R&D - New Modding Tools

[Amineri]

I've merged in XMTS's changes with mine, and committed my most recent project tree file handling changes to the repository. After XMTS has a chance to review my code and fix up any possible weirdness (he's definitely a better Java coder than I am), I'll likely release a new version that rolls up all of the changes.

[wghost81]

Can some of you, ple-e-e-ease, fix modfiles tree sorting under linux? :smile: I'm starting b14 linux adaptation (don't tell anyone :smile: ) and finding a right file in that tree is a real pain.

[Amineri]

I've put in code that should be sorting files/folders as they are being loaded, so hopefully this will fix the issue. It just so happened that the Windows implementation of the SimpleFileVisitor happened to return files/folders in alphabetical order, but this is not guaranteed on all systems.

 

I have an alpha version of my current v0.83 build posted up for you to try, although I haven't tested it enough to want to have a "real" release quite yet.

[wghost81]

After spending many hours applying patches with UPKMod, I realized there are two things I would really like.

 

1. Project tree filter. Some small field to enter the modfile name and get the project tree filtered by that name. Like classes tree filter in UEE.

 

2. An ability to quickly find all the versions of the selected modfile. Since UPKModder uses before/after style patching, to install an update for some modfile one needs to revert previous version of that file first. Ideally, I want to be able batch-reverting previous versions by right-clicking the files/folder and choosing an option "Revert previous mod version". :smile:

 

Let me explain this in detail.

 

After several experiments I ended up with this routine. I have all the modfiles in one project. The project is logically divided to folders and sub-folders. When I need to apply some updates, I create an update folder inside the project folder and copy all the updated mofiles there. I then check the status to find the ones on the "red". After that I use my eyes to search for previous versions of those files to revert them. And then I apply the new ones. So, if I had an option to auto-find and revert previous version of the file with the same name as the selected one, it would make my eyes happy. :smile:

 

Thanks for all the work you've already put into this tool!

[Amineri]

Unfortunately, adding a project tree filter seems like a bit more UI work than I'm currently interested in trying to undertake. I did add more functionality to allow changing of files "underneath" UPKmodder by changing things via the File System Explorer and having UPKmodder watching the project folder and updating itself automatically. So I generally use Windows Explorer to find and mess with files. It's a little clunky, but a lot less coding work to implement something that already has a method to accomplish (albeit non-ideal).

 

I have however been working on a small update to fix a couple of minor things, as well as adding a new feature that should help with debugging :

 

v0.84 (r144)

• Fixed issues with Project Pane folders not sorting under Linux
• Added error-checking to jump offset highlighting so that jump offsets are colored red if not pointing to the start of a line
• Added save/restore of window size when close/re-launch of UPKmodder app

The jump-offset thing is just a highlighting helper -- it checks the hex value of absolute jumps (06, 07, and I think 45) and verifies that the value is the memory position of some line in the modfile. If it finds a valid line, the two bytes will be colored orange, otherwise they will be colored red.

[wghost81]

Amineri, shame. :sad: I use File System Explorer too to find the file, but then I need to manually search for the same file in a project tree anyway to undo it. Can at least searching functionality be added to project tree?

[XMarksTheSpot]

Can at least searching functionality be added to project tree?

This can be easily achieved by replacing the tree component with an extended version found in an external library which I tried to avoid adding to the project so far to avoid unnecessary bloat. I went ahead and added that extra dependency just now, so the project tree and mod file editor now have native search support using Ctrl+F. The trade-off is that our so far pretty lightweight project grows by another 1.5 MB, ah well :smile:

 

I'll leave it to Amineri to package the new JAR files and upload them to the drive folder since I don't have access to that :smile:

[Amineri]

Thanks for looking into that, X. :) You definitely are more proficient at such general programming / UI-related tasks than I am!

 

I'll update my UPKmodder project and get a new release with the search functionality out soon.

[Amineri]

Sorry for the delay, but X found a way to improve performance with large files, but it required some restructuring of the code, and now we're chasing down the resultant bugs. Good times.

[wghost81]

Another humble request regarding to search. :smile:

 

Can you add "copy modfile name" item to context menu (right-click)? And if possible also add "Search for this file in project tree" item?

 

And a question: will search functionality find all the files with the specified name? Will there be something like "find"/"find next" functionality? Will it be possible to use wildcards?