OXCTools

[Warboy1982]

nope, far too ambitious on my part, nothing about this works, i'm just losing time here, learning nothing.

[pmprog]

Awww, did my code sample not help? or did you post this before that?

[michal]

So, any GUI apps programmer here who could write this utility?

[pmprog]

Well, speaking with Warboy earlier, I might try and combine MARS with the other tools I've taken up

[michal]

In C#? But first you would need to write MARS

[pmprog]

Yes, it'll be C#, and yes, I know I need to write MARS. I'm half tempted to rebuild the map tools based upon the data from a loaded ruleset, rather than it's own individual hardcoded config file

I guess we'll see though

[michal]

Sounds nice. Hope to see some progress soon

[Yankes]

btw Warboy do you think that you could create sprite creator? e.g. load surfaceset with unit parts and then place them manualy on "animation frames". save all data to file and load it in OpenXcom?

every surface in surfeceset will have 4 values write by this editor for every animation frame:
x,y - position offset
z - draw order
v - visible

Editing could be very "simple":
3 controls [next, prev, list of all] changing frames (probably longest list here)
2 controls [left, right] changing rotation (8 direction)
3 controls [next, prev, list of all] selecting surface group (e.q. chest part, legs, right arm, corpse frame)
4 settings [v,x,y,z] values for current part
1 screen showing unit using with current frame and rotation

[Warboy1982]

i guess i could write up a design brief and start building some of the context menus.

i was planning to steal the sprite drawing routines from OXC to build a rotatable image, which could preview different animations (ie, walking, shooting, holding various arrangements of weaponry) so if you were replacing frames within a set, (like, say moriarty's armour mod) you could see the changes.

i wanted to steal the geoscape globe renderer too, so you could see the country/region/mission zone borders as you were editing them. (drawing routines already exist within OXC to render these)

but these were plans for well down the line, like... finishing touches.

getting it to read in YAML is the first hurdle.

[Yankes]

You could simply made desktop version of OpenXcom (somthing like this https://inanutshelll.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/2010-04-13-civ2.jpg )

[SupSuper]

getting it to read in YAML is the first hurdle.

The upside is with C#, that part is the easiest as you can just use reflection to automatically load/save any class fields.

[pmprog]

The MARS C# code I wrote can read YAML fine...

I did think about when (if) merging the PCK viewer, whether to add a simple "paint" package to let you edit them too, but I wasn't sure on the demand now that you can use bitmaps in the game engine.

[darkestaxe]

In my humble opinion:

This project shouldn't be Warboys little pet of the week. (no offense Warboy) This project combined with whatever system for loadable-unloadable mods should be the primary direction of current OXC development. Once we have proper mod/modder support the only thing between us and 1.0 is bugs.

I'm thinking at some point SupSuper or someone should lay out a design doc of some type (feature list maybe) and new roadmap to 1.0. The reason I suggest a design doc and new roadmap is because X-COM was our perfect exhaustive design doc, we all played it for 10+ years; obviously we haven't already used the mod tools/support we'd be making.


Anyway, it's just my humble opinion because I'm really kinda on the outside looking in right now. I'm barely a real programmer and haven't had time for OXC lately.

[mercy]

Once a good AI is finished, everything will fall into place.

[SupSuper]

It'd be great if development was as linear as going from point A to point B, but there's always new bug reports, new feature requests, new stuff to do. The current feature list for 1.0 is just finish as many bug reports and popular feature requests as we can.

I have written a modding design doc that covers most people's requests and I'll look into implementing after 1.0.