WitpDecoder; Now providing some overview

Gary Grigsby's strategic level wargame covering the entire War in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945 or beyond.

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Woos
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WitpDecoder; Now providing some overview

Post by Woos »

As discussed elsewhere I was a bit displeased with the GUI of WitP which doesn't deliver lots of necessary information at all or only after several clicks (and thus hints at Mr. Grisby being a quite bad UI designer).
Solution at first: Maintain several spread sheets by hand. Bad! Why am I doing work a computer is much better at?
Solution now: WitpDecoder!

WitpDecoder will read your savegame file, extract information into an SQL-Database, collect it over several turns and display it in a (hopefully) easily accessible way to you. Currently it provides:
  • Overview of stocks, production, usage, ... of all 'strategic resources' like engines.
  • List of units moving and/or preparing for a certain base (basically impossible to get that in-game since all units on ships vanish from the in-game lists)
  • List of leaders with all attributes shown and custom rating formulas definable
  • List of ships to be updated at a date (and their current location)
  • List of ship classes to select the best ones for a TF.
  • List of leaders assigned to more than one unit/TFs and other inconsistencies (Yeah, you finally can see the leaderbug ;-)

And all that for not 10, not 7, not 5, no only 2.6 MB download from http://extweb.retsiemuab.de/witp/witpDecoder0.4.zip (most of it used up by the SWT and HSQLDB jar files and libraries). More instructions in the witpDecoder-docs.pdf file (also in the .zip file). Read that documentation!

Now updated to V0.4c. Main new feature is the Map Overview Tab which gives info on search coverage, ship repair utilization and support levels. Download the updated .jar file, rename it to witpDecoder2.jar and overwrite your current .jar file with it.

Note that when you want to report errors you do not have to screengrab the popup windows. Most error reports can be found as text in the witpdecoder.log file.

Collection of basecluster files provided by users (also included in the zip file):
Below some screenshots to wet your appetite.

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Oh, before I forget. Some restrictions.
  • You need Java 1.5.
  • New functionality gets added from time to time. Expect bugs. And expect database changes in future versions to come without an automatic upgrade mechanism (so keep your safe files).
  • Do use the "Quit" menu to leave (and not the "Close Window" X-button). Otherwise the database will never clean up and things will quickly become awfully slow.
  • Reading in a save file is slow with only minimal feedback. Don't despair. It does not hang. Really. Remember, you need a fast computer for WitP turn execution anyway ;-)

Known bugs:
  • Coral Sea Scenario does not work with witpDecoder (and probably never will). It uses the Truk base as Headquarter for the Truk Base Force, which can not easily be modeled within witpDecoder.
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Woos
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Woos »

Finding a useful leader.

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Woos
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Woos »

Where are all these d***** DDs which will update in a few weeks?

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Woos
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Woos »

How many LCUs did I sent to Rabaul?

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Charbroiled
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Charbroiled »

Ok tell me the truth......did I just die and go to heaven?


Is this for stock only, or will it also work for CHS?
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Terminus
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Terminus »

Good Thread...[&o][&o][&o]
We are all dreams of the Giant Space Butterfly.
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treespider
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by treespider »

Very Nice...[:)]
Here's a link to:
Treespider's Grand Campaign of DBB

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Woos
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Woos »

ORIGINAL: Charbroiled
Is this for stock only, or will it also work for CHS?
It should work with all mods. In principle. But I read that e.g. RHS is using 'wrong' nationalityID for LCUs to make them fight badly (e.g. IJA Manchurian cavalary marked as chinese). This will not work with this tool since it does evaluate the ID and not the slot something is in.
So if mods do strange things, it will probably not work with them (unless someone tells me how to reliably work around it without getting problems with stock).
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Nemo121 »

Is there any error reporting process?
 
Whenever I try to load a savegame file it crashes to desktop...
 
Maybe I don't have the most u to date Java version... Any chance of a link to the latest version which this is known to work with?

This should prove VERY useful indeed.
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Well, that's that settled then.
jcjordan
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by jcjordan »

Good work & assume it'll soon work for Allies as well?? Another question on ship updates screen, does it show ships that are past due for updates? I think the Storage & industry screens would be invaluable for managing the IJ economy for the quick look.
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Roger Neilson II
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Roger Neilson II »

By this stage of reading the thread I salute you...... this is so so good! I assume the Allies are also going to be able to use this later as its fully completed?

Sorry size of font is deliberate to show how happy I am.

Roger
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2ndACR
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by 2ndACR »

1st post down at the bottom, says it works for the japanese only at this time.
Woos
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Woos »

ORIGINAL: Nemo121
Whenever I try to load a savegame file it crashes to desktop...
It probably does not "crash to desktop" but just has a little nice Java Exception and then ends itself. All completely controlled. ;-)
The exception should show up in the console (you did use the witpdecoder.bat file to start it, didn't you). If you somehow send it to me, I can have a look.

My first guess would be that you didn't prepare the necessary .csv files (see the README.txt file).
* edit * Actually, thinking about it, the CSV files are used during first startup. So if you were already able to select "Load Savegame" that shouldn't be a problem. Did you have a problem during startup (due to not reading the README.txt file) at first, then did everything necessary and started it up again? In that case you probably have a partially initialized database. Remove everything named "witp.*" and try again.

If you have it running that far that you can select "Load Savegame", it is probably not a problem with your Java version. But you can get a recent one from: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp (4th download (JRE) )
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by niceguy2005 »

Looks very interesting Woos. I look forward to an Allied version.
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by GaryChildress »

[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o]

WOW!!!!! This looks like a must have! How did I ever play without it?!


[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o]
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by scott64 »

Nice [&o]



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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by VSWG »

Amazing... simply amazing...

This will be a completely new game!!

Does it work with PBEM saves, too?
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Raverdave »

I await the allied version...............in one word...........brillant !
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by Grotius »

Wow! One feature alone is enough to sell me -- the one that tells you which LCUs are prepping a particular base. The ship-finder and other stuff seems great too.

I play WITP windowed these days, so I assume it would be easy for me to run this in the background and switch to it. What about people running WITP in a full window? They have to alt-tab out to access this?
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RE: New tool: WitpDecoder; No more spreadsheets!

Post by VSWG »

BTW, Grüße nach... Deutschland?
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