Let's improve Abiathar!

Utilities for editing Keen:Galaxy and Keen:Dreams levels.
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Fleexy
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Let's improve Abiathar!

Post by Fleexy »

A complex program is basically a big pile of details, and it's easy to get minor details wrong when bolting huge mind-blowing feature-extending assemblies together. As the developer of Abiathar, I know how to get around and use all the accelerations. It's all obvious to me, but a given detail might be a random "surprise!" to somebody who hasn't seen under the hood.

There might be tiny details that aren't deal-breaking on their own, but are an inconvenience and a minor annoyance. I want to make every part of Abiathar not just tolerable, but enjoyable to use.

So, I want to hear every nitpick on the program, no matter how small. This is an invitation to complain, so complain away - let's improve Abiathar! I will continue coming back to this thread even after the next update; if there's anything - anything at all - that's suboptimal (introduced at any time), just tell me and I'll do my best to fix it.
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MoffD
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Post by MoffD »

Not a feature request/complaint but a bug report

In the current version of Abiathar that the updater gets the tile property view doesn't work for some reason (on Windows 7 not just Linux O_O) It doesn't display solid tiles anymore which is a bit of an annoyance.
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Post by Fleexy »

:0

I wasn't able to reproduce that issue. Try deleting editor.aconf, which will cause view settings (including the colors for the overlays) to regenerate. Hopefully the tileinfo itself hasn't become corrupt - that would be an infinitely worse bug! If deleting editor.aconf doesn't help, please send me the resources and dependency file giving you the problem.
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MoffD
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Post by MoffD »

Hmm... removing the aconf didn't work, what about the adeps file? does it store anything related there?

I also notice that the links aren't working either D: this is very odd...
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Post by Fleexy »

That may indicate an issue with your graphics drivers. Try updating those, or re-install the .NET Framework. (The graphics assemblies might have been damaged somehow.) You might also try re-downloading Abiathar. This is indeed quite strange :/
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MoffD
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Post by MoffD »

alright, fresh Abiathar and keen install and the tile properties started working, however it's still not showing links (I'll see if somethings up with my mod files). Gonna try reinstalling .net now to see if that fixes the link view
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Post by levellass »

Ok, so my song mappings were shot to hey and I couldn't figure out why.

Turns out Abiathar won;t let me have less than 6 songs, is there a reason for this? When I try to delete the two extra slots it just leaves them blank as '<None>'
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Post by Fleexy »

Yes, it won't let you have fewer song slots than were in the original game, since that would result in a shorter AUDIOHED. You can whack the ImfEnd value in the .adeps file if you need fewer slots. I am curious, though, as to how the placeholder slots caused problems.
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Post by levellass »

I'm a little confused too, but Abiathar for some reason output a song list that used values 0 and 1. It happens occasionally but I can't reliably reproduce the error. It confused me a great deal when it first appeared.

A shorter AUDIOHED shouldn't matter, it's longer ones that cause problems.
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Nisaba
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suggestions

Post by Nisaba »

Hey Fleex,

(A) this is just a minor thing, but nevertheless:
while working on several projects simultaneously, it would be nice to have an indication in the window title section which names the currently opened project (e.g. the adeps file name).

[Icon] [Abiathar] ['Project-Name']


(B) another minor notion:
an export-all-level-images-at-once switch would be neat.

(C) and that's gonna be a big one:
I wish to see an KeenGraph integration. oh ja... that would be neat, but I guess that's to much to ask for, isn't it?
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Post by Nisaba »

what about....

improving the level inspector by adding the option to jump right to the mouse-clicked warning coordinates (x,y).
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Bubzrulz
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Re: Let's improve Abiathar!

Post by Bubzrulz »

what about abiather creates a back up set of files in a different location for projects .. yes i copy my full projects obviously not enough tho i lost a full level and a bit of patch work .. patch worked fixed now and lucky i exported the level 90% done so not that bad but just my 2 cents worth ... note to self triple check that you are copying files into the right folder
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Re: Let's improve Abiathar!

Post by levellass »

Some sort of project backup might be nice, just a big dump file it puts everything in and can restore from. Heck it might make sharing mods more easy since you'd have all the files 'zipped' up there already, ready for another Abithar to open up.
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