simple machines forum

Woops, I forgot to upload the DLL files corresponding to the CSV files. They are there now.

I told myself I would hold onto this until I was done/ready to writeup a blog post. I will still be doing that, probably before the weekend, but I seem to be so full of enthusiasm that I need a release, and writing for the public is a good way to organize your head, and the unplanned micro/surprise-release ahead could benefit from some writing about it in advance.


I noticed during the last release just days ago that there were issues around the Windows 7/8 taskbar that I had not personally encountered because I keep most of my work files on a networked drive, which to this day Windows still treats as a second class citizen in the disk world--I wonder if it does the same for external drives, like thumbdrives too or what--and as such I hadn't encountered the pinning element since it doesn't work with network addresses, not even when they are "mapped" to drive volumes.


So I hastily prepared a patch to sweep all of the embarrassing stuff under the rug, and I thought that would be the end of it. But afterward I wanted to go a little bit further. I gotta admit XP is feeling kinda sub-optimal these days, and Vista had such a stigma I doubt anyone is using it, so I reckon 7/8 are dominant right now. 8 is like a puzzle box to me that I still can't believe anyone can use effectively for anything, but I know it uses the 7 style taskbar, albeit without the Start menu. So I wanted to seriously invest in this new feature set, also knowing that once Microsoft adds a feature that lasts more than one version of Windows then it is almost always sure to stay around... forever.


The new "pin" setup impose serious restrictions on applications that never existed before. There's nothing wrong with the way SOM works, but it's completely antithetical to the way the "pin" system works. Not only can you not pin the tools, the one tool you can pin is SOM_MAIN, and you rarely use it for more than half a minute before moving onto SOM_EDIT. So if you pin it then its pin slot will just be taking up space even after SOM has loaded itself up. And of course in our case, extended SOM_MAIN can't even be pinned, because it needs to go through a launcher.


Taking all of this into consideration I began trying different things. I'm pleased to announce that I'm really pleased with the results, which is nothing less than a complete rebranding for SOM, and also a window into its future development.


I've tried to gather everything I could into one screenshot to share. The one thing that is missing can be seen in screens there were provided along with the late patches. That is that all of tools are grouped together in one place on the taskbar...

Also I've added a Tasks--- section to the right-click menu which can't be seen. It just contains one entry so far called Setup. I may've posted a screenshot of this, I can't recall. I think I will probably add a Tasks submenu to the start menu so that you can customize the tasks to your liking.


I finally figured out how icons work, and have standardized them. Before some of the icons didn't even support the big view in the taskbar and icons were sampled differently in different places. The reason I think I could never understand icons is the obvious LoadIcon API is used to load "big" icons, which seem like they would've come later in Window's lifetime. Whereas the small icons used on windows must use the LoadImage API. It's totally backwards IMO. What's stranger is the constants for setting the icons are 0 for the small icon, and 1 for the big icon, suggesting small was first, even though LoadImage seems like an API that setup wise would've came well after LoadIcon, and the small icons use a system metric that is prefixed, but I digress. Naturally I standardized around the tools' icons. I think the sword icons could benefit from being remade from scratch, but I did improve them somewhat. The black shadow owes to the fact that they came from the original SOM_MAIN icon with a black background. The thinner black contrast comes from downgrading the 32x32 icons with transparency around the edges I think. 7 seems to have dropped the shadow effect on icons, so it would be better I think to have icons without a shadow. But they'd still need an outline so not to blend into the frames.


First things first, in order to have an icon that can be pinned, and because since 7 Microsoft seems to want to kill the systray outright by hiding all of the icons so that users must manually opt in without having any idea that the icons in the systray even exist in the first place! When opting out is super easy to do just by removing any systray icons you don't want. This leads me to believe that it's only being kept around because it's owed to application that depend on it, even while cursing those applications to not be able to expand their user base by virtue of new users not knowing where to find the application in the systray...

So in other words, SOM can't depend on the systray going forward, and while I'll continue to support it because I prefer it, there has to be an alternative. So the Pin slot I've given to SOM_EX.exe, the launcher, and it is designed to behave virtually identically to the systray icon.


This means SOM_EX suddenly becomes the entry point into Sword of Moonlight. I'd always intended that to be the case, I just thought it would be more of a minimize to the systray kind of setup. I'd made an icon for SOM_EX.exe that looks like the tool icons modeled after SOM_SYS's in fact, except I changed it to look like an ampersand, or & in a font that look like Ex. Because & means Et, so imagine the t turned 45 degrees...

I'm not sure why I made the icon, the file just needed one I guess, and it seemed like it would be fun to try. It never got used since the Start.bat file would assign SOM_MAIN's icon to the shortcut to SOM_EX in the Start menu. But now SOM_EX has to be assigned the Moonlight Sword icon, and so the & seemed even less worthwhile in hindsight. Except! for the fact that since the tools are all grouped together into one icon now, and the icon shifts from SOM_MAIN->SOM_EDIT, then it occurred to me that it would be better if SOM_MAIN's icon matched the other icons. So as it turned out the & icon was perfect for this purpose. So I've unilaterally decided to change SOM_MAIN's icon to that. Of course the icon is up to the language/theme pack.

The new & icon for SOM_MAIN helps to illustrate I think that this isn't old SOM_MAIN, and reminds users that SOM is extended. Plus since SOM_MAIN is the entry point to all of the other tools, the & prefixes them as well, as if saying this is SOM_EX. To be honest I would prefer to change the file name of SOM_EX, and probably will, but I don't know what to change it to. SOM is already taken...


It was around this time that I also had the idea to idiot proof a couple things. I added the big button seen in the screenshot to SOM_MAIN.exe so that if anyone is just poking around or trying to hard and so ends up running SOM_MAIN directly, they won't get far, and will be helped back on the right track. I imagine for people who are too socially awkward to ask for help, this might save some people from having a bad experience.

And in addition to that I followed through with an idea I've been debating with myself for a while, of having Start.bat run SOM_EX for the first time. Most installers let you decide to run the app after the installer finishes. I didn't want to give the idea that Start.bat is a launcher. Its real purpose is to setup the Start menu. But also my thinking was, some people might not even be able to figure out the Start menu, so at least this way they will see SOM in action at least once as a reward for downloading all of the files. Again these same hypothetical people are too socially awkward to just ask for help, and probably not at all persistent enough to be using software to develop anything in the first place, but hey, first impressions are everything.

EDITED: upon reading this it also occurred to me that Windows 8 doesn't even have a Start menu! So Start.bat may be the only way to get the program onto your taskbar and pin it there. 8 is truly insane. I find it very difficult thinking in terms of 8. It's a good thing only hypothetical people are using/trying SOM right now, or I'd need to be coached on how to smooth out the 8 experience, but I think this release should go a long way towards that, if not as far as 8 allows. Lets be honest, there's probably no way to smooth out 8.


The reason I decided to do this in fact was the way 7's extended taskbar works is the program itself needs to set it up. So until the program is ran for the first time the right-click menu is not populated. So I thought Start.bat can complete the process by running the program and populating this menu...

But what totally surprised me, and hadn't even occurred to me is first of all, this gave a perfect opportunity to at least show off once the ASCII art in the commandline as can be seen in the screenshot. But more importantly by running the program for the first time, it can actually complete the setup process by prompting the user to setup their language/theme and update all of their components. Which is something that feels more like part of setup than the initial run. My thinking is people might be surprised or let down at least if they are asked to update when running for the first time, even though that's how the PS3 seems to do everything! But if the update procedure is part of setup then they will be more comfortable.


Finally it was at some point during all of this tinkering that I realized the "Setup" program, SOM.exe is actually a spot on metaphor for the Dragon Sword. And because SOM needs to shutdown in order to manually update it (without chancing running into a lock) that is like the Moonlight Sword in its inert state (aka. the Dragon Sword) and so in order to differentiate the icons between SOM.exe and SOM_EX.exe's new icon (which up to this point were identical) SOM's icon could be like the Dragon Sword, basically a desaturated version of the Moonlight Sword. And I thought not only is this a cheap and easy way to make an icon, it would also be visually interesting when doing just-in-time updates since the software would startup with a greyed icon asking to be updated, and then become fully lit up when it's ready to go!


The only problem with all of this is there is currently nothing, literally nothing, to show for the SOM_EX program. It's a launcher after all. And what's more since 7 the program shows a thumbnail in the taskbar, even if it has nothing to show. As you can guess the default for nothing to show is not pretty.

And on top of this, the name for SOM_EX in the Start menu up to now has been "Sword of Moonlight". But not only did this title not look well to me in the taskbar, especially next to the more spartan titles, SOM, SOM_MAIN etc. neither is SOM_EX itself necessarily "Sword of Moonlight", even if it is an entry point. So that coupled with the way Windows 7 generates the name of apps in its extended taskbar forced my hand to totally rethink the Start menu...

So what I did, and this can't be seen in the screenshot, is change the names of the shortcuts to "Dragon Sword" and "Moonlight Sword" respectively, further embracing this relationship, and I think making a more enduring product in the process. However in the extended taskbar menu "Dragon Sword" is referred to as Setup, since that's its task, and its window title is SOM as you'd expect, not Dragon Sword. However that is its product description, since that is one way that Windows 7 generates the names of applications in the "extended taskbar menu". And likewise for SOM_EX.

And likewise just the same the window title. Not being "Moonlight Sword" that is. I tried different titles, but ultimately because the SOM_EX taskbar title is meant to be identical to the systray icon, I went with that. I changed what the systray icon says too. It now just says your username, so that's the title of the SOM_EX taskbar icon too. Your user name next to the Moonlight Sword icon, suggesting that it's your sword in hand. This is a detail that I think communicates and empowering message, but also it's something that's just a coincidence. The systray icon will need to reflect who the user is ultimately, so that's that.

The Windows 7 taskbar also has extra features I think that let you change its colour to signal different notification states, and it has a built in loading bar too, there may be other things as well. Actually, this gave me the idea that the jewel embedded in the Moonlight Sword is perfect for an LED like status indicator. So rather than modulating the colour of the sword to indicate status I reckon better to use the jewel, since the sword pretty much stays cyan anyway.

The red jewel comes surprisingly well contrasted in the 16x16 icon just by chance. I wonder if its single pixel would be visible enough if made bright red or green.


PS: The thumbnail visible in the screenshot is kind of a hack. To get it to display if must be drawn into the corner pixel of the display, which isn't reliable on multi-monitor setups, even though I hope that's going out of fashion since widescreen displays offer more than enough workspace (admittedly CRTs definitely did not) for the sane among us. So... basically the work I have cut out for me is to move the splash screen into SOM_EX one way or another, so that it can be displayed center screen, which ironically seems to be the only way to get the thumbnail to work (there's just no way to generate it from off screen.)

After this release there will still be multiple instances of SOM_EX.exe running, but the eventual goal is definitely to only ever have a single instance. It will just take more work to get there that hasn't even been scheduled yet.


PPS: About the screenshot. I don't use big icons like this myself, or grouping, and my taskbar is usually two or three times as wide as this, but I wanted to show it in more of a default arrangement, and to show off the glorious big icons. I don't know if big is still the default these days, but I am pretty sure taskbar on the bottom is still default and it's usually as tall as the icons are. I very much prefer titles in my taskbar and couldn't imagine working without them.

Also BTW, you can see my icon is named Michael. There will be a team based messenging service as the centerpiece of SOM_EX or whatever it will eventually be called in the future. But by default it will probably still use your Windows user name, and that was just the easiest thing to use as filler for now. Plus the contents of the registry depend on your username, so it's important to communicate "who" you are using SOM as I think. I very much don't like to hide implementation details from users. I think in the long run it's not helpful. Especially for applications that are geared toward software development.


EDITED: So in both places in this screenshot where it says "Swordofmoonlight.net->Sword of Moonlight" it should say "->Moonlight Sword" now instead. My intention is not to monopolize the Moonlight Sword here, but to contrast it with the Dragon Sword. Plus I do think that "Moonlight Sword" is just easier to ramble off than "Sword of Moonlight" as program names go. And Swordofmoonlight is already in the folder name, so it seems a little bit repetitive/silly to repeat it.

This morning I restored SOM_MAIN's splash screen.

I only noticed a little while back during this release cycle that it was missing. Because this release draws the big buttons on SOM_MAIN and SOM_EDIT's main screens at one point I needed to compare them to the original apps, and noticed the splash screen then. I'm pretty sure it's been missing from "SomEx" since forever...

Although I can't figure out why. Easier than figuring out why would be to just make a new splash screen (my assumption is SOM_MAIN's program uses some really unsanctioned trick to determine whether it's being opened anew or reopened by SOM_EDIT with it's close out button, and for whatever reason when running it through SOM_EX.exe that looks to SOM_MAIN enough like being run through SOM_EDIT.exe, and so it doesn't throw up its splash screen)

I wasn't going to put it back, because I couldn't think of a nice way to do a splash screen, since the program really doesn't take long to open, its not warranted. But it occurred to me in the meantime that FromSoftware's name is nowhere to be found on Sword of Moonlight, so I wanted to put it somewhere, but couldn't think of anything other than the splash screen.

The old way didn't fully cover SOM_MAIN and looked like it was drawing over the desktop. I know newer versions of Visual Studio do this, Microsoft's flagship application, but it looks bad IMO. Especially given SOM's circa 2000 overall presentation.

So what I did is stick the copyright from the King's Field start screen in the splash screen, since I reckon that comports with From's wishes. And added a frame so SOM_MAIN is fully covered by the original splash screen. I couldn't make the window appear to be active, ie. coloured in title bar wise. But I figure that it's actually better to not be active, since its an non-interactive window, and suggests that the program is not yet active anyway. It can't be moved and the cursor icon is an arrow-less hourglass or spinning thing on Vista.

Plus I made the splash screen show itself as soon as possible, so the application feels as responsive as it can be. It closes after SOM_MAIN's window appears, or in 3 seconds, or in the difference between the two. Theme packs can change the image and size, but can't change the information in the title bar.

I chose to use the toolbox style title bar, but on Windows 7 it appears the same. I haven't tested it on XP yet, but will have to before dropping a new release. I am finished with all of the work for the next release, but I still need to work on the Japanese EXE files in the TOOL folder so they will reflect the same enhancements so far made to the English language package.


EDITED: The coverage is not as much an issue with the new setup, because the windows fade in/out around the same time. A theme pack could probably live with a smaller splash image (and if the image isn't in SOM_MAIN's file then the splash screen won't appear)

EDITED: On XP the window appears active, but I also noticed that XP has some ambiguity around activity since its possible to make two windows appear to be active if you select a bottom window when another application is active. It could just be that my XP box is really funny, but it behaves in lots of ways that are really undesirable that I haven't been able to look at so far, which if I knew for a fact that all XP installs are the same way then I'd almost be ready to give up on XP altogether!

(I do understand this XP problem to a degree. It's shared with other older programs like Solitaire. I think if there is some way to make SOM's tools appear different program signature wise the system will not interfere with it ... presumably it thinks it's helping, but it really isn't. It is something I'd like to remedy eventually.)

Updated with second screenshot featuring a totally new, and much improved layout. The old screen was so cramped and full of negative space it was abysmal!

Here is a new development for the English language pack. This is the Neutral language pack, but I think I'll probably retain this when I go to work on a King's Field themed package in the future.

This is SOM_PRM, one thing that has always bothered me is the damage coefficients, how to represent them, mainly because everything is so damned cramped on these screens. I honestly don't think there needs to be two identical sections for attack and defense, the magic screen doesn't work that way, but I think it will evolve into every piece of equipment having both attack and defense capabilities (probably even item like capabilities too) that just makes sense.


Lately I've been trying to maximize real-estate for the sliders. So I'd decided by god, I don't care if 1,2,3 is used instead of names, there's just no room for names. I had thought about using balloon tips for the names a while back, but last night I thought about maybe a legend on each screen, but instead I realized it would be simpler to put the legend in the grouping boxes like so...

I was elated that everything fit, it wasn't a sure bet that it would. At that point I was happy with just 1,2,3,4 but I thought, lets see if this can't be made easier. So I think I've gradually warmed up to the idea that language packs should be intimately married to their fonts, and I'd decided that MS Gothic and this language pack are probably inseparable. So I decided to just see what symbol like characters I could find in MS Gothic.


You can see in the screenshot the 3 "physical" attributes all use rune like symbols, that are all made out of three lines, of roughly the same length. And they all pretty much match the implied characteristics of the attribute. It's fortunate because these are pretty much all of the three lined symbols in the font, and they all just happen to fit their parts.

Here, I will write them out. ≠ for the edge, or slashing. You can see the diagonal cut in the symbol. ≡ for surface area, or blunt force or whatever, you can see its like a square, or area. ＊ for the point, or poking or whatever. It looks like a spike coming right ate you doesn't it.


The main reason I chose to use symbols over numerals is I wanted the "magical" symbols to have a different quality to them, so that you can tell immediately where the dividing line is based on the symbol alone, so that it doesn't have to be illustrated explicitly. Which especially hard to do because of the odd number of each class.

For magics, they are easy to remember, alpha beta gamma delta epsilon. α β γ δ ε. They are by no means straight lines. The MS Gothic font renders them in an almost cursive way, so that they appear to be magical sigils of sorts, but simultaneously they can be non-fantasy symbols too, like they'd work in Armored Core to designate special kinds of damage, like heat, and ECM (electrical malfunctioning, suddenly I'm wondering what ECM stands for. It doesn't appear to be a real-world acronym)


I've always thought it would be better if symbols were used instead, since there aren't really words for what they mean. Demon's Souls uses symbols, albeit not good ones. This way there's no need to make symbols, or at least there are standard fall back symbols.

I think I'm going to prepare a micro release featuring usability enhancements for SOM_MAP's tile editor instead of drilling down on translation/script for the next release as I'd originally intended.

I don't think I've voiced that, but all year I've been working towards a suitable translation/script environment so I can make good on a promise to translate and take a look at Hearts Collide, but also because it's the logical next step.


Last night I dug into the guts of SOM_MAP's 3D painting subroutine so that a new toggle button could hide the contents of the tile from view except for the current selection. The trick was establishing a way to know what is being painted when so that it can be selectively displayed or not.

I'd like to keep this up, one thing I find lacking is you don't get feedback of the changes you make until hitting the Record button. I intend to change that so that Record is initially a disabled button, and becomes enabled once you've made a change, or in other words, its only enabled when previewing the changes you are about to make. Or in other words, WYSIWYG.

I think it's probably a good idea to initially disable the Record button on all screens, but you gotta begin somewhere.

Another problem that's always bugged me is the crazy coordinate system that is used for rotation. It's inadequate for using all of the available axes since by the time you move the third (or even the first) axis it's any bet what will happen. I think this has to change, even if initially it might make the event-based animations work differently (although for all I know they already do)


But what really made me want to tackle this right now, at this very moment, is I recalled that in game, if an element is rotated so that its vertical axis is not straight up and down then its clipping ("collision detection") is incorrect. So that's a straight up bug that like all of its buggy kind must be dealt with ASAP, period, end of story.


Another idea for a feature I have is a checkbox to unlock the X and Z rotation axes. Just like a safety lock. And it seems to me like the vertical sliders should be vertical, although that's up to the language/theme pack. Especially for the elevation, it's really unwieldy, and seems like it would work much better if it was extra extra long, in addition to being vertical.


PS: I don't think it would be hard to show more than 3x3 tiles in the setup screen. I don't think I'll work on that for this release. But it seems like if the multi-select feature was used on the map screen, then the tiles of the selection could then be shown in the viewer. Another feature that would be nice is a way to move to the neighboring tiles without closing the screen out. I think some kind of UI for that could be added to the information area. That could also help if the multi-select technique chose the wrong tile for its central focus.


EDITED: There is a screenshot of this work so far here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=197.msg1699#msg1699)

I spent the last couple days perfecting the automap system. Well I call it automap, even though I just learned towards the end that the save file doesn't track the exploration of the map, revealing tiles along the way. Although I suppose it's still an automap in the sense that you don't have to build it yourself.

There were actually numerous issues with the system, and that was even after the first pass at making it merely presentable (if you don't mind your frame rate falling off the side of a cliff) a while back.

I think it's still really useful for developers, and players if they want to add it to a game for their own use. I think it would be very useful as a compass item if it weren't for the fact that it reveals the whole map.

There are all kinds of possibilities for extensions around the automap, but for now I'm just glad to have one more feature introduced by From' in working order. It's always hard to say how many more original features there still are that need work. I find new ones all the time just when I thought there could be no more.


I changed the tiny square to an arrow. It's hard to guarantee that the points on the arrow will always fall square on a pixel. I'm not sure it's even possible to guarantee that. So the arrow is larger than the 3x3 square. And I'm quite pleased with the fact that it was very easy to make the point at the middle of the back of the arrow more transparent than the rest (the arrow is made by shifting the square around) so that the arrow appears to be a 3D cone, or at least it does on a white background (I suppose I could make that vertex itself whiter) and the pulse seems to flow towards the tip of the arrow as if it's pointing you in the right direction. Which is helpful since it's easy to confuse an arrow with a view cone.


PS: I also just fixed an issue with the full screen tints not quite covering the edges. I thought that was because the final transfer was off, but it was just the tints didn't go all the way to the edge. These fixes will be in the next release unless someone requests them. I guess I have to look at the regular maps now before I can do anything else. There'll probably be a follow post on that after a day or so.


EDITED: Here is a list of changes for posterity sake. There is an extension, do_fix_automap_graphic. The map is constrained to be proportionate, so it can only be 300x300, 600x600, or 900x900. The arrow scales with the map, except at 300x300, in which case the 600x600 arrow is used. Of course it runs at full frame rate. I thought it would disable filtering to make it more crisp, but it seems crisp enough as is.

I noticed just now that a lot of the graphics say "Making tool" instead of "Making Tool", so I went to check the website and noticed that it doesn't seem to be there anymore:

http://www.fromsoftware.jp/main/soft/som.html

Maybe it's a temporary outage, but I doubt it.


You can still browse the old site with the files in the web folder here (http://svn.swordofmoonlight.net/web/som.html) but I won't make that appear as a website on this site since it's not From's website here.

Of course you can open if you download it, and this (https://web.archive.org/web/20120216111746/http://www.fromsoftware.jp/main/soft/som.html) works for now. Sites can retroactively pull themselves though by blocking certain kinds of crawlers I think.  Presumably all of the images and downloads are also on archive.org, but I don't know.

There are no snapshots on archive.org after 2012.

Maybe the website changed its timestamp for each snapshot.

The biggest loss would be if From' isn't selling copies of Sword of Moonlight anymore.


PS: I'm still working on a visual SOM file editor. It's worked out surprisingly well. It also occurred to me that it's the perfect final tool for the core tool suite. It's standard icon will remain the same I reckon. It makes sense since the icon is an arrow pointing into a map that is same as SOM_MAP's icon...

It suggest that this is where you setup everything that goes into the other tools, mainly represented by SOM_MAP since that's where everything comes together.

It doesn't just edit the SOM file, it represents the entire project, so it's perfect for visualizing the entire project, and opening even more tools up that aren't available in the main SOM_EDIT menu. It can be used to open the advanced tools up for instance, right from SOM_EDIT.


EDITED: The preview image browser doesn't work on archive.org's snapshot. It works, but the larger images are not archived. I went ahead and sent the following email off as the 404 page suggested:

Webpage down,

http://www.fromsoftware.jp/main/soft/som.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20120216111746/http://www.fromsoftware.jp/main/soft/som.html

Does the below information remain valid?

商品名   ：   Sword of Moonlight 〜KING'S FIELD Making Tool〜
販売価格   ：   7,000円（送料・消費税込）
支払方法   ：   代金引替システム（郵便局）
購入方法   ：   ご希望の方は以下の記入事項をご記入の上、
E-mailにて shop@fromsoftware.co.jp までご注文ください。
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