Oh man, I'm starting to use Notepad++ less and less now for changing settings. Fantastic work thus far.
And the community has really stepped forward with the token definitions. This pleases me to no end
Right now I'm most concerned with the idea of this utility spitting out a 100% workable raw folder with it's default settings. I'm testing this by importing and then exporting a mostly vanilla 34.10 raw folder (it has phoebus color and tile changes, but is otherwise normal).
I've noticed that the png graphics files are being correctly exported over, but end up about half the size. Looking at the difference in-game shows no real changes, and examining the files in photoshop reveals that very little has actually changed, mainly being confined to the backgrounds of the files. I assume this is all due to recompression.
Possible additions or changes:
- Comments - Various mods and even the vanilla game files use invalid tokens in order to make comments in the raws. It might be possible to parse unknowns as a "comment" line.
- Basic Tokens - Almost every token which takes no arguments gets output in the files as [TOKEN_NAME:] instead of [TOKEN_NAME]. Note the extra ":". It parses correctly in DF, but leads to confusion when using external tools to check out the changes.
In language_words.txt alone, there are 2,869 changes of this type, and all tokens seem to be correctly defined as taking no arguments. Over the entire vanilla fileset, after exportation, there are 23,935 occurances of ":]"
It could "easilly" be fixed by adding a new "Args Type" of "None" to the Token definitions, instead of just "Basic" or "List" - More on Language - language_words.txt is being exported over, but the words files (language_DWARF.txt, language_ELF.txt, etc) and the symbol file (language_SYM.txt) are not being evaluated or exported. Two object types are basically being overlooked in the [OBJECT:LANGUAGE] files:
- [SYMBOL:x] - subsymbol [S_WORD:x]
- [TRANSLATION:x] - subsymbol [T_WORD:x]
They're very simple file types actually. Far simpler than language_WORDS.txt. It might be possible to show the translations side-by-side in a grid so that all the translations could be viewed and edited at once (in a perfect world where everything is possible of course).
- Formatting - There are several conventions of raw syntax that have evolved over time. Technically they are not required for any specific tokens to work correctly, but they do help in readability. Compare: body_default.txt before and after exportation. At best, this is a minor consideration, but it would be nice to be able to specify that, for example, Caste level tokens be indented farther than Creature level tokens, or that [CON:x] should appear on the same line as a [BP:x] token
- Save-Editing Mode - Some features may break a game if performed on a save\regionX\raw folder, such as adding or deleting any objects or object files. It would be fairly simple to "lock" this ability with a menu option.
- Adding Graphics Files - Under Manage Source, adding a GRAPHICS source will lead to a file named "object\filename.txt" instead of putting the file into the Graphics folder.
