... 

Was the concept of wrappers implemented consistently for all resource types already in a code at SVN?

Is there any developers documentation about key classes of SimPE or class browser is the only source of info (code comments)?

Is there any naming convention?

I know you lack developers however. I think, taking my example, it takes a lot of time to go through all SimPE details to understand how it works. There hundreds of classes, several namespaces, some code looks like garbage from previous versions. Some basic developers documentation would help to make it easier to start develop in SimPE and extend developers base.

I will be greatefull for any suggestion how should I attack a subject

Thanks, Quaxi, for answer.

In fact, I'm more than Example Plugin now that I found at spot. With no prob I could compile a plugin but also entire project as well. I also have discovered how to create a package but still digging how to add specific resources to a package. It looks for example that 3IDR has no wrapper just CPF editor. I'm not sure if wrappers are instatiated at SimPE startup and if it may be a problem if I will start another wrapper instance, because users will need originals when they have some package open. Your scanner plugins are a great help for me so far and show the way to scan resources. I like the concept and going to create similar one. I hope you don't mind to copy/paste some parts of your code not saying the scanner architecture.

I'm a little bit lost in terms of caching. What is included in SimPE cache and under what circumstances I should/could rebuild it? Does it relates somehow to game cache?

Thanks for help,

vl 

Thanks, that was really helpful.

I progressed nicely but was stuck on picture wrapper. It seems this wrapper has no method to actually add picture  data to pfd or I'm missing something and should work it another way like direct stream read to pfd user data?

Any suggestion?

Thanks,

vl 

[Edit] I used stream and it works like a charm, however picture wrapper is annoying still with no method to add resources, and consequently picture plugin obviously doesn't have that option.

OK, now I have concrete question.

I'm getting problems with 3IDR resource. My pseudocode for adding this resource:

RefFile reffile = new RefFile();

IPackedFileDesriptor pfd = IPackedFileDescriptor.NewDescritpor(data here);

reffile.ProcessData(pfd, package);

IPackedFileDescriptor[] pfds = new IPackedFileDescriptor[size];

foreach( in pfds)

pfds[index]=IPackedFileDescriptor.NewDescriptor(data here);

reffile.Items = pfds;

reffile.SynchronizeUserData();

package.Add(pfd);

When I look at created 3IDR in SimPE everything is ok, however in the game it seems that this reference is not recognized.

So I made a similar reference in the game,  extracted it with SimPE and imported to my package and it starts to work. So in fact I suspect that I'm doing something wrong the way I create this resource.

Yes, I doubled checked instance, etc of referenced data.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

vl

OK, I love to discuss with myself :).

I believe I found a small bug that is preventing proper recognition of 3IDR in the game.

3IDR resource user data has following structure:

DWORD

ID (0xDEADBEEF)

DWORD

Index Type (1=12 byte records,2=16 byte records)

DWORD

Number of records

for each entry

DWORD

Type ID

DWORD

Group ID

DWORD

Instance ID

DWORD

Resource ID(optional)

 

 In RefFile wrapper ID is never set to 0xDEADBEEF, and Index Type is not set to 2 only number of records is set. Maybe it's fine for other resources but in that particular case game seems to be sensitive to that. Unofrtunatly RefFile does not expose id and type in public so the only way I see to progress is to inherit RefFile wrapper until this will be fixed.

Quaxi am I correct or I miss something?

vl 

I found some other issue.

It looks like WaitingScreen.Wait() shows a splash screen only when it's first time called. Every next call does not show the splash screen, although no error is raised. I checked current production realease and behaviour is similar.

I decided to use FileIndex for my plugin and noticed that initial reading of group cache takes soooo long even though the file is small in size. Debugging it further on revealed that the most time consuming action is actually binary string byte by byte reading of file names stored in group cache. Is this possible to rewrite it to some faster method? Or maybe some C++ guru could have a look and write a function in C to help with that?

Thanks,

vl