1165 replies to this topic

[Argent77]

Update: NearInfinity v2.1-20200425

Changelog:

• Added option to colorize resource structures and their associated offset and count fields (replaces former "Colorized offset fields" option). Can be turned on/off in menu Options > Show colored structures in Edit tabs.
• Advanced Search:
  • Added feature to add selected resource fields as filter definitions (Right-click on resource field in Edit tab of resource and select "Add to Advanced Search")
  • Fixed missing import of "Match case" options for field and value definitions
  • Fixed a bug in search of grouped filter definitions
• Area Viewer:
  • Overlay transparency from ARE field is considered when rendering overlays
  • Fixed overlay rendering issues in EET and possibly other games
  • Fixed erroneous detection of extended night maps in PSTEE
• BAM Converter:
  • Fixed transparency issues with external palettes
  • Added support for PNG palette in "Replace colors" filter
  • Improved support of Microsoft PAL palettes
• Experimental: Changed detection of transparent palette indices in BAM resources (palette index 0 and any palette indices matching RGB(0,255,0) are considered as transparent). Because of technical reasons BAM frame export and BAM Converter preview box will only support one transparent palette index though.
• Search for resource references: Improved results for textual resource types (BCS, 2DA, ...). Results list shows matching line and line number, added support for multiple matches per resource, and cursor jumps to matching line when resource is opened.
• Updated ARE Animation appearance and flags descriptions
• Updated fields in GAM and GAM > NPC structures
• Added ITM Ability flags bit 9 description
• Further improved search names for areas in resource tree (uses names from worldmap if available)
• Fixed bug when assigning resource references containing lower-case extensions in resource fields
• More robust decoding of compresed BAMs containing corrupted data
• Fix inaccessible GAM > NPC structures in PST
• Various minor bugfixes and optimizations

[Argent77]

I don't think NI can be really made "noob-friendly". NI is first and foremost a general-purpose resource editor for Infinity Engine games. The user interface is part of the core design and allows only changes with certain limits.

You're probably better off using a dedicated savegame editor such as EE Keeper if you're not interested in learning the raw internals of savegame data.

Btw, EE Keeper is open source, so it is possible to fix bugs or extend functionality without having to rely on the current (or former) maintainer. (Links: SourceForge and GitHub)

[Argent77]

Update: NearInfinity v2.1-20200502

Changelog:

• Added PRO search names to resource selection tree (based on MISSILE.IDS content)
• Added INI search names to resource selection tree (using ARE search names or symbolic ANIMATE.IDS names, depending on type)
• Improvements to table view (Edit tab) of structured resources:
  • Added new 'Size' column and option to display size in decimal or hexadecimal notation (can be controlled in menu Options > Show table columns)
  • Added option to show relative offsets of fields in substructures (can be turned on/off in menu Options > Show table columns)
• Improved readability of CRE Status flags
• Flag fields: Description text of unknown flags are drawn in lighter colors to emphasize known flags
• Fixed jumping to correct DLG state/trigger entries from a reference search
• Fixed StringRef Lookup not passing the correct strref value to the string editor when clicking the "Edit" button
• Fixed WMP worldmap loading error if referenced resources are missing
• Updated external libraries used for displaying textual content
• Various minor fixes and optimizations

[The Imp]

Added PRO search names to resource selection tree (based on MISSILE.IDS content)

So does this mean that we can identify which spells use a particular .pro -file ?

[Argent77]

Added PRO search names to resource selection tree (based on MISSILE.IDS content)

So does this mean that we can identify which spells use a particular .pro -file ?

That can be done with the "Find references" feature. Search names can be helpful to get a general idea about the functionality of a projectile. For example TSKULLNP.PRO is labeled as "Skull Trap (Not Party) for Jan" - which is not apparent if you only saw the resource name "TSKULLNP.PRO" in the resource tree.

 

[ALIEN]

Hi Argent77,

 

Why opcode #188 is named "Increase spells cast per round" if the  IESDP has "Spell Effect: Aura Cleansing" and the param2 description is "Cleanse aura?" Yes/No which is indication that the effect is 'aura related'? I find this very confusing.

[Bloodtitan]

Maybe it's legacy from the ToB HLA Improved Alacrity.

[Argent77]

Hi Argent77,
 
Why opcode #188 is named "Increase spells cast per round" if the  IESDP has "Spell Effect: Aura Cleansing" and the param2 description is "Cleanse aura?" Yes/No which is indication that the effect is 'aura related'? I find this very confusing.

As I already told you in the G3 thread, it's merely a different name for one and the same effect. "Aura Cleansing" seems to be the technical term used by the devs, and since DLTCEP (and IESDP) tends to describe engine functions more technically, they used this term in favor of something else.

NI was developed by different people who did their own research on opcodes and came up with names that more closely described the observed effect of opcodes. Btw, most opcode names were defined back when most engine aspects still had to be discovered via reverse engineering or simply by test and observation. Only recently when Beamdog took over information were easier to come by.

I don't think changing all the opcode names to match the DLTCEP terms would be a good idea (unless opcode descriptions are clearly misleading), since they are that way for almost two decades by now. It would probably cause more confusion than anything.

Edited by Argent77, 23 May 2020 - 12:30 AM.

[Robin Hood]

In NI, is it possible to get rid of the search names for "Area north" (etc.) in View mode? I've tried setting ResRefs to filename only, and getting rid of them in the tree, but they still show up next to "Area north". This causes the columns to all widen proportionally, pushing the right-most column (Containers and Points of Interest) partly or entirely off the screen, meaning I have to scroll to see them. (See attached)

 

Spoiler

Edited by Argent77, 25 May 2020 - 12:24 PM.

[Argent77]

Removing the search name for selected screens is not so trivial. However, I can probably make the static layout of the area view tab more dynamic. I'll see what I can do to improve the situation.

[Robin Hood]

Thanks, much appreciated!

 

And sorry everyone for the gigantic image. I didn't realize it would do that with a file attachment. I'll leave it to mods to figure out whether it should stay or if it can be removed now.

[Gamemacik]

Hello, there is is weird BUG with export/import session for BAM files.
 
Steps i performed:
1. "Exported session...", when Export BAM Session window appear uncheck "Frame Source Files", leave "Frame center coordinates" and "Cycle Definitions" checked ("Filter Configurations" is unchecked greyed out)
2. Now import source files from folder (my folder contains png files eg. "GLDR#0_0002_s.png" ... "GLDR#0_0028_s.png") to new BAM file and "Import Session" which was exported before, it should assign correct values to coordinates and cycles
3. BUG is: coordinates are assigned but into cycles are loaded values from coordinated in my case each cycle contains values x,y  91,122, and number of cycles is also wrong ...
This is how Session ini file looks like:

Spoiler

[Global]
version=1

[Center]
0=91,122
1=91,122
2=91,122
3=91,122
4=91,122
5=91,122
6=91,122
7=91,122
8=91,122
9=91,122
10=91,122
11=91,122
12=91,122
13=91,122
14=91,122
15=91,122
16=91,122
17=91,122
18=91,122
19=91,122
20=91,122
21=91,122
22=91,122
23=91,122
24=91,122
25=91,122
26=91,122
27=91,122
28=91,122
29=91,122
30=91,122
31=91,122
32=91,122
33=91,122
34=91,122
35=91,122
36=91,122
37=91,122
38=91,122
39=91,122
40=91,122
41=91,122
42=91,122
43=91,122
44=91,122
45=91,122
46=91,122
47=91,122
48=91,122
49=91,122
50=91,122
51=91,122
52=91,122
53=91,122
54=91,122
55=91,122
56=91,122
57=91,122
58=91,122
59=91,122
60=91,122
61=91,122
62=91,122
63=91,122
64=91,122
65=91,122
66=91,122
67=91,122
68=91,122
69=91,122
70=91,122
71=91,122
72=91,122
73=91,122
74=91,122
75=91,122
76=91,122
77=91,122
78=91,122
79=91,122
80=91,122
81=91,122
82=91,122
83=91,122
84=91,122
85=91,122
86=91,122
87=91,122
88=91,122
89=91,122
90=91,122
91=91,122
92=91,122
93=91,122
94=91,122
95=91,122
96=91,122
97=91,122
98=91,122
99=91,122
100=91,122
101=91,122
102=91,122
103=91,122
104=91,122
105=91,122
106=91,122
107=91,122
108=91,122
109=91,122
110=91,122
111=91,122
112=91,122
113=91,122
114=91,122
115=91,122
116=91,122
117=91,122
118=91,122
119=91,122
120=91,122
121=91,122
122=91,122
123=91,122
124=91,122
125=91,122

[Cycles]
0=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13
1=14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27
2=28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41
3=42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55
4=56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69
5=70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83
6=84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97
7=98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111
8=112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125

 
 

 

 

tested with NI v2.1-20200502

 

Note: i checked older versions of NearInfinity import Session worked properly with Version 2.1-20180615 (but there was a bug with Palette import, Palette and Session Import worked well with Version 2.1-20180531), the Session bug Import appeared since version Version 2.1-20200401

Edited by Gamemacik, 16 June 2020 - 01:51 AM.

[Argent77]

Good catch! It's just a mixed up variable name and can be easily fixed.

[Argent77]

Update: NearInfinity v2.1-20200620

Changelog:

• Fixed structure order in empty SPL or ITM resources when adding new abilities or effects
• Added option to align content in 2DA tables
• Long strings in View tabs are cut off to prevent out-of-bounds UI elements
• Improved ARE View tab layout to prevent out-of-bounds scrolling
• Updating CRE effect version (offset 33h) converts effect structures on the fly between EFF V1 and EFF V2 format
• String Editor: Fixed saving changes of read-only dialog.tlk (e.g. in DLC archive) to another location
• Advanced Search > Filter > Structure level: Made root element unremovable
• BAM Converter: Fixed incorrect cycle data imported from a session file
• BAM Converter: Fixed display issues in palette dialogs on Linux systems
• List of available primary types (spell schools) in opcodes 202, 204, 220, 223, 227, 229 are created dynamically from mschool.2da
• Implemented TobEx feature "Effect stacking": new flag in save types, EFF 'special' field is splitted into 'identifier' and 'prefix' fields
• Fixed CHR -> CRE conversion

[Miloch]

Nice work.

[Argent77]

Update: NearInfinity v2.1-20200901

This release provides a couple of nifty features.

1) Filtered item lists
Fields in structured resources which provide a list control for item selection can now be filtered by text input. The list content will adjust dynamically to display only matching elements. This feature can be used to quickly find specific elements without knowing the full name. Filtering is initially disabled and can be enabled/disabled by a toggle button at the right side of the list input field. The filter state is preserved globally during the whole session but not saved in the NI settings.

Spoiler

2) NI loading times
I've invested some time to improve loading times which have been a bottleneck since major portions of NI were rewritten back in 2016. On my Windows test system improvements reduced loading time by about 25 percent when a great number of files were present in the override folder. The Linux version may provide an even greater speed boost if the right conditions are met because of some additional bugfixes. I can't say how much these optimizations affect macOS systems. Feedback would be welcome.

3) Launching the game directly from within Near Infinity
This feature has been requested several times in the past. It is now possible to start the game executable associated with the opened game in NI with a simple click on a button at the top of the resource selection tree. NI determines the right game executable from a predefined list of potential filenames. Custom executables can be defined by using bookmarks. The feature can be enabled or disabled via menu Options > Allow launching games. I was only able to test it on Windows and Linux. Feedback from macOS users is greatly appreciated.

Spoiler

 

This button is active if there is a potential game executable available. It can be globally disabled from the Options menu.

 

A popup menu shows up if multiple game executables are available. A small black arrow indicates that multiple entries are available. Press the Ctrl key (or Command key on macOS) while clicking the button to quickly launch the first available game executable without making a detour over the popup menu.

Full changelog:

• Added feature to launch the game directly from NI
• Improved NI loading times by optimizing various I/O operations
• Added filter feature to listbox datatypes for structured resources
• Added "Properties" button to TTF resource viewer
• Added tooltip descriptions for Options > Look and Feel themes
• Fixed minor display issues with transparent pixels in worldmap viewer (should only affect PST:EE)
• Removed (functionless) "Release Dialog.tlk Lock" entry from Game menu
• Various bugfixes and optimizations

[Sam.]

• Removed (functionless) "Release Dialog.tlk Lock" entry from Game menu

I remember back when this did something. When did that change?

[Argent77]

 

• Removed (functionless) "Release Dialog.tlk Lock" entry from Game menu

 

I remember back when this did something. When did that change?

Dialog.tlk handling was redesigned some time ago. The new version doesn't lock the file permanently. The menu entry was just a leftover from that time.

[LightAcolyte]

I made a mistake. I downloaded the newest GitHub version of NearInfinity NearInfinity-20200901.zip as I wanted to try the new functionality.

Now I cannot see the GUI even if I open my old 2019 jar file. I normally see everything in large size with dark background and light text because these are the only settings I can use to read text due to my vision. All I "see" of it is dark background with black text, or light background with light grey text, which are both totally illegible for me.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Java and selecting menu options from memory inside the program. Ironically, with the new version of Java 8 I can now see things I couldn't before on the Java installation splash screens and such, but I cannot use the jar application to do anything besides open it in WIndows Explorer.

I realize this would not be a high development priority to fix for most, but would someone please help me to get the GUI to where everything is dark background with light text? Right now I can't even see to make different selections for the colors.