Galactopedia. Now Twilight of the Arnor compatible.

I just wanna say Thanks soooooo much for this as my earlier copy of the initial 1.6 version by Christoph Nahr was "somehow" buggy when i was trying to load up DA values into it. Yours is proving to be steadily working and as a bonus, i would eventually get access to the new highly complex tech-trees of TA. April 23rd sure is a date to remember for all GC fans.

Although, i'm also deep into the early stages of developing 'GTeChnos' (a sort of visually oriented tool simply coded in VB05X, which is similar to Galactopedia in scope & in features but focusing more on some target details and swift values - only!) the entire analysis of researching assets couldn't have been any easier without both Christoph and your version.

If you only made a single person happy with this work... it's certainly me!
I highly recommend anyone to pick it up (specially those lucky Beta testers) - this, until mine is out though!!

You get access to the beta by placing a preorder for TA.
If you want to do the beta just preorder the game.

I am glad you appreciate my update to Galactopedia.
By the way, in case you happen to find any bugs, I will fix them if you mention them in this thread.
Of course, if you do not have the Twilight of the Arnor expension yet, you will be unable to find bugs within the new functionality. Or at least, not yet.

Thanks for the hard work, Netriak. I found that little proggy very useful when first learning the game. With all of the new content in TA, I'm sure it will be even more so.
Allow me to add my recommendation to Zyxpsilon's.

This has been fixed and will be in our next beta update.

That's good. I've also managed to solve the problem in reading dds thumbnails, so that will not be a problem either.

Awesome update to a great little program.

When I started to get back into GalCiv and TA I was trying to remember the name of this program and couldn't for the life of me. It was like, "I know there used to be a program to view this stuff out of the game..."

One thing you might add if it's not too hard, is the maintenance cost of the planetary improvements.

Done. I just uploaded a new version that adds that, among other things.

Bump! I wanted this to be easier to find.

I vote for replacing the old Galactopedia sticky with this one. The old version is no longer compatible with much and isn't even hosted at the page in the old thread. That means you have to click like 4 times to get it there.

Thanks again for the update Netriak!

Agreed, ComGizmo!

Btw, Netriak... you might want to have a look at the formatting ways when long text must be written up in the pre-allocated drop space; since, some TA information blocks are huge, this sometimes cuts off the additional bottom notes like "allowed items".

Otherwise, everything looks flawlessly efficient - but the "selector_boxy" drop list of Races which hovers annoyingly above a radio-button.

Might as well try fixing two things at once in a next version.

Great Update. Thanks . It working better with more useful features than before.

Thanks, this is a really useful program!

NB: Among it's many useful features, this makes it super easy to see which races are missing starbase modules they ought to have.

I always try to fix any bugs, but I am not able to replicate those bugs myself. Can you show me some screenshots of them, and are you using the latest version, 1.7.4?

It may very well be that the race selector I made is on the wrong place under certain settings, but I'd need to know what settings those are. A screenshot could tell me.
The same goes for the text cut-off, although I'm sure I fixed such a bug several versions ago, which is why I'm asking whether you are using the latest version.

This image may prove to be useless (since it looks like i DO have a 1.7.0 version!)
Anyway, that's what it is...

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I'll sure have to download your 1.7.**4** version later; but last i checked it wasn't here in GC libraries.

It's strange though and i suspect my Net-Framework 2.0xx may have been borked up somewhere, somehow in the past by anything from a VB05X re-install and a number of XP re-settings by even M$ updating of the OS.

Thanks, anyhow.

Okay, got the version above and installed it.

Bottom rows now display fine as expected with the side-scroller maxed down as it should. The only remaining thingy is the race selection droplist which is still above the radio-button.

I'll bet it is caused by something better known as the legendary "backhand slap to the forehead!" misconceived reasoning on my silly part or just a simple, NET settings as you suggested.
Lemme know about anything else.

I just uploaded a new build of Galactopedia to the library: 1.7.4.16165. Since I was unable to replicate the problem with the combobox, I am not sure whether this will fix it. Can you try it out to see whether this new version solves the problem?

Drum roll, please... problem fixed!
The combox now gloriously sits right where it should. Thks.

Now, an ever so slightly tiny framing detail; Ship Components_Driv--e, the *e* gets covered up by the frame.

Still, i wouldn't want to intrude on your coding skills but could you share the method you have used to correct some of the above? I'd simply be curious since i am also working on GTeChnos with a VB05X interfacing plan... which - in fact -- btw ---

You may be interested by this...



Latest snapshot (resized at 800 from original 1024 wide, lowered resolution) of the template i always pre-draw to develop some codes.
It is actually not exactly finished for TotA features (although the entire DA tree design is all there!)... but the small boxy (right below the multiple colored Races/octagonal cue tool_Icon) is almost ready to receive conditional items such as "A history of..." & etc.
Let's see if you can detect the Terror-Star group & the double Plagues Cure(s) location, just for fun!

For the abilities side-bar, not sure if that would be good to have all values ON or simply slapping a droplist. Still thinking about a few more thingies.
Central "hexagon-symbol splasher pic" is where the selection listings will be gathered.
And, so on.

Which, reminds me;

- Collaboration and co-authoring, would that be a possibility between the two of us?

Anyway, GalactoPedia is certainly great as it is & Netriak, you had the guts_generous_skillful mind to fix & enhance it for everyone.

In the meantime, i've got two HUGE Mods to work on and a couple of Utilities to keep on planning.

Concerning how I solved the position of the combobox:
I had previously hardcoded its position, anchored to the topleft.
With your windows/.net settings/version however, the components look slightly differently and have different sizes too. So hardcoding it could simply not work. I changed the code so that it would calculate the position and size based on the position and size of the frame. That way it would always be at the right position.

As I see it, the problem with the cutoff with the e from "drive" is the same problem. Due to slightly different letters and such, it no longer fits. I could simply make the box slightly larger, or I could try to make it scale dynamically based on its needs.

And actually, I had never coded in c-sharp or .net before I decided to update Galactopedia. I just tried to understand to existing code well enough to be able to make the necessary modifications. It seemed to have worked quite well, and it was quite a lot of fun.

Concerning collaboration, you mean with VB05X that you are writing it in visual basic 2005?
I'm not sure. Visual basic isn't such an interesting language, and with such an collaboration you'd spend a lot of time simply coordinating between each other, which is not that fun either.

Gotcha!

Yep, it is a Visual basic **Express** '05 Edition i'm stuck with.
I figured developping in Delphi would be an indirect better way... but the routines would need a whole re-writing of the essentials & a declaration group so big it could bug itself to death before i even to get to have an effective beta copy.
Call me lazy, Pure Pascal days are long gone and C++ is much more convivial -- if one has the languages nailed and the PC compiler speed for it.

Thus, VB - licensed, not bought. Intuitive, lotsa user-friendly options, kinda easier than looking at thousands of indented lines.
Be a coder, act as a coder, cope with the tasks involved. I'm no longer the late 70's IF-ELSE basic TI/99-4A magician i've been, i guess. ASM mnemonics and SLR 16 byters operands of the mid 80's in a professional school didn't help either.
Bof, it's okay. Life goes on.

I also agree that coordination IS the main culprit of any hopes i may have had.
Then, let's call whatever comes out of my stuff; a friendly competitor of the Nahr_Netriak results.

Again, thanks for your kind help.

Back to work.

I just uploaded another test build to the library: Galactopedia 1.7.4.15964.
This build dynamically calculates the sizes and positions of the frames based on the actual needs. This should solve your display problem, I think. The frames should also look more consists in their sizes this way.
Can you test whether this new build works for you, and perhaps supply a screenshot so that I can see whether everything now looks as it is supposed to?

thanks for this most helpful tool !!!!


Nasty

I just down loaded the latest version 1.7.4.15964.

It worked ok for DL and DA but when I selected TA it just crashed.

Now it won't run at all  

Any ideas ?

I know its off topic, but you might want to have a look at C#. You can get it in an express version too, and it is really the best of both worlds when it comes to .Net programming. You have the fast managed capabilities of VB with all the power of C++. It also tends to be much more natural to write than VB or C++, at least to my ear. Most folks with a background in C++/Java/etc can pick it up really easy.

Where's that edit button go when it is hiding?


Ok, back on topic:

Netriak, what exactly is the program doing when it starts up that takes so long? I assume it is reading in the data from the game folders and such. Any chance you'd feel like tossing in a progress par or busy animation on a splash screen or something? Maybe even with a cancel button? C# .Net has some handy gadgets you can plug in with ease to do things asynchronously if need be.

treborblue:

Now, first of all, is there perhaps something wrong with your twilight install?
Is there a twilight subdirectory in the galciv2 directory? Are there files missing?

If there is no obvious problem, can you post the data of the crash report?

I also just uploaded a new version, 1.7.4.36220, that supports better error messages in case of missing data. Perhaps that version can tell you what is wrong.

CommanderGizmo:

What it is doing? Loading the .net framework is what takes most of the time. If you for example run another .net program just prior to running Galactopedia after starting up your computer, Galactopedia will load in a second or so, and visa versa.
And I have no idea how one would display a progress bar in c# if the .net framework is not yet loaded...