DLTCEP Requests Thread

[Sorrow]

Under Linux it would have to run Weidu with wine WeiDU.exe.

[Maighstir]

A couple requests I couldn't find so far:

1. An option to display a graphical preview of the whole UI (CHU file) and/or just the current window (triple option maybe? all, window, none). Would make it slightly easier to see how everything fits together.

 

Perhaps even making it possible to select controls in the preview, or display (with a border or something) which control is selected.

 

2. When choosing Edit->Chitin (KEY) for Icewind Dale, and immediately clicking "Confirm changes" (so no changes have been done), DLTCEP complains about a lot of "missing" bif files that exist as cbf files instead (compressed bif?). I'm thinking it shouldn't do that, but accept bifc and cbf as alternatives to bif, no?

[Avenger]

Wouldn't the single window preview work for you?

Is there a problem because the window is too small to display the whole form?

 

It is not possible to display multiple windows, because the underlying logic is hardcoded in the exe.

I cannot reproduce it sensibly.

 

[edit]

About iwd .key editor.

So you say, exiting from the .key editor doesn't reload the bif cache as the "scan chitin" button would do it?

[Maighstir]

Wouldn't the single window preview work for you?

Is there a problem because the window is too small to display the whole form?

 

It is not possible to display multiple windows, because the underlying logic is hardcoded in the exe.

I cannot reproduce it sensibly.

 

[edit]

About iwd .key editor.

So you say, exiting from the .key editor doesn't reload the bif cache as the "scan chitin" button would do it?

 

 

There is a single window preview?

Oh, there... the "select control" button... didn't see that one

Yeah, that'll work

 

I don't know what "reloading the bif cache" means, to be honest, but this is how it looks when I click the "confirm changes" button, as you can see in the small window in the top right, the *.cbf file is there. For each time I click "yes", it throws up another dialog for each file that's a cbf instead of a bif, as it does for the few bif files that does not exist in BG2 but are referenced in chitin.key. If I click "no" in any of those dialogue boxes, any changes I made are discarded (of course, in this example, no changes have been made).

 

[Avenger]

Hmm, looks like the .key editor doesn't work with cbfs only bifs. I admit that there is a bug.

But, do you really want to use it as an editor?

 

I NEVER used it as an editor (only as a browser), i'm almost sure, it wouldn't really work that way

 

So, i always exit this editor with the 'undo changes' button.

If you use it only to look at the .key structure or such (just browsing), then i recommend doing the same.

 

If you really had the idea of using DLTCEP for .key modification, first tell me (preferably in a new thread), what exactly you need. It will most likely need coding.

[Maighstir]

Hmm, looks like the .key editor doesn't work with cbfs only bifs. I admit that there is a bug.

But, do you really want to use it as an editor?

 

I NEVER used it as an editor (only as a browser), i'm almost sure, it wouldn't really work that way

 

So, i always exit this editor with the 'undo changes' button.

If you use it only to look at the .key structure or such (just browsing), then i recommend doing the same.

 

If you really had the idea of using DLTCEP for .key modification, first tell me (preferably in a new thread), what exactly you need. It will most likely need coding.

 

 

It's not really important at the moment, just reporting the bug. I'm fine with using the override folder for now, but later it would be nice to put all those files into bifs instead when the dataset we're working on comes nearer to completion (just beginning now, give it a few months or so and I may have a couple of screens to show).

 

That I found out about it not liking cbf's was because I was trying to remove anything not actually used by the game, shrinking the total size a little bit and lessening the complexity that comes with the sheer number of files.

[Galactygon]

I am having problems compiling with DLTCEP V7.2, the scripts are downright messed up.

 

I was able to reproduce the bug with existing game scripts by simply opening them and compiling them, and they are messed up as well.

 

I can still compile scripts with WeiDU 212, so this is most likely a DLTCEP issue.

 

-Galactygon

[Avenger]

Do you have the internal compiler/decompiler enabled? If yes, simply turn it back to external (weidu).

[Galactygon]

Do you have the internal compiler/decompiler enabled? If yes, simply turn it back to external (weidu).

 

Yes, that was the problem, thanks.

 

-Galactygon

[Sorrow]

One thing that could be extremely useful, would be a zoom function for map polygon editing.

It's much easier to do precise operations where every pixel counts in 8x zoom.

[Maighstir]

I'm curious if it (%Appdata%) exists on Win98 too, because i heard requests about Win98.

Windows (as a whole) is more diverse than linux.

 

It doesn't exist in my Win98 VM at least, I'd guess it's only defined by default on Win2000 and up (probably not Me, since it's not NT but an upgrade from 98). You could check wether it's an NT based Windows or a DOS based one, I guess (there's got to be some function to check the version), then use %APPDATA%\DLTCEP on the former and the install directory on the latter.

 

Yet another idea regarding this.

What DOES exist in everything from Win98 and WinNT4 to Win7 (at least in the virtual machines I've set up) is the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\AppData, which contains the path to the active user's Application Data folder.

I assume there's some function in the Windows APIs to fetch the paths of the special shell folders so that developers wouldn't need to create their ow functions to parse the registry, at least Win7 contains an instruction that says "!Do not use this registry key - Use the SHGetFolderPath or SHGetKnownFolderPath function instead", I seem to recall that warning in Vista as well but it's not present in anything earlier so I don't know if the functions exists at all before that.

 

Either AppData, or the key named "Personal" located at the same place, which points to the "my documents" folder, except on NT4 where it defaults to "C:\WINNT\Profiles\<user>\Personal".

[Jarno Mikkola]

What DOES exist in everything from Win98 and WinNT4 to Win7 (at least in the virtual machines I've set up) is the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\AppData, which contains the path to the active user's Application Data folder.

Well, if you do any moding with the game and wish to make sure the mods works, then you are more likely to not have an accurate path to the registery key... yes, I have had 10 simultaniously working and playable games with 1 registery key... the registery key is the %&%¤#"#¤%¤#"¤%&¤&¤=>IQ=0"¤%¤ thing ever created to the Windows Operating System as it prevent from intentionally installing multiple copies of the same program.

[Maighstir]

Pardon me, but I fail to see how messing with a registry key pointing to a folder that's never used by any of the IE games (as far as I can discern) would in any way affect your ability to run several copies at the same time.

 

The suggestion was to use AppData or Personal (MyDocs) for DLTCEP's saved configurations, so that it wouldn't complain about Vista's and 7's folder protection when installed in the default (protected) location of Program Files. (Well, okay, it doesn't complain, but requires running as admin to be able to save new configs or edit old ones.)

[Avenger]

Can't you simply copy dltcep to a writable place?

[Maighstir]

Can't you simply copy dltcep to a writable place?

 

Sure I can, and I can tell it to always run as admin as well. I like not having apps installed all over the place though, and running as admin shouldn't be necessary unless doing system-wide changes (when do you use sudo in Linux? same idea applies), if the app automagically finds a writable folder it would make things easier for other users. Program Files is the default installation folder for most users, and since that is protected on Vista and 7 people may get confused as to why their game setups won't save.

 

I'm all about ease of use, and wanted to help in that regard, I think I've presented the ideas I have about this "issue" though so I'll leave it be for the time being. I'll try to refrain from posting about this one again, can't promise though... and I'm likely to tell about other ideas that I think would improve DLTCEP.