Converting .xmesh to .bfxm....

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:40 pm

WHat do i need for it? i'm finally making a few ships again but i'd prefer to make them for the current release.... heh... Were do i find the converter?

Post by **hellcatv** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 7:44 pm

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/v ... mesher.exe

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 6:35 am

Ok, what do i put in for the command?
Example :mesher 3G5.xmesh 3G5.bfxm ?????

Post by **hellcatv** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:06 am

mesher blah.xmesh blah.bfxm xbc

mesher blah.bfxm blah.xmesh bxc

should do it

if you do something wrong it should give you a usage dialog

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 6:10 pm

Ok, i figured out what to do last night slightly alter i posted, i converted it to BFXM, i changed all tags in the ship file for it accordingly, i even added the BFXMmake file and altered it accordingly.
I did the whole mesher thing with: mesher 3g5.xmesh 3g5.bfxm xbc
...... What am i missing? it's still looking for the file, and nothing shows up in game...

Post by **hellcatv** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 9:06 pm

which version of VS is this? for the latest stuff you need to add a row to units.csv
then you need to make a mission which spawns that unit
make sure the directory entry of units.csv actually contains the proper directory to that unit
and make sure it contains the proper bfxm name ofr that unit

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 8:20 am

aha, i see..... this sh!t is getting far to complicated, BFXM had better be worth it..... dammit.

Post by **hellcatv** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:06 am

VS can load obj and xmesh as well

you could just use those

just maek sure mesher.exe is in your bin/ directory when loading up VS

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:15 am

You've got to be kidding me (looking at units file) there's burly any organization at ALL in this file, i don't have a clue what anything does, the copy i did to try and get it to function did nothing but crash the game.... Now going to BFXM was supposed to be a upgrade right? AM i the only one that feels like i just stepped backwards a year or so?
It dosen't matter than VS supports Xmesh and OBJ really, i still have to put all this new BS into it now don't i?

P.S. I'm not trying to sound ungratefull, i do appreceate your help but this is freaking annoying... before getting something to run in the game was just a matter of exporting the INI and making a file and dir for it in the game.... This is getting really annoying.

Post by **jackS** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:46 am

Ares wrote:You've got to be kidding me (looking at units file) there's burly any organization at ALL in this file, i don't have a clue what anything does, the copy i did to try and get it to function did nothing but crash the game.... Now going to BFXM was supposed to be a upgrade right? AM i the only one that feels like i just stepped backwards a year or so?
It dosen't matter than VS supports Xmesh and OBJ really, i still have to put all this new BS into it now don't i?

P.S. I'm not trying to sound ungratefull, i do appreceate your help but this is freaking annoying... before getting something to run in the game was just a matter of exporting the INI and making a file and dir for it in the game.... This is getting really annoying.

I actually find the units.csv file more than sufficiently organized, and very easy to edit with any decent spreadsheet program. Indeed, it's very convenient for making sweeping changes across units, changing the artwork used by a unit or units, getting rapid side by side comparisons of various stats...

The changes to BFXM and to a unified unit statistics file were orthogonal. I happen to think both were quite positive. If you feel the loss of functionality from such 3rd party tools as the wings unit exporter is an overwhelming negative, then I suggest looking at the python scripts that convert from an xunit file to a row in the csv. I believe they're slightly outdated, but the unit produced should still be viewable/flyable in-game, modulo some potentially garbled particular stats.

If you are unsure as to what sort of data is expected, the top two rows name and document the expected values and format for every column.

I'm given to the notion that you weren't using a spreadsheet editor to edit the units.csv - if you were, you'd probably see that it's actually _easier_ to add many types of units to the game now because you don't have to make explicit directory structures and populate them with files. Faction specific variants can just be declared by the appropriate modification of the hashname. Changes to the name of the ship are now independent of where the files for the ship art are (very convenient for cranky old CVS). The previous format didn't allow any indirection - this does. The csv is a bear to edit much with a text editor, but with a spreadsheet editor, it's trivial - which makes sense, because it's a table, and spreadsheet editors are built to manipulate tables. Some of the particular fields, like the mounts, are more arcane than in the XML, but I think that's a very minor price to pay for all that this simplified stats-as-table format gives us.

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 8:00 pm

well, i don't know what spreadsheet editor your using but i tried using microsoft works spreadsheet on it and i can't so much as SAVE it without it corrupting it, probably since it's not a format it officially recognises... I tried just loading it and saving it and VS won't even run then. didn't chaqnge a damn thing. If you have any idea's i'd like to hear them cuz my patience is rapidly drawing thin.

One other thing.... since everything is in the spreadsheet now is there even a point to having the ship information files in with the units?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:11 pm

I know that in Excel you can save-as a CSV, but Works might be different. I haven't used it, but it may be avalilble under "File->Export" instead. But like I said, I've never used Works, so I don't know what options you have. But if that's the way it works, you might want to save your own Works copy of the document and export CSV's when you change it.

PCM@work · Post by **PCM@work** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:20 pm

Above post by pincushionman

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:55 pm

Well after alot of swearing i have figured out how to get VS to except it from works spreadsheet. As such i have learned 2 things, 1, there's no point to keeping the ship files in each dir now it seems since it gets all it's information from the units.csv file.... Why hasn't anybody bothered removing them? and 2 i am getting a REALLY strange error, it seems only about 1/4 of asteroid fields in the starting system are appearing.... around the asteroid base and the jump point they only appear on one side of it..... i have not even the faintest clue why, i touched nothing relating to asteriod fields... The only guess i can take is that after i've exported it the file is about 300K smaller than the original for no known reason... other than the asteroid fields it seems to be reading fine? i have no clue...

Post by **jackS** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:56 pm

Ares wrote:well, i don't know what spreadsheet editor your using but i tried using microsoft works spreadsheet on it and i can't so much as SAVE it without it corrupting it, probably since it's not a format it officially recognises... I tried just loading it and saving it and VS won't even run then. didn't chaqnge a damn thing. If you have any idea's i'd like to hear them cuz my patience is rapidly drawing thin.

Both Excel and OpenOffice are known to properly handle csv files.

One other thing.... since everything is in the spreadsheet now is there even a point to having the ship information files in with the units?

Correct. There is no point in generating xunit files except perhaps as intermediates. They are now depricated.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 11:05 pm

I generally like the whole units.csv thing. Me and Jennos have been doing a lot of balancing and tweaking of Vega Trek stats, and the spreadsheet-style is good for that.

It can get a little annoying sometimes, though. It's easy to lose track of what ship is on what line, forcing you to scroll back to the far left and back again to check the name of each row. And once you start getting too many ships, you start to lose track of the column names too.

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 12:01 am

peteyg wrote:It can get a little annoying sometimes, though. It's easy to lose track of what ship is on what line, forcing you to scroll back to the far left and back again to check the name of each row. And once you start getting too many ships, you start to lose track of the column names too.

That's a common problem in spreadsheet programs ... and there is an easy solution for it:

In Openoffice (and AFAIR there is a similar ting in M$ Excel) you just put your cursor in the 2. row / 2.column and select "Window->Split". (maybe you need to 'Freeze' it too, canÃ„t remember for sure)
Now the frist column and the frist line will be visible everytime.

Pontiac

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 12:01 am

Well i figured out why half of the asteroid field was dissapearing. It's simple.... Works spreadsheet is cropping it short. it's cropping most of them after about 1/4 of it. anyone know how to fix this?

Post by **hellcatv** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 3:35 am

I hate to be cynical, but if OpenOffice does the job right...it might be the answer.

we already had to pull out the master part list from the units.csv (actually makes it easier to edit) because microsoft office wasn't playing nice with big columns larger than 16384 characters or so

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 6:07 am

Anyone know wereabouts i could find a spreadsheet editor that won't throw a fit over big #'s? I'm not forking over 50 for MS excel when i'll never use it except for anything except this. I suppose worse comes to worse i can just drop it in manually.

Post by **hellcatv** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 6:25 am

OpenOffice is free my man

the other name is star office

http://openoffice.org/
that's what the devels use

kspread is another option, also free

Post by **dandandaman** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 6:40 am

or if you want a smaller download than open office (and can't get it on cd) .... and don't mind using a testing version, then the windows version of gnumeric (which is also a very good spreadsheet) has release candidate 1 out:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/glad ... 92-rc1.exe

Dan.a

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 8:32 am

45MB? whoa, 56K here...
I'm sorry maybe for playbalancing the spreadsheet thing works well but for trying to transfer the information, it's a mess, it's easy to get lost without any text or other markers to remind you were you are, (as in XYZ axis) i'm sorry... but i see this as a large step in the wrong direction.... Having them indevidually in the files was nice.... Is it possible to circumvent the units file? Once i send you my projects your all welcome to burn your eyeballs out staring at spreadsheets for tons of time for playbalancing but that craps not for me.... lol. Admittedly the tons on now adjustable statistics are nice to be able to control, it looks like the damage mapping system has been changed, not front left right and back now but top left right bottom left, right, and so forth..... may i ask what was wrong with the old one?
It looks like in the course of the 'upgrade' about a MILLION new statistics were added....

I miss simplicity.
For stuff like weapons and turrets and stuff i can see the point to spreadsheets, but for ships? maybe i'm missing something here....

Post by **hellcatv** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 9:15 am

hmm well use the csvexport.py and csvimport.py to import and export individual rows of the csv into an xmlish sort of file... that's pretty easy to read and tweak (just remember that commas replace quotes for some odd reason)

these scripts can be found in the objconv directory
that way you can export it there...and send me that file even and I can import it into the common central file

python ~/vegastrike/objconv/csvexport.py units.csv llama

that exports a ship to the editable form

python ~/vegastrike/objconv/csvimport.py units.csv llama

will return it to its place among the other lines in the csv
will work with any version of the csv too

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 10:32 pm

okay..... this is really starting to get annoying, how many stupid little programs do i need to put a ship into VS now? the number seems to have just increased exponentially. I would HARDLY consider this a upgrade.
I don't have the whole python script system shit thing installed on my comp and have no intention of doing so. (enough crap on this HD)
I'll continue fu@king with it, and see what i can improove, and does anyone have ANY idea why each quad on the mesh for my ship is now reflecting individually? that's a new error too....