SWGAide -- About Next Version

[Rommel]

You can hook me up, I'm playing a little more now.

[Ruh]

I'm in.

[Coatlicue]

Happy to help in any way I can, Zim. You know where to find me

[Zimoon]

Thanks all,

I have been stuck in work, family, an coding SWGAide, very much in that order. And sick in a few takes And not here at the forum, if you perhaps have missed me.

How is it going?

After pretty much a semi-rewrite of the Current Resources panel (which always have been a sore and vulnerable spot) I am now on to the other panels at the resources section. These are neither hard nor that-much affected as the 'current resources' was so time-wise it should be finished soon.

I have also added so inventory and guards can be imported with stats in any order, I think that was a request from somebody. The syntax is still quite rigid but stats can be ordered in any fashion you please. As long as there is a header line reading the order

Then a porting tool, or rather, a cleaning-the-DAT-file-tool. Remember that the DAT-file contains incompatible old-style objects which the "new SWGAide" does not recognize but rather than forcing you to erase it, with all options and stuff, I rather "cleanse" it. Piece of cake but still takes a few days. Here is a problem though, the utility must be executed standalone before starting the new version, which is not the problem. But, it will not be able to make all items possible to import afterwards, that is harvesters and monitors which today does not have support for import. Adding that support would take another few days so I rather just print as much info as possible to a text file and defer that support until later. Guards and inventory will be exported so it can be imported smoothlessly. Everything not related to resources are unaffected.

While reviewing the code to patch it after the changes I have also fixed some possible loopholes and added missing safety checks, so the time is not wasted, not at all. In many ways it is not just another minor version but a major release. Unless SWGAide is not still a beta candidate

In essence, everything is going just fine, just slow. Please bear with me.

For the curious: At the moment I cannot even launch SWGAide myself, to test anything. Another reason why I must walk slowly and think things through rather than trial&error

Greetings folks
/Zimoon

[Zimoon]

PS:

I have heard from at least two interested developers, and I am happy about that. Thing is, at the moment nothing works if you download the source from SourceForge, so it this is not a good time to "jump in", at least not on anything related to crafting since it is there everything moves right now.

However, still interested?
* Install Eclipse.
* Send me a PM here at SWGCraft and I will send you some info.
* Setup a SVN-branch with the version for the currently public version, develop in that branch and prepare for a merge later on.

Safe sections right now:
* The "album" which needs faster thumbnail support to be useful (I am certainly not skilled in image processing).
* Documentation, everywhere, proofread and edit so also non-Swedish readers can understand my Sw-english.
* Mail-handling, drag-n-drop maybe. And smoothifying.
* Whatever that amends to usability and ease-of-use.
* Code review and suggestions/correcting.
* Rework notes reader, currently a mess.
* Macro editor as an in-game-lookalike.
* Review/implement so SWGAide's DAT-file can be copied between computers, possibly shared concurrently.
* Replace absolute paths from the DAT-file so SWG and/or SWGAide can easily be relocated.
* Add options dialog for generic stuff, such as file path to SWG, etc.
* Add safety helpers such as dialogs telling users they must relax security settings in Vista rather than printing huge error logs.
* Support for transition of any in-game settings possible to take with you to another computer.
* New sections such as
-- RE-support, mod-combinations and such. Probably need some cooperation with The Junk Yard for access to combos, etc.
-- Expertize-calculators. Also needs gathering data on whatever it takes, suggested in some clever/generic XML format
-- Combateer-calculators: buffs, mods, whatever to play around with.
-- Editor (graphical/animated?) for Entertainer macros/flourishes.
-- City planning support such as a map editor, plotting houses, etc.
-- Mayor admin helpers regarding citizens, the 90-day rule, whatever.
-- Guild admin helpers. Including automated parsing of mails to add/remove guildies from the charts. Incl. writing an alias file with /addfri XX; /friendc XX <sometext> where sometext might be an alts name, also parsed, of course, from secondary mails from guild leaders if any.
* Whatever I have not thought of. Any feature can be aded as another tab to the main tabbed pane. I do not know much about plugins but guess having support for chooseable plugins would be great :p

So, send me the the PM and I will hook you up.

Greetings
/Zimoon

[Rommel]

Did I mention this is like the best program ever? I love you so much.

I just joined a new guild and they asked my friend who Rommel's was before letting me in, nobody knew my name, but he said Ickx Enterprises, my shop name and they all knew me lol. They were wondering what they bought from me and because I maildump constantly I could tell them with the help of swgaide., LOVE IT!!

The resources tab is amazing too, so much great stuff in swgaide omg.


Yeah, I have been using it for a while and stuff...ya know

[Zimoon]

Did I mention this is like the best program ever? I love you so much.

I just joined a new guild and they asked my friend who Rommel's was before letting me in, nobody knew my name, but he said Ickx Enterprises, my shop name and they all knew me lol. They were wondering what they bought from me and because I maildump constantly I could tell them with the help of swgaide., LOVE IT!!

The resources tab is amazing too, so much great stuff in swgaide omg.


Yeah, I have been using it for a while and stuff...ya know

Thanks R, you embarrass me
More people wanna get embarrassed? PM me

[Belisama]

Did I mention this is like the best program ever? I love you so much.

Your SO right.
I can't live my SWG-life without it

[panino76]

PS:

I have heard from at least two interested developers, and I am happy about that. Thing is, at the moment nothing works if you download the source from SourceForge, so it this is not a good time to "jump in", at least not on anything related to crafting since it is there everything moves right now.

However, still interested?
* Install Eclipse.
* Send me a PM here at SWGCraft and I will send you some info.
* Setup a SVN-branch with the version for the currently public version, develop in that branch and prepare for a merge later on.

Safe sections right now:
* The "album" which needs faster thumbnail support to be useful (I am certainly not skilled in image processing).
* Documentation, everywhere, proofread and edit so also non-Swedish readers can understand my Sw-english.
* Mail-handling, drag-n-drop maybe. And smoothifying.
* Whatever that amends to usability and ease-of-use.
* Code review and suggestions/correcting.
* Rework notes reader, currently a mess.
* Macro editor as an in-game-lookalike.
* Review/implement so SWGAide's DAT-file can be copied between computers, possibly shared concurrently.
* Replace absolute paths from the DAT-file so SWG and/or SWGAide can easily be relocated.
* Add options dialog for generic stuff, such as file path to SWG, etc.
* Add safety helpers such as dialogs telling users they must relax security settings in Vista rather than printing huge error logs.
* Support for transition of any in-game settings possible to take with you to another computer.
* New sections such as
-- RE-support, mod-combinations and such. Probably need some cooperation with The Junk Yard for access to combos, etc.
-- Expertize-calculators. Also needs gathering data on whatever it takes, suggested in some clever/generic XML format
-- Combateer-calculators: buffs, mods, whatever to play around with.
-- Editor (graphical/animated?) for Entertainer macros/flourishes.
-- City planning support such as a map editor, plotting houses, etc.
-- Mayor admin helpers regarding citizens, the 90-day rule, whatever.
-- Guild admin helpers. Including automated parsing of mails to add/remove guildies from the charts. Incl. writing an alias file with /addfri XX; /friendc XX <sometext> where sometext might be an alts name, also parsed, of course, from secondary mails from guild leaders if any.
* Whatever I have not thought of. Any feature can be aded as another tab to the main tabbed pane. I do not know much about plugins but guess having support for chooseable plugins would be great :p

So, send me the the PM and I will hook you up.

Greetings
/Zimoon

Nothing more? lol

Good luck Zim, this is a great project, and tbh some interesting features I see here....

[Zimoon]

PS:

I have heard from at least two interested developers, and I am happy about that. Thing is, at the moment nothing works if you download the source from SourceForge, so it this is not a good time to "jump in", at least not on anything related to crafting since it is there everything moves right now.

However, still interested?
* Install Eclipse.
* Send me a PM here at SWGCraft and I will send you some info.
* Setup a SVN-branch with the version for the currently public version, develop in that branch and prepare for a merge later on.

Safe sections right now:
* The "album" which needs faster thumbnail support to be useful (I am certainly not skilled in image processing).
* Documentation, everywhere, proofread and edit so also non-Swedish readers can understand my Sw-english.
* Mail-handling, drag-n-drop maybe. And smoothifying.
* Whatever that amends to usability and ease-of-use.
* Code review and suggestions/correcting.
* Rework notes reader, currently a mess.
* Macro editor as an in-game-lookalike.
* Review/implement so SWGAide's DAT-file can be copied between computers, possibly shared concurrently.
* Replace absolute paths from the DAT-file so SWG and/or SWGAide can easily be relocated.
* Add options dialog for generic stuff, such as file path to SWG, etc.
* Add safety helpers such as dialogs telling users they must relax security settings in Vista rather than printing huge error logs.
* Support for transition of any in-game settings possible to take with you to another computer.
* New sections such as
-- RE-support, mod-combinations and such. Probably need some cooperation with The Junk Yard for access to combos, etc.
-- Expertize-calculators. Also needs gathering data on whatever it takes, suggested in some clever/generic XML format
-- Combateer-calculators: buffs, mods, whatever to play around with.
-- Editor (graphical/animated?) for Entertainer macros/flourishes.
-- City planning support such as a map editor, plotting houses, etc.
-- Mayor admin helpers regarding citizens, the 90-day rule, whatever.
-- Guild admin helpers. Including automated parsing of mails to add/remove guildies from the charts. Incl. writing an alias file with /addfri XX; /friendc XX <sometext> where sometext might be an alts name, also parsed, of course, from secondary mails from guild leaders if any.
* Whatever I have not thought of. Any feature can be aded as another tab to the main tabbed pane. I do not know much about plugins but guess having support for chooseable plugins would be great :p

So, send me the the PM and I will hook you up.

Greetings
/Zimoon

Nothing more? lol

Good luck Zim, this is a great project, and tbh some interesting features I see here....

Sorry P, I was in a hurry when I wrote
... hurry to fall asleep, in my bed writing at a lousy mobile
/Z

[Zimoon]

Kind of a heads up,

I have to admit that I really took on a big bite here. Never did I realize how much the changes affected. Parts of the GUI is now rewritten, hopefully the hardest is now behind me. As an example, all of the "Current Resources" had to be carefully reviewed, much is rewritten, logic is changed -- about one week's spare-time. Inventory is finished and now supports importing from file with columns in any order, almost. But the stupid edit/create dialog, though looking so simple, is deferred until later. Half done with the submit-panel but need to rework parts of it. Of course nothing is really tested yet.

Wife is kind of reading the telephone book on divorce attorneys
But I will steer this ship into safe harbor

Whatever, today I will decide whether to defer rest of GUI until next week and build the "cleaner utility" and have a first crude test version ready for the weekend ... and take on the rest in parallel with fixing bugs that inevitably will show up. Opinions?

Have fun
/Zimoon

[Zimoon]

No opinions?
Well, then I carry on.
For two days I have been unfortunate enough to suffer from a bad cold, dripping nose, and sore ...
The up-side is that I could sit--undisturbed from family--and finish the review/rewrite of "Submit" tab. Also found some old, evasing bugs (just from reading carefully enough) at the harvester tab.

If the Force is with me the harvester tab is finished soonish. Then I will be able to launch the "new-SWGAide" for the first time. Plus writing that little conversion/cleaning utility.

Things are looking promising

------------------------------------

May I kindly ask somebody a favor?

In the stickied thread and in some other threads regarding SWGAide there are anything from small gem-stones to larger suggestions. Also bug reports on issues yet not fixed.

I had a long, compiled list of these at my computer, however, I cannot find it. Neither does Google-Desktop nor my other scan-my-entire-system-utility. Possibly I deleted it by mistake :/

If anybody has the time to skim through the relevant threads and take a short note each item into two sections: bugs + enhancements. I have Rommel's wishlist bookmarked, but perhaps we could include its relevant content into a new compile. A one-liner note summarizing each issue/idea. Post it as one new thread but split on one post for bugz and one for ideas.

I would be you eternally grateful. And we will all benefit from the tedious work. Otherwise, oh well, it will happen sooner or later, ... or later

Now, kids off to scholl and me to coding.
Cheers
Zimoon

[Zimoon]

Short question while I am at the code:

How many are using the ``warn-by-percent for hopper full´´ option at the harvester panel?

Or are we all using the warn-by-hour?

IMHO I would rather take away options of little or no interest. Mainly to keep the GUI as clean as possible and the easier to navigate. But of course it makes life easier for developers too

/Zimoon




PS: The harvester panel is the last panel to give an overhaul before first test-launch. And I am ½-way through
Family is out buying bomb-shelter equipment

[Zimoon]

Horray

Finally, to quote an unknown source at MS: " did it compile? OK, shrinkwrap and sell. "

Now SWGAide compiles error free

Time for testing? Who wastes time on that




In other words, in just a few days the converting tool will be available for die-hards. Within a week a first testing version of SWGAide. If the test-pilots find it stable enough the next version is out within 2 to 3 weeks

The instant that happens I am off to vacation
Nah, not really

/Zimoon

[Belisama]

Hoi,

i use the warn by hour.

BTW if you sent me the URL of the threads you need to search tru for a list of suggestions / ideas i can try to help. but i don't promise that i am fast. i am NOT. i am short on time. always.

Best
Bel