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harpo99999
harpo99999
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{Utilityrelease v1.2.0} entrenchment/diplomacy manifest maker (now trinity friendly)

a vb6 program to make manifests for mods

May 14, 2009 7:26:19 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I have decided to start the design of a vb6 program to create manifest files for mods, would this help any modders?

I have  the program at testing stage 3.

the program now will build a set of manifests that load and run in entrenchment for a copy of an existing mod.

on a athlonx2 5200 system it creates a full set of manifests within 2 minutes, and I have tested the speed on my slowest sins machine my laptop, and timed the manifest make time to be about 2 minutes

the next test stage is to merge several mods together and create a set of manifests that run in entrenchment

the program has passed the stage 3 tests and also the windows compatability tests so it is now moving to beta status

pm me with an email address that can receive a 100kb email if you would like to help me do final testing/debugging on this utility for modders

I have actually timed the find all the relevent files and create the 6 manifests for distant stars mod and the time taken was 9 seconds. the big question is how many entries can you make in a manifest in 10 seconds????????

it can now be downloaded from my three file areas

and is also in my modding utility pack in the mod updater thread

filefront http://www.filefront.com/15597241/sins-manifest-maker1.2.rar/

filefactory http://www.filefactory.com/file/b01e8h8/n/sins_manifest_maker1.2.rar

and the latest exe all of 100kb that replaces earlier versions(still uses the same ocx files)

from my dropbox

 and filefactory

harpo

 

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harpo99999
EviliroN
Join Date 04/2008
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Reply #1 May 14, 2009 9:40:57 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

what do you mean? would it scan the gameinfo folder, count the entities, then create the manifest? i guess it could help, but i don't have too much trouble as it is right now. maybe 7ds might appreciate it, since they must have 1000s of entities

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #2 May 14, 2009 4:58:02 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

yes eviliron that is the rough idea of the program.

in more detail the user selects a mod folder, then selects which type(s) of files to make manifests for and whether or not to include the original sins files in the manifests (these choices are by tickbox) then clicks on a single button that removes and previous manifests in the mod and creates a correctly formatted manifest of the filetype(s) chosen.

this is the current screen of the program during alpha test phase http://www.mediafire.com/?hyjjmzynbmz

harpo

harpo's entrenchment manifest maker

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harpo99999
Nuttygamer
Join Date 12/2008
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Reply #3 May 14, 2009 7:09:35 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

and then code would be:

 

pesudocode

count the number files -> "entityNameCount " + number;

for each file

{cfile >> "entityName " >> filename;}

 

I hate using the code part of the reply box. the langauge i was using was c++.

And what is wrong with the current process? save the orginal file as txt and as you write the mod just add a line to the manifest txt?

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #4 May 15, 2009 5:16:50 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

mooster that is ok when you are only adding ONE or TWO files, but if you are adding 3 or more at a time the chance of an error increases, and the current design checks the mod for all files of the type for the manifest, sorts them by name,removes duplicates, then creates the new manifest(s) for the mod. I am currently testing it on several larger entrenchment mods and have had an interesting occurence of the original manifest having over 1900 entities, and my program's generated manifest having only 1700 entities, but at present I am attempting to improve the quality of the entity files generated to as complete as the ironclad ones

harpo

 

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #5 May 15, 2009 8:23:12 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

the program is nearly at the point where I can test a difficult mod of several mods(that work when stacked in entrenchment) dumped together in one folder then run the manifest maker over the test mod and then test the mod is sins. if the test mod works then the program will be offered as a beta, but it will be a couple of days before I can do the test due to RL

harpo

 

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harpo99999
ReiverTA
Join Date 04/2009
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Reply #6 May 16, 2009 12:07:41 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Oh, this could be shiny indeed.

If you have any bugs in the code, I'm somewhat familiar with Visual Basic (I worked in it for six months as part of a job; I'm a little rusty now but hopefully not too bad!) and could hopefully offer a hand. Either way, good luck! I look forward to seeing this.

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harpo99999
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Reply #7 May 16, 2009 6:18:29 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

reiverta thanks for the offer. the program is in alpha test phase, which is testing the creation of the manifests to create a working mod from all of the files from a complex entrenchment mod like distant stars excluding the manifests, and still getting various tweeks to the design and features, but the bugs so fare are related to the interations with sins & entrenchment, so full knowledge of the program is more use at present, but I would like to have your help when it reaches beta stage ie more than internal testing with existing mods

harpo

 

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #8 May 16, 2009 8:39:25 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

the latest stage is a successful manifest make for a copy of distant stars without any manifests, the next stage is a test of manually merged mods to see if it works in sins.

harpo

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harpo99999
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Reply #9 May 17, 2009 12:31:09 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

quick & dirty testing in xp32bit is ok,next stage of testing is windows 7 32 & 64bit & vista 32 & 64bit, but I expect these to work as well as the xp tests as the base code was already tested on xp,vista 32 & 64 & windows 7 32 & 64bits in the galaxy manifest manager which had zero feedback for any dificulties with any versions of windows

after the vista/windows 7 testing I will be calling it as a beta program.

for the beta program release it will be by email so if you want it pm me with an email that can recieve a 100k email with attachment

harpo

 

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harpo99999
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Reply #10 May 17, 2009 12:49:14 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

quick & dirty testing in xp32bit is ok,next stage of testing is windows 7 32 & 64bit & vista 32 & 64bit, but I expect these to work as well as the xp tests as the base code was already tested on xp,vista 32 & 64 & windows 7 32 & 64bits in the galaxy manifest manager which had zero feedback for any dificulties with any versions of windows

after the vista/windows 7 testing I will be calling it as a beta program.

for the beta program release it will be by email so if you want it pm me with an email that can recieve a 100k email with attachment

harpo

 

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harpo99999
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Reply #11 May 17, 2009 6:38:43 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

it has now passed basic vista win7 & xp testing, so I am offering it to modders as a beta program, ie there might still be bugs/problems with the program and/or the manifests created by the program, but on my teseting in several large mods(that I tested by re-naming the manifest files and then creating new manifests) no problems have been found yet.

if any modders would like to help me test the program and possibly save yourself time creating the manifestsfor your mods pm me with an email address that can recieve a 100kb email & I will email it to you.

also assuming that I do have some beta testers for the program I will release the porgram as a download after 1 month without sny bugs being found

harpo

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harpo99999
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Reply #12 May 17, 2009 10:11:37 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I have been doing a bit more fine tuning of the program and further testing, including the creation of manifests for vanilla sins mods and also timing the complete process of finding all of the files relevent to each of the six current manifest types and creation of the correct manifests. on my main development machine it took 7 seconds to create the manifests for SOGE .9 and 9 seconds to create the manifests for distant stars beta 0.7. would you prefer to MANUALLY make the manifests in 20 seconds per file added or use a program to create all of the manifests in under 20 seconds?

harpo

 

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harpo99999
DANMAN3712
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Reply #13 May 17, 2009 10:32:52 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

OH MAN I WANT THIS!!!!!!!  Harpo, this would make my job MUCH easier!

 

DANMAN

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harpo99999
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Reply #14 May 17, 2009 10:38:41 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

danman if you want to help with the beta stage the please pm me with an email address that can recieve a 50kb zip attachment, and I did design it to help all modders including myself as I have been testing ideas from many threads in these forums and while I was only adding one of two files at a time, it was slow work

harpo

 

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harpo99999
Teal_Blue
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Reply #15 May 18, 2009 4:39:36 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

  Yes

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harpo99999
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Reply #16 May 19, 2009 7:41:07 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

just another update.

the latest beta version will automatically offer ONLY  the expansions that are installed, and I have made guesses as to the expansion2 & 3 names & folders, it also will support up to 12 manifests, and I will be adding all the changed items as the patches require. and a screenie of the menu for the manifest maker as it stands

[URL=http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=y5z2lewyjym&thumb=5][/URL][/URL]">[/URL]" alt="harpo's sins manifest maker b2" width="640" height="480" />

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harpo99999
ReiverTA
Join Date 04/2009
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Reply #17 May 19, 2009 11:35:57 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Any particular reason why you've limited it to 12? (I apologise, I'm still not hugely familiar with how Entrenchment does things, so...)

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #18 May 20, 2009 7:15:17 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

at present there are six different manifests in entrenchment

1 brushes

2 entity's

3 galaxy

4 playerPictures

5 playerThemes

6 skybox

I chose 12 as a guess of the likely maximum number of manifests, but it is a minor matter of re-designing the UI and adding the nessacery headers in the files. if I need to alter the program to support more it would probably take about 4 hours to do and test

harpo

 

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harpo99999
ReiverTA
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Reply #19 May 20, 2009 8:42:55 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Fair enough.

Oh, I am so very looking forward to this. The manifest files were really giving me a headache...

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #20 May 20, 2009 9:10:43 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Just re-iterating, if you want to help me finish the testing (beta) phase of the utility and are familiar with modding then please pm me with an email address that can recieve a 30kb email with zip attachment

harpo

 

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harpo99999
ReiverTA
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Reply #21 May 20, 2009 9:13:38 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Done and done.

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #22 May 21, 2009 6:29:23 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

just another update of the screen look

beta 5 of the manifest maker screen

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harpo99999
harpo99999
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Reply #23 May 22, 2009 9:19:23 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

just another little update.

one minor bug to do with running the utility on a machine that does NOT have sins installed fixed

and if no other bugs/problems/suggestions/ideas in the next 5 days I will be releaseing to ironclad AND my 3 download locations

harpo

 

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harpo99999
CursedSpirit
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Reply #24 May 22, 2009 10:07:29 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

great job man

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harpo99999
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Reply #25 May 25, 2009 7:53:50 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

one more update

if there are no further bugs found then I will be releasing the manifest maker tomorrow

harpo

 

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