[WMCoolmon]

VP Combiner

Pretty straightforward - add the names of the VPs you want to combine into the Sources box, add an output filename into the output box and click go.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Only works with files in the same directory as the EXE. (NO LONGER TRUE AS OF EDIT)
  
• VPs can take a VERY LONG TIME to build - this varies depending on the size of the file, and the amount of memory you have.
• Wildcards can be used to add multiple sources (ie mv_*.vp to add all mediaVPs)
• Loosened qualifications of directory, so derelict.vp would work
  

[Kazan]

did you write all the code for this yourself

and what purpose do you see in splicing VPs togeather

[Goober5000]

Cool.

[kasperl]

what does it do when it finds two ship tables with different contents?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kazan
and what purpose do you see in splicing VPs togeather

It would be quite useful when you have multiple VP files you need to turn on and off (e.g in the satalite campaigns for inferno and TBP)

[Kazan]

*rolleyes*

THAT'S WHAT -MOD IS FOR

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Kazan
did you write all the code for this yourself

and what purpose do you see in splicing VPs togeather

Yep.

It'd be handy for the mediaVP, and it was the easiest thing to do to test all the loading/saving functions. The code is fully capable of adding individual files or directories (In fact that's what it does to load the VP) it's just harder to translate that into a GUI frontend.

Originally posted by kasperl
what does it do when it finds two ship tables with different contents?

It will use the first one it finds, using the order of the sources in the listbox - this is currently alphabetical.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kazan
*rolleyes*

THAT'S WHAT -MOD IS FOR

Credit me with some sense.

 -mod doesn't work when you need the VPs of something like TBP to play one of the campaigns based on it like In The Beginning or Heat Em Up. In those cases you're back to renaming vp files and Data folders again.

[Kazan]

karajorma: ah.. we should makde it allow 'mod stacking'

[karajorma]

I agree.

It's not a huge problem yet. There are only 2-3 campaigns out for TBP and only the one released for Inferno IIRC but more are on the way

[Flipside]

It'll also be handy for modders who want to combine together several peoples work, the modders/fredders etc would simply VP their own work in the correct area, and the one person merges them all together

Tables would probably have to be added manually later as Karajorma said. I guess while I'm starting to learn C++, I might as well make a little project for myself of a more flexible way of editing tables, and inserting them into ships.tbl or weapons.tbl etc. Ah well... maybe one day

Very very useful indeed! Thank you

[WMCoolmon]

Updates:

• VPs will build much faster
• Added a warnings window that will tell you if files are excluded
• If an error occurs, the location of it is given in the caption

Edit: Err, I ran out of webspace and my ISP cleared the file, if you had any problems downloading try again.

Today's final addition:
A preview box! :D

Tommorow's planned additon: An update button, so you can select a file from a VP and selected an updated version to use when the VP is compiled.

[Flipside]

Excellent to hear!

Really good to see more tools

[Kazan]

what GUI toolkit you using

[WMCoolmon]

The base Win32 API functions.

[Kazan]

Yikes! I did that for PCS -- I highly advise you to learn WxWidgets

[WMCoolmon]

Newest version

I had a hectic Friday, testing today...here's the new version.

The bad news: Removing sources is faulty
I did some heavy re-coding, but the added memory-recovery functions aren't working properly or something. Clearing still works, though.

Edit: Files now save properly, so this bug is effectively fixed aside from the extra memory it takes up. I'll keep on looking into this...

If the file count increases when you remove something, or something Bad happens when you try to read the outputted VP using another program, clear the source list and start over.

Stuffs

• File icons in list
• Updated files have a * next to their name, as do dirs with updated files
• You CAN update files
• Files counter
• Plain icon with name RC1

[WMCoolmon]

Mucho updates:

• That...BUG...is fixed. After about 6 hours of debugging, I finally figured out it was because I was passing a pointer to a pointer...
• You can update files (right-click)
• You can also extract files(double-click or button)
• You can now browse for sources
• Ditto for an output filename
• Delete button added for files
  
• VP files no longer have trailing ".."s in index
  

Meaning if you want to update an individual file of a VP - load it as a source, update the file, and output it.

Edit: red stuff added as of edit. It was really easy and thought of it while making post.

[Antares]

So long as you're putting so much effort into this, compile an updated Media VP with it.

[WMCoolmon]

Well, this one very convenient thread popped up, so...