[WIP] Zeus: Pre-alpha 1 release

[spahrky]

You are so cool

Friendly people are cool people

[Sparky]

You are so cool

Friendly people are cool people

I couldn't agree more.

Alpha 1 demo of Zeus, including an actor tag. nil, dirk and Zero advised I redo the window layout, so I am about a third-way through reading the Apple Human Interface Design guidelines to which dirk linked me last night. Please comment on what you see here already.

This application is compatible with intel processor computers and was built in 10.6 and also tested in 10.7; if you use 10.5 or earlier, please let me know if it opens.

nil helped me parse the float values, so that means total parsing of data types comes to:

bit mask flags (integers displayed with bitwise comparisons) (check box options)
enums (integers) (popup menu options)
floats (decimal numbers) (text fields)

Remaining are dependencies, which are strings, basically, so that's easy... and the others are easy also. Eh. I've given few details.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?74s9e8y38s6cbhn

[Sparky]

Today, I covered reading dependencies. For tags, I parse the tag string name along with the dependency and display both the tag type and the string as an NSURL file path. At some point, I'll add a Preferences window where you can specify the base tags directory. Otherwise, Zeus will by default assume your HEK tags directory is on your Desktop within a "tags" folder: ~/Desktop/tags . This is meant to be used in lieu of, or in substitution for, the HEK. Thus, since the base HEK tags directory is not kept anywhere in the files but is hard-coded into the HEK programs, the actual tags directory can be relocated to wherever you decide -- even in the HEK's default "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo Custom Edition\tags\" directory. But you would need to specify the base directory for your tags, wherever they may be, if you want to have Zeus be able to immediately recognize the dependency tags referenced within a tag or map.

The only other basic data types to cover are colors -- which "should" be easy -- and built-in structs, which I anticipate to be difficult. The ACTR tag type does not use structs, though, so that tag type is basically finished. I doubt I'll get much more done this week, though, but maybe by the weekend I'll have the ACTR tag finished and a Preferences window in place for a default tags directory.

So many lines of code....

[Sparky]

I am finished parsing the HEK .actor tag type; you can open HEK .actor tags now, and see their contents. According to the schedule, I'm working on saving files now, so that you can write HEK .actor tags. That will mean complete support for HEK .actor tags!

Preview release will be given after I incorporate a preferences window to specify your tags directory and add writing support to the HEK .actor tag type. Then you can play with it, so to speak, and let me know what you think.

[Sparky]

I plan to release a pre-alpha version on May 18th with full support for reading and writing HEK .actor tags. I already added a preferences window, but I should have it functional for this pre-alpha release also.

Any ideas about how to work with reflexives / structs? I'll probably attempt an actual c struct for each reflexive. That should be a little adventure. And also, color wells for colorRGB and colorARGB types.

Time Table Guess
Seeing as it took me like two straight months of work to put forth Sparky's Plugins for Eschaton, and seeing as it took me maybe a day of coding the .actor tag support, not including research, and there are 85 tag types... I estimate that Zeus should have complete HEK tag metadata support some time around September... but then again, certain aspects of this program take a while to research, so I'm guessing maybe August for the final alpha versions, October for the final beta versions, maybe I'll figure out the gamma versions by the end of this year, March 2014 for the final delta versions, and I don't even know what the heck if I even live that long...

[Sparky]

Pre-Alpha 1 release:
viewtopic.php?f=101&t=18588

The preferences window is there but nonfunctional.