Crispy on 29/6/2005 at 06:40
Quote Posted by ascottk
I've been messing around with some reverse engineering software & I've been looking at the T3Ed utilities. The IonShader.dlt & MatExport.dlu looks like dll files.
Very interesting! Enlighten me, though - what do those files actually do? :)
The more reverse engineering we can do to this puppy, the better IMO. :cool:
Quote Posted by Shockeye
can you also make it load DLL plugins
Sorry, I know thats a lot of work and would require you to release some sort of SDK, but I guess there's no harm in asking
The Lua scripting will be quite powerful. (It's a great little language.) I had planned to sandbox it somewhat to prevent malicious plugins, but I suppose that's not a huge concern given the small size and tightly-knit nature of the Thief modding community. Running external EXE files will be possible, but only through the interface. (That is, the Lua script itself will not be able to run EXE files; it will only have the ability to add menu items and toolbar icons that run EXE files.)
I don't see a whole lot of point adding DLL support, even though it wouldn't actually be that hard. If you can convince me of its usefulness, then maybe...
ascottk on 29/6/2005 at 07:55
Quote Posted by Crispy
what do those files actually do? :)
The IonShader.dlt & MatExport.dlu are plugins for 3ds max 5.1. The *.ms files are max scripts & those are compatible with gmax (the Discreet cheepo as in the free version of max) . I'd like to find out if I could modify the the plugins to work with gmax. I'm making a tiny bit of headway because the IonShader plugin is looking for an entry point in core.dll in the gmax directory that's supposed to be a max 5.1 dll. OllyDbg has shown me the error :thumb:
ascottk on 30/6/2005 at 04:32
Well, it looks like porting the T3Ed max plugins to gMax is not going to happen. The import table for the IonShader.dlt calls to a nonexistant function in gMax's core.dll. It seems as though the missing functions are only in 3ds Max's core.dll like ?SetProperty@MtlBase@@UAEHKPAX@Z.
What else sucks is that most of the plugins that come with T3Ed rely on the IonShader plugin. Besides, gmax doesn't have a built in renderer any. You can render with YafRay but it's tricky & I haven't been able to do it. gMax is pretty worthless for us unless you can get the exporters running.
mol on 30/6/2005 at 04:51
I'd passionately plea the case for the fixed Static Mesh viewport. I've bitched about it before (all I can do, apparently, in this case :( :tsktsk: ), but the way it works now really busts my chops; small viewport with a mis-aligned center so that 3D navigation in it is awkward, and directional lighting (why can't it be fully lit?) so that it's even harder to make out the details in the meshes.
If this can be fixed, my personal T3Ed productivity will soar.
Seeing how much programming talent there is among the editing community, is it really not possible (or let's say feasible, within reasonable effort) to make an external Static Mesh browser, in case the current one can't be modified?
Crispy on 30/6/2005 at 05:13
ascottk - Ergh, that's annoying. I used to have gmax... !@#$ing restrictions. :grr:
Why does it only work on 5.1? Maybe it's possible to patch it so it works on 3ds max 6 and 7; I can't imagine that discreet would *remove* functionality between versions, just change the API. Versions 6 and 7 are still not free, obviously, but they're much easier to find these days than 5.1 is.
I expect we'll have to reverse engineer the file formats involved, and maybe write our own plugins. (But didn't someone already do that?)
mol - Yeah, it is really annoying. Making it larger should be possible, but some of the rest might not be. I suppose we could simulate a mouse event when the window is created that turns the view around to face the correct way... :joke:
I haven't noticed the misaligned centre myself - but I don't see it being fixable. Unless we could somehow intercept the mouse events and change the pixel coordinates to fake it; but, again, that's really dodgy and would take a lot of work to get right.
An external static mesh browser is much more feasible, and indeed it would be relatively easy to integrate it into the editor (replacing the existing one). If someone writes the code for it, I'll stick it in. :thumb:
And hey, once I finish this project, I may even write it myself. It'd be good experience. It might even be fun. :cool: I want to finish this before getting distracted by too much else, though.
mol on 30/6/2005 at 05:35
Thanks, Crispy. I don't know if the center is really misaligned, I just couldn't describe it any better, but it certainly feels 'off' somehow. The navigation feels strange. Man, it's been ages since I really coded anything. I wish I had the skills to do something about this. Do you suppose anything can be done to the lighting situation, in terms of making the viewport 100% lit so that you could properly see the mesh? Having a toggle for fully lit / shaded would be even better! (Ha! See how good I am at simply requesting things while sitting on my ass twiddling my thumbs! :o )
Regarding the 5.1, it really doesn't seem to be available anywhere :( I don't need it now, but probably will in the future.
bukary on 30/6/2005 at 06:55
Thank you! :thumb:
Gestalt on 30/6/2005 at 07:07
Excellent!
Komag on 30/6/2005 at 07:20
:( I can't go to rapidshare while at work, it's blocked (maybe because it's out of country, dunno)
But the original static mesh view window is indeed offset, as though you are seeing only the top left one-fourth of what should be a larger window. Try replicating this effect by putting paper or books over your montor to cover the bottom and right halves of the 3D window, then move around in it and notice that it behaves just like the static mesh browser window.
