FSDSxTweak v2.21 patch (fixes bloom disable bug)

ANOTHER EDIT!!: A new version of the Suite, v2.3 has all these fixes incorporated (and a few others too) - you can download that instead from AVSIM

EDIT: If you are still having problems, try using this version

A patch to bring version 2.2 up to 2.21 is up at AVSIM. Here’s the readme:

FsdsxTweak v2.21 patch for version 2.2
Dave Nunez (dave.nunez.za@gmail.com or http://davenunez.wordpress.com)

This is a patch to be applied ONLY over version 2.2 of the FSDSxTweak suite. It fixes a bug associated with bloom parameters. In v2.2, turning bloom to ‘off’ did not actually inhibit the bloom. Please note that after applying this bug, you need to check all your materials created with v2.2 to ensure that they have the bloom parameter you want (use FSDSxTweak_Edit and ensure that the correct setting appears in the bloom parameters part of the materials tab).

Installation: Locate the files fsdsxtweak_edit.exe and fsdsxtweak.exe on your system, and overwrite them with these newer ones. Double click each to ensure you now have version 2.21 installed. By default, these two files are installed into your FSDS folder.

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Cthulhu Tales vol 1 free at Boom! Studios

Via Comics Worth Reading: Boom! Studios has released its Cthulhu Tales vol 1 as a free webcomic (interesting set of short stories here). Unlike other places releasing stuff for free , this one is not locked to any particular geographical region. Comics it seems, like Cthulhu, dream a mad dream of one dark day finally being free.

EDIT: Ross Richie of Boom! studios tells me that they are gradually releasing a page a day of this little gem, so be sure to check it periodically.

Two other free comics worth trying are Antarctic Press’s Twilight X: War and Duel.

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Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a pretty good Cthulhu game

WARNING: Some minor spoilers may lie ahead.

I just finished Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, and I had a very good time with it. (in fact, I stopped playing the Bioware magnum opus Mass Effect in favour of it). I first heard of this game through the demo release on Steam. If you just play it for an hour or two, you won’t be impressed - it is obviously a lowish budget game, the voice acting is decidedly B grade, and the lack of budget makes the virtual environments seem a little sparse and uninhabited. The tech is also a little outdated - it uses an updated Myst engine, with some nice shader based water effects as the only real eye candy. But forget all that - to really enjoy this game you need to push through past the five or six hour mark, and look beyond the surface.  Here’s what you get for $20:

1. Play as Sherlock Holmes (and sometimes Watson too). I am not a huge Holmes fan, but I have seen a few of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on DVD (my brother has the complete set, he’s a big fan). The dialog is very believable (even if the voice acting is not so great), and there is lots of it, all spoken. The main characters are  interesting enough that it warrants a go.

Holmes and Watson in a rough part of the docks (Image from armchairempire.com)

2. Play in an 1890s setting, in both Europe and the US (there is a lot of travel to exotic places in this game). How often do you get to do that these days? The environments are simple, but because you have free ,first-person navigation, they are very immersive. And the developers understand their engine (especially the lighting) well enough to give you a pretty good presence experience too - by the time you discover the first cult temple, you are definitely feeling the mythos doom.

3. The Cthulhu mythos (this is what attracted me to this game in the first place). The reason mythos stories work is because it is very complex, with hints of wierd tribes, ancient history, incomprehensible madness and bizarre conspiracies all intertwined (and glued together with some blood and guts for good measure). This game has the lot. Because it is so heavily narrative, there are lots of opportunities to dribble out the horror in small doses. For example, you pick up a lot of newspaper clippings and books which give a huge amount of detail all written in a great 1890s over-the-top sort of way. This ensures that you understand the meaning of everything, so that a simple scribble on a wall can become very ominous. I think the game fails to capture the overwhelming sense of inevitable doom that is essential to the mythos, but it does a very good job otherwise.

The pace of the story is excellent - by the time you discover this, you will be sweating bullets (Image from armchairempire.com)

4. No contrived action/reflex sequences that artificially extended gameplay time at the expense of the mood and theme of the game. Sherlock Holmes stories are about the triumph of cool (almost inhuman) logic cutting through the most complex of contrived evil plans. This game remains true to that - yes, there are a couple of fight scenes, but these are shown as brief cut scenes. You spend your playing time thinking about what is happening in the game world, and not getting frustrated at the game itself (0k, the lock picking mini-game is a little contrived - last time I looked, locks were not like the Towers of Hanoi inside). But most importantly this means no having to save every half hour for fear of dying senselessly (are you listening, Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy? )

I would give this one two thumbs up.  There are some interface oddities, and the scripting logic is a little screwy sometimes, but at a budget price it delivers. Be warned, though - because of the linear story and the pre-set puzzles, the replay value is going to be similar to a movie or book.

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AircraftTweak v1.0 released!

Put it on AVSIM just before lunch. I added a little UI for installing and removing repaints:

The UI works like the UI in Exchange - it is just a graphical wrapper around shell calls. The main app is statically linked so that it can be distributed without requiring users to install additional packages to use (after all, it is intended to be deployed to unknown remote machines as a patcher). The UI obviously requires the .NET libraries etc.

I must admit, after all the .NET code in fsdsxtweak, I enjoyed going back to good old fashioned C stdlib text manipulation

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New project: AircraftTweak

With modeldef_edit released, it is time for a new project. Again, it’s one for developers (this time aircraft painters can have some benefit too). Very close to release right now (it is a command line tool, so development has been quite speedy). What does it do? Here is the dump from the tool itself:

AircraftTweak v1.0 (c)2008 Dave Nunez (dave.nunez.za@gmail.com)

This utility allows you to inject data and make changes to an aircraft.cfg file (FSX only). Common uses involve issuing aircraft.cfg patches, or installing/removing variants/repaints. Intended for installers and scripts (batch files). Visit http://davenunez.wordpress.com for more details

Usage:

AircraftTweak.exe <Required parameters see below> [optional switches as needed]

Return values are always 1 on success; 0 on error. Usable modes:

SANITIZE_VARIANTS “aircraft folder name”

INSTALL_VARIANT “aircraft folder name” “source file”

INSTALL_VARIANT_BY_PATH “folder containing aircraft.cfg file” “source file”

Optional switches that apply:

/SOURCEFILE_IN_AIRCRAFT_FOLDER

/PREVENT_DUPLICATES_BY_TITLE (*DEFAULT*)

/ALLOW_DUPLICATES_BY_TITLE

/PREVENT_DUPLICATES_BY_TEXTURE

/ALLOW_DUPLICATES_BY_TEXTURE (*DEFAULT*)

/DELETE_SOURCEFILE_AFTER_INSTALL

REMOVE_VARIANT_BY_TITLE “aircraft folder name” “title”REMOVE_VARIANT_BY_TEXTURE “aircraft folder name” “texture”

Optional switches that apply:

/REMOVAL_NONDESTRUCTIVE (*DEFAULT*)

/REMOVAL_DESTRUCTIVE

/REMOVAL_DELETETEXTUREFOLDER

VERIFY_AIRCRAFT “aircraft folder name”

VERIFY_TITLE “aircraft folder name” “title”

VERIFY_TEXTURE “aircraft folder name” “texture”

DUMP_ALL_TITLE “aircraft folder name”

DUMP_ALL_TEXTURE “aircraft folder name”

PRINT_PATH_AIRCRAFT “aircraft folder name”

PRINT_PATH_FSX

CHANGE_VARIANT_PARAMETER_BY_TITLE “aircraft folder name” “title” “parameter” “new value”

CHANGE_VARIANT_PARAMETER_BY_TEXTURE “aircraft folder name” “texture” “parameter” “new value”

CHANGE_GLOBAL_PARAMETER “aircraft folder name” “section” “parameter” “new value”

APPEND_TEXT “aircraft folder name” “source file”

READ_VARIANT_PARAMETER_BY_TITLE “aircraft folder name” “title” “parameter”

READ_VARIANT_PARAMETER_BY_TEXTURE “aircraft folder name” “texture” “parameter”

READ_GLOBAL_PARAMETER “aircraft folder name” “section” “parameter”

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FSDSxTweak Suite v2.2 is released!

Finally! This version has Modeldef_Edit included, and a tons of fixes and new features, including integration with DrawCallMonitor v1.1. You can download it from the AVSIM file library. The old v2.1 Hit 714 downloads, let’s see how this one does.

EDIT:I forgot to add the Modeldef_Edit SDK keyword list files to the installer! Sorry! I have put the files on the AVSIM library for download.To install, simply put all the files in that archive into the same folder where Modeldef_Edit in installed.

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FSDSxTweak work progresses

V2.2 is coming together. Here is a screeny of _edit 2.2:

(click for full size)

New stuff is the diffuse and specular color selectors, the bloom parameters and the misc params (n-number and double sided). Modeldef_Edit is also progressing nicely, and the docs for all these are 60% done.

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A workaround for the FSX-SP2 ‘White screen’ bug

If you are running FSX SP2 (or acceleration), and you find that on loading some aircraft your entire screen suddenly goes white, then check your display options - you probably have the ‘light bloom’ option on. Turn it off, and the issue should disappear (this applies, as far as I know, to DX9 only).

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I have a visa and FSDSxTweak has bloom

Today I got my H1B visa stamp in my passport - yeeha! I will be back in the Pacific Northwest in late September, ready to sweat and labor for the man.

FSDSxTweak news: I have been wanting to give a big feature for 2.2, because I have new stuff for _plugin and _edit, but nothing for the tweaker itself. A post on the forum today reminded me that I did not include bloom material parameters yet, so I have found quite quickly how to do that.

Notice the blooming nice effects on this giant Mark Knopfler billboard!

I also found how to do the N-Number texture flag, and the double-sided material flag. I need to actually add the parameters into the KFG reader, and add them into _edit (which is going to be interesting, because there is very little space left on that materials tab).

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FSDSxTweak_Plugin and Modeldef_Edit features update

Been a slow couple of days, but some progress exists. I have been listening to Utah Phillips‘ “We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years“, which has kept my keyboard clacking up. Here is what is new:

FSDSxTweak_Plugin

The interface is very decluttered - all the global options (FSDS path, text editor to use, etc) have been moved to a separate window. The new features of FSDSxTweak_Edit (extract parts and materials from the .x file) are now there too. The biggest new things are the Advanced button, which allow you to declare three batch files of your own to execute during the build process: One before the tweaks are applied, one between the tweaking and XtoMdl, and the other after the build process is complete. This allows you to insert other tools into the pipeline as you need. The big feature is the DrawCallMonitor button, which will (as soon as Arno implements a command line arg to DrawCallMonitor, which he tells me he is working on), you will be able to query that tool to tell you how many DrawCalls your model will make.

Modeldef_Edit

Much testing and debugging has been happening. Notice the up and down arrow buttons - those allow you to move the Name and Length parameter between the ‘top’ (Animation block) and the ‘bottom’ (PartInfo block). This is important because these two parameters must be the same in these two blocks, and you don’t want to be typing them in twice or messing with cut and paste. So if you have typed the correct name in the PartInfo block, click the up arrow, and the name will be copied to the Anim block. Another new feature is the ability extract a single part to a text editor - this allows you to get a dump of the XML of your part to post on forums, send by email etc.

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