Sword of Moonlight > Devs
EXIT: Long time no update! (Sorry about that)
Holey Moley:
Feature Patch
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.6.zip
http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/日本語/最新.zip (Japanese)
http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/English/Neutral.zip
These are patch files for a potentially helpful commenting/annotation feature I've been working on (finishing up from when I dropped the project 3yrs ago) in the past two days. It also adds more aggressive categorization to the list on the right side of the image showing the big fat comment button below.
I've written more about this image here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=257.msg3255#msg3255) in this old topic/thread in case anyone's interested in it. It speaks to an eventual plan to add advanced programming to SOM's event system by tying this feature into the script/translation system, which can include normal open-ended "scripting" in the style programmer's prefer to these limited/clunky visual programming systems.
P.S. I'll probably get around to adding some balloon tips to this, and it shouldn't be hard to add a special style to the comment lines, I'm just not sure what style. Maybe they should be a little more gray? Bold? Or a certain color? I'm a little unsure.
Holey Moley:
Yearly GameFAQs update
I don't know how many people still read GameFAQs but I've committed to posting a yearly update there since it's one of the few places that has a SOM section and it used to be a major source for game stuff when I was still into games, mainly back in the 20th century. So that link is below!
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/958393-sword-of-moonlight-kings-field-making-tool/79828570
Holey Moley:
load time regression patch (important)
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.6.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/x2mdl.dll/1.0.0.2.zip
Edited: I've also updated these files (and code files) in the SVN (Subversion) repository, so SVN Update is another way to update to this patch.
Since I'm working on better loading maps I lucked into noticing that the Microsoft system (IShellLink) for extracting targets from "shortcuts" was roughly tripling the amount of time it takes for a game to start up since it takes about twice as long as it does to read a file. FYI the new art system introduced by this release uses shortcuts for timestamp files.
Luckily I figured out a different way, which is not online as far as I know, however it's perhaps uncommon to use shortcuts for things like this, so that's unsurprising. I wrote about this in a recent topic about map loading. (Edited: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=67.msg3267#msg3267)
I also added the technique to x2mdl for when it checks if it needs to extract textures from models or not, and this was another lucky find because I noticed that it was always failing this test owing to not equating slashes and backslashes in file system addresses. I chose to use slashes with the new models, however shortcuts use backslashes. I should've thought of this in the first place. This should speed up conversions when the textures are already converted. (Assuming reading a shortcut file is faster than writing a texture.)
This last bit is really questionable if I should even mention it, but last minute I also wanted to add something, to truncate the data in the MPX file to speed up load times, since normally it would have data for every entry (like all 512 objects) even if the slots aren't filled. This makes the files smaller and load faster. Another odd thing about MPX (and MSM) is the texture section isn't aligned on 32-bit addresses, and this throws off the rest of the file, so that many crucial parts are unaligned, and this isn't good for CPUs since they will run more slowly. It doesn't matter in the game because each section is copied into its own designated address in memory, however if the whole file were to be loaded into memory, these parts of the file would be unable to be used efficiently without copying them out, so it's important to align files. Most of SOM's file formats are so aligned fortunately. And not by accident. So it's odd these aren't. What I did this afternoon to fix this (going forward) is to add some blank textures to the texture section to pad out the extra space. I'm going to do the same for MSM files when I add MSM to x2mdl. I plan to do that sometime in the early parts of 2022. If I don't do it soon it's because things are dragging out... it's in the front of my immediate plans. (Edited: I just checked and found a note that SOM_MAP is sending the unaligned MSM data to Direct3D. Edited: I wouldn't be surprised if MapComp is doing unaligned reads too. If so converting the MSM files should speed it up some.)
Holey Moley:
SOM_MAP shift+drag patch
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.6.zip
I'm not sure how long Shift selection with the mouse has been broken, but I failed to include a fix in this release with some improvements to mouse input.
I should've dug into it, I couldn't think of a reason it shouldn't work, unless it had never worked. But that seemed unlikely, but there's many unlikely things in SOM. The problem turned out to be something out of left field. In inverting the sense of the Ctrl combo by default, I changed some code that used an unusual approach to calling this subroutine, via a register. I didn't think that the same register would later be used for the Shift test, but that's what was happening. I have a strong hunch this bug was only introduced in this latest release, but it's hard to go back and test this theory.
I'm trying to make this release a stable, long term release, since it jettisons all previous versions of SomEx.dll, so I've gone ahead and updated the binary once again (I wish I'd waited a few hours ago to do this, but I just found myself at the end of my day with enough time and desire to do a small task.) It would be nice to establish a long term release because this release broke from the past, so there's nothing to fall back on. However the next release--or maybe the one after--will have the same problem as this one when the MSM files are changed over like the MDO and MDL files are changed by this release.
Holey Moley:
Moratheia demo patch (and NPC skin bug)
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.6.zip
Update: I remembered last night after going to bed that there was a clerical error that broke the skin system (and caused everything to go haywire) so that this fix is not strictly limited to plain/legacy MDL models, but also affects the new MDL+MDO models. IOW this patch is required for "skins" but I'm not patching the TOOL folder because this is an advanced feature that SOM's own models don't utilize.
I missed some things for old projects not using the new MDO+MDL system like this (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=154.0) Moratheia 2.1 demo for example.
One thing is the "skin" feature of NPCs and monsters. Another problem pertains to this demo more specifically since its arm.mdl file (floating first-person arm) depends on the old behavior of ignoring "translation" movement on the root node of the arm's skeleton. To deal with this I had to tie the new behavior to the new "modern" bit setting in the MDL file. The new behavior subtracts the base CP from the node both to make it behave like the other animation type, and to be less counterintuitive. (Edited: being "intuitive" functionally means greater flexibility.)
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