ChronoCrash Modders Tools 0.7.9.10.1

[Piccolo]

Hey Piccolo, I had a file lost... again (build 0.5.6.1)

I was renaming one animation in Vega to "FOLLOW10" but since I already have a "FOLLOW1", once you start typing follow10 the tool autocompletes to _ALREADY_USED.
I've fixed it, renamed to follow10 and jumped to another entity (Willy) to copy a code and once I got back... two animations were gone (follow5 and follow6 where simply deleted from the file).

I saw a save icon over Willy name (without me changing anything on it) and once I closed the tool, it asked me again to "save unsaved changes" on willy, but I declined it.

I think its the 6th or 7th time I've lost a file using CMT. Its a great tool, don't get me wrong and I and happy to have a new fool finally.
But there are two things I don't use on the this tool anymore because I am sure I will have trouble:

- Jump to another project (I do prefer to close the tool and open it again)
- Renaming an animation on "animation" tab (I do prefer to close, open it on notepad and rename it manually).

Based on my experiences, I am sad to say that I really don't advice anyone to use those cases I mentioned above (jump to another project or renaming animations), as they will surely cause a file loss.

I don't use the autobackup as I use dropbox, so I am able to recovery the lost data. But I am afraid this won't be the case for most users and data loss is a terrible user experience

I hope you find a solution for this.

Hey, well the rename feature in animation editor is new so it's expected it needs to be tested to not cause issues. There is a very good reason why I was reluctant with adding the feature to rename animation while in animation/entity editor, it's very tricky to not cause f*ck ups. Those issues can be prevented and fixed but only if I have reports to know what doesn't work, and you're the only one that gave reports on this right now. If you don't want any f*ck ups while renaming/deleting animations, it's not necessary to go in external editor, just do so only in CMT "Text" editor. It's very safe here, as safe as if you did it in an external text editor. But then I won't have reports to fix issues in animation editor haha So your choice.

The good news is that it's probably not related at all to the previous file overwriting you previously reported.

And as I said earlier, I'm pretty sure there is actually no problem with jumping to another project, it was just a wrong conclusion. The issue was not related at all to this. It probably seemed related to you, because when you use switch project feature you also closed a lot of files while in entity/level editor. But in fact the problem was only related to closing files in entity/level editor (the issue happened whether working on a single project or multiple, didn't matter). And that issue is definitely fixed, so your advice to not use switch project feature is now out of date You'll see for yourself that it no longer happen. As for the renaming issues, it's a whole other matter, but I'm pretty confident it'll get fixed soon as well.

As far as other users are concerned, the auto-backup is enabled by default in CMT, so anyway no one will lose data.

two animations were gone (follow5 and follow6 where simply deleted from the file).

In Willy or in Vega ? I tried but can't reproduce the issue. If an issue exists, it will always happen if you do the same thing that made it happen the first time. So I guess there's something missing.

 

[Kratus]

@Piccolo Hey man, I was checking the Obeditor and got some ideas that may be good to add in CMT. But it's not critical, no problem if not added or if it cause too much complexity to the editor.

1. Add an option to show simple lines for atbox/bbox/range, like the image below. Sometimes the current "bold" line it's a bit hard to see where it exactly start/end.



2. Add a frame "move" command in the editor to simulate how it will work in order to help aligning sprites correctly during the move. I recorded an example below.

3. Be able to change frames using left/right arrow keys in the keyboard when clicking on the frames at the bottom of the window and back to normal when clicking in the text editor part. Currently the arrow keys only move the cursor in the text editor part. And for some reason the sprite file name can't be seen due to the window's size but it happens since older versions.

 

[Piccolo]

...

Not problem for 2 and 3

But 1 I don't think I understand. How are lines clearer than boxes ? Boxes are just lines but filled with color. The lines in CMT are not bold, they are 1 pixel large. Of course if you zoom the sprite they'll be zoomed too, but that doesn't change anything.

 

[ABK]

Good that you tell when it happens so were gonna be careful Ilu

 

[Kratus]

Not problem for 2 and 3

But 1 I don't think I understand. How are lines clearer than boxes ? Boxes are just lines but filled with color. The lines in CMT are not bold, they are 1 pixel large. Of course if you zoom the sprite they'll be zoomed too, but that doesn't change anything.

Taking the example below, in CMT I never knew exactly if the real border is the one outside (yellow) or the one inside (green), different from the Obeditor where it shows a thin line.

 

[ABK]

imo the actual lines should scale up with the sprite and keep it pixelated as hell on big closeups

 

[Kratus]

Boxes are just lines but filled with color.

Indeed the boxes in CMT are perfect, my point is related only to the borders.

 

[Piccolo]

imo the actual lines should scale up with the sprite and keep it pixelated as hell on big closeups

Yeah exactly, in this case Obeditor is actually less precise, because it doesn't scale the boundary.

Also Obeditor doesn't tell you as well if the boundary is the line included, within the line (the line not included), or within the lines if it was actually scaled up (even if it's not in Obeditor). It's basically just an illusion of clarity, not how it will be for the engine.

So at the end of the day what you want to know @Kratus is what to look for. What is the real boundary for the engine. I'll look in the code, but I'd bet it's all the colored portion, the "black" line being just the "outside" border

 

[ABK]

he wants precision pixel to pixel with actual sprite lines

 

[Kratus]

So at the end of the day what you want to know @Kratus is what to look for. What is the real boundary for the engine. I'll look in the code, but I'd bet it's all the colored portion, the "black" line being just the "outside" border

Yeah, exactly. According to my tests the real border is the one inside (green) because it is confirmed by the Obeditor too. Maybe removing the extra outside border can help, but maybe adding it as an option because some people may like how it currently works.

 

[Piccolo]

Yeah, exactly. According to my tests the real border is the one inside (green) because it is confirmed by the Obeditor too. Maybe removing the extra outside border can help, but maybe adding it as an option because some people may like how it currently works.

Yeah it's exactly what I just did, will upload it in 5 minutes

 

[Kratus]

Yeah it's exactly what I just did, will upload it in 5 minutes

Thanks a lot
But again, it's not critical. In case you feel that it can cause problems or more complexity to the editor, we can leave this out.

 

[Piccolo]

Piccolo updated Chronocrash Modders Tools with a new update entry:

Changelog 0.5.7.1

In animation editor, added a button "Disable box border" (above the sprite) to disable the black outer border of body boxes, attack boxes, and range boxes. You can toggle in on/off by pressing the button. Without this outer border there will be no ambiguity where the box boundaries start/end @Kratus

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[O Ilusionista]

if you don't want any f*ck ups while renaming/deleting animations, it's not necessary to go in external editor, just do so only in CMT "Text" editor. It's very safe here, as safe as if you did it in an external text editor. But then I won't have reports to fix issues in animation editor haha So your choice.

Understood. I think if renaming in Animation mode is sensitive to bugs, you could either block it or make an option (turned off by default) which would let the user to be able to to it, with a warning about the risks. It's a very handy feature and I like it, but I always like to think "stability > features". IOW, I do prefer to have a stable tool whith less features, than a tool with many features where some can cause data loss.

In Willy or in Vega ? I tried but can't reproduce the issue. If an issue exists, it will always happen if you do the same thing that made it happen the first time. So I guess there's something missing.

In Vega, the first entity.

To make it short:
1- Edit the entity "A" without saving it
2- Jump to another entity "B" to copy something
3- Jump back to entity "A"

From what I can remember, this happens if you don't save the first entity in step 1. I used to save the file now in EVERY change I made (I don't even jump from one animation to another on the same entity without saving), but to speed up the process, I didn't saved entity A (Vega) before jumping to entity B (Willy).

And, again, the tool said there was some unsaved changes in Willy, but I haven't changed anything on it.

Those issues can be prevented and fixed but only if I have reports to know what doesn't work, and you're the only one that gave reports on this right now

Count on me, buddy. I am here to help.
I'm happy to be able to help, because sometimes I feel bad for always bringing you problems to solve lol.

 

[Piccolo]

And, again, the tool said there was some unsaved changes in Willy, but I haven't changed anything on it.

Note that it can sometimes happen just because the reconstruction process did not produce exactly the same file, even if the relevant content is actually unchanged.

To give you an example it almost always happen when you open a level in level editor and then change to another file. You did not change anything in the level, but the level content was recreated back from the GUI, with slight variations (for example if there was a tab between a command parameters, or maybe multiple spaces, it will be replaced by a single space in CMT, and then the whole file will be considered different and thus unsaved).

It would be really bothersome to make sure that CMT reconstruction process (when you go from GUI to text) preserves the previous number of spaces between parameters, or preserve if it was a tab or a space. CMT just rewrite the parameters with single space between parameters. And then the file is considered unsaved, but in this case it's not really, nothing relevant was changed.

Understood. I think if renaming in Animation mode is sensitive to bugs, you could either block it or make an option (turned off by default) which would let the user to be able to to it, with a warning about the risks. It's a very handy feature and I like it, but I always like to think "stability > features". IOW, I do prefer to have a stable tool whith less features, than a tool with many features where some can cause data loss.

Yeah I'll consider disabling it altogether if this bug is not clarified in the coming weeks. But I won't simply disable a new feature as soon as bugs are in sight, or else there will never be the conditions for the app to improve. It's just part of the process.

Count on me, buddy. I am here to help.
I'm happy to be able to help, because sometimes I feel bad for always bringing you problems to solve lol.

Lol no problem. As I said earlier I'm confident the number of real problems is dropping real fast, so you won't have to report new problems anymore pretty soon because they will be very rare

 

[maxman]

Hey Piccolo. I'm wondering about the possibility of having an automatic animation frame slide open to display, as well as scrolling all the way down for a full list of animation names without having to restore down CMT's window size. One problem for the animation name list is that it doesn't show all the names when you try to scroll all the way down unless you restore its window size a bit smaller than the full window as seen in the video. You can have the slide automatically disappear every time you move your mouse to the character folders/files that were opened. I notice that when you move your mouse there, the animation slide goes down to not display again. When you move it back to animation name list or animation data, it don't automatically appear again unless you restore its window size down again. Can you have the slide automatically open again after moving the mouse to either of the two?

 

[Piccolo]

Hey Piccolo. I'm wondering about the possibility of having an automatic animation frame slide open to display, as well as scrolling all the way down for a full list of animation names without having to restore down CMT's window size. One problem for the animation name list is that it doesn't show all the names when you try to scroll all the way down unless you restore its window size a bit smaller than the full window as seen in the video. You can have the slide automatically disappear every time you move your mouse to the character folders/files that were opened. I notice that when you move your mouse there, the animation slide goes down to not display again. When you move it back to animation name list or animation data, it don't automatically appear again unless you restore its window size down again. Can you have the slide automatically open again after moving the mouse to either of the two?

Hey, not sure I understand. If the window is not fullscreen then it can expand outside of screen boundaries and you won't see the parts that are outside the screen.

 

[maxman]

Oh. OK. If you see the blue scroller, that's what I'm talking about. I forgot about the Library section where you see all types of entity models for scrolling down for a full list of names. It's all about displaying the whole thing in full screen. Don't know if this can help you to understand.

 

[Piccolo]

Oh. OK. If you see the blue scroller, that's what I'm talking about. I forgot about the Library section where you see all types of entity models for scrolling down for a full list of names. It's all about displaying the whole thing in full screen. Don't know if this can help you to understand.

What is the resolution of your screen ? Maybe that's why I don't get it, maybe if the resolution is too small there's a bug even in full screen.

CMT does adapt well for resolution height down to 720, which is already pretty small. If it's under that, then maybe it will cause issue

 

[maxman]

My computer screen resolution? It's 1366x768. (I think I should've mentioned my computer screen.)