Ultimate Editor

[Flocke]

Ah, I see now, there is a 50 stellar limit. Would it be fair to assume if you copy the Nebula object, it creates another Nebula object, without the map functions? Just curious how far you have gone with this

Hey Tethys! You show up just in time!

Current limit is 30 stellar object types by the description mappings. All currently known limits however can easily be raised when we move the lexicon id tables to some other location like the relocation table you mentioned. It is plain data, no code far jumps required, just the ids need to be moved.

Some little increase would also be possible right in place when the data lookup is split or when the subroutine is moved. For now however 30 types I think already is alot.

Adding new stellar types it indeed copies current selection, but - beside that the value copy is currently broken and left empty *cough* - the hard-coded nebula image remains special to vanilla nebula type 2. I did not expect it to be worth another menu option. UE however still allows to disable the special nebula handling in the trek.exe graphics menu so the nebula is mapped too.

edit: fixed to copy current values

[Tethys]

I think you misunderstood. IIRC some stellars have some map effects which may be connected to their stellar ID (blackhole and neutron destroys ships, nebulas decrease scan, etc)

I assume these effects are NOT carried over to the new stellar when copied? Because they are based on their ID (02 nebula etc, not 0F nebula). Hope that clears up my question.

Also I may have new ideas on the possibility of stellars sharing effects, but I will have to look at the code again.. its been some years now since I looked at BotF code, I've been plugging away at Bridge Commander for a while now...

[Flocke]

I think you misunderstood. IIRC some stellars have some map effects which may be connected to their stellar ID (blackhole and neutron destroys ships, nebulas decrease scan, etc)

Ah, I see, no I didn't investigate the map effects. They should be unaffected by the UE changes and most likely are bound to vanilla ids.
But when there is some good documentation I ofc might add a new option for it.

Also I may have new ideas on the possibility of stellars sharing effects, but I will have to look at the code again.. its been some years now since I looked at BotF code, I've been plugging away at Bridge Commander for a while now...

Sounds like it's about time to check back on BotF again!
I might be silly but I still believe in this game and that together we can advance it a whole lot further. I am full of ideas but I ofc need to care on other things too and not always have the mood to code on BotF either. Would be awesome when you can figure what is wrong on your blackholes and can document some more of your analysis!

[thunderchero]

not sure if you are interested but,
Add/remove ship models could use some adjustments for different resolutions

sizes and file names are listed here
viewtopic.php?p=47791#p47791

not sure how UE would check current resolution?

export would need to add new files when creating ship pack
import UE to warn if images are missing from ship pack for installed resolution.

info could also be checked during integrity check?

[Flocke]

not sure if you are interested but,
Add/remove ship models could use some adjustments for different resolutions

When you can name exact code locations where to read the required image size and how to match file names I might add some checks.
I'd hate to depend on the game resolution here as it might be modded differently.

E.g. the 60x50 ship image size looks to be set by the races wdf files:

ship_img_dim.jpg (23.16 KiB) Viewed 1211 times

BTW, I already feel sorry for the many changes Alan has to review.

ue_merge.jpg (40.21 KiB) Viewed 1211 times

[thunderchero]

When you can name exact code locations where to read the required image size and how to match file names I might add some checks.
I'd hate to depend on the game resolution here as it might be modded differently.

here is ship images

Code: Select all

1024 x 768 (UM5 only)
vanilla file name i_***170.tga
new file name i_***_270.tga (new ship file)
vanilla size 170 x 142 
new size 270 x 225
wdf file *solbld.wdf
wdf id 2202
trek.exe change location 0x0180274

1366 x 768 all mods
vanilla file name i_***170.tga
new file name i_***270.tga (new ship file)
vanilla size 170 x 142 
new size 270 x 225
wdf file *solbld.wdf
wdf id 2202
trek.exe change location 0x0180274

1920 x 1080 all mods
vanilla file name i_***170.tga
new file name i_***_c.tga (new ship file)
vanilla size 170 x 142 
new size 509 x 425
wdf file *solbld.wdf
wdf id 2202
trek.exe change location 0x0180274

Here is structure image changes

Code: Select all

1024 x 768 all mods
vanilla file name ***_b.tga
new file name ***_c.tga (new structure file and tech type file "bio_c.tga")
vanilla size 270 x 225 
new size 400 x 333
wdf file *techost.wdf 
wdf id 3320
trek.exe change location 0x017ec34

1366 x 768 all mods
vanilla file name ***_b.tga
new file name ***_c.tga (new structure file and tech type file "bio_c.tga")
vanilla size 270 x 225 
new size 706 x 588
wdf file *techost.wdf 
wdf id 3320
trek.exe change location 0x017ec34

1366 x 768 all mods
vanilla file name ***_30.tga
new file name ***_50.tga (new structure file)
vanilla size 30 x 30 
new size 60 x 50
wdf file *senergy.wdf 
wdf id 2410 - 2416, 2430 - 2436
trek.exe change location 0x01801b4

1920 x 1080 all mods
vanilla file name ***_b.tga
new file name ***_c.tga (new structure file and tech type file "bio_c.tga")
vanilla size 270 x 225 
new size 509 x 425
wdf file *techost.wdf 
wdf id 3320
trek.exe change location 0x017ec34

1920 x 1080 all mods
vanilla file name ***_30.tga
new file name ***_61.tga (new structure file)
vanilla size 30 x 30 
new size 60 x 50
wdf file *senergy.wdf 
wdf id 2410 - 2416, 2430 - 2436
trek.exe change location 0x01801b4

I hope I got all that right.

[Flocke]

That will be of great help. I'll take a look when I find time.

[thunderchero]

That will be of great help. I'll take a look when I find time.

edited my post above.
I edited UM5 files/trek to make it more consistent on ships.

[Flocke]

I edited UM5 files/trek to make it more consistent.

perfect

[thunderchero]

as for structures not sure if any adjustments will help

example; *solbld.wdf uses same prefix ***_c.tga on all 3 resolutions but each resolution uses different image size. will this be an issue?

example 2; *senergy.wdf 1366 and 1920 use same file size, but each resolution uses different file name. should one resolution be changed so they match?

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Nice one, but that's a feature that I'd rather not implement with UE for now unless there is serious demand.

I patched sub_48AA6C so one does not need to mess with lexicon.dic: viewtopic.php?p=57639#p57639
Can you allow UE to set IDs 0-1F in edifice.bst? To keep the task hassle-free don't bother with labeling new IDs, just link the patch post.

Offset 0x0071 to 0x0071 System requirement (1 byte)

0 - Arctic planet
1 - Barren planet
2 - Desert planet
3 - Gas Giant
4 - Jungle planet
5 - Oceanic planet
6 - Terran planet
7 - Volcanic planet
8 - None
9 - Asteroid (not working)
A - Asteroid belt dilithium (not working)
B - Dilithium
C - Worm hole (not working)
D - Radio Pulsar (not working)
E - X-Ray Pulsar (not working)

New sub_48AA6C (edifice.bst+71 System Requirement strings) uses inter alia:

- same entries via object ID as sub_43D800 Lexicon_Star_Anomaly_Names (so no UE conflicts, but my patch won't work with new object IDs)
- unused atmosphere + RebelSystem entries from lexicon.dic topic (this was a great help)
- trek.exe string workarounds for "Artifacts" & Battle-tried ("Battle Fought")

[Flocke]

Can you allow UE to set IDs 0-1F in edifice.bst?

Will do. Sounds reasonable and easy to implement.

[thunderchero]

I went to gitlab today, I saw "modded_save_detection" version no longer available.

for testing, what version would be best to download?

the last version I downloaded on 10 - 23
I noticed switching race of a saved game would crash on game load.

[Flocke]

I went to gitlab today, I saw "modded_save_detection" version no longer available.
for testing, what version would be best to download?

It's been merged to the master branch after DCER completed first sight. He had some good findings for further improvement but with SonarQube and SAST he caused me a bit of trouble. They scan the code for possible issues and bad coding practices, which is great when there was not 10000+ reported issues.

While I try to fix some of it, it is so many complains that I'm not gonna fix all of it. E.g. it complains on public class member access, which indeed is a bad coding practice, but which has been used for large amounts of code even before I started to work on the project. But when I fixed part of the code, I hope DCER will be happy.

I noticed switching race of a saved game would crash on game load.

I gave it a try myself, on master and on old modded_save_detection branch there was a bug storing the empsInfo file, which I introduced 3 weeks ago. With commit https://gitlab.com/stbotf/ultimate-edit ... 0493a9a4be I added more known variables but I missed to save the production queue ( 'prodQueue' array ). Since the file is loaded by default any game you saved with UE is corrupted. When re-loading with UE all but the cardassian empire names are missing and all the empire data is messed.

It's now fixed again.

[thunderchero]

It's now fixed again.

You may have not been aware UE has issues switching races

new race is still controlled by AI, original race is not controlled by AI (inactive)

here is the dominion wars scenario save we used MP game to switch race

single player saves.zip

(650.26 KiB) Downloaded 36 times

IIrc all saves were based on cardassians

but no idea what is different between saved games