@skwasjer

Are you develping this using eclipse ? Just curious...

Nope, it is coded in C# using .NET 2. Nevertheless, once source is released, it is very good possible to port it to java. Also, the file reader/writer comes in a single stand alone binary (as will other file formats, like 3DS/ASE) which can also be used for other projects if one chooses to do so...

A manual surely is a must. There are already some do's and dont's that I know of. But I also believe that I alone can't write a proper manual. I prefer some help with this. I'm by no means a hardcode modder, just a humble coder, so we need some guys to step up and help out with this.

As far as editting properties, this may not make first release, so it can still take weeks before you can use my tool to edit them. That said, if you want to mod particles today, you still need to hexedit them...


Thanks for the positive notes guys. This community is giving me warm feelings :sunny:

:D
1) The treelike hierarchy of objects is the most convenient kind of data display in SH4. For the best readership you can divide a tree into some levels (steps, screens, tabs...)...
2) Terminology is not discussed, it is DevsTeam terminology.
Look strings in SHControllers.act, SHSim.act and other ...

I think you should look again at my first pic. It includes a full tree. Only I kept materials on root level because they are only referenced chunks. They don't actually have a parent, it is the other way around. Same for 3D models, however, these never are referenced by more than one (the node link), so I decided to put it under the node that references it.

All other screenshots use my other view mode 'List' which is basically a list of 'order-of-appearance', no tree. Then there's even a 3rd view (no screenshot), which basically groups all types in seperate folders...

In fact, the tree you see in the first pic is better than any other tool that shows a tree of the dat-structure.

To give you a better idea of my other approach using navigable id's, I've created another screenshot:

http://sh4.bodeman.nl/ge/t/Material.jpg

To sum up, I understand what you mean (I guess), but I think this is the best approach for now...

Your job is the answer to our prays. :up:

Will you pretend to be posible to add new meshes and nodes inside *.dat?
I'll explain a little , in SH4 every plane had a predefined nodes for its load. In the stockgame itself devs made a mess, coding extense loadout cfgs while dat files are limited to few bombs in few pillons. So the planes should be reworked from scratch to finally use the famous airdepthcharges.

Anyway I give you a 10 for trying to make a step in the developement of "the tool". Nobody has worked such effort yet. And give you my vote too, to make this thread sticky :rock:

The ability to add or fix nodes... wow, that would be cool.

Yes, to a certain extend. At least some types of nodes, that are fully known. Otherwise, it will be cloning which is the safe approach, and is quite easy for me to do actually. I may even include automatic id generation (to prevent duplicates/collisions).

Depends. If a chunk is broken in a sense that it breaks parsing rules, then you're in no luck probably. Of course, you can always try to open it. Adding new nodes, see above.

For those nodes the tool shows, it does the best job so far. To get an overview of the 3D model and make an initial test after the model modification, I still prefer to use Datconvert, not Pack3D.

Naturally, it is up to you as an author to decide about the tree order, I am just speaking about my experiences as an user of different tools for SH3/SH4.

@sergbuto where would one find Datconvert, never heard of it.

Cheers!

Mike, you can to download datconvert.zip and datconvertsrc.zip (source code) from my FileFront page ...
But Pack3D has greater functionality ...

We better wait to see the results. If the tool is as powerful as expected, then I think the way how it shows data has little importance. ;)

Anvart, your opinion is appreciated. But it's fair to have different opinions too. Just wait and see, I'm sure you'll like it when you can actually see/try for yourself. :)