The one tool I know of (heh, I built it) is "chunkie" - https://github.com/inkyblackness/chunkie
It is part of the now deprecated "deck" release: https://github.com/inkyblackness/deck/releases/tag/v1.3.2

I've never come round to provide all the import/export functionality into hacked, so there are still some functions here and there in "deck" that aren't supported by hacked.

ss-specs have them documented: https://github.com/inkyblackness/ss-specs/blob/main/media/Palettes.md#pixel-animation--palette-looping

Tried this just now, but the extracted sprites seem to be really low-res and I was also looking for a way to import into .RES files too

EDIT: Apparently that's what they're supposed to look like? I guess EE just uses the Mac sprites or something by default

EDIT 2: I'd also like to know how it manages to do the palette cycling animation on graphics like the Rail Gun and the Ion Beam

TheNateIf you are referring to the sprites of objects that you see in the world, those are in the "Objects" window.
If you are referring to the "2D" graphics of the muzzles, those aren't available in the editor. You'd need one of the exporter/importer tools for that.

What would be the best tool to extract those?

How do I find and extract the weapon sprites? I looked through bitmap and texture windows, but I couldn't find them

Oops. Thank you for the heads-up. I seem to have uploaded the wrong binaries.
I'll update as soon as I get to my dev laptop

HackEd v1.8.0 has been released.

This one is again in the light of usability - with a lot of internal rewiring going on.

It's been sitting for several months already and I wanted to include more, yet I should rather do smaller releases (and more frequent) than sitting on several features at once. For instance, I wanted to include a better orientation view for level objects - though I failed to nicely show this - especially since various objects don't make it easy as to what their default orientation is. Cameras, for example, are oriented West by default, while buttons are oriented South.

And no, so far I do not intend to create a mini-renderer, showing a 3D section. There are way more features (and internal refactoring) pending before I enter the third dimension in the editor.

...and as answered on the NDS discord: One of the next steps is to have a project selection within the editor. I'd like to avoid the need for users to copy around the binary files.

My goal is to get most the things for one project be in its own folder, so that it can then be version controlled. I needed to start somewhere. Right now we have an "undefined" project that the editor needs to store. As soon as the concept of a project is implemented, then its details can be saved wherever you want, and the central place points there as the "last project". A project is more than just a mod path, so that's not the same.
I took this inspiration from the Sublime Text editor, where you can have some "undefined" project, that is restored when reopening the editor. When you save that project (in a folder of your choosing), then you can close that project and open another.
Right now HackEd only supports "undefined" projects, which is more than it had previously.

I believe we are on the same page as to what the editor should be doing eventually. Sadly, with only a few hours per month available for this pet project, the steps are small ones.

I hope that the benefits of the current solution still outweigh the drawbacks it currently has. For example, I doubt that the different workspaces you currently have need a different list of static files.

I already pinged you on the NDS discord. I'm not a fan of centralized settings files in any software ever. I prefer instanced workspaces rather than this. Where the setting file is located in the same folder as the executable. Hopefully there will be a solution that allows instanced workspaces in the editor versions going forward.

Thank you for the requests. Adding text-input fields would probably address a lot of this, yes.
As for the different units for height/rotation: That's because the engine itself uses different base units for these things (Plus, these sliders are for both new archives, and savegames). Only degrees are the "common" abstract unit here.
I'm adding the requests to the list of usability, which I'm now working on - slowly.

I have some recommendations (annoyances) for the sliders in the Archive - Game State Window:

Hacker Position X,Y,Z,Yaw Sliders:
--------------------------------------
Spawning hacker dead center of a tile is impossible. To start hacker in the center of tile 32x32 would be 32.500 for both X and Y value. The way the sliders are right now does make setting this value impossible because it changes the raw value by 000001. Why would anyone want to spawn hacker at game start in the upper right corner of a tile?
My suggestion is to fix the X,Y sliders to 0.500 or 0.250 steps. So if anyone ever wishes to spawn hacker between two tiles, they can (but I highly doubt that).

Z slider: Make it conform to the values for setting F,C heights of the Level Tile Window.
(I know that depending on level height the incremental values change. But maybe having them set to 0.125 steps makes it more precise.)

Same with the Yaw slider. Make it conform with the values found in the Level Object Window Z rotation slider.


This one is hard for me to explain. I try regardless:
---------------------------------------------------------
When setting floor heights and adjusting slope heights, you can see via the green outline between tiles if they are on the same height and go into each other seamless. This makes setting floors with varying slopes very easy.
BUT this does not apply to ceiling heights! Having a setting that allows switching back and forth to check if ceiling heights and slopes go seamless into each other would be much appreciated.

OK, I've investigated further, thank you for the example files.
It seems there's a change in the engine's behaviour. I'm trying to contact Nightdive devs about this on Discord. I don't know how and when this will be fixed.

@szmotsu, I had a look at the .res file - I could not find any image in there - which MFD Bitmap Index did you replace?
Perhaps also, send me the image you wanted to import, so I'll try to reproduce it on my machine.

Hello @szmotsu, thank you for the post - and it's great that you are picking up SS1 modding

As for your question, I'd expect bitmap editing to work, yet since it hasn't been touched in a while and automated tests are quite lacking in this area, I have no current proof.
When you say "ending with error" - which app is reporting an error, the editor, or the engine when you load/use the mod?

I haven't worked on it, but would like to continue.
Ask away

GameState editing! HackEd v1.5.0 has been released with the capabilities to change the game state - even the starting state for fan missions!



The two major features:
First: Allow for GameState override for fan missions - let the protagonist start on a different level, with different inventory, and also have the variables have a different value.
Sadly, this is only for supporting engines, which currently is only the Source Port. Shockolate does not support this yet, and has received a feature request. (Thinking about it, perhaps this could be my first ticket to finally get hacking on there as well...)

This feature also allows for "New Game Plus" missions! To get people started, I created a template project, available here.

Second: Load and edit savegames. This can help struggling players, and also aid in looking for another case of "deleted plot items".

[edit]Oh, the static resources can now also load the source port "sshock.kpf" file, which is a ZIP file in disguise that contains all the resource files.[/edit]

In other news, since I was working on the "mod-examples" project, I updated both the "Cortex Reaver Challenge", as well as the "Museum" missions to have mission.as files for Source-Port.

Since I also figured out a way to let the Source Port load mod/mission files without having to rename the resource files, I documented the recommended project layout in the Wiki as well.
This allows to run the editor and the engine in parallel, without the constant need of renaming/copying files.

What's up next? I have no idea. There are still things like editing of 3D objects or fonts missing, yet there are also a many many feature requests from users. Next to my own unhappyness of the internal structure to "easily" implement these feature requests... All combined with little time to follow up on this.

Pony tail seems a little short, but otherwise not too shabby.  I'm not sure how I feel about it but I spose it's cool.  Do you have the pain sound separate for download?

Hello there, Anon, thank you for your message. And yes, you are in one of the right places
First of all, I'm with you, the whole thing could be way more performant. Lack of "optimized graphics thinking" and "feature/time pressure" are probably the main causes.

I don't remember precisely why I'm using OpenGL 3.2, at least it's one of the earliest versions to properly support the "core" profile. It might be because I wanted to make use of single-color-channel textures to have palette bitmaps be rendered by the shader. If memory serves right, this is not available in earlier versions. Sure, things can be handled differently.
As for overkill: The editor is surely not using the full featureset of that API. Though, the API itself is probably hardly the issue. I'm pretty sure if I were to port the usage to, say, 2.1, the performance would still suck (if not worse)

I believe all of the versions draw a lot of resources. The main culprit is the implementation of the map renderer, which needs to render the 64x64 tiles with all the objects.

I'm sorry I can't help you further. I also can't tell you when I would be able to tackle this. There's a lot of things to do, and little & undeterministic free time available for this hobby project.

More requests

I'm in need of game variable editor (initial values).
It would be nice if you could add name/description to them and it would show in the action.
List of objects (in all of the levels) that use that variable would be very helpful.

Reordering of textures.
Indicator to show what textures can be used as floor and texture
(I had to reorder some textures to be able to use them as floors or ceiling)

Show sprite in object editor and in the drop down to select object type that you want to create. If there is no sprite the editor icon could be used as fallback.

Bug:
Door access level names doesn't seem to match names that are shown in game.

More requests:

• Mirroring selected (textures, slopes, moves selected objects)
• Rotating (+-90 deg) selected (textures, slopes, moves and rotates objects)
• List of objects in selected tile. (Sometimes it is necessary to have multiple objects on same XY and selecting is cumbersome)
• Show object id:s in map icons
• Rendered 3D objects (bounding boxes would be enough)
• Arrows to show object orientation in map.
• Tile floor&ceiling heights shown in map (and corner/side heights for slopes) Maybe match texture view setting for floor/ceiling heights?
• Use keyboard to set object property values
• Use mouse to select object from map or list in object id references (traps and doors).

There are also lot of special cases that needs custom value editors, such as screens.

I have been slowly doing FM. That's why I'm posting these

Ok, codesploring time....

AI Moods:
#define AI_MOOD_FRIENDLY   0
#define AI_MOOD_NEUTRAL    1
#define AI_MOOD_HOSTILE    2  Josiah: seems to force enemy into combat state
#define AI_MOOD_ISOLATION  3
#define AI_MOOD_ATTACKING  4

AI Orders: //Josiah: Oh interesting how in the code it is treated like SHODAN giving orders
#define AI_ORDERS_GUARD    0     // hang out until player comes around
#define AI_ORDERS_ROAM     1     // wander about
#define AI_ORDERS_SLEEP    2     // do nothing ever until awakened
#define AI_ORDERS_PATROL   3     // back n forth between 2 points
#define AI_ORDERS_HIGHWAY  4     // follow invisible highway
#define AI_ORDERS_NOMOVE   5     // like guard, but will never move //Josiah: I guess like a turret mode, I wonder if any cyborg assassins use this?

Hmm...critters can sometimes be flagged with AI_FLAG_CONFUSED which is treated the same as AI_ORDERS_ROAM but critter is more impatient to wander when confused.  I guess this is a possible result of disruptability of some weapons?



Hang on what's this?!
if ((rand() & TRANQ_RAND_MASK) < TRANQ_RAND_LEVEL)
         {
            objCritters[osid].flags &= ~AI_FLAG_TRANQ;
            if (CritterProps[CPNUM(objCritters[osid].id)].flags & AI_FLAG_FLYING)
               apply_gravity_to_one_object(objCritters[osid].id,0);
         }
Does this mean that a stunned flyer will fall?  Need to test this.

Hey so I'm using this to determine enemy states and positions as I go through and place enemies for Citadel, at least, following the original in part.  I'm not 100% sure what each enemy state means and can't find an explanation.  Also, the roaming behaviour is random?  Or patrolling to specific cells?  Or what?  Any help is appreciated or pointing out the particular source code files for critter behaviour.

Lots of old and new properties. Will take a time to get used and figuring out how exactly some of them affects things. (especially now that I do a sshockmodding break). Maybe I can upgrade my weapon mod with the new found possibillities.

What's left is being able to edit 8way critters and door animation frames. Etc.
3d model im/exporter I dont even talk about. Cuz friend told me the format is archaic custom made stuff. Not sure how much that is true.

The project window will show in its title bar: how many files need saving, and after a few seconds after a change, a timer will appear that will cause an auto-save when reaching 0. This timer is reset for each further change you make. By double-clicking on the title bar of the project window, you can "minimize" this window to just show the title bar.

Yeah I see it now. I expected I would see the message in the main menubar, but it was in the Project titlebar. This is correctly documented in the wiki and you said it as well. I always closed the project window, since I don't need it after loading the mod and it seamed in the way (before I figured you can fold it in).

Hey-o @datiswous

I just reorganised and restructured the wikipage for the archive window. I do hope its more clear this way to understand what Clear and Remove do. It's not perfect. But if you think that you understand it better how it is now, please do tell.

https://github.com/inkyblackness/hacked/wiki/Archive