[PSX/PC] Battle editor - Proud Clod (1.5.0/FINAL)

[Armorvil]

This would be amazing. Yes, I think I'd love that.

[Bosola]

It hit me as I was fixing this that I want to make it more like the tool Square was likely using to create the scene.bin in the first place. What I envision is there are entries for enemies, attacks, and scenes. Specifically, a list of each and a form for each. During saving, the tool would combine them all based on the formation data entries.

WANT

[secondadvent]

WANT

Seconded. Been kinda hoping for something like that for a while now .

[nfitc1]

Nice. I'm glad that got a good response. I figured it would. I'd like to apologize for the visual atrocity that PrC has become. Since it was originally just an attack editor it made sense to just keep adding little piece by little piece on to it.

I've been working on the interface for about an hour and I like the direction it's going already. Most of the code is written already (which is good) so it's really copy-pasting and a few days work to get it all together. Don't fool yourselves into thinking it'll be done in a few days, that's just the cumulative amount of time it'll take to finish it.....when I get the time.

Now what I need is some artistry. I'd like to add a little more pizazz to this redesign. What I'd like are 32x32 pixel icons for enemies, attacks, and scenes. I'm thinking something like http://www.finalfantasykingdom.net/dissidia/bomb.gif for enemies, maybe the buster sword for attacks http://geekskillz.com:50000/images/buster_sword.gif, and a basic blue squares vs red triangles for scenes. Any other ideas?

EDIT:
The more I play with this idea, the more I abso-freakin'-lutely LOVE IT!! This is going to be cool, but potentially memory demanding. I didn't ever retain more than the scene.bin's size plus two times the size of the uncompressed scene being worked on (just over 271K). Now this new interface is holding data for each unique attack, enemy, and scene. That's a LOT more data to hold onto, but it's SO much more organized and easier to keep up with what's changed.

[Bosola]

If you require assistance on the UI design front, I'm happy to give advice. My experience is more in laying out web service pages, but I've practical experience in the field PC deals with.

[Vgr]

I think you might get dependance on the kernel (already discussed I think) and battle.lgp so that we see potentially new names, models and all. Also, you might want to allow us to open any .BIN file instead of a one naming scene.bin so that it is easier for modders. Also, let us choose which kernel.bin to check data in, instead of the one in the kernel folder. Also, make all windows resizable and all, even is just diagonaly (because I sometimes want to open 2 scene.bin simultaneously and my screen isn't big enough).

[nfitc1]

I think you might get dependance on the kernel (already discussed I think) and battle.lgp so that we see potentially new names, models and all. Also, you might want to allow us to open any .BIN file instead of a one naming scene.bin so that it is easier for modders. Also, let us choose which kernel.bin to check data in, instead of the one in the kernel folder. Also, make all windows resizable and all, even is just diagonaly (because I sometimes want to open 2 scene.bin simultaneously and my screen isn't big enough).

Dependence on the KERNEL.BIN? No. Highly suggested encouragement of it's inclusion? Definitely. Like I said earlier, I want this to have the ability to create a scene.bin from scratch. I've already got that in place. I'm convinced I can create one from scratch based on the way I'm going with it.

Less restrictive file naming convention? You got it! That was easy.

Resizable? You got it! Now that this will be an MDI interface, I can restrict the size of the individual attack panels and still give you the ability to resize the overall container window. All those annoying focus-related issues will go away too! You can have multiple attacks or multiple enemies (even multiple windows PER enemy if you desire) viewable at the same time, be able to switch between them, and have the ability to save changes whenever!


Another epiphany:
Attack data will tend to look the way it used to, but I'm still going to have some tabbed browsing for enemies and formations.

Enemies will be divided into the following tabs: Stats; Animations (including allowed attacks, modelid, and berserk/manip attacks); AI. This way I can still make prime use of real-estate. The Animations tab will allow you to use ANY attack rather than just the thirty-two in the scene already so it might take a while to load. I'm going to see if I can do some sort of data-binding to reduce this lag.

Scenes will have the following tabs: Formations (including flags, background, enemy placement data in a similar format to what it was before); AI. I'd also love to keep the Preview button, but it'll likely be a while before I include the battle.lgp (not the char.lgp that I mentioned earlier) for model importing. I'm still not good at the animations and stuff.

[Vgr]

What about to let us choose which kernel to patch? Can you make it that the dumped scenes are text files? If I understand correctly, we can have dozens of windows and be able to switch between them all? Awaiting badly for the true release of 1.5.0!

[Bosola]

It hit me as I was fixing this that I want to make it more like the tool Square was likely using to create the scene.bin in the first place. What I envision is there are entries for enemies, attacks, and scenes. Specifically, a list of each and a form for each. During saving, the tool would combine them all based on the formation data entries.

I've been reflecting on this. What 'development' tool did Square use? More importantly, what general 'development' tool best fits our requirements as modders?

My thinking is this: rather than even talking about separate KERNEL.BIN, SCENE.BIN, LIMTMENU.MNU etc. editors, what about, as an ultimate ambition, a 'general' FF7 mod IDE? Think an application that can work in an open-standard project file format, handling notes, flags, revision histories and user-defined groups, that can take the contents of an FF7 ISO and output a new, modified disc / patch file. An IDE that can automatically handle YAMADA.BIN (file table) modification and insert 'global' AI scripts (common AI scripts used to hack functionality, like our Poison=Disease script). An IDE that needn't be rewritten when new files are researched / alternative files are written, thanks to an extensible XML-based resource directory.

Would be a massive undertaking, though. Might have to park it until, ooh, 2016.

[nfitc1]

...
Would be a massive undertaking, though. Might have to park it until, ooh, 2016.

Yeah, you get right on that, let me know how it goes.

Kidding aside, I doubt there was one great "omni-tool" that was used for every piece of the game. It would be likely that there would be one great battle-related tool that would end up creating all the resources like menus, stats and attacks for both player and enemy-related data. Perhaps some day I, or someone else, will combine the functionality of PrC and WM with some form of menu editor.

As an update to my current progress things are looking positive. I was able to sucessfully open at least thirty attack windows and manipulate them all. However, in order to do that most efficiently, I made the attack sat a window to be tabbed. This seems to be a good thing because I can make some labels be more descriptive. For instance "No re-target" got changed to "Will not re-target if target is disabled" and "One Row" got changed to "Cursor cannot switch between enemies and allies" and stuff like that. I was going to make a fraps of it and post it on YouTube, but I'll probably wait until it has more features ready

[poofacetherisen]

Optionally, it would also allow importing of KERNEL.BIN attack data, attack names (both of which trump scene.bin attack data), and item names for consistency's sake.

Yep, you need the item/materia (can enemies drop materia?) names, Hojo couldn't do that and it really made things difficult.

Question: Is that what YOU, the end-user, wants?

Well, I want to basically completely modify the game, so yes.

[nfitc1]

Yep, you need the item/materia (can enemies drop materia?) names, Hojo couldn't do that and it really made things difficult.

When Hojo was developed KERNEL.BIN hacking wasn't happening. Since text of items wasn't changing there wasn't much point to allow a different set of item names. This new PrC will accept either KERNEL.BIN or kernel2.bin attack/item names (no, enemies never carry materia either dropped or stolen. You either find it or buy it).
I also realized as I was digging through the asm of attack indexes listed in the scenes that the attack data for KERNEL.BIN based attacks DOES INDEED need to be in the scene for only one function: determining MP cost. It looks like if the command index is 20h (from the 92 command) then this function will look through the attack data from the scene and pull MP data of the attack from that. If I'm reading the rest of the code right (including that) then that's really the only place that the game cares if KERNEL.BIN attacks are in the scene.

[Armorvil]

Small bug report : the camera override doesn't save for -at least- the first enemy.

[nfitc1]

Small bug report : the camera override doesn't save for -at least- the first enemy.

Can you clarify that? I don't know what you mean by "camera override".

I did find a pretty glaring error while looking through this. The actual formation data, the stuff on the "Formation" tab, will be saved to the scene data as you edit it. Even if you hit cancel those changes will still be made.    That is, obviously, not a good thing. I'll fix this after Armorvil tells me what he meant.

[Armorvil]

Yeah, the "done" button doesn't do a thing, and "cancel" closes and saves the changes. Still, it's no big deal.

What I meant by camera override is : camera override. This is what it's called, and this is what it does
But this is just me being annoying. If you need more precisions, this is in the Animations/Formations window, in an enemy's tab. At the right of each attack, you can assign an animation. Then, at the right of the animations, you have a field called Camera Override. Basically, this forces a new camera data for this particular attack. Since my modifications sometimes turn a single-target attack into a multi-target attack, I need to change those values (so the camera doesn't zoom on the middle character when said attack hits the whole team). In previous versions of Proud Clod, the data in those fields was always saved - but not in PrC 1.5.0.α_4! 

If you change a camera override value, close the animations/formations window, then open it again, you'll see your modifications - implying it will save. But alas, if you save your scene.bin, the data reverts to its previous state.

Oh yeah, and now that I'm at it, there is another bug - regarding AI editing this time. When you create a new line and type the 93 opcode, the program instantly displays an error message. And once, after I added many different 93 opcodes, the program would start to automatically add lines consisting of 00s below them (opcode being 00, argument being 00 00). And everytime I'd delete those unwanted lines, they would keep coming back after closing and opening the AI window again -__-

So I had to use Proud Clod 1.2.0.0 to do my AI editing, since it looks like it handles AI editing with more stability somehow.

[ff7rules]

Another bug also the editing of enemys names is not saving at all

[nfitc1]

Yeah, the "done" button doesn't do a thing, and "cancel" closes and saves the changes. Still, it's no big deal.

Wow! This is the result of lazy programming on my part. I changed some variables to be global then didn't realize that that required a re-write of my saving processes. I think I have it more isolated now.

What I meant by camera override is : camera override. This is what it's called, and this is what it does
But this is just me being annoying. If you need more precisions, this is in the Animations/Formations window, in an enemy's tab. At the right of each attack, you can assign an animation. Then, at the right of the animations, you have a field called Camera Override. Basically, this forces a new camera data for this particular attack. Since my modifications sometimes turn a single-target attack into a multi-target attack, I need to change those values (so the camera doesn't zoom on the middle character when said attack hits the whole team). In previous versions of Proud Clod, the data in those fields was always saved - but not in PrC 1.5.0.α_4! 

If you change a camera override value, close the animations/formations window, then open it again, you'll see your modifications - implying it will save. But alas, if you save your scene.bin, the data reverts to its previous state.

Oh yeah. I forgot about those. Sorry. Yeah, they weren't right. They weren't saving properly at all. I fixed that too.

Oh yeah, and now that I'm at it, there is another bug - regarding AI editing this time. When you create a new line and type the 93 opcode, the program instantly displays an error message. And once, after I added many different 93 opcodes, the program would start to automatically add lines consisting of 00s below them (opcode being 00, argument being 00 00). And everytime I'd delete those unwanted lines, they would keep coming back after closing and opening the AI window again -__-

So I had to use Proud Clod 1.2.0.0 to do my AI editing, since it looks like it handles AI editing with more stability somehow.

Yuck. This is why I have old versions of WM archived. AI made a drastic change a few versions ago and that was bound to cause some odd things. I haven't gotten to this yet, but I'll look at it.

Another bug also the editing of enemys names is not saving at all

Actually it does, just not in the scene selector. I should probably fix that...Done.

I'll upload these changes soon. I think.

[LegacyHero]

Ok, there's a bug for Proud Clod, and that's the enemy stat editing part.  When I edited enemy stats the enemies started showing up in the wrong places (for instance when fighting the ice lady in the cave, instead of the enemy snow, there were three bandersnatches).  I know this involves the Kernel.bin not updating correctly.  Hojo fixes the issue by updating the kernel.bin when you save.  However, Proud Clod does not, hence the bugging part.  I don't know how to resolve this issue except for to start with a scene.bin that hasn't been tampered with Proud Clod.  I tried opening the corrupted scene.bin with Hojo and then updating the kernel.bin.  It didn't work.  I'll try again, and post later if successful.  If there is any advice you can give I would appreciate it.

[Vgr]

Proud Clod can update it. Select create scene.bin from file.

[nfitc1]

...Hojo fixes the issue by updating the kernel.bin when you save.  However, Proud Clod does not...

Proud Clod can update the KERNEL.BIN, but doesn't do it when it saves. I'm not going to offer much help to people that don't read the included readme.

[poofacetherisen]

This new PrC will accept either KERNEL.BIN or kernel2.bin attack/item names (no, enemies never carry materia either dropped or stolen. You either find it or buy it).

Serious? Wow, and I was going to have enemies and bosses drop many attribute related Materia.

[Bosola]

You can make non-random enemies drop materia via field scripting. Think about the Ifrit materia Jenova-BIRTH leaves behind.

[Vgr]

Godo and Leviathan

Actually, it might be possible to do like gjoerulv's hardcore mod with summons.

[poofacetherisen]

It hit me as I was fixing this that I want to make it more like the tool Square was likely using to create the scene.bin in the first place. What I envision is there are entries for enemies, attacks, and scenes. Specifically, a list of each and a form for each. During saving, the tool would combine them all based on the formation data entries.

If you do this, can you allow copying and pasting of enemy entries (collectively, like the whole form) into/over another enemy's form/entry (or whatever it's called)?
Which would make using already made enemies as a template for a stronger one or "Uber" boss far easier and quicker.

You can make non-random enemies drop materia via field scripting. Think about the Ifrit materia Jenova-BIRTH leaves behind.

Yep, I'm aware. I've just had some 'hair-tearing' problems with field scripting, so I had previously thought I was able to get by using the battle drops. But meh, whatever guess I have to slowly learn instead.

[DLPB_]

Now i confess this might be laziness on my part but is there any easy way for me to make sure the hardcore mod stays compatible with the retranslation project (which alters scene.bin text only)?  If not an easy way... any way?