraxwhirl]

Oh, well I don't know. I was kind of hoping you and/Cycrow might be able to tell me.

But you see, my GUESS is that you can't use both together.

You see, unless I've misunderstood, your ship viewer places a new .exe file in the game folder, yes? And you run that exe to start the game. Is that right?

Well, Cycrow's GUI does that too. You doubleclick his .exe, and that starts the game.

Now the problem is that you can't run two exes one after the other, so you run EITHER the Custom GUI exe OR the Ship Viewer exe, but you can't do both....

...I think.

I confess I haven't DL'd the Ship Viewer yet but that is because I'm already running Cycrow's Custom GUI, and I don't envisage that one could run both together.

However, I'm not much of an authority on this. Cycrow Might be able to shed more light on this.

[exogenesis]

OK that's why I asked, to see if you were currently using the CustomGUI.
You are correct, you currently cannot run both the Custom GUI and the in-game model viewer
at the same time, since they both use the same custom direct-hook dll method.

[MJALowe]

is it possible to do something like this:

run shipviewer
ship viewer asks -> do you want to run another exe before x3 (with a selection)

if there is a selection it runs the selection and lets the selection run x3, if no then it runs x3

wouldn't doing something like that result in a double hook? the hook looks at x3 not the next exe run correct? or does it sub the x3 exe so they are basically the same app?

[Cycrow]

its not the X3 exe that its hooking, its the DirectX DLL.

the custom exe is jsut used to hook this DLL then run the main X3 exe, which is y you cant run both.

says you run the custom gui exe that calls the viewer exe, what will happen, is that the custom gui will hook the DirectX DLL to its own, then the viewer will replace that hook with its DLL file so u'll end up just with one.

the only way would be to edit one of the DLL files to allow hooking of the other, but as i said, i wouldn't really like to pass through more DLL files, it could have a bad impact on performance in the game.

i am planning on adding DLL support into the Custom GUI meaning you would be able to load in Custom DLL's to it, so this would work for the viewer.

so until then, you will have to use one or the other

[xTemon]

heya; just tested on Vista. Seems to allow initial install of 1.1.1.6--which then pops up with a Viewer has stopped functioning error immediatly after install, then missing dll after patching and same error. This happens with both hotfixes.

Seems to me i had a similar problem with doubleshadows editor and manager yesterday that was solved by installing both to a single folder in program files. This however isn't going to be an answer for yours as it has to be installed to an X3 directory--not that i couldn't create another--but seems to be related to permissions control in Vista or some such. basically; any program embedded more than one or two folders down from program files that is unregistered is sort of ignored--or not examined thoroughly--by Vista, and thus won't function immediately. That is; you have to reinstall or change the way its installed for it to work properly; or at least, i do

I'll see if i can't get it working later; love the spray shop support


edit:

seems i posted in the wrong thread; was reading both at the same time

[xTemon]

wow; i can be incredibly dense at times

i seem to have missed the fact that the 1.1.2.2 and 1.1.2.3 .exe were intended to be placed in the X3 Reunion folder and used instead of their respective predecessors... works great

not sure what the program has stopped working was all about on initial install; seems to work fine with any of the executables when triggered from the X3 directory or quicklaunch.

paint shop is pro

[exogenesis]

Glad to hear the standalone modelviewer works for you in Vista

PaintShop Pro ???

Just over 100 downloads so far for the v1.2.0.2 in-game model viewer,
I'm wondering how many got it working OK (only 8 votes showing atm).
Maybe no news is good news?

[jadmanthrat]

hi,
i've got some probs with your nice prog
i have defined the hotkey and it works fine to open the menu.
but when i want to show a selected ship, "." doesn't work so i don't have the additional window, just the sector-map opens (standard-settings)
help, i want to see my ships before i buy them

edit: changed sectormap-key but doesn't work either -.-

[MJALowe]

are you using the keys on the num pad? (usually the far right side of the keyboard), the key should be "." "del"

if its still not working, try pressing num lock once (so that it is turned on) and try again

[exogenesis]

Thanks MJALowe,
that sounds like the likely cause, maybe the 'numpad' part of the
on-screen instructions needs to be highlighted more.

[THE_BIG_FISH:Leo]

i seem to have a problem, i am running XTM and have added a few ships using the plug-in manager (some of the start trek ships) and as you can see from the picture no matter what i do there are never any ships for me to select

[ external image ]

any ideas on what could be up?

[exogenesis]

Looks like the tships file in your modified cat-file is not being read correctly by the viewer dll.
Could you upload the cat file containing your latest tships somewhere
(e.g. FileFront) so I could check it out.

But if plugin-manager has merged the new ships into the tships file in say XTM's 10.cat file,
then the file may be huge (1 gig uncompressed) so upload may not be an option you wish to consider.

XTM uses the 'false patch' system (e.g. 10 & 11.cat) -
are you having to select a further mod in the mod directory (e.g. ShipCreator.cat) to get your extra ships in X3?,
this would be a much smaller file.

Can the stand-alone model viewer program see your extra ships ?

[THE_BIG_FISH:Leo]

i will try i find the cat/dat files there in (i should point out that all of there dds files where moved into there own cat as i was having texture problems with xtm ) you wouldn't happen to have a link to the original model viewer would you? it seems to have fallen off the edge of the world

Thanks

Edit: i managed to find the model viewer and (with a patch i forgot to download the first time) it works fine so its just the in game one that's not loading

as i don't have the time atm i will just upload the tships file i can upload the whole cat/dat files later today if they could help

http://www.mediafire.com/?bix2llycfgx