Grakl's Mod Editor

Grakl

Chieftain
Joined
May 19, 2006
Messages
61
Location
South Dakota (People live here ><)
Grakl's Civilizaton 4 Mod Editor - Beta
This is my crack at making a fully functional Mod editor. My aim is to make it easy to use, reliable, and powerful. Base functionality should allow editing all CivilizationInfos properties while future versions hopefully will allow adding, editing, deleting the more complex mod aspects (units, buildings, techs). For simplicity, the Mod Editor for now only supports mods that are created for Beyond The Sword expansion. But you may assign text infos values from the previous products.

preview_5W9.jpg


DDS Previewer (Edit ArtDefine Form)
previewdds_swf.jpg


DOWNLOAD

Current Features:
- Opens and parses CivilizationInfos and all corresponding XMLs, including Vanilla, Warlords, and BtS.
- Displays and allows changing of non-list properties (description, color, sounds, ...)
- Displays contents of list properites (Cities, Leaders, Techs...)
- Includes a Recent Projects menu for quick loading
- DDS previewer when editing the Art Define property (Buttons, Flags)
- Supports adding and deleting civilizations

To Do List:
- Mechanics for New projects
- Mechanics for Assigning/Removing list properties
- Tooltips

Wish List:
- Add Modular XML support
- Add Help topics
- Add backwards compatibility for Warlords and Vanilla
- Expand Editor to allow Adding/Editing/Deleting Units, Techs, Buildings, Civics, Leaders, Religions

Notes:
This is written in Visual Studio 2005 C# and thus requires that your PC have the .NET 2.0 framework installed. Which can be downloaded here.

Please please, remember, this is in BETA. So, always copy off a stable version of your mod before using the Mod Editor to manipulate your files. I'm not responsible for any mishaps that may occur, though I will be sad my work led you to it :(. It doesn't do a whole lot yet, but I got it out the door and I believe it's reliable, though I have noticed 1 bug that causes 1 civ to copy the properties of another civ.

FAQ:
I accidentally selected the wrong folder when prompted for my Beyond the Sword directory or my mod directory, how do I fix this?
- Delete the config file generated by the Mod Editor, it should appear in the same directory as where the executable is, or you can edit it by hand if you know what you're doing.

None/Some of my flags and buttons are showing in the Art Define edit window.
- This could be caused by a couple issues. Make sure that the location for the button or flag file in the Art Define tag exists in your Mod folder structure. Also, the previewer currently doesn't support compilation DDS files, which are used by default civilizations. So if you have something like ,"Art/Interface/Buttons/Civilizations/America.dds 1, 5" then it's trying to reference a row/column in a compilation (at least I think).

Why is this not finished?
- Well, I'm married and have children for one thing, but regardless, I'm a UI developer IRL and so far I've sunk at least 12+ hours into the beta release, and I'm simply adding stuff I know how to do, I havn't spent any time on reasearch yet. Plus, I set a deadline (2 weeks) for myself to keep motivated, and I made it :). Don't worry, it's going to be constantly updated. I'm taking pride in my work if you can't tell by me arrogantly putting my handle in the Mod's title.

Suggestions, constructive criticisms, and complaints are fully accepted, and finally, Thank you for using my work, I take pride in knowing I'm contributing to the community.
 
Thank you!

Looks very good so far. So far it's basically read-only, but it does help with mod planning! I'm looking forward to the big update. Keep up the good work!
 
Good stuff. Need something to take away the xml tedium.

Thank you!
 
Thank you for the kind words. I'm sorry it's not entirely too functional at the moment, though I don't think it should crash, if it does, send any messages my way.

I have good news, I've been doing some research on displaying .DDS files, and I've found a way to do it programatically, same with .WAV files. So, this means I'll have a previewer of both images and sound art files in the next version hopefully. You can't do a whole lot with a images at the moment though since I don't have anything coded for adding or editing new units/buildings/etc... But it does give some hope for the future.

Correction, I think the ArtDefine property will be the first instance of using the DDS previewer as you need to be able to assign images for each civ's button and flag.

Also, if any modder hasn't seen this DDS Thumbnail Viewer they might contemplate installing it (It shows the left-hand preview of DDS files in Windows Explorer just like BMPs and other graphic files). I remember I had a hard time keeping straight which DDS files were which, and I got tired of opening them in GIMP and other utilities.
 
:thanx: :woohoo:
I hate doing grunt work. As well as my computer lags on large xml files, this program is a godsend to me.
 
Thanks, I apologize that I didn't make my Sept. 3rd deadline as Labor Day weekend was a bit busier than I expected. On a bright note, I have some teaser info (yeah, I know, real exciting eh?). I finished the bits so that you may now add new description, short description, adjective, and civilopedia entries. I also added a form for editing the Art Define property which includes a DDS display of the flag and button for the civilization. It's currently a bit flaky, for instance, you can't view compilation DDS files or the files for default civilizations (America, etc...). But it should work for custom made civilizations or ones that have their DDS files in the "correct" setup.

So, by tomorrow night, I just want to finish up being able to add a new Art Define and Add/Delete civilizations. It's coming a long, but a lot more work than I expected of course heh heh.
 
Sounds promising. I look forward to seeing this get updated.

(although it is a bummer that there wasn't one of these included with the game, like in Civ3)
 
New version
Added mechanics for adding description, short description, adjective, and civilopedia entries.
Added mechanics for editing the Art Define property, including a DDS previewer.
Added mechanics for adding and deleting civilizations.

The previewer is a tad flaky as I mentioned a couple posts up. It expects the DDS files for buttons to be located:
(Your Mod)\Assets\Art\Interface\Buttons\Civilizations \(Button).DDS
and the flags:
(Your Mod)\Assets\Art\Interface\TeamColor\(Flag).DDS
 
I hug you.
 
Wow. After spending hours making a new Civ the hard way, I see this. Great work!
 
Looks good from my point of view (modding newb).
 
It won't allow me to open it.
Netframework error intilization error
 
Well, looks promising. Keep up the work. Right now it does.. well.. not much at all.
 
Well, other than the list sections, audio, and art style properties; the entire base CivilizationInfos xml file is editable. The next update should finish the ones I previously listed. Then for the most part it's minor bells and whistles for the base project I started out to do. After it's finished, I havn't really decided what I'll move on to next, some people have been asking for a Leaderhead editor in various threads. There's an enormous amount of xml to pick from.
 
Great to see such a editor being developed, civ4 has needed one for about 2 years now, I really hope you get to develop this into a good ongoing working product if you do you will rock the civ 4 community.

I have been wanting to do a civ 4 version of Redfront for a while now (as like my civ 3 version) and only need a editor so i can focus on the playability of the scenario rather than the tedious manual modding of files. Without a editor such in depth scenarious are just too much work.
I await your next update with anticipation.
 
Grakl, if I remember correctly, you mentioned transitioning to DataSets a while back. Did you manage to do that? If so, I'd be interested in hearing how you got the XML Schema for the data to work properly with the DataSet. I've been having a problem loading Unit XML files.

Near as I can tell, when an element such as "UniqueNames" has no children, the DataSet wants to make it a column, rather than the normal DataTable that the Schema specifies. It throws a DuplicateNameException at me. Any ideas here?
 
Top Bottom