xdaniel's Random Junk

[xdaniel]

Cleaned up my VS2010 projects folder, so here's a short update about every important one:

• BakemonoModelLoader: 3D model import/export library used in Model2N64; work-in-progress.
• DashTest & DashTest2: DashViewer for Mega Man Legends, in both its incarnations; first one is dead, second one on extended hiatus.
• DTAViewer: PSX DTA archive/model viewer, see Twili's PSX hacking thread for more; finished with it, source is out.
• G2Map: Pokemon Generation 2 map editor; work-in-progress, awaiting some modifications/fixes.
• GBEmu2: SharpBoy rewrite; work-in-progress, almost ready for new release. Long overdue for one, in fact.
• MapDev: The original SharpOcarina; stalled/dead.
• MapInfdev: The SharpOcarina rewrite that was actually going somewhere; awaiting another rewrite to use the Bakemono model library that was spun off from this.
• N64ModelConvert: AKA Model2N64 as mentioned before; work-in-progress.
• PCE: ExPCE, my PC Engine emulator; stalled.
• RMEXESprites: Mega Man Battle Network experimentation testbed, source of the MMBN sprite screenshots a page or two back; stalled, will get back to it once/if I go back to MMBN hacking.
• SayakaGL: Well, ol' Sayaka, an OoT/MM level editor; stalled/dead.
• TaskbarCalender: A simple calender popup thingy that sits in the system tray, made it for my desktop's XP install because I was missing the calender from my laptop's 7 install; finished, not intended for release. Could upload it somewhere if anyone wants it, tho.
• WWActorEdit: Wind Viewer, the WW/TP level editor; stalled.
• WWText: WW Text Viewer; finished with it, source is out.

There's some more projects that are either unimportant/private (ex. editing tools for my equally stalled PSX homebrew game) or unannounced, so no point to elaborate on those.

[Conker]

Lots of cool stuff there.

[haddockd]

xDan,

 

I am curious as to which ones you would consider to be a priority. Not that it matters, I mean you get to it when you do, but I always like knowing what others are thinking so I can make informed decisions in the future.

[xdaniel]

I would say that Model2N64 and the Bakemono library, then one, maybe two as of yet unannounced projects and a support library for them, then SharpBoy's rewrite have priority, in that order. Been working on one of the unannounced projects and that library last, will look into some of the smaller bugs that Model2N64 has next (ex. materials with alpha channel, as IIRC Airikita and Sanguinetti have mentioned).

[xdaniel]

When fed up with and/or bored by Zelda, I'm messing around with this:

 

 

The program is currently just a simple map layout viewer - "Floor Appearance" and "Events" do nothing - as there's still a lot of research to be done (hur hur). Been messing around with scripting last, and I can so far at least give myself obscene amounts of money... and crash the game hard.

[haddockd]

I love and hate Etrian Odessey (all three). They had alot of potential to be so much more...

 

How in the hell do you keep track of all these tools, what they do, what they need work on, changelogs, etc?

[xdaniel]

The EO series maybe isn't perfect, but I really like them. Or, well, the first one at least, as 2 and 3 never came to Europe, and while 4 has been announced with a vague "Spring 2013", it's not even clear yet if it'll be retail or eShop-only.

 

Anyway, I don't really know how I'm keeping track of everything myself. I guess I tend to keep the rough outline of each program in my head, while details are kept in comments in the code, for ex. things that need to be added/fixed are listed as big, fat "TODO TODO TODO"s...

[xdaniel]

"Floor Appearance" now does something, most of the... I guess saga up to this point being documented on Jul. Will need much more work if I ever want to use it for something other than Etrian Odyssey's floor models, because of the still incomplete NSBMD implementation, but oh well:

 

 

Also, there's a really tiny bit of event script parsing implemented. I understand maybe less than 5% of event scripting, so this'll be a nightmare to take care of:

 

 

And unrelated to EO, and more related to emulator development and such, I've been messing around with DirectX, too - but not via SlimDX, XNA or some other 3rd party behemoth, but rather Microsoft's deprecated and long since discontinued Managed DirectX. All I can say is: it works fine even to this day, under Windows 7, VS2010 and .NET 4.0.

 

Using a custom Direct3D control and support functions to render an ARGB byte array to the screen, as well as keeping track of the keyboard and a gamepad via DirectInput:

 

A simple gamepad selection dialog:

 

[Conker]

Oh man, that's looking very cool!

[Arcaith]

You think you could write a replacement input dll for Nemu? I can't stand the current one >_>;

[xdaniel]

Ohh, Nemu doesn't use normal Zilmar spec input plugins like most other emulators, huh? I don't think I can write a replacement for that... I'd basically need to know how the DLL and the emulator interface, which functions the DLL exports, etc. Can surely be figured out by reverse-engineering them somehow, but I have next to no clue about how to do that with Windows executables, x86 and such. Not to mention, even if I did, I wouldn't know how to code a working replacement...

 

On a more positive note, the DirectX stuff has been improved somewhat and a hacked up SharpBoy core - put into a C# library, missing a bunch of stuff, and running just about at full speed, as opposed to 150+ FPS in the actual SharpBoy - is happily displaying its video output through it:

 

 

If I'll actually continue this SharpBoy, uh... hack? Port? Thing? Well, I dunno about that. For testing purposes, sure - like hooking DirectInput up to it and such, improving and optimizing the DirectX side some more - but beyond that... probably not.

 

[xdaniel]

Seems like this is becoming my test bed for all kinds of ideas... this time: GUI localization via user-editable XML files, instead of ex. embedded resources. See the spoiler for XML and code snippets:

 

 

 

(...could it be that the forum is inserting nonsense linebreaks inside the code tags...?)

 

A German example XML:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><Locale>  <Name>Deutsch</Name>  <Common>    <OK>OK</OK>    <Cancel>Abbrechen</Cancel>    <Yes>Ja</Yes>    <No>Nein</No>    <Close>Schließen</Close>  </Common>  <Debug>    <Debug>Entwanzen</Debug>    <MightyTestButton>Blah blah blah Mr.Freeman</MightyTestButton>  </Debug></Locale>

 

The form's declaration, note ILocalizeableForm:

 

public partial class MainForm : Form, ILocalizeableForm{  Locale Language;  [...]

 

...in the form's constructor:

 

Localize(Language = LocaleLoader.GetLocale(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.Name));

 

...and a function that does the localization of static GUI elements, prototype as per ILocalizeableForm:

 

public void Localize(Locale locale){  this.Text = "Language: " + Language.Name;  button1.Text = Language.Debug.MightyTestButton;}

 

 

 

Now, see the window title and button text:

 

 

(Oh, and I'm just having fun with the German text, don't mind me...)

 

[xdaniel]

Got sidetracked. Again. What else is new? Anyway, for the whole story: http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=16145

 

...and in somewhat short form: Uncovered a lot - and I mean a lot - of compressed, unused leftover graphics in Pokemon Puzzle Challenge / Pokemon de Panepon (GBC) that belong to a scrapped, and as far as I can see never even announced, GBC version of "Panel de Pon", the fairy-themed SNES game that was reskinned with Yoshi & Co. and released overseas as Tetris Attack. There's graphics for a Nintendo logo screen akin to the SNES game, for the title screen, for the menus, for cutscenes, for the VS Com story mode, for the in-game HUD, for the suspend save screen, and so on. There's also an unused English logo, even in the Japanese version, that says "Pokemon Puzzle League", the same title the N64 version had. The game appears to literally be one-third leftovers of various kinds. Have a look at TCRF for some of the PdP leftovers already dumped and documented: http://tcrf.net/Pok%C3%A9mon_Puzzle_Challenge

 

And this here's the graphics viewer/decompressor I'm almost finished with. I still need to add the command line options from the previous "cheaty" decompressor - which contained a full GB CPU emulation core to execute the actual decompression code in the game, because I am too stupid to figure out any compression algorithm better than RLE, even with a disassembly - as well as a simple palette editing feature, but besides that it's pretty much done and should be released in a few days time.

 

[haddockd]

This is going to sound bad, but nothing but love here...

 

And the Award for 'Most Unfinished Projects' goes to....

 

*Drum Roll*

 

xDaniel!!!!!

 

*Crowd goes wild*

[xdaniel]

This one is going to get finished, tho. Yeah, "I believe it when I see it", I guess, but a certain combination of factors - the rather simple scope of the project, its immediate use and my own will to use it to document those leftovers - will make this one a reality in a few days or so. Again, there really are basically just some finishing touches left to do, a few hours of work at most

[Mallos31]

Pffffff at least you can START projects! I keep trying, and getting stuck right at the beginning. I'm getting somewhere finally, but it's haaaaaard. 

[haddockd]

Mallos, what are you trying to do?

[xdaniel]

Ha-HA! PaneponGUI v1.0 is out, binary and source

 

http://magicstone.de/dzd/?page=programs

[haddockd]

*clicks stop watch*

 

NEW RECORD!

 

lol

[Mallos31]

Well, I'm simply trying to get better at programming in general. But my current goal is to figure out how to get started on my Pokemon game. I already have all the tiles and sprites from Fire Red that I want to use, plus a few I made myself, so I figure I need to create some sort of tool to help me make maps, and events. I honestly don't know where to start though. I figure it would look something like xdan's gameboy tile editors, but I need to come up with my own map format too. Which I'm working on. I've actually written a good part of the engine, but that was just for text based battles, and with tackle and a few status changing moves and stuff. So I have a loooong way to go. 

[Three_Pendants]

Well, I'm simply trying to get better at programming in general. But my current goal is to figure out how to get started on my Pokemon game. I already have all the tiles and sprites from Fire Red that I want to use, plus a few I made myself, so I figure I need to create some sort of tool to help me make maps, and events. I honestly don't know where to start though. I figure it would look something like xdan's gameboy tile editors, but I need to come up with my own map format too. Which I'm working on. I've actually written a good part of the engine, but that was just for text based battles, and with tackle and a few status changing moves and stuff. So I have a loooong way to go. 

Have you had any luck contacting the maker of Pokemon: Ash Gray? PokemonL Ash Gray is an absolute Overhaul of either Fire Red/Leaf Green. It modifies the game to follow the Indigo League storyline of the series and is an amazing piece of work with new events (and as far as I'm aware) new event conditions and conditionals. A lot of work and love was clearly put into that. I would suggest you contact the maker to see if he or she could help you at all in learning.

[Mallos31]

Thanks! I've never even heard of that! I have a story line going about the pokemon war and Kanto's secret projects and even MissingNo. I have the whole story mapped out, and I'm adding it to the game that already exists. And I'm wanting to kill the glitches that made the game beatable in like 4 minutes Thanks for the info! Now back to xdan!

[Librarian]

Ahh, MissingNo. I still can't believe it got so popular. When I first heard of it I instantly thought Missing-Number (it has a full-stop and all), but, nope. Apparently it was a mutated science experiment (or something stupid like that). I wonder if people would've acted the same way if it was named Error. Anyway, I love a good Pokemon creepy pasta, if your into Pokemon hacking, perhaps that could be your next project.

[Three_Pendants]

Creepypasta's are a dime-a-dozen when it comes to Pokemon and they're mostly, to me, just silly. I can see why people would want to incorporate MissingNo into the actual lore. Mainly because the original method of finding it places it right beside Cinnabar which has a lot of experimental dealings alone without a MissingNo connection.

[Librarian]

That's the point isn't it, to make fun of crappy creepy pastas. Sometimes I come across one that's actually good, but it's rare.