EDIT: Rezilla 1.1 is now officially available! Grab it while it's hot!

After I released Rezilla Custom 3, work on Rezilla from my part went into pause mode. After all, I had contributed my part to fix bugs and add features to the template editor so that we have a solid (though low-level) base for plug editing, before the coming of graphical editors (which I can only start to work on now). But of course the work didn't stop there, oh no. In september Bernard Desgraupes resumed working on Rezilla "base", which meant among many other things merging my features and bugfixes back into his source code. I assisted in this endeavor, by checking his modifications in the sourceforge CVS (where the source is hosted), by telling what I did and why I did it and checking that it was well put back in Rezilla's source code. Now he thinks the code is stable and close to release enough that I it should be safe for me to start using it and begin learning about Rezilla's plug-in interface, which will allow me to do NovaTools-like editors for Rezilla. So I've been trying Rezilla 1.1rc1 (Release Candidate One) today and I can report you a few things about it (notice you can ask me for it, it's not prevented, but you might as well wait for the actual release, it shouldn't be too far off).

First, unfortunately field and checkbox stuffing, as well as keyed section dynamic value changing by popup menu, didn't make it to this version, and won't make it to actual 1.1 (we're in feature freeze in preparation for 1.1). Rezilla 1.1 is actually overdue and these two features are actually quite complicated and disruptive of the codebase (as I openly admitted to him back when I released custom 3) so they take time to merge back, but Bernard told me they should be useful and definitely thinks they should be added, so they will actually come in a later revision, probably 1.1.1. In the meantime, I'll probably do a Rezilla 1.1c1 that implements these two features (after actual 1.1 is released, of course), if only to provide an implementation of these features as merged in the 1.1 code for them to be put back in main Rezilla. Also, for now 1.1 is 10.3+ only, it can be fixed if this is a problem (10.2 users then won't have access to the import-export functions, based on 10.3-only APIs).

Now the good stuff. In case you haven't figured already, 1.1 implements a plug-in editor architecture, and Bernard has made two such editors to show that it works. This means I can write editors completely independantly from his code and do whatever I want (including writing in straight, good old C, instead of C++, yay!) in these editors. In fact, NovaTools are actually plug-in editors for ResEdit, which means that I would probably be able to take their source code (provided the Sutherlands agree) and base my work on them for making these plug-in editors for Rezilla, in fact it could be said in that case that I would be porting NovaTools to Rezilla. Plus, I've always wanted to do some Pascal again, I have a soft spot in my heart for this language, even though, as an electronics engineer (who needs to work at a low level), I prefer C most of the time (and assembly when the need calls for it).

Other good stuff: pickers. You can now view rows of PICTs, icons, and other such wonderful stuff in their own window before opening them. Also, there are new editors, such as icns. And a myriad of other improvements (beyond the ones he got from my code).

So, I will begin work on a guinea pig plug-in editor ASAP for me to learn by experience the process of creating a plug-in editor for Rezilla, then I'll formally ask for the NovaTools source code and set up a Pascal compiler and learn the ResEdit plug-in editor inerface (because it's what I'll be porting them from). That's the plan for now.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 28 November 2006 - 01:07 PM

Wow, this is all sounding great

You've waited til now to ask for the NovaTools source? There's bugs that need fixing (at least I think there is, I don't remember what they are though). Well while you're at, see if you can get the source to the whole suite of utilities as well.

Work on Rezilla 1.1 is going on, right now I am trying to understand how CFPlugin works by staring at my computer screen until my eyes bleed (WTF? Why does this COM stuff need to be so byzantine and complicated? Oh, that's because MS originally came up with it. Blame MS.;)) Other than that, nothing new, since I think I broke some sort of World record by having 49 hours of classes I should have attended this past week, with 18 of them being at the same 9 hours so I only actually attended 40 (but I'll have to catch up these 9 anyway).

@zacha-pedro, on Oct 23 2006, 04:02 PM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

Work on Rezilla 1.1 is going on, right now I am trying to understand how CFPlugin works by staring at my computer screen until my eyes bleed (WTF? Why does this COM stuff need to be so byzantine and complicated? Oh, that's because MS originally came up with it. Blame MS.;)) Other than that, nothing new, since I think I broke some sort of World record by having 49 hours of classes I should have attended this past week, with 18 of them being at the same 9 hours so I only actually attended 40 (but I'll have to catch up these 9 anyway).

**Class < Improved Editors

_bomb

**

I did it!
After a few days of hard work, I finally completely implemented my first functional (and useful) Rezilla plugin, RLEPlugin. As the name indicates, it is able to view rlë8 and rlëD resources and rotate them. You can download it from my webhosting by clicking this link. It's technically a beta, I've not tested it much besides making it open various rles from various sources.

Oh yeah, that's right, you have no way of running it for now (no, Rezilla Custom 3 won't do). Okay, I'll let you get a release candidate of Rezilla 1.1, you can download it from <EDIT: link removed, get official 1.1 or later>. Once you have it and the plugin, just get info on the Rezilla app, and in the "Plug-ins:" subsection, click the Add… button and pick RLEPlugin.plugin. Now when you run Rezilla, it should allow you to view rle resources.

Tell me I rule.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 28 November 2006 - 12:07 PM

OS 9 support?

Cool! By the way, would it be possible to have the RLE viewer act a bit like MC, i.e. give the option to view on another background, stop animation, ? Because that's quite useful for spotting mistakes in plug-in development

@jacabyte, on Nov 22 2006, 05:45 PM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

OS 9 support?

None whatsoever. Run ResEdit. Sorry about that, but Rezilla has been OSX only for some time, in fact on this Intel Mac I don't even have the possibility to target OS9. Anyway right now this Rezilla plug-in doesn't do anything that ViewRLE can't, you can use that too.

@pace, on Nov 22 2006, 07:36 PM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

Cool! By the way, would it be possible to have the RLE viewer act a bit like MC, i.e. give the option to view on another background, stop animation, ? Because that's quite useful for spotting mistakes in plug-in development

Sure, I'll try doing that, this plugin is just a proof-of-concept first version. I intended to add the ability to click to stop the animation just like in ViewRLE already, and in fact the image does have an alpha channel (which is always 255 or 0) so it's trivial to have it applied against a colored background instead of a black one (driving an acceptable UI to select the color is another thing, though).
By the way I like your sig Pace. I didn't know about prune_day, it's going to be useful... Thanks for the free ad space.

Anything for the greatest guides I've ever seen, and for one of the greatest developers out there.

Thank or thank not maybe Guy & grunk

Edit: …… which I see you have not perhaps undone!

This post has been edited by Pace : 22 November 2006 - 02:28 PM

You rule
I don't think you'd need a colour picker though, just white, black and grey should be fine.

Did you manage to contact the Sutherlands?

I sent an email recently, that's all.

EDIT: I've uploaded the source code in case anything would be interested, download it from http://perso.orange....LEPluginSrc.dmg

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 24 November 2006 - 03:51 PM

Okay boys and girls, Rezilla 1.1 has now been released! Grab it from SourceForge (get the Bin, i.e. binary release, unless you're interested in the source).

You should replace any rc of 1.1 you might have downloaded before with this version, and in fact remove Custom 3 and replace it with it as well if you're feeling like it; however, as I said earlier some features from Custom 3 have not been implemented in 1.1 so you might wish to delay trashing Custom 3 until I've either produced a 1.1 custom implementing these features or there is a Rezilla 1.1.x that implements them (thanks to my work).

Rezilla 1.1 runs RLEPlugin well as far as I can tell, however I have gotten reports of RLEPlugin not working under Panther which I'll try to investigate (sorry about that, Edwards), but since I don't have my hands on a Panther system right now...

Also, Rezilla 1.1 of course doesn't include the Nova templates (which were built-in in my Custom releases), so here they are as a standalone file that you can put in (~)Library/Application\ Support/Rezilla/Templates/ for them to be used by Rezilla. Notice that since they assume all my features to be present, but Rezilla 1.1 currently doesn't implement the last two, they will work fine but you will get long lists of items (instead of them being stuffed) and no dynamically changeable keyed sections (and for instance the name of the oütf's ModType won't be shown since it only appears in the popup menu for choosing it, both in the static choice dialog popup menu and in the dynamic in-editor popup menu). I'll get to work on implementing these two features in the 1.1 codebase ASAP so that I can send them back to Bernard for him to do a new version that implements them (and perhaps I can do an interim Custom).

That's all for today, thanks for you attention. Man, between that, xxx, xxxxx, and ARPIA2, I think I'm going to explode soon.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 28 November 2006 - 01:04 PM

@zacha-pedro, on Nov 28 2006, 11:01 AM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

Rezilla 1.1 runs RLEPlugin well as far as I can tell, however I have gotten reports of RLEPlugin not working under Panther which I'll try to investigate (sorry about that, Edwards), but since I don't have my hands on a Panther system right now...

sigh
Don't worry, I'm getting used to it. I suppose that's what I get for using an OS that's almost a whole three years old. Sort of like my using a machine with a "mere" quarter-gigabyte of RAM (that, at least, should be rectified in the next few days).

At any rate, it's nice to see that you finally have a version of Rezilla to work with that supports non-template editors. I hope you hear back from the Sutherlands.

Edwards

@zacha-pedro, on Nov 29 2006, 07:01 AM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

Okay boys and girls, Rezilla 1.1 has now been released!

Hm, how long ago did that happen? I randomly bumped into it a day before you posted that

Perhaps because:
- I've only known about it released when Bernard told me (better wait for this signal anyway, in case I pick up a bad release)
- we're in different time zones, I posted this the 28th in my evening but it shows up for you as the morning of the 29th (and was probably available already for you at your evening the 28th, i.e. a few hours before)
- I've tested that this relase basically worked, then that RLEPlugin did work with this release, then double-checked that my templates did too, and repackaged them as a standalone file, before I notified you about it.
- did I mention xxx and xxxxx? yes I did.

According to the SourceForge release hour (which is very probably relative to a US timezone), it was at 00:18 the 28th, which means it was between 6 to 9 AM in France, and between 6 to 9 PM in New Zealand, and anyway for everyone it was the 28th of November (except perhaps Hawaii and other such places in the east of Pacific for which is was still the 27th). Do you think I have many opportunities to post about this before the end of the work day?

Edwards: don't worry, I do plan to support older systems, in fact it should be possible to backport Rezilla 1.1 to 10.2 should anyone ask me about it, by disabling the XML import/export functions when being run on this system (they're using 10.3-only functionality). RLEPlugin doesn't even use anything 10.3-specific (let alone 10.4 specific stuff); Bernard will investigate the issues on 10.3 this weekend, it's probably a bug of mine in the HIView stuff that happens to work on 10.4 (I'm just beginning with HIViews...), but if he hadn't I would have tried changing stuff and sending it to you for testing, even if I do not even have the slightest clue of what is wrong and no way of testing it with a short turnaround time. Instead now I'll be doing more productive stuff, i.e port the two missing features to the Rezilla 1.1 code.

I'll use it when you put in graphical editors for shäns

Or have you already done that and I've missed it?

Man A graphical editor of weapon exit points would be awesome indeed

Where you point and click and the editor does the rest? Oooo, yahh... That would be awesome!

@zacha-pedro, on Dec 1 2006, 03:28 AM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

Perhaps because:
<snip>

Yeah, I figured as much, I just thought it was quite odd that I came to the Rezilla site right at that time

Hm, a graphical exit point editor might be possible - you would click at the point on the sprite, rotate it to a new angle, click on the point again, possibly repeat some more and then it works out the values that match those points the closest.

Any update on a weapon exit point placing system? Because I'm trying to truly understand them, and it's not working. The Illyana/Sylvatha weapon exit points are killing me

If anyone did have a method, I have the exit points in pixels for top, down, left & right

(I messed around before on the Illyana, but didn't get as lucky as I did with the other ships )