Shadows(!), Heightmaps and Cataclysm

So finally I found my mistake within the Shadow-Setters - yay!



(Remember: ADT-Shadows only appear if you have deactivated dynamic shadows!)

Also I think, I've found the correct way WoW handles it's heightmap:


You can find my comment on it at
WoW.Dev


To the new Addon, Blizzard announced, Cataclysm:
The terrain-phasing looks promising, even if it'll need much effort in implementing the new format(partly has been leaked to WoW.Dev already, even if it may change) aswell as implementing this features to Emulators(do they already support WotLK-Phasing? or still not?).

Optional Chunks and more Editors

Well, the last days and weeks, schlumpf and me did investigate the WoW-Formats and found out some things like the MCSH,MCSE chunks in ADTs being optional etc. aswell as schlumpf found a new chunk - MTFX which is used for effects.
So I did some work on the ADTCore-Classes.

Also I decided to add Flag-Editors for MCNKs(most likely they're outdatet/shouldn't be used) and MCLY-Flags:

(you might also notice, that the chunk-borders are now displayed as well as the chunk-position ^.^)

Download Taliis

Edit:
Meh I found a mistake in the MCNK-Editor ._.
it's fixed now:
Just place this in the plugin-folder

--Tigu

DBC-Boolean

Well I was bored so I added a new option "bool" to the DBC-Editor.
You're now able to set the Datatype in the config to bool and then you'll get something like this:

Usability Updates

The last days I improved the usability of Taliis by creating a new Plugin:


As you can see you now can easily set the AreaID,Holes and Textures of a Chunk by only rightclicking on it.

hf

Download

No words needed

Texturing

Today I started the texturing functions of Taliis, it works over Exporting/Importing of PNGs,
it atm supports just the changing of existing Alphamaps but it's a start xD

WDL-Editing and Preview-Release

Today I complettet the implementation of the WDL-Format:




And because some people requested a new Release her it is ;) :
Taliis Rev 238

Injection-Functions

Tharo and me did some Injections-Functions the last days, so Taliis is will now be able to inject ie heightmap,alphamap and doodads into a new created ADT to fix the noggit-bugs.



Also I played around with Materials for WMOs:


Schlumpf wrote some ingame-code which is in an early stage of developing but it works and it is a start!

But I have to announce some bad news:
Tharo will pause with Taliis-developing for about a half-year because he has to write his Bachelorpaper. So me will in the next time be the one you have to talk to if you wish new features etc.


--Tigurius

WMO-Editing

Ah well my first post for the Taliis-Blog :P
I'll make a short showoff what is possible with the Core-Classes of Taliis and what we've done the last few days:
The 3D-Preview now has near good looking textures(ok some minor problems are still there but it's just a preview):


And I created a little plugin for ArtOfIllusion(an open source modelling tool written in java) which allows importing wmos and injecting the manipulated data into a group wmo(this will not go to public):


--Tigurius

ADT Rebuild - Again

.... aaah .. well. Yes.

Another ADT core rebuild. Again.

You can guess why? Yes. Because of Noggit. Again.

And btw. the new _noggit_ is down. He dont gave the source to anyone else. Again.

So the asshole shitload list of ppl that raped noggit got bigger. Again.

In fact i hope after this rebuild we can even load the biggest 'fucked' noggit shitfile in the world as long the content is still - somewhere.

I asked for sugestions. Bug reports from our users or as least wishes. But so far we got nothing. Again.

People that want to rebuild taliis from SVN attention!
Because of new Exceptions in the core all plugins are incompatible atm.
Its not a big thing - just add try catch - but until we did that everywhere its recommed for you to build Rev. 175

DBC Release

It been ages that i did a release so i will make it short:

This is the probaly best dbc editor around. Enjoy it. Report bugs.

http://www.mmoforge.org/gf/project/taliis/frs/

DBC Toy

I spend again alot of time at dbc today.
Its just such a nice toy: You edit some files and have allready big effect inside of the game.

Long story short .. I spend the day into a new dbc editor.
He is fixing some anoying bugs of the old one and have new Features. So far:

- config files with names and short descriptions
- float edit works again
- sort columns
- cross linking (display a string instead of a number)

Expecialy last feature is since 2 years on my wishlist for dbc editors.
Its funny. If we fix some smal anoying habbits, put a xml in/exporter and maybe a flag editor ... We realy could make the No. 1 dbc editor.

And thats even its just a side product of our daily work o.O

SVN Mess

Pff.

I dont know what happend to me yesterday. I got somehow insane in Rev 193 and 140 and deleted big parts of the main source. Sorry for that. I will fix it asap...

Some news

So. Since Tigu and me work together we did a lot of s***t on Taliis. Nothing of it is realy finished thought, but as least something happend.

So we started a WMO Editor. Yes. WMO. Therefore we did a bunch of new core classes. It works pretty nice so far but of course its in a "edit" state. Thats the state that noggit had for many years: You can edit infomations but cannot add or remove stuff ;)

We also restarted a taliis 3d pugin. Its growing slow because we both dont realy like that nasty 3d stuff and it turned out that opengl for java (jogl) had unbeliveable many API changes in the last years. Therefore of course its an preview allready.. But now we just need to add textured and of course a good algo that set a nice perspective by itself.

Wow. Its been allready more than one year that i seriously started taliis (March'07) and i wonder how many other wow projects survided for this long. Somehow im a little bit proud about my work ... o.O

Cleanup

Okay. After rebuilding the adt core i also started to do some big cleanups today.
Many classes got moved to it's more logical desteny. Also the new ADT dialog finaly became his "version" option.

Trigu started to implement the new chunks from WOTLK .. so far its recomed to dont use the WOTLK option if you create new ADT files. As least where i tryed the new chunks shown that they are not ready for the creation task right now -> the process crashed.

But anyway :)

Wrath of the Lich King

Yes. Wrath of the Lich King is comming out thoose days and taliis is prepared:

From today on we support WOTLK ADT files in creation, mod and also for save changes ^^
Also we still provide the same features for the old ADT subformats as well.

Everyone that is interested can just download the new core file in our svn download section (or compile it by himself)

Since this is an alpha release it may be possible that we will find some bugs in the next days. Also we will do a new "New ..." dialog for ADT files.

The Taliis Team also got (finaly) a new member at the last week. Welcome tigurius! I love you :>

WDT Files

Well some ages ago in the beginnings of taliis i did a bunch of wdt code that so far still survived in the core package. Its not much but as least it allows to place / remove adt files.

So today i did a smal plugin and re-included it to the editor. Its just an array of checkboxes but i cannot remember that i had seen better tools so far.

Im just to lazy to do something like minimap preview or shit <.<

Alot of stuff

Noggit

Most of the people know im not a big fan of noggit. Thats because it think besides the 5 original autors (the wow map ones and the noggit autor itself) nobody realy knew what he is doing there. Some of them know 3D, some of them know Binary reversing. But never - never someone was able to finish it and fix it bugs that it causes due some reasons.

I for myself had never a look on its source since last summer. But i seriously ask myself: HOW could this happend!?

All Textures cutted out and no Doodads visible.
How could it you want to ask? I have no idea to say truth. Okay. A look to a good Wiki tell us that the number of Layers and the number of Doodads are are close together.  And stupid readers might now say "hahahaha you switched them and all layers got killed! HAHAHA!".
But no. I did not. I checked it 3 hours. Hex Editors, tons of logs what happends and what got changed. Nothing. The values are still in that file. It should be allright.

But it is NOT. But another even more amazing sample:

Yeah and: NO .. the original have NO water. It happend because of another Taliis-Noggit combination.

Offsets

Suddenly all second layers got to water layers. And after you change them in Noggit its back to normal. Wait - Alpha layer/Water layer? Yes. The offsets are cose together again. And somehow its funny, somehow not. But i can just _quess_ what happends to noggit. In the last year i worked at taliis i found some abnormalitys in ADT files. And just Alpha and Water Layers are two of them. 

In fact im installing wow now. I want to check the stuff by myself. But i checked my offsets and my datas 1000 times since yesterday. Its just TRUE: my data is right. The way how taliis calculates the offsets is 100% the same as Blizzard does .. as least for all TBC adt files ive ever seen - and understood.

Wikis

And there we on my last topic for today. Wikis. Im a bit angry about some people that write in private wikis instead of the original wowdev.org one. Why?

1. It was the first Wiki. Everyone that is doing wow coding today learned from there or one of its copys. Had they ever paid back? NO. Its the same like this noggit dumpfucks that always keep GPL src by themself and call it theyr sources.
2. People write new inventions to theyr own wikis. some of them are known, such as wow.dev, some are not. But in fact i see no reason to do so. Everyone can register and post at wowdev.org - stop spreading your infos around everywhere :/
3. Last but not least: The quality. Some of the new posts are nice. But some are also horroble incomplete or wrong. Why? Because ppl dont complety understood what _happends_ (in adt files f.E.) .. So they just delete out some infomations that are still valid and think they understood why. Or a complete file change had happend. But nothing of that seems to be true.

So .. i feel a bit like the angry video game nerd.
In fact i spend so many hours of checking stuff at taliis that always was working .. beeing afraid its my fault. But i can not see reasons. Everything works perfectly like ADT's habbits and linear rules. I dont know whats wrong :/ I just hope soon i can test ingame again.

It makes me sick ...

._.

Shit .. it happend to me again ..

Okay okay.

Taliis dont makes noggit killing saving errors anymore. Even wotlk is not supported atm ..

Okay and maybe it suports mpq files now. Only reading .. i not even made a fancy menue since there enought better mpq tools out.

And okay every app in taliis can load data directly from mpq files now. And? AND?

That have NOTHING to say. Im not working on it anymore. Get lost :(

PS: yes i realy need an icon for mpq files <.<

What happend?

Yeah it been a while that i posted here. I was more concentrated to the forums we got donated by a user. But .. 

At the Moment it seems that Taliis seems to get finaly closed. As least i dont did something new on it since finaly someone seems to be worth to continue noggit. I look forward to beket and his people. Lets hope they will made it!

So. What did happend to taliis recently?

I updated the editor many times. Also the core got some updates. Everything got prepared to auto-load files from mpq archives. So later new plugins would be able to request some textures or whatever they need.

Also i did a support for blp files. Same reason. 

And i started to make some ANT makefiles because it got almost IMPOSSIBLE to handle the whole project without makefiles anymore. Every recompile took me almost 40 Minutes of Handclicking work.

There is a greyscale import/exporter. Alpha layer importer/exporter, shadowlayer importer/exporter. All in clean own menues this time. Theres also a last 5 files history.

However. Here some screenshots. They might be the last.