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#1 02/18/13 09:02

Samer
Member
From: Lebanon
Registered: 09/04/09
Website

Modding tools suggestions

Iritscen wrote:

... For some of us, modding is so much easier than it used to be that we think it's fine as-is, but compared to what some other people are used to, it's not necessarily good enough to encourage more Oni modding.

ltemplar wrote:

What regards modding tools:
- the perfect will be to have constructor, where we can add scripts, characters, furnitures, etc.
- and some sort of texture/model viewer-s..so we are not forced to lunch game every time when we want to see them in real time - especially where thous damn particles are placed on guns.
-also particle editor will be a nice addition , and will help us a lot.

Iritscen wrote:

...It might be helpful to start a thread for brainstorming new tools, although I don't think we actually have the coding help available to do that kind of work right now.  But we can at least make steps in the right direction, over time, if we know what direction to go in.


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#2 02/18/13 09:02

Dirk Gently
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From: Boston, MA
Registered: 06/12/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

I have a modding tool I have been working on for a number of months now. I am writing it in C++, and it is on my github account (https://github.com/samdmarshall/OniLevelTool). If anyone wants to help work on it with me then get in touch and we can work something out. I was planning on making this a basic modding tool engine, providing the backend to interacting with files and creating new content.

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#3 02/18/13 09:02

Samer
Member
From: Lebanon
Registered: 09/04/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

From my experience modding characters and textures and some animations this is what I think can be made a bit easier. (all of them have workarounds that we currently use)

For character and textures:
I usually modify the textures on photoshop flat and preview them on the model in xsi which works well enough.
However if there's an alpha channel for reflectivity the textures become transparent in xsi  .. So i have to test them in game to see them ..
A model viewer which supports reflectivity would be nice .. Or if neo could add an option in onisplit to automatically remove alpha when converting txmp.oni to image files.
Also the brightness\color differs a bit from xsi to in game so if doable a model viewer would be helpful.

For animations .. I talked about this before when giving a character animations from another one, example fury to comguy .. We have to adjust the height of the pelvis in the tram xml, this is very tedious .. You copy the values from the xml and remove the height tag then paste them in a spread sheet then have it add or subtract the differrence then put the height tags then paste the new values back in the xml. Script_10k had a tool that automatically helps with that. It would be also easier if it was given a gui and a drop down menu .. You then select a TRam and from a drop down menu you select source character and target character. I.e if you want to give comguy an elite move, you'd select the TRAM and from a drop down menu select striker as source and comguy as target and the tool automatically adjusts the heights.

Also for animations ...
throws need to be made easier, paradox had a tool that helps with that.

What I think can be most useful is having an environment to test models and animations .. Example a windowed oni game that only uses 1 level and syncs (rewrites the raw dat files from the oni files you're making without having to exit and reinstall)
now when we want to test something we make the oni files and a package and install that package and wait for it to write all levels and then test and repeat every time we make a change.

A tool that converts sounds to the format most optimal for oni would also be helpful, i spent a significant amount of time experimenting with audio conversion till i got the right result.

A mac\windows converting tool .. For sounds ..

A template for TRMAs (it will have lines : 1.pelvis 2.right thigh 3... Etc)

Last edited by Samer (02/18/13 09:02)


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#4 02/19/13 08:02

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

It seems to me that OniBrowser can serve as a model and level viewer for modders.  We just might need a simple bridge between their working DAE and the .dat file that OniBrowser wants to open, so someone can just hit a button to see his model as it would appear in Oni.


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#5 02/19/13 15:02

paradox-01
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From: Germany
Registered: 01/14/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Dirk, github seems to have server problems. Can you upload the program somewhere else (e.g. to dropbox) ?
I can't code C .. but I would still like to know what it's capable of.

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#6 02/19/13 15:02

Dirk Gently
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From: Boston, MA
Registered: 06/12/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

I don't own a dropbox, and not using VC would be a huge pain, if you pop into IRC i might be able to hook you up with a zip of the latest source. at the moment it doesn't do very much because i am still mapping out the different level resources. However once that is complete I should be able to export a .dat into individual .oni files. from there the plan was to be able to take that and rebuild new .dats or allow someone to stick an interface on it and edit the .dat directly without having to rebuild everything to test.

The idea was to make a modding engine, rather than a modding tool. This way anyone to interface it with a UI on any system and go with it. I will not be adding any UI frameworks to this project, once complete I will use the engine and attach a native OS X UI to it for modders, but the windows and linux UIs are going to be up to other people to maintain. I chose github so that people that want to make a platform specific front-end can make their own project then add the engine as a dependency, so that they can be developed in union and not be limited to what build someone downloaded when they started the project.

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#7 02/23/13 17:02

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

A suggestion from ViciousReilly is that we allow level artists to write scripts for their levels without having to know much about programming.  I guess some game engines make things easier than BSL.  One program we might be able to use as a model is Construct 2, although I haven't tried it.  But apparently the idea is that you build actions and connect them to objects in a GUI.  Just leaving this here as a note since I don't have time to investigate or write more details about it right now.


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#8 02/24/13 14:02

Samer
Member
From: Lebanon
Registered: 09/04/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

mmm working with onibrowser makes things a lot easier .. but it's still missing some features ... example not all info of the ONCC is displayed ...

so I thought a "simple" yet very useful tool could be a program that is able to open and edit oni files without us having to manually converting to xml ... so you can simply double click an oni file .. it opens you edit and can save it or save it under a different name .. (handles the conversion to xml on its own without user noticing) as is now you have to convert the oni to xml open it with notepad++ and then after editing and saving xml convert it back to oni.


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#9 02/24/13 15:02

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Do any of the Windows OniSplit GUIs add a contextual (right-click) menu for .oni files?  That would be one quick way to convert to XML and open for editing, although I don't know if going back to .oni would be as easy.  Depends on some of the vagaries of how the contextual menu works, which I'm not familiar with in Windows.

It's true that there's a lot of stuff that OniBrowser doesn't do.  I suppose the fact that it can't do something as simple as display a SUBT string in ASCII, but can display complex animations and whole levels, tells us that Neo's focus with this app was really only on the 3D side of things.  He doesn't seem to be interested in combining OniSplit's understanding of game data with the abilities of his OniBrowser GUI, so there's an opening for someone to do something there.

Ultimately what would be great is, not just an automatic XML converter, but a comprehensive editor that gives the user an intelligent GUI for editing each type of data and doesn't require the use of six other tools to make a mod.  So, for instance, it would understand how to present different types of data for editing, it would understand file links like ONCC->TRBS, could preview TXMPs and models, etc.  While I'm compiling this pie-in-the-sky wishlist, I might as well throw in smart BSL editing (syntax validation and inline help on commands/variables).  And the whole thing would be written in C/C++ with native GUI wrappers for Windows and Mac so it would be fast and independent of third-party frameworks.

Unfortunately, this would require porting OniSplit's and OniBrowser's C#, and maybe other code from other projects, and making it all work together.  Pardon me for engaging in such wildly wishful thinking, but I thought someone might as well say it, since I think it's the logical endpoint of the entire subject of "modding tool suggestions".  We've discussed it before in other threads but no one had mentioned it here yet, so I figured I might as well  cool


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#10 02/25/13 12:02

Dirk Gently
Member
From: Boston, MA
Registered: 06/12/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Is there a reason why we use XML? because that is one of the most horrible formatting schemes ever created.

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#11 02/25/13 13:02

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

What would you prefer?  And what's horrible about it?


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#12 02/25/13 13:02

Dirk Gently
Member
From: Boston, MA
Registered: 06/12/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

It isn't human readable, and it is a massive markdown nightmare. It might be universal, but it really isn't easy to use in the slightest.

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#13 02/25/13 15:02

EdT
Moderator
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: 01/13/07
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Why not adopt the Oni Tools version:

215_character_properties2.png

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#14 02/25/13 16:02

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Yes, that would be an example of a smart editor.  The problem isn't so much envisioning it as it is finding someone with the free time to build it smile


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#15 02/25/13 16:02

Dirk Gently
Member
From: Boston, MA
Registered: 06/12/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Iritscen wrote:

Yes, that would be an example of a smart editor.  The problem isn't so much envisioning it as it is finding someone with the free time to build it smile

Or the motivation -_-

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#16 02/25/13 16:02

s10k
Member
Registered: 01/14/07
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Indeed, I planned to use that beta guis as base for some tools with Vago. Thinking about sound import for example. Haven't got yet the time to do it although.

Last edited by s10k (02/25/13 16:02)

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#17 02/25/13 18:02

Jon God
Member
Registered: 01/17/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

EdT wrote:

Why not adopt the Oni Tools version:

http://ssg.oni2.net/subfold/bluebox/ima … rties2.png

If the editors to Oni all looked like this, and had less importing/exporting to do anything, I'd probably mess around a lot more with them.

my 2¢


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#18 02/26/13 08:02

Dirk Gently
Member
From: Boston, MA
Registered: 06/12/09
Website

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Agreed. That is the primary reason I don't mod, is because it makes the process so over-complicated to do a simple test. All I should have to do is modify one level file, then once I get that behavior working I can then export that and rebuild all my files with it.

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#19 03/01/13 18:03

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Modding tools suggestions

Iritscen wrote:

Do any of the Windows OniSplit GUIs add a contextual (right-click) menu for .oni files?  That would be one quick way to convert to XML and open for editing, although I don't know if going back to .oni would be as easy.  Depends on some of the vagaries of how the contextual menu works, which I'm not familiar with in Windows.

To be clear on what I was referring to, here's a contextual UI for OniSplit:
OSshell.JPG
The files are here if anyone wants to adopt them: http://gumby.oni2.net/shell/.


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