Comparing spells

[Caedwyr]

I have a large number of spells with similar structures, such that the main differences is the list of effects in their single extended level header. I would like to use a command/program to be able to output/compare this large collection of spells and either highlight the similarities and differences or preferably, output them into some sort of searchable text format. Is there a program or weidu command to do this?

[Nythrun]

Other than Diff (nearly incomprehensible on binary files) there's none I'm aware of.

 

You can of course write a WeiDU script to do so, but it may be more trouble than you're looking for.

[igi]

You can use SPCIE (from http://www.gibberlings3.net/tools/igi.php) to convert a SPL to a TXT file - then you can use a diff tool on the resultant files.

[Miloch]

Yeah, I've used igi's tools on SPLs, ITMs and CREs. Then I select the two to compare and send them to PSPad TextDiff. Pretty handy, especially for modding on different platforms.

[Miloch]

I've been using this a lot lately, in an older mod that copies over a crapload of spells, some of which exist and need to be patched, some of which are new. It would really help to have a batch feature for this, e.g.:

spcie decompile *.spl *.txt

Or some other similar syntax. As it was, I wrote my own batch file to do it, but it was a pain and I have no doubt I'll need to do the same thing again (if not for spells then for items or something else). Not nearly as painful as eyeballing everything, but still, automation rules.

 

Oh and eh... how about an auto_diff and an auto_generate_weidu_code_for_diffs too, yeah?

[igi]

It would really help to have a batch feature for this

 

I don't think I have the source code to any of those tools anymore.

It should be pretty easy to make a batch file to emulate wildcard support for the tools though, based on the FOR command.

 

It wouldn't be much effort to recode the tools, however the functionality will likely end up in WeiDU anyway.

[Miloch]

It wouldn't be much effort to recode the tools, however the functionality will likely end up in WeiDU anyway.

It will? That would be great.

[the bigg]

No. NIDigGen.jar (from the same archive as NI) already has this option. It doesn't convert back to SPL, but who cares.

[Miloch]

No. NIDigGen.jar (from the same archive as NI) already has this option. It doesn't convert back to SPL, but who cares.

I found zero documentation on NIDigGen, except this post, which isn't really helpful as it just repeats the same text that appears when you type "java -jar nidiggen.jar" in the command window. I did manage to export a .spl, but only as a .spl not as .txt. Anyone know the syntax for that?

 

If the resource has to be present in the game, it has a serious disadvantage (apart from file size) over spcie.exe etc., which can be used in a mod folder or anywhere. Too bad igi doesn't have the source code anymore, because I've noticed only one bug in spcie: it doesn't always recognise a null character in an ASCII string, and instead represents any text it finds within ~8 characters of (for example) a sound clip in a spell.

[the bigg]

It must be in the override and/or in the biffs.

 

java -jar path/to/nidiggen.jar <path to chitin.key> <output folder> <file.ext>

 

it should create file.ext.txt