Kotor Tool - v1.0.2210.16738 (2006-1-19 12:38)

[Weiser_Cain]

Howabout a dialog editor, this is stalling my project!

[Shimaon]

I concur, a dialog editor would rule, and from your standpoint, I think it would take a short time to create.

[T7nowhere]

I'll add my vote for a dialog editor. Just as long as it's not too much trouble. Actually you probly already have it on your list of things to, so i'll just say Im looking forward to the next update you keep makeing this tool better.

Oh ya, And I would love to see the file trees enhanced to orginize the file types into categories. I wouldn't mind waiting for the tree to build, but I do have a fast PC.

[Fred Tetra]

Well, the various tabs in the UTC editor are now functional, but I have now moved on to the inventory editor portion of it. This is a bit challenging, but I'm making pretty good progress on it. I actually have a treeview from which you can select an item and drag it to the slot where you want it to go. I'm hoping to have the item properties set such that you can't put an item in the wrong slot (no implants in the hand slot, for example).

[Fred Tetra]

Some of you may find this amusing....

If you don't already know, each .UTI (inventory item) in templates.bif has a baseitem # field that refers to a row in baseitems.2da. This allows similar items to be grouped together.

What I found is that the four Bith (the musicians in the Cantina) instruments (Guitar, Accordian, Trombone and Clarinet) are all considered Blaster Pistols!

Better tip them well!

Maybe this mystery can become a spin-off game....

"The Mystery of the Bith" <groan!>

[Shimaon]

Heh, never saw that coming, when will those Biths learn?

[T7nowhere]

lol, The instruments and guns must have the same holding poses or it is just one of the devs form of a joke.
In my roamings though KotOR's files I saw that those instuments are quest items.

Which leads me to wonder how many other game elements are unused. So far I have learned there was plans for a second LS ending where Carth turns a female DS Reven back to the light on the starforge. Then stay there as it burns in the star. someone noticed there was an unused level in the vulker base and there is pretty much atleast 1 unused file per module some contain several, unfinnished models and I think some unused textures.

sorry went a little off topic. looking forward to the next release of Kotor tool

[Shimaon]

Speaking of devs form of a joke... look through a texture pack and find nun.tpc...

You see where this is going...

[Jackel]

Originally posted by Shimaon
Speaking of devs form of a joke... look through a texture pack and find nun.tpc...

You see where this is going...

thats just funy , but i can see bastilla in a Nun custome running around proclaiming her goodness

[Fred Tetra]

There's also a model of the classic "teapot" too!

[Fred Tetra]

Another amusing thing I discovered while debugging my latest code was that Deadeye Duncan has a gender of "both"!

Hmmm....

[tk102]

Version: KotOR Tool v1.0.1502.18035
Symptom: Arithmetic Overflow upon the following treeview navigation:

RIMs
- Rims
- - global.rim
- - - appearance.2da (double-click)

[Fred Tetra]

Originally posted by tk102
Version: KotOR Tool v1.0.1502.18035
Symptom: Arithmetic Overflow upon the following treeview navigation:

RIMs
- Rims
- - global.rim
- - - appearance.2da (double-click)

This occurs because this particular 2da file does not follow the same file format as every other one I have ever come across.

Internally, the file format uses tab characters (ASCII 9) to separate field and row names, and each list is terminated with a null (ASCII 0).

This file uses nulls in place of tabs so when I look for the end of the list, I find it too soon and the wrong number of rows is calculated, hence the error.

I checked the file against the version in the BIFs section and they are otherwise identical.

Thanks for letting me know.

[tk102]

Ha ha, sloppy sloppy Bioware! Put that in the same category as the duplicitous field indices.

Do you think Bioware ever reads any of these forums?

[T7nowhere]

Ha ha, sloppy sloppy Bioware! Put that in the same category as the duplicitous field indices. Do you think Bioware ever reads any of these forums?

I hope someone from Bioware does. This is the first game I have really ever dug into and Im a little surprized by how much junk and unused content their is. It almost makes me wonder if that is the only reason they won't support Modding Becuase of the sloppyness. It could be a contributing factor.

[juv3nal]

could be a chicken and the egg thing: "we're not going to be supporting modding, so it's ok to be sloppy"

[Naver Drolmai]

I would like to use the Kotor Tool but I am getting the following error every time I try to expand the tree :

The currency separator information specified in the NumberFormatInfo is ambiguous for parsing

I assume that the win98 installation I am using has a currency separator different from the default, but since I am in a netcafe with some options locked I cannot do anything for that.

Is there anything that can be done? i.e. allow the separator used be determind in the xml file?

kotor tool v 1.0.1502.18035

[Fred Tetra]

Originally posted by Naver Drolmai
I would like to use the Kotor Tool but I am getting the following error every time I try to expand the tree :

The currency separator information specified in the NumberFormatInfo is ambiguous for parsing

I assume that the win98 installation I am using has a currency separator different from the default, but since I am in a netcafe with some options locked I cannot do anything for that.

Is there anything that can be done? i.e. allow the separator used be determind in the xml file?

kotor tool v 1.0.1502.18035

I'll bet you're not using a us-english version of windows....

Microsoft's .NET environment, (which KT is coded in), tries to do a lot of globalization things for you (the programmer, that is) but sometimes it gets in the way. I'll bet this is one of those times.
If you send an email to the address in the readne.txt with the Exception text, I'll see what I can do.

[Fred Tetra]

New version released - v1.0.1521.38639 (2004-3-1)

Highlights:

* View GFF file(s) as Syntax-colored Text (File | View GFF Files...)

* Open and Edit UTC (Creature) files (ONLY!) including inventory/force powers/etc.
Other GFF-based files open in Text Viewer. (File | Open GFF Files...)

* Both of the above allow you to select multiple files in the Open File dialog.

* Treeview now has leaf nodes organized by type (most resources) or initial (textures in TexturePacks)

* You can now turn off building of the "Models" tree under BIFs to speed up overall building. (Tools | Options...)

You can download this new version from the links on the first post.

Enjoy!

Fred

[T7nowhere]

I just wanna add a small note for the inventory editor in the utc editor(npc's) If you add a custom Item to the inventorylist It must be typed in lower case letters or it won't work in-game.

Thats all oh ya and the new Treeview organizer is Awesome

I can't wait to see what you add next Fred.


EDIT:now that the files are organized, I found a file called partymember.btc and when I open it with the gff editor I looked the fistname[CExoLocString] and it read as "Badger" and under the description[CExoLocString] IT says "The common Badger is a small but fierce mammal. Its strong forelimbs are armed with long claws, used for both digging and self-defense."

When I think of how out of place this seems I just had to laugh.

[Fred Tetra]

Originally posted by T7nowhere
I just wanna add a small note for the inventory editor in the utc editor(npc's) If you add a custom Item to the inventorylist It must be typed in lower case letters or it won't work in-game.

Actually, you can't enter anything but lowercase letters in the item slots custom editor, but you can in the grid. I'll fix that in the next release.

Now that the GFF class (which all of the ut* files use) is done, other editors should be easier to do.

I didn't mention it in the readme.txt (not that anyone reads it ), but if you double click on an equipped item slot in the inventory editor, you can set it to a custom item's ResRef.

[T7nowhere]

Originally posted by Fred Tetra
Actually, you can't enter anything but lowercase letters in the item slots custom editor, but you can in the grid. I'll fix that in the next release.

OOPS that is what i meant to say. I thought I implyed that the way it is done is by dopping an exsisting item in the itemlist then deleteing the slot contents and entering your own Item.
My bad.

[vinniemc]

This tool will become the nwn tooset for kotor.

Now I feel like a real heel for asking ( due to you working so hard at this fine program) but any news on the update to modify .git files?
Only thing thats prevents me from creating new worlds ( with new content )

I feal bad even asking you....

[Fred Tetra]

Thank you; I hope it helps your efforts.

To quote something I said before:

"After determining that doing the Area editor would require some really good design decisions, I figured that I'd rather make my mistakes on something simpler. Not that dealing with GFFs of any sort is easy (just ask tk102!), but there is less to deal with (from what I can tell) in Creature files. Area definitions would benefit from a graphically-based object positioner and lots of other non-text-entry type GUI elements that I don't feel like dealing with until I feel comfortable with the GFF class implementation and interface methods."

Well, I did the UTC editor, but I am still revising the GFF class to make the whole thing more object-oriented. (This means less redudant code in each editor, like that for setting a text box from a GFF field value, for the non-programmers otu there.)

I could write an editor for GIT and ARE files, but it'd be all text entry, which doesn't work well for placing items in a 3D environment. Thus I have decided to hold off on that for now.

[Fred Tetra]

Here's some screenshot links from the upcoming Item (UTI) editor, shown editing a lightsaber from the module sta_m45ac_s.rim:

General tab

Properties tab

Description tab

When you double-click an existing row in the Property table, you get an editor:

Sample 1

Sample 2

You can also add new properties by double-clicking the "*" row header:

Sample 3


Testing is just about complete - thanks to T7nowhere for his testing so far!

If you're interested in helping, email at the address in the readme.txt file.

[Jackel]

Fred your tool keeps getting better and better with every release

this item editor will make for some fun new items ~rubs hands together~ i already have ideas forming in my head ...

i can already see some unique items that only one character can use , yes , that should be easy to do

[gameunlimited]

I second that.

Thanks for all your work man!

[Fred Tetra]

I finally looked at some of the light sabers in the game and discovered that they use an extra field of data to indicate which upgrades give which bonuses. Once I have this new discovery incorporated into the editor, I'll be releasing it.

[Shimaon]

Fred, the editor looks awesome, I can't wait for it since it oughta make custom lightsabers much easier. Also, in terms of file structure, the lightsaber upgrades work the same as any other items upgrades, they just have alot more fields, at least thats what I've gotten from it.

BTW, if you ever need anyone else to help test I'm always glad to help.

Shimaon

[T7nowhere]

I knew about that. I guess I just took it forgranted sinse I knew it was there. You mean the upgradetype which referances the upgrade.2da and upgrade types. That is just one more thing that makes upgrading weapons a little more complex.

[Weiser_Cain]

Is this right?
Heavy balster underoos?

[Jackel]

Originally posted by Weiser_Cain
Is this right?
Heavy balster underoos?

brings new meaning to the term

"is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just happy to see me ?"

[Fred Tetra]

It's a type of reactive armor, you see....

Actually, there is an item template "w_bstrcrbn.uti" that does have its baseitem set to basic clothing, hence it shows up under that category in the inventory tree.

[Fred Tetra]

Here's a screenshot showing some of my work with the .git files.
It's the Upper City Cantina on Taris with GIT data overlayed.

The image is generated by taking the map image and quadrupling the size and using it as a background. My code then reads the .git file data and draws a 3x3 dot for each point. The labels were added in an image editor.

Show in the image are the locations of creatures, placeable items, waypoints, sounds, doors, map notes and trigger geometries.

The hardest part so far is getting the game coordinates to map to the image. Basically, you have to scale them by ~11.08 and add an offset so they show up in the right place. On this image, they're close, but not right on.

GIT data overlayed on map

I have to experiment with other map/GIT combinations to make sure that the code always works.

[T7nowhere]

WHOA! Sweet. I have been thinking of how this specific thing could be done and I also thought the best way would be to use the game maps(atleast until there is a way to render an area outside of the game) But sinse I don't know how to program I didn't even consider doing it myself.

Is it possible to have x,y,z coords displayed when the map is moused over. The main thing stopping me from making any area mods is the amout of coords I would have to get from inside the game. The biggest things that are needed are being able to place waypoints, trigger areas, obejects, and NPC's. Being able to draw trigger geometry and way points is very important.

Do you know if the trigger geometry areas are used for creature encouters or is that a sepparate thing similar to Triggers?

This is really cool Fred. Is the veiwer capable of loading any git right now or just the upper Taris Cantina. I would love to get my hands on it if I could load up any area .git.

[Fred Tetra]

The way it is currently implemented, I have to export a map with KT, resize it in an external paint program and save it, then I have to align and scale the image to the data from the .git file. The last step takes quite a bit of time, as you have to know which things are where on the original map, and make sure they show up in approximately the right place. Also, many maps have different scales in the .git; Taris Cantina is has a scale of "24" while Dantooine (m13aa) has one of "50". I can open any .GIT and see where things are, but that's the extent of it today.

Basically, the aforementioned steps would have to be done for each map, which will be rather tedious and time consuming.

Since the maps are 2D and there isn't anyway of getting the elevation (Z) from the models today, I couldn't show the Z value for the map, only for the item.

I'll keep you all posted as things progress.

[dynamicnet]

Greetings Fred:

Awesome tool, and great work.

Will you be releasing the changes for editing light sabers?

Thank you.

[Fred Tetra]

I haven't heard anything bad back from the testers, so I'll be releasing a new version soon.

[T7nowhere]

Originally posted by Fred Tetra
Since the maps are 2D and there isn't anyway of getting the elevation (Z) from the models today, I couldn't show the Z value for the map, only for the item.

I'll keep you all posted as things progress.

So is the data laidout on a grid or is it a matter of over laying the output data over the map. I could help you out with resizing the maps it is tedious ,but sounds easy enough to do.

I had a thought, would it be possible to calculate the space in the area models. Im thinking it might be difficult as the models still remain uncracked. *does that make sense*

What I would want to do is to know the coords for every meter of walkable space in the areas. it would make placeing things much easyer.

[Fred Tetra]

What I do is calculate the pixel/meter ratio and place the dots accordingly.