Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]






Shoot a firework rocket ~ Winners!
Make a forum zoo!

Welcome to The Round Table. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Locked Topic
Current Projects
Topic Started: Feb 15 2014, 07:38 AM (241,625 Views)
Posted Image Narukota
Member Avatar
blah

Aight then, looks like I'll be making animals now since this incredible genius made everything so easy and awesome. :P
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

Aww... lol

Now I'm fairly happy with the BFB scripts, so I can turn my attention to other things.
I continued working on the zoopedia system for APE2 and now have a working prototype. It can save and load zoopedias (partially at least). Other than in Zoozanne, zoopedias are generated from scratch rather than premade bits. This allows for more flexible usage, especially generating different zoopedias for animals and objects will be really easy this way. It's only a matter of time till it can create complete zoopedias.
I also set up a translation system completely independent from the main program, where one simple text file adds compatibility for a new language - a little like in zoozanne, but better.
Edited by HENDRIX, Jan 4 2016, 08:59 PM.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
Chase
Member Avatar


It's amazing how little attention this topic seems to be getting, but tbh I'm not surprised. You aren't cranking out downloads like you used to, and to the less design savvy members what you're doing here must make no sense. Even I don't understand half of what you're doing. That said, I do know that this is so much more important than a new animal or pack.

You've broken the BFB wall in designing and worked out ways to make custom animations (1). But most importantly you're making programs that make designing accessible. I never fully got into designing because it all seemed unattainable and convoluted. Having to learn outdated programs and I couldn't even begin to grasp rigging and nodes and all that stuff.

I guess what I'm trying to say, for myself and on behalf of those who don't know what's going on, is this work is appreciated. Since it's not a new download this goes unnoticed, and I don't want that to be the case. You've opened up pathways that could change the design portion of the community forever. So thanks HENDRIX for everything you've done, and continue to do.



(1) I think other people did similar things, or worked out portions of these same issues so credit to those who did. I'm not trying to make it seem like HENDRIX did everything by himself, he's really just the only one I know of.
Edited by Chase, Jan 5 2016, 03:32 AM.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

Most of the BFB and BF decoding work was done by harlequinz ego, with some help by bl3nd3r, VerdantGregor and myself. I just implented all that knowledge into a functional exporter.

So, I've made some progress and I think I know why the properties in the UI are not working. I need to do some considerable recoding to make it work, and learn how to use classes properly. Zoopedias generation can access the main xml information now.

I'll release a new version when all that stuff is working as it should.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

I had to wrap everything into a class so I had to change everything around, but it has paid off:

Posted Image

Further additions to the properties tab will be a button to save the changes, something to add additional properties not present in the base xml, and common values for options like KeeperEatType, Endangerment etc that you can add from the dropdown menus.

I have restored most of the functionality of the old version, some bits are still to be fixed though.
Edited by HENDRIX, Jan 5 2016, 02:20 PM.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
Deleted User
Deleted User

A lot of what you're working on is way above my paygrade, but APE development is much, much, MUCH appreciated.
Goto Top
 
Acinonyx Jubatus
Member Avatar
I AM THE UNSHRINKWRAPPER!

Wow! This will certainly make coding a lot faster.

Can I just ask what the code "b_BiomeOdd" means? I've seen it many times in the .xml, but I've no idea what it does.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

I think it's used for the guests to be able to judge if an animal is in the right biome.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

The current version of APE2 is in the dropbox. Changing properties works fine and they can be saved back to the xml by clicking the button. Zoopedia generation is roughly done, a few issues with <br /> and <p /> tags remain where I'm not sure how to create them properly. I also need to filter the properties for useless ones (ie. zoopedia link) you usually won't need to change. I haven't added the default values for the dropdown menus but that should be rather easy too.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
Reptileink
Member Avatar
(Feral Designs/DeepSix)

mind=blown

I've been following this thread from the weeds and read every post (even though I can't comprehend half of it)

Incredible job done by all on this project. Maybe some day my old brain will figure it all out (and by then, it will have changed again...lol)

Kudos!
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

I managed to improve the XML debugger, so it can now fix 4 kinds of XML syntax errors. Therefore more XMLs can be parsed correctly by the picky XML parser, allowing to clone more entities (e.g. AD armadillo).


The default values are implemented, each variable gets the values from a TXT file in a defaults folder.
Posted Image
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

Reorganised the stuff to fill the space more effectively, sorted the properties and added a scrollbar because some animals have a lot of bool properties:

Posted Image

I also added the Location to string properties, even though it technically doesn't belong there. It works, so I'm happy. :P




Can't seem to get the dropdown menus to stick to the right of the string box...
But adding new properties works:
Posted Image
Once added, they behave just like existing properties and values can be assigned.
Edited by HENDRIX, Jan 6 2016, 03:05 PM.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

Most things work now. Zoopedia loading is restricted to the name at the moment, and the saved zoopedias are not perfect. Current version is uploading atm.

Posted Image
Edited by HENDRIX, Jan 6 2016, 04:49 PM.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

Except for the colors, the zoopedias generated for animals seem to be fine. Once the colors work, I can adapt the procedure to create suitable zoopedias and entries for objects, too.
I also added a handy little shortcut to "Save Z2F and Test", which runs ZT2 after saving the Z2F. Current version is uploaded.
Edited by HENDRIX, Jan 6 2016, 07:14 PM.
Online Profile Goto Top
 
HENDRIX
Member Avatar
-retired-

I have updated the APE2 tutorial to include the latest functions and created a APE2 Support and FAQ thread.

The current version is available in the resources folder; I have improved some little things:
-Save Z2F file default name is now based on the project contents
-Zoopedias are correctly colored and seem to be just right for animals.
-added Online Tutorial and Online Support as buttons, which will open the respective thread in your default browser.
-various smaller notifications and fixes
Online Profile Goto Top
 
2 users reading this topic (2 Guests and 0 Anonymous)
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Individual Projects · Next Topic »
Locked Topic