could this be implemented in camedit ?

would it be possible to select the cars.wad and not load the one in gp4 directory.
reasons :
. i use carset manager and have a empty cars.wad and anim.wad in the main directory to make carset manager start much faster.
. also with multiple carsets it would be nice to choose different cars.wad from within camedit, ie able to edit cameras for 2003cars.wad, 1995cars.wad etc.
i hope you understand what i mean because the new version of carset manager being released very soon, i hope, this would be useful.
i think carset manager will be able to patch saved cam files, hence the idea to be able to run on multiple wads.
if not possible i can always just copy and rename wads to edit cameras as i do now so it doesnt really matter, just thought it would be nice.

yes would be good.
or even load a car.gp4 file.
i imagine lots of people use the 'auto' functions on all the utils, but i prefer doing things manually. ie loading a cashape, making cameras and saving the .car for later use.
thanks



____
Tony

Camera's are stored in the exe file, and have got nothing to do with the wad. Only the information about the tyres/wheels are stored in the wad file. But if you use a empty wad file in your gp4 dir, camedit will give you an error because it doesn't find the files it is looking for.
I use my own program too, otherwise i would have never wrote it and i experienced the same problems you have. But i don't think that Lo2k has to adjust his program to other editors. Let him put his time into new stuff.
It's my duty to make things easy for CSM. Therefore files like .cam/.car files are supported with the next version of CSM. If you want to adjust the camera's, just load the .cam/.car file into camedit and adjust them and save it in your carset path (without exporting). I'm not going to build in an option to adjust the .cam/.car files camera positions etc.. in the carset editor that comes with carset manager, because i consider that stealing.
If i'm going to implement something like that, then i'll use my own fileformat.
Sounds pretty dull, but think about editing a .car/.cam file and my app screws the file up for some reason, and Lo2k gets the blame. I wouldn't want that to happen
Anyway.... if Lo2k wants to add something like that to camedit it would be cool and easier to use for people with an 'empty wad'.
But then again.. you don't really need an empty wad.
Feel free to email me, and tell me the difference in loading time between an empty wad and the original wad (and it would even be better if you give me as much info as possible like your paths and free disk space). Because the loading time for a wad should be less than a second, unless there's something wrong.

@b-tone
Great suggestions about the different carset files! (you know what i mean ) I'll send you an email today/tomorrow, and answer all your questions and send you an update

I was thinking couldn't we have track specific GP4Tweaker.bin files, as many people will have say the MP4-17D starting the season then the MP4-18 at the end and the helmet/arms/steering positions would be different, if we could implement this then Helmet/Arms/Steering Config could be changed track specifically.

Thanks

Ian




PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

i agree this is not really necessary, but would be usefull. i know the wad is not patched but you really need to have the correct cars.wad for the season that youre working on. ie for setting t-cams,arm colours, etc which would be different for each cars.wad.
ie what i mean is that id like to run camedit, select say 2003cars.wad from my 2003 carset directory, then edit my t-cams, arm colours etc, export .car file to 2003 carset directory. then say do the same with a 95 carset and 95cars.wad etc

im not sure exactly how much quicker it is with an empty wad but it seems a lot quicker to me, maybe my disk was badly fragged or something but a few times i ran gp4 from the CSM it took about 5 seconds to rearrange the wads before GP4 started to load. hence i changed th wads in the gp4 directory to be empty and everthing went much quicker.(that wasnt a complaint about CSM, by the way. its a great program and im desparately waiting for the new version)

On CSM, I never have quickstart on, hence GPxPatch always comes up, couldn't we find a method of bringing up Lo2K's CamEditor like this? then say enable/disable it in the options, then we could just simply load settings and the export.

Ian




PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

To Caelen:
Yep, i thought about those having many cars.wad and i can add a "select wad" button instead of using the one used by the game. It's the same matter as the select gp4 path matter.

To b-tone:
Tweaking cam's for one carshape as no sense for now as cams are used for all cars. Anyhow, some people already asked me to be able to save datas per car/team when you only need to update one car/team.
I will have a look but it needs from me to completely change my .car format.

To Zaz:
Great post Thanks for your position on .cam/.car editing why not adding a button in your app to start Cameditor to build the .car/.cam ?

To Ianwoollam:
Hmmm...i don't understand. Do you mean being able to load a .car file and export it quickly, whitout having to load Cameditor ?
If so, this tool already exists: GP4Patcher. (Clic on my sig pic below to get it).

@Caelen
I know what you mean, but it would be difficult(its not really difficult but its more of an easy way out) to let the programs communicate with eachother because they're very different.
imagine that you select a cars.wad in a carset directory of CSM.. then it'll have to look in the carset file if an executable is included, and if not then it should use the default exe file. It will also have to look what the name of the .cam/.car file is if it is in the carset etc...
Then in the end we'll have 20MB 'apps' because they're compatible with every version of any other editor (thats because i won't be expecting a GP5 soon)
But i have 1 question... Why do you want to load a cars.wad into camedit?
All the data you are talking about (like arms etc..) are stored in the .exe and in the .car file. So why don't just load a .car file into camedit and change whatever you need to change? Only thing i can think of are the wheel positions, because it you'll need to see the shape to adjust them right. But only for colors I don't really see the point seeing the shape also.

@Ianwoollam
Why do you want to do that? CSM supports those files for a reason
So you don't have to load camedit and change the settings in that program. But i could add something that you can startup whatever you want to startup, but i don't really see the point now convince me

[edit]@Caelen Don't worry.. if you want to see something different, the only way is to let me know If i want to see something different i simply just change it. I have the source code and you don't useful criticism will only make the program better. And i forgot to say something about the loading time... It probably is quicker the 2nd time you load it because there's a lot of info in your memory at that time. But if that isn't the case, please email me with as much info as possible so i can solve it. It maybe would be useful to the other users too[/edit]



Post Edited (06-28-03 12:26)

---

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

Great post Thanks for your position on .cam/.car editing why not adding a button in your app to start Cameditor to build the .car/.cam ?
Then i would have to add something like described as above..
But it means i'll have to figure out how to do it without affecting the carset directly. example:
If you add a line in a carset like
OnStartRun="c:\camedit\camedit.exe camfile.cam"
And people download the carset and they have camedit stored on a different location on their HD it won't work..
Thats why i patch the exe myself.
I think i'm going to add an option to do something like that anyway, but i'll only have to think of how to do it without putting csm files into danger, because they're not user friendly anymore
And another reason why i don't use a method like that is because it doesn't suit the philosophy of carset manager.
Carset manager restores everything after use to the previous settings, and if its going to use an extern tool, it would have to understand what it is doing. And it doesn't understand what it is doing, it simply does it

Right difficult to explain but here I go,

People have begun to use Track Specific cars.WAD's What I was originally thinking was to be able to attach a GP4Tweaker.bin file to each Track Specific cars.wad. This is because some people use the 2002 Ferrari to start of the season (Australia, Malaysia, Brazil etc. . .) and then change to the 2003 Ferrari, But the Helmet/Arms/Steering Wheel positions for both cars are different. Hence if we could attach a GP4Tweaker.BIN file to each cars.wad for each track, Helmet positions could easily be changed when the new 2003 Ferrari comes in, or when the McLaren MP4-17D changes to the MP4-18 etc. . . .

I Hope you can understand what I'm trying to say, I think I went down the wrong route with Lo2k's cam editor!!

Thanks In Advance

Ian




PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

sorry for this getting complicated, personally i dont really think CSM needs to communicate or run camedit, simply being able to use .car or .cam files in a carset would be beautiful.
the only reason i wanted to be able to load different wads has nothing to do with empty wads etc. When editin t-cams and cockpit height, steering wheel height you really need to use the actual shape from gp4 which is what the latest versions of camedits do, it was simply i wanted an easy way, no renaming, copying etc, to select different wads. as i said to alter t-cams steering wheels etc for 2003 carset .car file you really need to load 2003 cars.wad into cameditor, and the same for other seasons.
i think i might get what i asked anyway.

Author: Lo2k
Date: 06-28-03 11:49

To Caelen:
Yep, i thought about those having many cars.wad and i can add a "select wad" button instead of using the one used by the game. It's the same matter as the select gp4 path matter.

By the way lo2K if jou could implement this it would be excellent, and thanks for all the replies to my question.

restoring to 'normal' is great, but i have no normal.
all my data will eventually be stored in carsets, so i'll either have 0kb car/anim/track wads in the root, or wasted hd space.
i don't expect you to disable the restore to normal. just thinking aloud. i dont mind if the default is all 1995 F1 when i finish using that mod.
understand?

what I want with CamEdit is to load the Merc ITC shape, make some camera angles, and export/save it. its hard doing it with an F1 shape.
but i guess if i put the itc wad into the right place, it will use that shape?

oh, i've read Caelens last post and agree with what he says there



____
Tony

To Zaz:
You're right, you can't know where the player "installed" cameditor, that's a problem... but i think if you just read .cam/.car files, there are no risks to corrupt them. I suppose that all users need is to be able to load a .car file throught your app. Then you just have to restore original values when leaving CSM, without modifying .car file.

To Iamwoollam:
Then it has nothing to do with Cameditor, as cameditor isn't yet able to change GP4tweak.bin files (will be able in a next release only).

To Caelen:
It's already done
I have original cars.wad and Ellis GTmod wad named carsgt.wad.
In cameditor, i just click on "Manual cars wad" and choose the carsgt.wad and instantly all cars where update to those of the gt mod.

You only have to know that TYre Positions are saved in the cars.wad, so any tyre position change will only be save in the selected wad.

@Caelen
Aha! I get your point
I don't really edit the graphical part of GP4 myself, and i only used camedit for testing purposes, so thats why i didn't get you at first. But now i know what you mean.

@b-tone
I guess you don't like data that isn't necessary huh?
Well.. i never thought about people using an empty wad before, but you saved me some time, because it will probably result in an error while adjusting the wheel positions. I'll take a look at it, and find out if I have to change some of the code for it.

@Lo2k
Don't worry.. CSM never changes anything of the .car/.cam files. So CSM simply just can't corrupt those files. And it doesn't restore the original values, it restores the previous values
I don't restore the original values because it wouldn't make any sense according to how many people are still racing with the original 2001 carset.
I tried to write it in a way so people can use it with their 'normal' GP4, without screwing up their current carset.
ps.. one quick question..
When GP4 is running with CSM with the 'openwad', and I try to edit with Camedit, Camedit gives me an error that it doesn't find the file it is looking for..(other people should not try this, because its unsafe(!))
So how do you search the file in the wad you are looking for? by 'index number'? or by name?
CSM just searches for files in a wad by name, like GP4 does(although i'm not 100% sure right now).. But other editors seem to have issues with that. You don't have to give me detailed info about it, i'm just curious about your main method. It'll save me some research time. And if your app doesn't search the wad for files by name, is there any reason to? The structure of wad files is one of the oldest tricks in the books, and those files don't work with a particular order, so that's why i'm asking also

Hmm...if GP4 is running, Cameditor won't be able to open cars.wad as it is already used by the Game.
And technically speaking, Cameditor grab GP4 install path in windows registry and then open the cars.wad at that location, it's simple as that

Thats not what i meant.. Assuming that you can access the wad file, i want to know what method you use to get the "CAR_COLLISION_MESH.CT" file from the wad. Do you seek dynamicaly for it by name, or are you trying to find file#XX? Because when using 'openwad' in CSM it compiles the files to a wad file. And i never sorted the order of the files becuase GP4 doesn't care what the order is. So GP4 doesn't have problems with that but Camedit does. So i would like to know why its coded that way so i can make it more compatible with your app

hmm...ok...In fact Cameditor search for car_collision_mesh.ct in the list of names/size/adress declarations in the cars.wad and when it finds it, go read the file (and then write) at the given adress.
Cameditor don't unpack the wad at any time.
Hope i answered you this time even if i still have doubts on your question

Slightly OT but relevant to ZaZ's last question.

I was using EasyWad to compile and decompile my cars.wad. Suddenly CamEditor said it could not find car_collision_mesh.ct

When I compiled the wad with GP4Master, CamEditor worked fine again.

The file size of the wad didn't change so it may be something to do with how EasyWad repacks the wad.

As ZaZ says GP4 doesn't care because the game worked fine the whole time.

Sorry to butt in.

EJ-14

Well, it's interesting... i will try easywad to see what's happen with it.

Well, i just tried EasyWad and i'm still amazed that GP4 accept wads created with it

So Zaz here are the 2 "mistakes" you did in that tool and that cause Cameditor fail to find any file in the wad :

1st: You are using 127bytes long file names in the list of names/offset/size where original GP4 wads are using 128 bytes long one. Anyhow, it seems that gp4 manage to read them so it won't be so annoying.

2nd: You added a space (0x20) caracter at the end of your 127 bytes name.
And that's where Cameditor fails just because cameditor delete every 0x00 in the file name and then compare the 3 last letters to ".ct" (as cameditor only need the .ct file).
Meaning that file names become ...collision.ct_ ( "_" replacing here a space)
and that cameditor now compare ct_ with .ct and obviously will never find it.

So as Sven(GP4Master) and I(WadUpdater) did, i just suggest you to change those 2 littles thing (127 to 128 bytes file names and no spaces at their end) and your tool will be perfect

Best regards,

Lo2k



Post Edited (06-29-03 22:03)