Tuesday, May 5, 2009

3.0.0

I've packaged it up and uploaded it to FUM, once it shows up as available for download I'll post a link to it. You should pretty much forget everything you knew about the existing parser UI, the 3.0.0 change is at least as significant as the 2.0.0 change.

Oh and it added support for arcane power stuff. Linked powers and arcane power specific items (like familiars) won't be live until the next ruleset update.

Version History:

3.0.0

* Arcane Power support. Familiars and other changes.
* Complete rewrite of the interface. Old files will still load and should save as
updated versions

General:
The tree uses graphics to indicate the type of input it will expect.
Optional items are indicated with the (Optional) tag
Clicking on an item will open the correct/window menu. These now use windows common controls

Context Menus:
Clear - Remove the data
Validate - Verify that all files/directories/values are specified
Process - This will parse the item and some top level items. The resulting XML is displayed in a simple XML browser for debugging.


Menus:
->File: Contains the file operations such as save/load/exit
->File->Save: This saves the current settings to a file.
->File->Load: This lodes the current settings from file.
->File->Exit: Ends the program

->Parse: Contains the parsing operations
->Parse->File Check: Verifies all the paths exist/all required information has been supplied
->Parse->Parse: Verifies all the paths exist/all required information has been supplied and then converts the raw data into FGII format.

Processing Results window:
This displays during a parse. It provides a wealth of information as to what the parser is doing and any errors it encounters. Some errors are not fatal (such as missing tokens) and the parse will complete. Fatal errors should be trapped and reported, at the very least you'll have a better idea what the parser was doing when it broke.


*************************************************
TOP LEVEL:
*************************************************
Name: This becomes both the file name of the module, and it's the name displayed in FGII
Thumbnail: This is the thumbnail to be displayed in the module
Category: The group this module appears in within the library.
Modestring: A unique internal identifier. This prevents the library/adventure objects for this module from conflicting with other modules.
Temporary Directory: The directory where the parser results are stored.
Output Format: Provides three options for output:
db.xml = Readable only by the host
common.xml = Readable by all, stored at the host. FGII Handles distribution. Slow.
client.xml = Readable by all, stored locally. Each user must have their own copy.
Output to Library: Determines if the module is displayed in the library. Normally it is only set to off for Adventure modules.
Module Directory: Determines where the final module is stored (see compression utility)

Compression Utility: The two options in this section take the place of the batch file.
Executable: Location of the compression exe (c:\program files\winRar\winrar.exe for example)
Flags: Any flags required for the compression for WinRAR use A -afzip -ep1
The resulting command is:
{executable} {flags} "{module directory}\{name}.mod" "{temporary directory}\*.*"


2.0.26

* Added the ability to parse map shortcuts (pins).

3 comments:

Olodrin said...

Hey,

This stuff looks great. I've seen a numbers of mentions of a new ruleset, and that it's deployment is dependent on a new version of FG2.

Is there any indication as to when the new version of FG2 will be out?

J said...

No clue. I know as much about the next release of FGII as you do :) I did participate in a session using 2.4.0 RC4 and the majority of the issues cuased by RC3 were resolved.

There's one minor issue with TheBox but moon_wizard tells me he's fixed it.

Unknown said...

hey J, what's the link to Arcane Power mod?