Oh' if you're taking request, I'd like a item creation function that creates items from existing items without overwriting the original.
And a way to give and equip the item on npc's and in shops.

Originally posted by Fred Tetra
It's never a bother to hear what folks would like to have in Kotor Tool.

Re:
#1 - I'll put it on the to-do list. Do you want it to highlight the cells as each succesive find is done, like in a text editor, or do you have something else in mind?



Just like text editor is good.

Originally posted by Fred Tetra
It's never a bother to hear what folks would like to have in Kotor Tool.

Re:

#2 - Since it is a GFF file and I am working on the GFF (re)writer portion of the GFF class in Kotor Tool, I'm not that far away from being able to write editors for various "flavors" of GFF-based files. Area (.ARE) files have the most votes so far, however.

Glad to hear that :) I might be able to help with the format of those various "flavors" if you happen to need it.

Edit: NVM about helping with the format. I just looked up the bioware site and it has full documentation of it, heh :)

Hey Fred, sorry to bother ya, but do you think you could give us a list of features you're working on and features you plan to work on?

Shimaon

How about a find option in the main window? Just like you get in a text editor. And if it's not in the 2DA editor, how about there, too?

Hey Fred, I have a suggestion for a future version of Kotor tool.
I find when Im useing Kotor tool sometimes It can take a while to scan through all the different files and file type's. So I often will load NWN Explorer to find out where an elusive file is. I would prefer to use your program than to have them both open ,also some of KotOR's files will crash NWN explorer.

Suggestion: Is for there to be subtrees that orginize the Games file types into there respective Catagorys. Useing a similar method as NWN explorer. This feature would greatly enhance the usabilty of your awesome Tool.

Thanx. :)

Originally posted by T7nowhere
Hey Fred, I have a suggestion for a future version of Kotor tool.
I find when Im useing Kotor tool sometimes It can take a while to scan through all the different files and file type's. So I often will load NWN Explorer to find out where an elusive file is. I would prefer to use your program than to have them both open ,also some of KotOR's files will crash NWN explorer.

Suggestion: Is for there to be subtrees that orginize the Games file types into there respective Catagorys. Useing a similar method as NWN explorer. This feature would greatly enhance the usabilty of your awesome Tool.

Thanx. :)

I had considered doing it that way, and still may, but MS's TreeView control isn't the fastest to manage in code. If folks don't mind waiting for the items to be sorted out then have a tree built accordingly, it could probably be add to the list of future features.

Originally posted by Sunslayer
How about a find option in the main window? Just like you get in a text editor. And if it's not in the 2DA editor, how about there, too?

While a 'find' feature for the main tree might seem like an easy task, it requires that all tree nodes be realized to work. What you may not know is that when you "open" a "+" node, many times I am building the leaves underneath just before you see them. In this way, you don't have to wait for the whole tree to be built (and it does take a while, especially for the RIMs section, since you have to open, scan, and build for each one. Perhaps I could have it do the full build only if you choose to find.... hmmm.....

As for the 2DA editor, I've got a find feature for that in mind, too.

Features planned...

- Complete GFF Writer function to provide infrastructure for GFF editing.

- Area editor (.are)

- Save editor (maybe)

- 2DA find function

- Resource categorization on Tree View

- Full tree find function

- BIF builder

- RIM builder

- Auto update notification ("A new version is available...")

Fred's request list:

- A Teletubby skin and 2DA fileset so I can use it with Master Vandar (sp?) as the main PC

- Postcards/stamps/coins from foreign countries

- More chocolate :)

With the GFF Editor will you have some sort of item creation wizard?

GFF's are dealt with at three levels, the first two of which the user does not see. The first is the reading and writing of the data in the file to and from an internal representation, and the second is dealing with that data in a logical fashion that doesn't care about how it exists on disk. This second level knows how to add a structure to a list, how to find the value of a variable that exists in a list, etc., but doesn't know (or care) how that data was organized on the hard drive)

The third level is the one the user sees. Since there are many game data structures that use GFF to hold their information, each would have its own editor. These editors don't have to be concerned with reading and writing of disk files, so coding them is easier. They just have to be written to manage and display the data that is pertinent to the specific content of the file type in question, be it an Area or Creature file.

Just an update on the GFF effort -

I discovered that there are at least two field types that are not found in BioWare's GFF specifications. These two new types are used (for example, but not exclusively) to represent the Position and Orientation of items in the CameraList list.

Also, these types are not supported by the GffEditor program. If you try to open and save a file containing these types, they will be ignored and the file will be smaller when you're done. Perhaps quite obvious is the fact that you can't edit attributes of that use those types in their representation. An example of one of these files would be m02ae.git.

I noticed Field Type 17 during my investigations into savegame editing. It seemed like it always pointed to 12 bytes of NULL in the Field Data table. In the savegame editor I'm working on, I made the assumption this would always be the case whenever the editor writes a savegame. I haven't found a case yet where the edited/unedited savegame miscompares due to Field type 17 data.

What other field type have you seen?

I found that in my files, that type 17 is used to hold a tuple of floats (single precision). Type 16 is 16 bytes long, an appears to be used to hold 4 floats (single precision).

And so it shall be defined!

Type 16 - Float16[4]
Type 17 - Float16[3]

Well, after spending a few hours analyzing the results of a test that I did.

In the test, KT reads in almost 7400 GFF files from the RIMs, turns them into internal data structures, then re-writes them for size comparison (usually a good indicator that your code isn't working if the sizes differ).

About 0.3% (27 of 7391 files) differed in size. 15 of those are .utm (store) files. They appear to have been written by a different version of the internal toolset, as the field indice array has duplicate entries! The duplicates are ignored, as nothing references them, and my code doesn't read them because of this, so my output files are more compact, holding only meaningful data.

The other files are a couple of .dlg's and the rest are .git's. I'm going to check these out next and see if they're OK. The hard part is that I can't just do a binary compare between the files since I use a different algorithm for writing the data out than BioWare did. This means that all of the data is there, just in a diferent order.

Fred, those are exactly the issues I was facing too including the size checking, the duplicity of entries, and the order of rebuild. For example, in the partytable.res file, the CExoLocStrings are stored first in the field table, before the primary structure's first field.

And hex editing would've driven me bonkers if not for the latest version of Hex Workshop ythat allows the overlaying of structures onto the hex data. It sounds like you've just about conquered all the issues since you're able to describe them... that was the hardest part for me.

I just looked into Hex Workshop; it would have been nice to have had something like that instead of Hex Editor 2.0 from HHD software (although it is freeware).

Since my last post, I discovered more of the same type of issue that I found in the UTMs in the GITs. I'll spare you the details here, but email if you want them for you own edification.

What this means to everyone else who couldn't care less about the nitty gritty code details is that I can now start on the GUI for some editors. I had considered a savegame editor (and I may still do one) but you've got that covered well enough for now. I was going to add ability to adjust the global variables in the saves in addition to the features you already have done.

Good to know you're making solid progress!:D

I agree that a savegame editor is not even near a top priority..Better take care of the area editing..that will give the comunity a kick!

I've decided to work on the Creature (.utc) editor first. 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.

People interested in testing possibly buggy versions of KT can email me saying so. You'll get to see where it is going before the next real release, which might be some time off, given the increased difficulty in building the next level of functionality into KT.

Here's some screenshots from the new UTC (Creature) editor. Right now it can open any .utc from the tree view, allow you to adjust many of the parameters (not all, yet) and save the adjusted content to the override folder. You can very easily change the settings over and over, saving from the same editor instance and seeing what the results are in the game without quitting either.

Basic (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/1.gif)

Statistics (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/2.gif)

Class (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/3.gif)

Advanced (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/4.gif)

Skills (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/5.gif)

Scripts (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/6.gif)

Feats (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/7.gif)

Howabout a dialog editor, this is stalling my project!

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

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.

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).

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!>

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

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 :)

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

You see where this is going...

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...


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

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

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

Hmmm....

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 :D

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. :D :D :clap2:

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.

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 :eek: 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.

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....

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.

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

General tab (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/UTI_editor_1.gif)

Properties tab (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/UTI_editor_2.gif)

Description tab (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/UTI_editor_3.gif)

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

Sample 1 (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/Property_editor_1.gif)

Sample 2 (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/Property_editor_2.gif)

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

Sample 3 (http://home.comcast.net/~armada/Property_editor_3.gif)


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.

Fred your tool keeps getting better and better with every release :D

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

I second that.

Thanks for all your work man! :D

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.

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

:) 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. :)