MDLUtility2 beta

Your_Persona · Post by **Your_Persona** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:42 am

Dark_Sponge wrote:QUOTE (Dark_Sponge @ Mar 19 2008, 10:18 AM) Selecting a btnteam(color here)bmp.mdl (i.e. btnteambluebmp.mdl) file throws an exception: "Requested range extends past the end of the array"
Selecting a (planet here)lobbybmp.mdl (i.e. marslobbybmp.mdl) file does the same.

Not sure if it's supposed to be able to read those or not.

I'll look into those files as soon as I get some free time. Most likely wednesday.

Your_Persona · Post by **Your_Persona** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:28 am

Dark_Sponge wrote:QUOTE (Dark_Sponge @ Mar 19 2008, 10:18 AM) Selecting a btnteam(color here)bmp.mdl (i.e. btnteambluebmp.mdl) file throws an exception: "Requested range extends past the end of the array"
Selecting a (planet here)lobbybmp.mdl (i.e. marslobbybmp.mdl) file does the same.

Not sure if it's supposed to be able to read those or not.

A very useful program imo

Updated.
Now no longer exceptions when loading a bmp.mdl with an invalid scanwidth.
Instead it now throws an error about the problem, and tries to compensate for the bad header information.
It will now try to load the image, though it may still be distorted.

MDLUtility2 RC1

MDLUtility2 RC1

It can also convert a batch of images in one go.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:09 am

wait...

this can detect buggy/malformed alleg artwork files?

Your_Persona · Post by **Your_Persona** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:36 am

madpeople wrote:QUOTE (madpeople @ Mar 30 2008, 04:09 AM) wait...

this can detect buggy/malformed alleg artwork files?

when I ran it through my artwork folder I found about 10 files that would fail after loading the data and then trying to read it back out based on a length in the header. The header had simply specified that there was more data there then was true. When I tweeked it to read these anyway, I found that the scanwidth was off by 2. What ever had created those bmp.mdl files had broken the scanwidth mod(4) rule. I was getting scan widths which were not a multiple of 4, and they were distorted increasenly by one pixel per line. By checking for when the scanwidth was off by 2, and then reducing the image width by one, and setting the scanwidth to match, I could then load these images uncorrupted.
I noticed that all images that throw the error are custom images, and there are very few of them. Leads me to believe they are corrupted. And their header info does not match the data.

...

So, for this specific bug in the files.. yes it catches it and tells you.

Your_Persona · Post by **Your_Persona** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:48 am

Your_Persona wrote:QUOTE (Your_Persona @ Mar 30 2008, 04:36 AM) when I ran it through my artwork folder I found about 10 files that would fail after loading the data and then trying to read it back out based on a length in the header. The header had simply specified that there was more data there then was true. When I tweeked it to read these anyway, I found that the scanwidth was off by 2. What ever had created those bmp.mdl files had broken the scanwidth mod(4) rule. I was getting scan widths which were not a multiple of 4, and they were distorted increasenly by one pixel per line. By checking for when the scanwidth was off by 2, and then reducing the image width by one, and setting the scanwidth to match, I could then load these images uncorrupted.
I noticed that all images that throw the error are custom images, and there are very few of them. Leads me to believe they are corrupted. And their header info does not match the data.

...

So, for this specific bug in the files.. yes it catches it and tells you.

If anyone had any bmp.mdl files they know are corrupt/ crash the game, or cause strange behavior, then I'd like to verify that they have the same bug in their header.
If true, then it would be very trivial to tweek the header and then test the file again to see if it still crashes the game.
It would be nice to know what these bugs with the other tools has been.
I might add some save as support for bmp.mdl after all. I was already planning on adding some of the mdlThing functionality to it for the next version. Maybe I'll do both if we can confirm this fix.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:14 pm

well, in the art dpt we abandoned using mdlfx because it created buggy files unpredictably, some would seem fine, but others would crash. some that seemed fine would crash if used in a non-static way (e.g. a ammo bar, it appeared mdlfx simply could not create images that were used for gauges or were otherwise modified by the game).

and its long been suspected that there do exist buggy art files in people's artwork folders from custom factions created before we switched to only using the original tools to convert files.

i can't do anything helpful like test my art dir because i am away from home and on my tablet pc.

though do you have a list of files which you found to be buggy?

Your_Persona · Post by **Your_Persona** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:40 pm

madpeople wrote:QUOTE (madpeople @ Mar 30 2008, 12:14 PM) though do you have a list of files which you found to be buggy?

btnteambluebmp.mdl
btnteamgreenbmp.mdl
btnteamlobbybmp.mdl
btnteampurplebmp.mdl
btnteamredbmp.mdl
btnteamwhitebmp.mdl
btnteamyellowbmp.mdl
dn_faphbkbmp.mdl
earthlobbybmp.mdl
hlpacadbmp.mdl
hlpbioslogobmp.mdl
hlpcargodetailbmp.mdl
hlpcoloniallogobmp.mdl
hlpdreglogobmp.mdl
hlpgigalogobmp.mdl
hlpiclogobmp.mdl
hlpnixlogobmp.mdl
hlpshiploadoutbmp.mdl
hlpsingledonationbmp.mdl
hlpstationtransferbmp.mdl
hlptakemetobmp.mdl
hlptrlogobmp.mdl
hlptrainbmp.mdl
hlpweapons2bmp.mdl
hlpweapons3bmp.mdl
jupiterlobbybmp.mdl
marslobbybmp.mdl
missionbriefbkgndbmp.mdl
saturnlobbybmp.mdl
venuslobbybmp.mdl

Your_Persona · Post by **Your_Persona** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:22 am

Updated

MDLUtility2 .90 beta

Changes:
Default view is now the Details tab. The View tab still lets you pan and zoom what ever item you have showing in the details tab.

Can now return detailed information about text mdl files. Lets you inspected all images loaded by the file and you can click the reference to load the referenced image.

Can now do basic inspections on binary.mdl files. If the first reference is an image it will load and display it.

I would still like to add some support for the text mdl files to list referenced sounds and such, with the ability to play them.

There is still much I would like to figure out with the binary format. I haven't figured out how to offset to the items from the header information except for the single case of a simple image embeded. Once I understand how the offsets work it will be time to add saving/creating new bmp.mdl images.

I'm looking forward to suggestions and feedback. And I'd love to hear more about how the offsets in the binary files work if anyone knows.

If you have any suggestions or would like to help get this thing to version 1.0, I am happy to share.