118 new icon slots available... need help to test

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Don Doom
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problem with v7.1

Post by Don Doom »

I decided to add the new bunker icon Warhorse finished for me in the offical 7.1 mech that comes with the complete download. Well when I went to address 162870, I found the following:
slots 16-28,42,243,589-639 are empty and the rest are full upto 1230!
tried 161A70 and found: 0-491 empty!
tried 162A70 and 461-511 where empty!

Ok anyway to search for the a possible new address.
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Post by Warhorse »

No problem!! I used the L/42 model, saw your post then about it being the L/60 ??! Sorry, but then again, maybe no one would notice the shorter gun?!:D
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Don Doom
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Re: problem with v7.1

Post by Don Doom »

Originally posted by Don Doom
I decided to add the new bunker icon Warhorse finished for me in the offical 7.1 mech that comes with the complete download. Well when I went to address 162870, I found the following:
slots 16-28,42,243,589-639 are empty and the rest are full upto 1230!
tried 161A70 and found: 0-491 empty!
tried 162A70 and 461-511 where empty!

Ok anyway to search for the a possible new address.
Did anyone ever figure out mech7.1 address yet?:confused:
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Post by Warhorse »

Don, it seems to vary a lot with almost each individual exe, for some reason, seriously, it shouldn't in theory, but we've found it to be true!!! Mine is 163270, but others were completely different!! I also found that using some of the last numbers like 1120 also made the pref's need to be reset every time you play, but it doesn't take but 10 seconds to do this, so I don't mind... Hope this helps, best thing is to do a search with spile for your individual address. Using a hex editor in the Chlanda folder,you want to look for in the mech.exe a string like 00000300060009, then do byte search, in results, this will be the address to type in spile. In the run box I type C:\SPWAW\SPILC_4_Sp2il.csv_mech.exe_163270, or whatever your address is.
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Post by Don Doom »

Thanks now back to testing for me.:)
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Post by Don Doom »

Originally posted by Warhorse
Don, it seems to vary a lot with almost each individual exe, for some reason, seriously, it shouldn't in theory, but we've found it to be true!!! Mine is 163270, but others were completely different!! I also found that using some of the last numbers like 1120 also made the pref's need to be reset every time you play, but it doesn't take but 10 seconds to do this, so I don't mind... Hope this helps, best thing is to do a search with spile for your individual address. Using a hex editor in the Chlanda folder,you want to look for in the mech.exe a string like 00000300060009, then do byte search, in results, this will be the address to type in spile. In the run box I type C:\SPWAW\SPILC_4_Sp2il.csv_mech.exe_163270, or whatever your address is.
Depending on which ver. I use, the patch is one number and the full DL is the 163270?

So i used the full one and incerted the the pzk3 tur'ed bunker and set it up as a Tank destroyer, so the turrent would show up.
Works so far!
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Post by Warhorse »

Glad you got it to work, it can all be very confusing at times!!:D
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Post by Don Doom »

Warhorse.
have there a icon swap area or forum been setup or inprocess to be setup?
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Post by Warhorse »

Doom, Not that I know of yet. I wanted to get into this more, but looks like until cooler weather comes, I won't have the time to even think about it!! I've got tons of icons to release, but have to get them all together, and they will be in bmp form only, the user will need to add them to whatever shp files, as the ones I have them in are waaay different than the original by now!!
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Post by Bing »

Good to see the discussion continues about WAW icons. I'm trying to get better helo graphics for Jamie Woods modern OOB's - right now we have just US and Sov equipment and formations up to current day. Includes MLRS and Cruise MIssiles, the like.

I got Fred's spile to work and a dry run of spilc went off without a hitch, once I found my old MS DOS Prompt (haven't used it in so long it was buried about five levels down in directory).

My run of spile produced the requisite 1,320 entries - beyond 1111 it looks uninhabited. Here's the real problem - am not afraid to experiment, I have backups stashed all over the place:

Helo graphics ARE in the game, they are sprinkled throughout the Icon -nnn.shp files from 0009 to 0158. But the graphics files make use of a limited number of the tiles that reside in the Icon -nnn.shp files - from 0009 to about 0058 are used, there are nine .shp files with helos in them in the 0109 thru 0158 range - and none of those are used at all.

I don't get it. According to what i have found, there are no "live" references to these tiles whatsoever. I would like to use them - they appear to be a little better in detail than the supposedly older ones - but hesitate to do so - because am not sure which Graphics file #'s I can overwrite or dump new tiles into without disrupting WAW graphics generally.

And what's the deal from graphics # 1113 on? I might have missed that item in the "118 new icons" thread, which I have read and re-read and printed out.

Any ideas, suggestions or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thank you one and all, it was really wild because purely by coincidence I shoved a VALID helo number into the OOB.

Just dumb luck I picked one that actually worked and it wasn't an LST floating around Fulda Gap firing off Hellfire missiles and shooting up Ivans with the chaingun. Took me all afternoon to realize it was a fluke - really worse than having a bad image in there. Yes, Jamie does have missiles floating across the landscape - no I don't know how he does it - not yet.

But I really AM enjoying this creative aspect of WAW. I learned more abut the game in a few hours today than I thought possible.

Bing
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Post by Bing »

Did somebody say 163270 as an address? Unless I use that I get a corrupted mech.exe. I have a fairly recent installation of v7.1 from the MegaCamp LV disk - played only on Sundays by a little old lady, so to speak. February 5, 2002 is the mech.exe date.

I wanted to correct Graphics File 160 - the helo body is OK but the rotor ("turret") points to a rotor graphic in Icon0040.shp that has no blades. I corrected the rotor reference, nothing else - changing it to a valid 3 blade set of tiles. (0040 -9,10,11 - specify 10) I did the .csv file then fired up the MS-DOS prompt and went at it with Spilc - first time I used 162870 and got a bunch of ugly brown command cars or something like that instead of helos, viz no helos at all. Not just that one helo, no helos at all!

Back to square one, repeated the editing and this time specified address 163270 on the spilc line and Voila! I now have a helo with a 3 blade rotor and the other helos are just fine. To this stage they are OK and I have playtested parts of turns, which went fine.

Let's hear it for the All Thumbs Hackers!! (Next I do a stealth helo: No body, no rotor, no sound.)

Bing
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Post by Don Doom »

Looks like you have the hang of it now soldier!:D
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Post by Bing »

Don - I feel I am getting there. Per usual, the first couple of dozen hours are absolute torture because you don't have the foggiest what is going to happen. To make it even worse, purely by accident I had entered a graphics file number for a helo OOB slot that turned out to actually BE a helo - I had no idea at this point what the file number meant and couldn't for the life of me figure out how Spile worked. If I entered a different file number I got command cars or tanks and didn't know why.

I read and reread this thread oin particular, printed out portions of it and I'll say this: If I can learn it and be successful in working with the mech.exe - anyone can.

Mike Amos has been a great help especially in the moral support department. I think I am picking up a tester for Modern WAW - I hope so because it really needs to be played PBEM. So much is going on AI can't cope with, never could I know that, but it's even worse flipping missiles across a 100 x 240 map.

I've felt for a long time the person interested in modern arms and warfare ought to have a viable tactical ops sim - we hope to provide that. Tiller's Fulda Gap is interesting, but it's more of an operational sim. BCT I still haven't figured out - I know I am not alone in that.

WAW we all know and love, it would be a fine way to segue players over to the modern era of warfare. It's exciting because new weapons are coming along all the time - I just laid out $100+ to update my paper Harpoon set, after just a few years of neglect the data was so far out of date it was better to start over completely.

Thanks again everyone for your help I think we are on our way now.

Bing
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Post by Bing »

I done it!! Fred Chlanda's ShpEdit came through like gangbusters: The four blade rotor graphics now work the way they are supposed to, centered real nice and everything. Looks like the header on this one set of tiles got messed up - the 2, 3, 5 and 6 blade sets of tiles have worked fine from the beginning. I followed Fred's instruc8tons for SPFix and they worked like a charm.

Here's something else I found, which may or may not have had something to do with this particular set of helo blades not working right: Upon sorting the Excel spreadsheet for the usage in the game of Icon0040.shp I found that two vehicle body icon files called for this four blade rotor - they look like command cars. Kinda funny looking, would be even funnier with a helo rotor on top. They appear to me to be the type of vehicle which wouldn't call for a turret of any type.

I checked both US and Soviet OOB's we are using closely and the two numbered graphics files are not in there - I can't swear to the older (current regulation issue) OOB's, though I could check them if it seems important to anyone. I rewrote the references to no turret, we'll see what happens later on.

Worked all day at this and it sure feels good to have solved the problem. Horray for Fred - I know I wouldn't be able to do anything with WAW graphics if it were not for his utilitiy files.

Bing
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Post by Don Doom »

Congrat's, looks like another one has seen the light.:D
Good job. The rest will go a lot easyer now.;)
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Post by Bing »

This sort of work turns out to be very gratifying for me, probably something I've wanted to do for a long time and didn't realize it.

If anyone cares to check it out the two graphics files with the offbeat rotor reference are #24 and #25. #24 = 4,4 and 40,7. #25 = 4,7 and 40,7. These come from shp files and mech.exe installed via a fresh v7l1 installation, complete through Watchtower and LV.

The really odd thing here is that 4,7 is ALREADY a turret. If someone actually used graphics file #25 they would get a turret with a four blade rotor on top??? A Steel Panthers propeller beanie??

I'm a a rookie to this but it seems to me Icon0004.shp is a kind of WAW backwater, the sort of place that once you left you wouldn't go back even to visit, per the hometown of some of us.

Also peculiar is that the first tile in the 0004 file is an A-10, just one tile ... all the other tiles in the file are "east-west" facing, the A-10 faces north east. Go figure. A progammers wastebasket that never got emptied.

What did WAW hackers do before they had Fred Chlanda's great utilities? Hack away with a hex editor, I suppose. Let's hear it for Fred! ("Drop the chlanda, sir ... real slow now ..just drop the chlanda and back up and no one will get hurt.")

You don't have to be nuts to do this stuff, but is sure helps, don't it?

Bing

P.S. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: Do NOT try a rotor unless you first center it with Fred's SPFix, you will regret it if you do otherwise.
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