TOAWxml Editor

[76mm]

Hey guys, I am hard at work on the Event Editor interface, and making steady progress.

Once that is finished I'll turn back to GUI improvements and maybe Lobster's favorite save/import unit feature [8D]

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Hey guys, I am hard at work on the Event Editor interface, and making steady progress.

Once that is finished I'll turn back to GUI improvements and maybe Lobster's favorite save/import unit feature

I'm petty sure that I can speak for the entire community when I say that we really appreciate your labors and your product has made our lives a lot better so we thank you.

[sPzAbt653]

can always go back to 4.1.0.3

or TOAW III, but we shouldn't have to.

I'm wondering if there's going to be a TOAW V now.

If it's going to have the same result as IV, do you really want a V ?

[Lobster]

If you look at the twists and turn in the road from 3.4 to 4.1 I'd say the chance of a TOAW V is Slim and none. And Slim left town. [:D]

Edit: Unless something drastic happens.

[sPzAbt653]

I think you are too pessimistic. If we follow history since 2006, then it seems like we will have V in about 5-7 years from now. It would also seem that unless there is some change in the course of development, V will cross the finish line much the same as IV, with fresh paint but late and on two flat tires and a misfiring engine. I don't think I'm being overly harsh or dramatic either.

[76mm]

I expect to have a first draft of the Event Editor ready within a few days. I'm testing it of course, but given the sheer number of permutations I don't see how I'll be able to test it exhaustively. Any volunteers to help test it a bit before I post it to the forum?

[Lobster]

Maybe the best way is to post it and let people find stuff as they go along.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Lobster
Maybe the best way is to post it and let people find stuff as they go along.

Well, that's what I was hoping to spare people. Oh well, I'll just take longer to test it more thoroughly myself and release it when I think it is ready.

[Zovs]

I can test next week, out till the 10th.

[76mm]

OK, thanks, let's see how things go, I might be finished by then anyway!

[larryfulkerson]

Here I am trying to mod my scenario and I've run into some values I'm not sure what to do with. Anybody know what "NEXT" and "STATUS" do for a specific unit? I'll look around some more, see if I can't figure something out.

[76mm]

Hey Larry,

The "NEXT" attribute is the Unit ID of the next unit in the same hex as the relevant unit. I'm almost certain that you can ignore this value, because it will be auto-regenerated when the game is loaded (although you will get a message in TOAW to the effect of "'Next' parameter is incorrect, it will be fixed.")

I'm also in the dark about the "STATUS" attribute, although I'm pretty sure that it is auto-regenerated as well.

In other words, I would ignore both of those attributes.

I've asked Ralph about both of these values, but haven't heard back.

[willyums_slith]

Thanks for creating this tool - it is exactly what has been needed! Thank you.

I am though having trouble exporting the .eqp file needed to use this tool with a couple of scenarios I've created where I've added additional equipment. Using the command in the game Editor drop down generates the standard .eqp file (with just the T64 as additional equipment). I can't work out what I'm doing wrong or whether I should be pointing the XML Editor to a different location.

Looking forward to a usable Events Editor - my labour of love is a very large scenario which I've been building for some months; the thought of trying to script the events in the standard editor makes me feel physically ill...

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: willyums_slith
I am though having trouble exporting the .eqp file needed to use this tool with a couple of scenarios I've created where I've added additional equipment. Using the command in the game Editor drop down generates the standard .eqp file (with just the T64 as additional equipment). I can't work out what I'm doing wrong or whether I should be pointing the XML Editor to a different location.

Sorry, I don't really understand the issue...you should be able to load any functioning .eqp file into TOAWxml; I've tried it with several files and didn't have any issues. What exactly are you "exporting", from where, and how?

ORIGINAL: willyums_slith
Looking forward to a usable Events Editor - my labour of love is a very large scenario which I've been building for some months; the thought of trying to script the events in the standard editor makes me feel physically ill...

I hear you, I could not deal with the original event editor at all. I'm very close to finishing my version; I came across some issues during testing and haven't had time to work on it much in the last couple of weeks. Hopefully within a couple of weeks...

[r williams]

Thanks for coming back. I think the issue was with naming the .eqp files the same as the scenario I was extracting them from - had another try and have got it working - didn't want to lose my various separate nationalities of Modern Infantry, AIFV-Milan and other carefully crafted equipment gems.

Will block the time out now for the arrival of the Events Editor!

[Edit: Posted under the wrong log-in - I'd posted the previous query above]

[76mm]

OK, I've posted an updated version of TOAWxml which includes an Event Editor. Here are a few screen shots; it has changed little since the previous screen shots.

Here is a basic list of events:

[76mm]

Here is a view with the treeview in expanded mode. Note that the values shown under each event in the expanded tree are the raw XML values, which can be confusing for two reasons:
1) Sometimes you need to add one to the XML value to get the in-game value; and
2) The XML export often spits out XML data which is irrelevant for the specific event (artifacts left over from other events, etc).

These issues are addressed/corrected in the event data shown in the right panel.

[76mm]

You can also filter the events by their trigger or event. If you filter by trigger, the results will also show each event's effect, and if you filter by effect, the results will show each event's trigger:

[76mm]

Finally, when an event involves a unit or formation, you can select the unit/formation from the OOB tree rather than typing in its name:

[76mm]

Anyway, let me know what you think, if you have any suggestions. I did A LOT of testing for this version, hopefully got rid of most of the bugs but am sure that I didn't catch all of them.

As you're using the event editor, please let me know if you get any crashes, incorrect data being shown, data not being saved, etc. To be of any use, I will need ALL the information about the relevant event, and to know what you were doing when the problem occurred. If I can't reproduce a problem, I can't fix it...