BZ2 DLL Scriptor

[bigbadbogie]

Hello again BS-er.

The topic of your scriptor has been brought up over at BZU, and several people are asking whether it could be upgraded to include the new 1.3 patch features.

Overmind has agreed to potentially do it if you were kind enough to release the source code to him.

Or if you were willing to do it yourself, it would be of great benefit to me and various other modders.

I completely understand if you are tied down with MAD development, but I thought it was worth asking.

[JonathanS]

Though I can't vouch for BS-er I can say with a lot of certainty that he is presently in a programming crunch on MAD to meet his deadline and the odds of him being able to work on another project is extremely low.

Don't know about the source code though...probably depends on how readily available it is. If he's got to do a lot of digging then it maybe awhile.

[bigbadbogie]

Is there any way that you know of to change the dlls back into .BZS scripts?

Its just that I really need to get the FE scripts back so I can recompile them in the 1.7a scriptor for the editor mode to work.

Also (for Red Devil), a few of the FE missions have been damaged by the port to the 1.3 PB4a patch and need the scripts back to be repaired.

[BS-er]

It would take some work to generate scripts from DLLs.  Someone who knows how it all works could create a tool designed to do that. 

A drawback is that you would need to know some details about the DLL, i.e. where in the DLL file the Scriptor information is.  Those details would need to be supploed to the tool.  So such a tool would need to be used carefully, following guidelines.

I just don't have the time to do it, but I could help someone with C++ programming abilities to get it rolling, i.e. give them the code and details they need.  Surely there must be programmers in the BZ community that would be happy to undertake such a project if it would be useful and helpful to the community.

[JonathanS]

I think OM is the only other programmer I know off the bat. Cmptrwz to, but haven't seen him on since the forums were cleaned at BZU.

[OvermindDL1]

The source for the dll part is available; in it, it is obvious how it accesses the information contained at the end of the dll and such.  It would not be 'hard' to make a tool to convert back, but it would be a ton of typing (mostly copy pasting, but a ton of edits in it regardless) to say, if this then output this and this and this and so forth this and so on.

[Lizard]

I have all of the FE mission scripts so does Commando, if somebody is willing to take the time to go through all the missions and fix them I'd be happy to supply the .BZS files, I'm sure Commando would too.

[bigbadbogie]

If you send them to me, I would be perfectly happy to fix them all.

[BS-er]

I have all of the FE mission scripts so does Commando, if somebody is willing to take the time to go through all the missions and fix them I'd be happy to supply the .BZS files, I'm sure Commando would too.

I seem to remember that any FE scripts we collectively have are not the final cuts, or at least some of them aren't.  It would be nice if we had the final FE scripts.  I did have them, but a hard drive wipeout changed all that.

The source for the dll part is available; in it, it is obvious how it accesses the information contained at the end of the dll and such.  It would not be 'hard' to make a tool to convert back, but it would be a ton of typing (mostly copy pasting, but a ton of edits in it regardless) to say, if this then output this and this and this and so forth this and so on.

Yeah I'm thinking a reverse scriptor would take some work.  Using the script "compiler" source code could speed it up a bit.  Somewhere in that code there is an array of structure declarations that defines the operations and their input/output types.

Another thought is to take the DLL code, and use the large switch-case statement in that code as a starting point.  Since it is already designed to read the Scriptor instructions, it could be revamped to fly through them sequentially (no jumping etc.) and output text representations of the instructions.  Still a lot of work no matter how you slice it.

[OvermindDL1]

Yea, as stated, would not be 'hard', just time consuming.

[bigbadbogie]

Please... 

*Gets on knees and begs OM*

[BS-er]

I MAY take a swipe at it starting in November.  I'm currently swamped and I gather OvermindDL1 is too.

[bigbadbogie]

I will send you Valentines Day chocolates for the next 25 years if you do.

[Dataanti]

y is it just about a little bit less then half or a little more of the people on this forum have somthing to do with BZ2

[BS-er]

That's a very good question.  Battlezone I and Battlezone II are my favorite computer games.  I did a lot of mod work for these games, and made friends with many other modders and fans of these games.  many of us formed a team to develop a large mod for Battlezone II titled Forgotten Enemies.

In starting this development project, I got some artists and contributors from that mod project to help out with M.A.D.  Some aspects of M.A.D. are inspired by Battlezone and Battlezone II, and I have enlisted some help from fans of those games to help with testing and development.

So this game is known among the Battlezone I/II community, especially on its most popular forum: http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum, so its no surprise that a lot of people from that community show an interest in this game.