Well, another year has flown by, and though I may look lazy I've still been tinkering away at my little map viewer.



Installation:
Download the latest version and extract it directly into your game directory.

Install the latest Java VM if you don't already have it.

Usage:
Run _BattleScapeEditor.bat to set things in motion. From there it controls much the same way as the original game, with these additional controls:

Esc: Quits.
F: Toggles fog of war.
L: Toggles lighting effects.
S: Toggles Scale2X. (slooooooow)
D: Enables various numerical displays.

With fog of war disabled, you can select enemy units and view their stats etc. You can also view psi stats for your own units this way.

Supported Stuff:
Displays pretty much anything the game would let you see, and some stuff it doesn't.

Stuff That Needs Work:
It's slow.

Stuff To Come:
Access to more statistics.

Old versions:
Initial release
Second release
(Download links removed).

Any feedback much appreciated, especially if you find a way to make it crash.

Update:
Viewer is now an editer. Moved thread to modding department and changed title.

Additional Controls:
You may now cut, copy and paste units, using Ctrl and X, C or V respectively.

A copied unit will have a "©" added to the end of it's name to indicate that it is a clone. Cloned units are the same as the originals, but will not return to base at the end of a mission - So be sure to make sure the original survives! If you cut and paste a unit, the first unit placed back in the field will be the original, and subsequent pastes will be copies.

Whenever you copy a unit you also copy his or her equipment, up to and including the ammo they had loaded into it.

The buttons 1 and 2 are used to cycle through the different ground tiles available on the current map, while pressing 3 reverts to saved. 4, 5 and 6 have the same respective effects with the western walls, 7, 8 and 9 with the northern walls, and 0, - and = with the tile contents (eg. Trees and hay).

You can also cut, copy and paste terrain by using Ctrl and S, D or F respectively.

Options Screen / Saving:
For completeness, in order to save your modified map you need to bring up the options menu. Although you can make changes to the settings the editer will always use auto-scroll at a set speed. It will, however, save your chosen settings with the map, so don't make tweaks unless you want them applied to the real game!

Stuff That Needs Work:
Same as in the first post. Unit copying is for small units only - While you can copy large units, this does not work correctly. Editer doesn't bother to check for unit/object overflows when you paste, so if you excede the limits, it'll let you know by crashing.

Stuff To Come:
Ability to modify fog of war/lighting/smoke/fire/stats for units, spawn items, turn units, and modify ammo counts.

I downloaded this before, But For some reson I wasn;t able to work out what it actually did. Although I did hit every key on my keyboard. I noticed the tile changes and at one point I noticed the whole screen turn a sort of patchy look...very weird, But I never the ctrl+c/v/x I never though about it really, plus when the "lights" come on I never look enough the map enough, hehe I kinada just though it changed the mission from night to day.
But after reading about it here I have foun some great uses for it now, mostly just to incease the amount of aliens around, apart from in terrer site..I dunno if it's just me or something but I have a hard time with terrer missions, it's not the aliens it the civllians The aliens seem to kill off like most of them within a few turns. I even thought about amouring them up to withstand a few shots, But since there is no zombie file I figured the zombie uses the same stats from whatever it was before. the idea of an insne zombie dude with 255 armour running around sounded annoying...anyway I've went on abit.
My point is I do like this editing. but what about maybe trying to add different weapons, like in the equip screen of a unit they key having a different effect mostly to do with items.

Anyway this works out to being a great editor with very useful effects.

Gah! First user comment in very nearly a year! It's enough to bring a tear to my eye!

Anyway. I rather suspect that zombies do have their own armor ratings, though truth be told I've never really looked into the matter. Given that they tend to be slower then their victims, I'd assume they also have different defense stats.

The "patchy look" is Scale2X. It attempts to "smooth" the image, modernising old graphics with the power of new hardware. Though it seems Java isn't the best language to attempt it with - My machine has trouble rendering a battleship, Scale2X or not!

I'll need to put a bit more coding effort into the inventory system before I can spawn items, but that feature is right up the top of the to-do list.

Update:
Statistic editer can now be accessed by entering the normal status screen with fog of war disabled. Program also randomises civilians and implements alien inventory screens, same as my uniform mod.

Additional Controls:
In the statistic editer, each statistic has a variety of buttons lined up next to it. The left most button returns the stat to whatever it was originally saved as, while the right most button maxes the value out (sets it to 255). The buttons inbetween raise or lower the stat by increments of either 10 or 1.

Many of the stats won't be familiar to non-hackers, so don't save over your old games if you're unsure what you're doing. A LOT can be learned by reading through the Unitref Wiki article.

Stats which lack descriptions do so because I don't know what they do. If anyone works any of them out, please post their meanings! While changing stats randomly may produce some odd effects in game, it shouldn't crash your computer, so feel free to tinker!

Stuff That Needs Work:
Same as before. Can't think of any new glitches.

Stuff To Come:
Ability to modify fog of war/lighting/smoke/fire, spawn items, turn units, and modify ammo counts.

I got a question, Do yer know where the weapon images are, the images used in the equip screen and the UFOpaedia?

I think they might be the BIGOB files however no viewer seems to open them right. Well..They kinda have to be them since the images of weapons used in the battles are HANDOB and FLOOROB.

Any ideas on how to open those files?

Update:

I should learn to quit giving up to quickly. Turns out the problem was a lack on Dot Net Framwork. After Installing it PCK Viewer 1.41 was able to open them fine. Although in saying so, I can only open BIGOBS.PCK in the units Dic but not any of the BIGOB_**.PCK files in the UFOGRAPH Dic. I guess it kind of annoys me,I wanna know what they are!..Of course they are related to Items and since they are PCK files they must be Images, But I'm Unable to open them to check..Oh well, At least I've got the Weapon Images open.

Daishiva's PCKView program is the best one for that.

However, it'll only open PCK files that have corresponding TAB files. Which means it'll open the bigobs file in the "units" folder, but not the multitude of bigobs files in the "ufograph" folder. I gather it also has trouble trying to create a new bigobs file.

The only other program I know of that handles bigobs is one that I've written. However, although it is functional, the average user wouldn't have a clue how to operate it (that is to say, there's no user interface at all).

Hence, if all you want is copies of the images, the best way is to look at the ones I put on the Wiki. If you want to change them so they appear differently in game, send me a copy of your versions and I'll send you back the new PCK files.

Oh....geez..thanks that would be a great help, I can view the BIGOB file but editing it cause the PCK Viewer to mess up the tap file.

I have the new weapon Images, They are named like "bigobs1" and so on, they just kinda slot into the number they are. Although I'm sure yer know but they like to count 0 so 1 it the second slot, But yer most likely know that.

Errrmm...Should I just Send yer the Zip file?

Thanks again.

Yup, just email it to me. Check my profile for the address.

I've been doing some playing around with this (for speed optimization). Load times are down by about 2/3rd on my system (1GHz PIII), and Scale2X is no longer *slow*.

Key change targets: Scale2X.java, PalImage.java, UnitDrawer.java.
* PalImage.java was just lifting a loop invaraint out.
* Scale2X.java formerly had rather extensive reevaluation of common subexpressions.
* UnitDrawer...stylebuster change: the switch operator is much maligned in coding standards. But very useful for performance here.

Other changes I did on my end did not result in drastic enhancements, although I believe they are formally faster.

Shall I prepare context diffs for you to merge in?

Ooh, yes, pretty please!

There are various coding thingies that I don't know about, and I've re-written huge sections of code over and over as I discovered better ways of doing things.

Though in the case of Scale2X, I pretty much just lifted the code straight from the official site webpage. I figured it wouldn't get any better then that so never read through it. Not that I understood what half of it meant until some time later, at which point I promptly re-wrote tons of my own stuff...

I've got a vague hunch that I've re-written the unit drawer sub already, but I dunno if I actually made it that much faster. The original version was just a mass of repeated code. I also need to prevent it loading images for non-existent races, as that's just a waste of time.

Sent by three distinct PM's. Feel free to ask questions.

I wasn't trying to carefully emulate your style, and mine has a few quirks...a blend of Ellemtel and GNU, with a few enhancements for C++.

Good good. I'll read through them as soon as I get a chance.

I have been using your editor on and off for a while now BB. Could you write up a readme file for it with the different commands and buttons used? I wrote them all down but still feel as though I'm not using the thing to it's full potential.

My wishlist:

1. The ability increase the size of the editor screen beyond 2x. Don't know if that is possible, but it sure would take the strain off my eyes.
2. The ability to cut, copy and paste smoke and fire. I'm working on testing out smoke clouds and this could really come in handy.

- Zombie

Increase the size of the editer screen? I'm not exactly sure what you mean about that, at the moment it covers nearly all of the screen space, with the exception of what the toolbar covers...

If you mean mess with the resolution, increasing it would fit more stuff on screen, but slow it down. Furthermore, that wouldn't help eye strain.

Decreasing it would... Well, you'd barely fit anything on the screen at all!

As for copying smoke and fire about, I'm afraid that's a tricky one. I simply don't understand how smoke works yet. I can scatter both smoke and fire about the map at will, but I cannot for the life of me get smoke density to work.

The current explanations of SmokRef and SmokBit don't address the density matter at all.

But for all I know, maybe it isn't even saved. I haven't done some tests for a while.

Update:
Smoke code no longer faked. Can now be manipulated by editer.

Additional Controls:
You can cut, copy and paste smoke and fire using Ctrl + W, E or R respectively.

The D button can be used to change the way smoke and fire displays. Press it once to view the "density" of smoke. Press it again to view the turns remaining on each patch. Hitting it once more returns the view to normal. I'm afraid a similar feature cannot be implemented in the real game, because different smoke densities share sprites - Check the Smokref Wiki article for more info on this.

Select a tile and press W to raise the timer on a given patch of smoke, or add a new one if the tile was empty. Q lowers the timer or removes smoke. E and R function the same way for fire.

A readme file has been added to the archive containing all the instructions for the editer. It's mostly a copy'n'paste job from this thread, but I'm pretty sure I didn't leave anything out.

Stuff That Needs Work:
Lighting code not 100% just yet. The inventory screen has had some work on it but is still not fully functional. You can pick items up with your cursor, but you cannot put them down. This does not trap you in the inventory, however - The usual methods for leaving still work, and the item will be returned to its original position.

Stuff To Come:
Ability to modify fog of war/lighting, spawn items, turn units, and modify ammo counts.

Yeah, I've still been working on this thing.

Update:
Inventory system now nearly fully functional (ei. "fully" with a cosmetic glitch or two). Item editer/spawner now implemented (press "i" to access it). You can add/remove items from the battlescape, or edit their ObData records. Also the ability to view route nodes by pressing "n".

Stuff That Needs Work:
Lighting effects are not 100% accurate. Boosting the timer for smoke/fire too high can cause a crash. Non-serious glitches in inventory management. Dropped items end up at their owners feet (even if there's no ground there).

Stuff To Come:
Planned improvements include an overhaul of the unit editer (resurrection etc), and global map edits (removing fog of war from the save game, bulk mind control, etc).

Update:
TFTD support, screenshots work too (hit F12, they're saved in GIF format).

Stuff That Needs Work:
Non-serious glitches in inventory management. Dropped items end up at their owners feet (even if there's no ground there).

Stuff To Come:
Planned improvements include an overhaul of the unit editer (resurrection etc), and global map edits (removing fog of war from the save game, bulk mind control, etc).