MAPVIEW upgrade

[luke83]

Hello,

 Any of you excellent Coders want to try your luck at making a few Upgrades to MAPVIEW? I downloaded the source out of curiosity but have no clue where to start

I PM Daishiva but since i have not heard from him in over a year i guess LIFE has gotten in the way of the last upgrade i asked for

My Suggestions for Upgrading Mapview:
1) Fix existing Bugs EG: the PATHS can only be modified by Notepad as doing it by the program wipes everything.
2) Specify Default Node type was added last time By Daishiva at my request , we need a extra Option to tell it to AUTOLINK to previous Node in both directions ( this will save alot of time)
3) Extra Visual clues as to what Unit type a NODE will be spawning ( Just some letters added to the Green box to represent a Class would be helpful)
4)Move Node Option, There is nothing worse than realising you have fully setup a NODE 1 block to the right of the desired location, a tick box to Drag and drop node at a new location and Keep all current LINK nodes would be awesome
5) Numbered Grids ( around the images) i hate goign cross eyed tryign to work out if i am in the right Row or not , a simply Number system down the side on ALL screens could be useful.
6) AUTO-Link : Not sure HOW you will handle this but this would save alot of headaches if i only needed to clean up a few LINKS instead of manually modding every one of them.
7) RMP Statistics = Would be great if there was a option somewhere to do a count of all Spawn Ranks per level and a overview of spawn Ranks across the entire map set, just Pop open a new window to display this when requested.
Some kind of import Wizard for the PAths , Mapedit page as i have Lots of differnt , half finished maps to import and its very time cinsuming to do them one by one. It would be good if it was clever , and noticed if i selected a Map without a ROute file, that it could ask if i want to make a empty file for it. ALso if you can improve the way the Map tree is controlled ( and allow Drag and Drop to change the sequence) that would be great.


This is a Fantastic program it just needs some work to make it easier for people like me to make LOTS of new map types, Any part time coders for OXC want to take a look ?

[pmprog]

What's it written in? and where can one find the code?

[AndO3131]

Code is here

It's written in C#.

[pmprog]

I'll try and have a look at that later. No guarentees though

[luke83]

Thanks pmprog,  i would appreciate any help you could possibly provide. modding a few small map blocks is not to bad , modding large buildings/UFO can take several hours per mapblock so anything to help reduce that would be a benefit to the community. I have spoken to many potential modders over last 2 years and most of them give up once they see how time consuming it is.

[pmprog]

Thanks pmprog,  i would appreciate any help you could possibly provide. modding a few small map blocks is not to bad , modding large buildings/UFO can take several hours per mapblock so anything to help reduce that would be a benefit to the community. I have spoken to many potential modders over last 2 years and most of them give up once they see how time consuming it is.

Could you do me a favour: For the things you want me to look at, can you write a step-by-step guide from starting the program to where the issues occur?

That way, I can follow it to where your issues are, then dig in.

[luke83]

Like this?

https://openxcommods.weebly.com/mapview_upgrade.html

[pmprog]

I've not really read it yet, but it looks the sort of thing I was expecting. I'll have a proper read tonight or over the weekend, depends on what free time I get.

Who's the original author of these tools? I guess there wouldn't be any issues with me putting the source codes in my GitHub seeing as though you can get them from Sourceforge

I noticed the PckView tool is also in there, and there was a few things I would like to do with that (basically allow zooming really). I was also thinking a simple pixel editor, but now that externalised graphics are supported, that really isn't necessary any more.

[luke83]

Sorry i added one more WISH , i hope you find the will to look into these 

The original author was Daishiva , i am not sure if he held off on doing these upgrades himself because of time restraints or because there was discussion at the time to moving to a new format, that would then make his program obsolete. Its been 12 months since then and i don't hear about much desire for a NEW format right now so i am really hoping this can be fixed up to make it easier for new modders to get started.

[pmprog]

Luke,

 I've fixed the DAT file saving now (point 1.), and I've also added your auto link (point 2.). So as you drop nodes, it'll add a link back to the previous node, and also try and add a link from the previous node to the new one. I think that's what you were asking for. The source code on SourceForge didn't have the "Default" checkbox shown in your screenshot. I should be able to add it back in, if you can tell me what it does?

Source code can be found here:
https://github.com/pmprog/OpenXCOM.Tools

Binary downloads are here:
https://github.com/pmprog/OpenXCOM.Tools/tree/master/Distribution

I need to go and do some less exciting, but more important stuff, so I'll come back to the other bits later. If you could test out my changes though, that would be helpful

[luke83]

Basically, you select a NODE that you that has all the setting you are after ( Spawn type , Rank etc) and you check the Default tick box, now every link that you place after has all the same settings.


***UPDATE****


Maybe its me, but i cant get it to open

[pmprog]

Basically, you select a NODE that you that has all the setting you are after ( Spawn type , Rank etc) and you check the Default tick box, now every link that you place after has all the same settings.

Okay, I can add something like that in

Maybe its me, but i cant get it to open

Does it say anything?

[luke83]

Commandwindow thing flashes pretty quick.

If i use the "Run AS" option in windows i get a message stating it cant create a temp file somewhere .

[pmprog]

Commandwindow thing flashes pretty quick.

If i use the "Run AS" option in windows i get a message stating it cant create a temp file somewhere .

Did you replace the exe's in you existing installation? Did you get all three files from the distribution folder?

Also, might be worth checking if there are any Microsoft .NET v2 service packs that you don't have installed

The other thing you can try is run the program, then right click on My Computer, and select Manage, then go to the Event Viewer and look at the Application Logs. Might have something in there

[luke83]

I tried a stand alone install and i also tried replacing my existing files with all 3 of your new ones.

I am setting up a VM on my work PC , i will try it there also , looking at the Event viewer( that i have never seen before) there is a error for .NET so i will update that next to test.