Staredit Network

Hello people,
It's been some time since I made the last update to DatEdit, which seems to have eventually arrived at the the top of its potential. Since then, quite many things hapenned, of those most worth mentioning are ShadowFlare's releases of SFGrpConv and her update of IceCC. I had my own, also real life, matters to attend to, but I managed to find a few hours to put into more serious progress a project that I had in mind for a few months already - GRPEdit.
As its title suggests, it is (or in fact will be, as it's still in the beta stage) a nifty program that will allow you to manipulate the GRP files both ways (from-GRPs and to-GRPs) in an easy, correct and efficeient manner, something that the SC modding community has lacked so far.

At the current stage of development, I have finished the the bigger part of the GRP-exporting features, and I still have to do the importing part, but I do not expect this to take me very long, simply because the complexity of the problem is not very high. For the same reason, I am not listing all the program's current features, as they are pretty obvious (see screenshot below).

Do not expect me to give you a fixed release date just now, but believe me that it won't be very far from today. I am just giving a heads up to all you modding folks that some new 'stuff' will probably arrive soon
At this point let me also express my gratitude to ShadowFlare, who created the GRPAPI, without which this project probably wouldn't be ever started

Of course, the reason I am making this pre-release topic is to collect your ideas, comments and feedback about the program, so that it can become a much better and more useful application. As always: if you feel like you have something to say - don't hesitate to say it

-Uncle Broody

Some of you have already seen it, but for those that hasn't, here is a screenie:

Ah, StarCraft modding is ever evolving. Good work!

Pwnage.
I'm working on a replacement for TBLPad, since you can't associate files with it :/

Why not ask the author for it? ShadowFlare is around here quite often.

One of the things I always hated about RetroGRP was the fact that you had to click on the 'next' button once for every frame you wanted to see. If you wanted to look at all the marine's frames, it would be a good 200 clicks.... A simple control like the one in the screenshot I'll attach shows a much better way of doing it - less space and a better control, since you can just hold down the up or down arrows to scroll.

This would of course make the whole listing to the left useless, so a list with previews of the first frame of GRPs in a folder you specify would be awesome to have there instead, like the explorer in Thumbnail-mode.... Perhaps what I'm asking is some extensive programming, but you wanted suggestions :P

I always liked the way LoEdit uses a slider.

Humina Humina. Did you use anything from Shadowflares converter?? cause she said she wasnt gonna finish it.

I doubt she would still have the source.

Nope, it's all my own (apart from the GRPAPI of course). In fact, I begun works on GRPEd some time ago, and I was talking to SF about it. It's bad news SFGrpConv won't make it any further :/

Ojan>Maybe, but in the same way you can just press the Down arrow in the frame listing and achieve the very same result. For more, the listing is constructed in such a way that you can easily jump by 17 frames just by pressing the left/right arrow. As for space, I don't see any good reason to save it - I was actually having a problem with what to put into it in the first place!

Pie_Sniper>Me too I thought about the slider, but it is not precise enough, to my mind.

EDIT:Doodle>Yeah, you're right. I remember her saying that she lost the source for it.

Is that the Civillian Building GRP from SCR?

Looks good, BroodKiller... It's good to get some replacements to these ancient programs.

Voy>Yes it is, but I have it from the times long ago, when I was a modder for this project. Btw, I always thought it was the Energy Tribunal...

As much as I hate that my best modding skill is .GRP making, this will hopefully shave off time it takes for me to perform my art . I'm routin' for yah buddy.

My only suggestion is: A play button.

So that you can watch it rotate each time. This would help point out mistakes made.

Good job and re-welcome back Broody



Agreed, a PLAY (maybe under Y Size) being replaced by STOP while playing is good, and maybe grp and ral associations.

I also think it'd be better to maybe replace the "Extract One" and "Extract All" buttons with just one called "Extract..." which (by the obvious ellpisis a dialog would appear that) will let you choose whether you will "Extract Selected" or "Extract All". By "Extract Selected" I'm implying "Shift + Click" would allow you to enqueue frames in a row while "Ctrl + Click" allow you to jump-select frames, just like normally in Windows.

Along its side a nice "Make GRP" would also be good
"Open File" would be nice to allow you both, ral AND grp browsing.
Maybe an option to delete/add frames just in case we had second thoughts on the grp as well ?

Just a (few) thought(s)

Yeah, and displaying the GRP frames as you scroll should be fast enough that this would be feasable, I think. Although, it may not really be necessary, considering the way it is shown in the GRPEd screenshot.



I never really said specifically that I wasn't going to finish it. This will make it so I don't need to, though. lol I could instead focus on that IceCC IDE I've started, which will not only help with using IceCC, but will basically be a replacement for ICE as well if I implement the planned features.

Hmm, if I remember correctly, I coded the GRP encoder function in GRPAPI because you requested it for this program. BTW, if it would help at all, I'll give you the source code for my progress so far on the converter I made.

Here's what I had in my todo list for my grp converter, along with some added comments:

- 24-bit support and 8-bit RLE support, probably only on import (and possibly other formats for import or export)
- Support exporting and importing masks for transparency, like the converter with StarDraft. Technically, there is no transparency color in Starcraft, that is just a RetroGRP convention. A transparency mask would be the way to do it for those who do not want to designate a color for transparency. Also, a transparency mask can be directly extracted from the image being made, when using certain image editors.
- Automatically find a count of numbered bitmaps, so it is possible to just open the first one and not need to specify how many there are.
- Support for being used with a file association
- MPQ support, for importing and exporting
- Preview, which is already covered in your program.
- Tips area (like DatEdit) -- might not really be applicable if the options in your program are self-descriptive enough, unlike the initial design for my converter.

though i hate grp edit for its LONG and TIME DRAINING art problems, this might help me, since all the all (?) of broodkillers' modding tool are quite easy to use and POWERFUL... hope u can release it soon.

Hmm...but do you want just a simple consectuive playback of all the frames, one after another,or something more advanced? To cut the talk - no, I do not have plans for Iscript integration with GRPEd.


What's the point in replacing 1 click with 2 clicks? But the "Extract Selected" button is a good idea, I will replace the "Extract One" with it


It doesn't have the Make GRP button because I haven't coded that routine yet. As for adding/removing frames, this is planned indeed, and at specific spots.





Although I would like otherwise, for big graphics the scrolling is not 100% smooth, I mean - if you browse through frames using the list (by pressing an arrow key), it wont' show all the previews. It is the case with the GRP from the screenie, which is 256x256, but I can't tell right now what size is a "border" for this. Or maybe it's just the matter of the processor I am using, because I'm working on my good old Duron 800Mhz


I have retaken the GRP-idea then, you keep the Iscript Mind sharing (privately) the progress?

That would be great


I plan to stick to the bitmaps for the beginning. I've done some research over other formats, and the only plausible one I found was GIF. The others are too much of a hassle.

...I think I need to learn a bit about graphic editing first

This is easy, with the obvious restriction that all the files have the same name and differ only in the IDs, I have already done something similar, to search for the palette files present.
A problem I can imagine here is when frames are missing. It is no problem just to skip over, and continue if there are more files present but the question is - how big should be the tolerance level? 1,2,5,10 frames?

I personally don't like file associaton, especially here, as Windows uses the GRP files for its own purposes, but I may think of it one day

No problem with this, as I've done it in DatEd before.


Wow, you hate it even before you used it? As for a release, I plan to have a working beta before Christmas.

it is TIME CONSUMING after all... plus my computer art is not even at the basic level... i dont even have a computer scanner... sad right?

File associations are bad when the program "tricks" the user into enabling it, thinking it's a good thing. However, when the user knows what (s)he's doing, file associations are very good. I have never once messed with *.grp-files that are not StarCraft files, so such an association would be awesome for me. The same goes for .dat's, but they are of course an even more general file type. However, I would like to associate them with DatEdit, since I never open .dat files in any other program, and if I would, I'd use that programs Open dialog, not the windows Explorer :p

Please consider implementing it ;)

Yeah, well...I probably will. It won't hurt if it's the user who decides whether or not to associate an extension with the program. As they say, blame yourself

Wonderful! I shall be rejoicing!

Since you need to update DatEdit due to bugs still being present, you wouldn't happen to feel like implementing that feature there too?

Pretty please with sugar on top?

...clean the fukin' car (I couldn't resist, this is my most beloved movie). And I shall see into that, but I don't promise anything.

You didn't mention my grp and ral association suggestion
That is to maintain a SMALL compatibility between RetroGRP and GRPEd users.

Also, maybe a direct support for gifs (as in grps are in a way gifs, animation wise), so that opening a gif would open all frames just like with a grp. Unles it's too much of a hassle for you

As for PLAY, I think he meant a simple one like I did. As for IScript support, who knows... it'd be nice, but this is, afterall, a GRP editor

I can't wait. If it's possible to have problems with a modding program, I've had them: AIII crashed like crazy, RetroGRP corrupts my files mercilessly, and GRPED outputs in weird colors, not to mention that Stardraft SE kind of fails at life. So I'm really looking forward to this...

LA>You meant GRPConv, I presume, as GRPEd will be this very application:)

Oops. Yeah. That.