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MDL Tweaker II - Alpha version

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arno

arno

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I have chosen to do the "release" of MDL Tweaker II a bit different then of the other tools. I will make an alpha version available that is certainly not finished yet, but it allows you to already use the functions that work. And hopefully it gives me useful feedback as well :). You can find the lastest alpha version in this thread. Please also read the messages below, as I report updates and limitations of the alpha version there.

If you found any bugs or if you have suggestions/feature requests please let me know. You can either discuss them here on the forum or report them on the SceneryDesign.org BugTracker system.
 
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The first alpha version is certainly not complete here is what it already can do:

  • Add/remove the kill shadow code to your MDL object
  • List the textures used in your MDL object
  • List and modify the materials used in your object
  • Give some statistics about the RIFF sections

On the part of the GUI that lists the textures used, you will also see some buttons and text boxes dealing with seasonal textures. These do not work yet.
 
I have attached a new alpha version above. New in this version are:

  • OpenGL preview of the object shown
  • More BGLC commands added and thus more object read without errors
  • General tab completed, you can update the information shown there
  • BGL section tab added that shows a list of the BGLC commands in this section, this is more for debugging, I need to think of a better interface for the final version

I am aware of the following problems:

  • The OpenGL does not show the material colors correct yet
  • For big/complex objects the OpenGL preview takes too much CPU power
  • Animated parts show wrong in the OpenGL preview, that is because I do not yet read the translation and animation matrices at the moment
  • The functions that tries to find the needed textures on your HD is not perfect yet, so it could be that no texture or the wrong is shown sometimes

Also a problem in the previous version was reported with a runtime error 429. If you get this you can solve that be registering the agsdlib.dll file with regsvr32.

To get the OpenGL preview working you also need the graphical DLL files of Martin Wright (just as with ObPlacer XML), as these are used to read the DXT textures.
 
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I have uploaded a new version again, this time the changes are:

  • Material colors should be displayed correctly in the preview now
  • I have added two small BAT files to register and unregister the DLL, this is for people who get an error when they start MDL Tweaker II
  • Basic OpenFlight export added (this only works if you have access to the OpenFlight API DLL files of Multigen-Paradigm)
  • BGL section display updated, this shows all commands found in the BGL section (like viewing the ASM file), when you click on a BGL_CALL_32 command (or any other command that performs a jump), the command that you will jump to is marked in blue.

The following features are on the top of my list to be sovled next:

  • Adding the mouse interaction with the OpenGL preview to rotate, zoom and pan
  • Adding more functionality to the BGL section page, so that you can add your own conditions from there, this will be more flexible than the conditions that could be added in the old MDL Tweaker
  • Adding a screen with some basic tweaks, like in the old MDL Tweaker, so less flexible but easier to use for people who don't know the source code that well
 
I have uploaded a new alpha version. This time you can interact with the preview window. By keeping the left mouse button down you can move the object around (pan) and by keeping the right mouse button down you can rotate it.

It is not perfect yet, but any feedback is already welcome. I know that you can pan the object out of the viewport, I am still working on that :). Another know problem is that the panning is now always along the X and Y axis of the object, so once it is rotated that is not really easy anymore.
 
Again a new version, the following main changes have been made:

  • Preview now uses a perspecitve projection and no longer an othogonal one, this should make the object look better
  • The mousewheel can be used to scroll in and out of the object
  • Pan movement refined (but I am still not really happy with it)

Please give me all suggestions and ideas you have for the movement/rotation/zooming of the preview. I think it should still be improved.

For the people who reported a problem with the preview because "temp.bmp" could not be loaded, please try again with this new version. I have added error checking in the piece of code were the real FS texture is read and converted to the temp.bmp texture. Hopefully this new error message can tell us more about what is going wrong.
 
New version available. Only a small change this time, I improved the error handling, so if something goes wrong when reading the MDL or drawing the preview you should now get a useful error message that helps me in debugging and not the send to Bill screen :).
 
New version uploaded. The new DLL file should solve the bug where the preview crashes while trying to load a texture called "".
 
Older version of the DLL restored in the zip file. This was unfortunately needed to solve the error at startup. Refer to this [thread=1669]thread[/thread] for more detail.
 
I have uploaded a new version. Quite a few changes this time, I will list the most important ones.

  • Completely redesigned GUI. This one should be easier to use for both novice and experienced designers.
  • All previously reported problems with the DLL should be fixed with this release.
  • You can add conditions to the object again, so this alpha has the same functionality as the old MDL Tweaker v0.21.

Of course there are still some limitations. For example you can only add new conditions at the moment, changing them (or seeing the ones currently applied) is not yet implemented.

The preview window is not perfect yet either. The zoom function is not implemented yet. You can rotate by holding down the right mouse button while moving your mouse and pan if you hold the left mouse button down.

Some lists, like the vertex list, are not yet implemented.

I hope you have fun with this new version and let me know if there are any problems. If you are using the previous version, please remove it before using this one.
 
I have uploaded a new version. This are the main changes:

  • Fixed a loading problem for long vertex lists
  • Searching for textures has been improved. If the texture is not found in the folder of the MDL object, up to 3 levels higher will be searched. For each of these levels, all subfolders are looked at. Let me know if this works well enough, as I noticed that sometimes the searching takes to long (depending on how many subfolders need to be looked at).
  • When you have loaded a MDL object that already contains some conditions, these will be shown when you start the condition manager. This allows you to alter them or add addtional ones.
  • I have added a very basic BGL Browser. You can find it in the view menu. With this option you can load a library BGL file and then load the objects from that BGL file in MDL Tweaker. Warning, if you load a big file, this can take some time. Let me know if this function is useful.
 
New version available. The biggest change in this version is that you can add seasonal textures now (and night textures as well). For the start and end of the different seasons you can specify the days of the year they should start at.

Another change is that the configuration XML file now detects for which version of MDL Tweaker II it was created and that allows updating for new features without loosing your current settings.

Besides that some small things I have already forgotten :).
 
I have released a new version (v2.0.228). As the tool is rather stable at the moment, I think this is a good moment to call it an beta version. For more information check this thread. This also means that from now on you can find MDL Tweaker II in the download center.
 
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