RE: Modding Tool (Full Version)

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Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/13/2016 11:55:57 PM)

No probs, I've added an example of how much easier the tool can make modding with some screenshots to help. I've fiddled with the formatting a bit too, hopefully that'll make it a bit cleaner.

In other news, revision 17 has the plagues form tidied up and tooltips added to it. I've also set the exception race name to be a drop down box so it no longer requires you to type the race name.

On top of that, I've been fighting an annoying problem which basically causes a crash if you select an item from a drop down menu and your mouse cursor happens to be over something that has a tooltip. I think I've fixed it now (only the races form was really causing the issue), but if it causes any issues for anyone just let me know.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/14/2016 5:51:56 PM)

And of course, one problem immediately begats another lol.

I think the issue with loading races is solved now. Basically changing the race in the drop down menu caused it to change the race name field (as you might expect), but when that's changed it's programmed to update the drop down menu with a new list, clearing the old one (in case the user wants to change the name of the race). So as soon as it tried to set the next field, there's (briefly) no items in the race list and it doesn't know what race to look up and gets confused, throwing an access violation error.

What it doesn't do is report any of that to me. It just says "access violation", with no actual pointers to where the problem is.

But it seems to be fixed now, and revision 18 therefore contains a single new line of code dealing with it.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/14/2016 9:30:00 PM)

Revision 19 is up, with two forms updated tonight. Facilities and Fighters have both been tidied up and have tooltips on them.

Also:

Design templates now updates its fields properly when the race is changed if you have a ship/base type already selected.

The Facilities form now has two drop down menus for the Component of Giant Ion Cannons and the permitted Colony Type for Wonders. Should make it simple to change those values.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/15/2016 7:58:48 AM)

Just published 0.2.2!

This completes the tidy up part of the process, so the research (and its subforms) and components forms are now done.

For the components form I’ve set it so “unused” values are not enabled, helping to prevent accidental typos and tabbing to them.

The restrict races part of the research form now has a list of all races with checkboxes next to them, click the ones you want to restrict it to. This works a hell of a lot better than requiring the user to manually write the names of any races used for that line.

The alter plagues part of the research form now has the exception race listed in a drop down menu, with a tooltip to note that changing it will change the exception race for the plague entirely (since you can’t change the exception race by research project). This is just for convenience really, so the user knows what race the exception will be applied to.

All in all I’m pretty happy with how this has turned out. It looks pretty good and it’s really easy to use at this point.

Now it’s just the nitty gritty work of data validation left (0.2.3) before graphics (0.3.0) and then it’s a clear run to the final release!



Uncle Lumpy -> RE: Modding Tool (10/15/2016 1:34:24 PM)

Wow! Thank you for all your work. I'm looking forward to your final tool. The whole fun of your project, though, has been following your step by step development. I don't know if I'll ever attempt my own mod (too many really good ones already exist), but your tool certainly temps me to consider creating one. [:)]



Capshades -> RE: Modding Tool (10/15/2016 8:07:43 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Uncle Lumpy
The whole fun of your project, though, has been following your step by step development.

This ^



Cepheiden -> RE: Modding Tool (10/15/2016 9:26:24 PM)

Nice, it can even edit research orders. Those took forever before since you had to look up hundreds of numbers. Great work!



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/15/2016 10:06:44 PM)

Revision 1 has a little bugfix for something I just spotted, if you create a new ability as part of a research project unused values were being left blank, which confused DW. Now it automagically puts 0's in them.



darkriot -> RE: Modding Tool (10/16/2016 1:43:30 AM)

Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. It works great now, your last 3 revisions made it work. probaly had some thing to do with me using the starfall mod. Great work![&o]



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/17/2016 6:37:46 PM)

No probs mate, long as it's working now!

Revision 2 has a small bugfix for the races form, since the change to non-editable drop down menus the research order could act a bit strangely. Fixed now.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/17/2016 9:09:43 PM)

So, spent this evening doing data validation on the characters form for revision 3. It took a lot to make this actually work, but work it does. It also gives me a template for the rest of the forms which is nice.

Initially I was going to have it pop up a message box if an invalid value was entered, but that got annoying fast. I’ve instead gone for making it change the background colour of the field.

So whenever you have a textbox allowing user input, it’ll appear light green if the value is valid and it’ll store the value. If not, it’ll appear pink and it won’t store the value. I’ve gone for these colours so you can easily read the text regardless.

Interestingly, there doesn’t actually appear to be a hardcoded limit on how many digits your character names can have. So the only restriction on that field is that you can’t have commas (because they’re used as the delimiter in the text files) and I’ve set it to automatically remove any you try and enter. You’ll just have to use some common sense as to appropriate character name lengths!



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/19/2016 7:23:35 PM)

Revision 4 has the Design Templates form with data validation enabled. Same basic idea as the Characters form, green = good and pink = bad. Most of them just have to be numbers above 0 which is easy enough to do.

The only other one was the image scaling, because appropriate values vary depending on what type of image scaling you’ve set. It works nicely though.

I’ve also made an “actual output” box for the Dialogue form. You can’t edit this, it just shows you what the actual output will look like without the character returns.



Cepheiden -> RE: Modding Tool (10/20/2016 5:22:45 PM)

I get a warning about multiple wonder IDs in the various race policy files. Is it true the game only uses one wonder ID?



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/20/2016 6:05:26 PM)

So it would seem. I know a few mods are out there that have more than one entry, but the modding guide suggests that only one entry is used and in-game you can see in the policy window that "Build Special Wonder" (the PrioritizeBuildWonderId line in a policy file) is limited to one entry. I'm not sure why mods have been developed that have more than one in them, perhaps a previous version of DW allowed it, but then I'm not sure why they'd remove it for Universe. I suppose it could be that the AI can use this in their policy files and the player can't, but I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that's the case.



Cepheiden -> RE: Modding Tool (10/20/2016 6:17:57 PM)

I see.
The warnings are quite helpful, allowed me to correct a bunch of typos and other stuff already.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/20/2016 7:22:17 PM)

That got me thinking, so revision 5 is just a small patch to make a couple of the warnings a bit more clear on what happens if you output.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/20/2016 10:37:27 PM)

Revision 6 is up and has the Policies form with data validation. This was an easy but interesting one, finding all sorts of limits that I didn’t know or didn’t remember existed as to what the text entries can be.

So far in my tests I’ve been loving this implementation, it makes it so easy to see if a value you’ve entered is going to work in game or not.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/21/2016 4:02:54 AM)

With revision 7 the races form now has data validation on all its textboxes. Since the dialogue form doesn’t need one (it only has a single multi-line box which you can enter whatever you like into) that’s all the subforms done.

This is defo going nice and fast, and the root forms should be easier if anything. Even the ones where the correct values vary by type aren’t likely to be a huge problem, since there’s already code built to handle that.

We could be looking at graphics as early as next week at this rate!



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/21/2016 6:26:40 PM)

Revision 8 is up, Governments and Government Biases now have data validation enabled.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/22/2016 2:49:17 AM)

Revision 9 is up, Race Biases, Race Families and Race Family Biases now have data validation enabled.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/22/2016 4:20:20 AM)

Revision 10 is up, Plagues and Resources now have data validation enabled.

Just realising what a nightmare the components form could be, with potentially 7 different values for each component type all having different valid ranges for their values. Might just leave that till last...



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/22/2016 9:49:11 PM)

Revision 11 is up, Fighters and Facilities now have data validation enabled.

It seems that some of the values don't really have a limit, so where that's the case they're limited to the max value for an integer which is 2147483647.

Facilities gave me some good practice for the components form, I think I've got a good basis for dealing with that now. Still, gonna leave the component values (and the identical component improvement values under research) as the last thing I implement.



Cepheiden -> RE: Modding Tool (10/23/2016 2:56:03 PM)

After using the tool to edit research.txt I either get the game stopping to work when starting a new game or the game not starting at all.

The Error is kind of reproducible. It doesn't happen when I only modify 1 or 2 entries, making me think it works. Then when I go ahead and modify a few more and test it again, it suddenly doesn't work again.
I have a hard time telling which action it is.
I get the crash on starting a new game after deleting a research project, which is weird since I checked the file and all the references and IDs have been changed according to the number of erased projects.
I don't know what causes the game not starting at all. It just happens after editing a couple of entries. Again, there is nothing suspicious in the research.txt file, yet it won't start the game unless I remove every project from it. There might be something invisible or really minor being added by the tool that makes it stop working.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/23/2016 4:04:52 PM)

Hi Cepheiden,

There should be a crash log in:

%appdata%\Code Force Limited\Distant Worlds\DW crash log.txt
or
%systemdrive%\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\my games\Distant Worlds Universe\DW_CrashDump.txt

Which would be useful to have along with a copy of a crash inducing research.txt file.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/24/2016 6:31:17 AM)

Ah, I’ve just managed to fix the deleting projects issue. Any projects that had more than one parent reference only had the first one changed, same issue on the components form and with inserting projects too.

I’ve tested it as best I can, but I’m finding I’m going from a “crash on new game” state to a proper load with the change so I think that’s sorted.

That may or may not solve the other issue depending on whether you’ve deleted/inserted projects while modding, if you’re still getting that problem then again, a crashing research.txt would be very useful.

Since that bug would effectively corrupt a research.txt or components.txt file, revision 12 is obligatory.



Cepheiden -> RE: Modding Tool (10/24/2016 10:02:42 AM)

That was fast.
You are right I should have thought about including those files earlier. If I ever manage to create another faulty file I will post it here.

Though apparently, when the game "crashes" with the windows message that the program has stopped working, it apparently doesn't write anything in the log file. Mine is empty except for a crash that resulted from something I typed in manually before even using your tool.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/25/2016 7:14:33 PM)

Yeah I saw it wasn't creating log files. This also explains why in one of my tests a while back I suddenly found all sorts of links between projects that weren't supposed to exist, it was like a spiderweb lol.

Anyway, revision 13 is up with the components and research forms (and subforms) having data validation, with the exception of the component values. That's literally the last bit now, so hopefully when I get a few hours to knock that out I'll be ready to look at graphics and finishing this project off!



ChildServices -> RE: Modding Tool (10/26/2016 6:48:12 AM)

Is anybody else having the same problem as me where their anti-virus absolutely refuses to let them run this?

Edit: This started happening after it finally did let me run them

quote:

PLATFORM VERSION INFO
Windows : 6.1.7601.65536 (Win32NT)
Common Language Runtime : 4.0.30319.42000
System.Deployment.dll : 4.6.1055.0 built by: NETFXREL2
clr.dll : 4.6.1076.0 built by: NETFXREL3STAGE
dfdll.dll : 4.6.1055.0 built by: NETFXREL2
dfshim.dll : 4.0.41209.0 (Main.041209-0000)

SOURCES
Deployment url : file:///A:/Games/Steam/steamapps/common/Distant%20Worlds%20Universe/Customization/MODS/Tools/Distant%20Worlds%20Mod%20Editor.application
Deployment Provider url : http://sabranan.plus.com/shares/ExternalHTTP/Distant%20Worlds%20Mod%20Editor.application
Server : Apache

ERROR SUMMARY
Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log.
* Activation of A:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Distant Worlds Universe\Customization\MODS\Tools\Distant Worlds Mod Editor.application resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected:
+ The deployment identity at the deployment provider is not the same as the original deployment identity.

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION FAILURE SUMMARY
No transaction error was detected.

WARNINGS
* The manifest for this application does not have a signature. Signature validation will be ignored.

OPERATION PROGRESS STATUS
* [26/10/2016 4:59:54 PM] : Activation of A:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Distant Worlds Universe\Customization\MODS\Tools\Distant Worlds Mod Editor.application has started.

ERROR DETAILS
Following errors were detected during this operation.
* [26/10/2016 4:59:55 PM] System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (SubscriptionSemanticValidation)
- The deployment identity at the deployment provider is not the same as the original deployment identity.
- Source: System.Deployment
- Stack trace:
at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.FollowDeploymentProviderUri(SubscriptionStore subStore, AssemblyManifest& deployment, Uri& sourceUri, TempFile& tempFile, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options)
at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadDeploymentManifestBypass(SubscriptionStore subStore, Uri& sourceUri, TempFile& tempFile, SubscriptionState& subState, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options)
at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, BrowserSettings browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl)
at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state)

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION DETAILS
No transaction information is available.



Sabranan -> RE: Modding Tool (10/26/2016 7:25:20 AM)

Hmm, anti-virus may well kick in for an application like this since obviously I'm a one-man publisher and it won't recognise the tool as being safe. Generally, the solution is to make an exception in your anti-virus software so it lets the application run, the "actual" installation path will be under "%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\" if you need that to make an exception rule. It'll have a random looking folder name that'll be a bunch of letters and numbers, it's different for each machine so I can't tell you exactly what that'll be, but (just in case you have more than one ClickOnce application installed) there should be a "Distant Worlds Mod Editor.exe" file under there somewhere.

Obviously making an anti-virus exception requires a certain amount of faith that I'm not a malicious git, but I'm assuming if you installed the application in the first place you must trust me to some extent!

As for the error message, I believe at some point I had to change the certificate used to sign the application and that could cause this error. The solution here is to uninstall the tool (Control Panel / Programs and Features in Windows 10) and reinstall using the version in the OP.



ChildServices -> RE: Modding Tool (10/26/2016 7:28:30 AM)

Ah, cheers! Reinstalled it and it works now.



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