RCT Discussion / New LL Memory Editor/Trainer

I've not finished it yet you can download it once it's done, or I guess sooner if you bug me enough on msn .
How's your list of things to add coming along?

The rct2 trainer will always be at least one step behind codex, having started it 4 years later etc.
All it can do at the moment is lower and raise clearances, and they aren't much use because as I mentioned before you can't build through everything with my technique. This is a genuine problem in 2 as there are so many objects on each square, it's realistic that 20%+ of the squares have some object that can't be built through on. (If that makes sense) So I need to figure out how to actually do zero clearances.
The good news is that (having looked at the rct2 save game format), it doesn't sound like it will be hard to port the map control over at all.

df

*imagines an RCT2 codex*

Dear God, please...

Heh. Wish I'd taken the time to actually learn C++ when I had the chance.

-ACE

Even though I don't play RCT1, I've been watching this with a lot of interest. It's really cool all the stuff that can happen with this thing.

And when you release that RCT2 thing you will be my hero. That would be awesome.

oh please release the rct2 trainer(as soon as it is finished) i have watched this thread excited with your work and even thinking of going back to LL just because of this awesome tool but to see it in rct2 would just wow... yeah im pretty sure im rambling at this point

Edited by chapelz, 17 August 2006 - 11:03 PM.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what exactly would make this codex trainer much different from the other RCT2 trainers? From what Ive read, which admittedly isn't everything in this thread, it seems the main features of this that were so great were the stacking and convenient invisible track and zero clearancing, all of which can be done already in RCT2. I'd love to know what the other major helpful features would be.

That’s a good question eman, I think it’s worth pointing out that codex doesn’t really seem to offer anything to ll either. You could already do stacking etc, but there are still things that can be easily done with it that were impossible or very hard to do without it. (e.g. Like fixing stacked track and beating the banner limit) I’d expect useful uses like that to be discovered for the rct2 derivative.

There are possibly a few things that will be completely new, like being able to make any track chain lift. The hex editing features of the map control have no equivalent anywhere but in winhack, tsearch etc.
It’s probably also easier to do things like raising large numbers of objects (i.e. that have already been built) and also raising and lowering rides, paths etc by only a quarter of a height marker. But I don’t play rct2 so I’m not really sure if they can be done already.

As Ed said

One more tool on the toolbelt is never a bad thing (at least not when it's a virtual toolbelt which weighs nothing).

But it’s hard to say how useful it will be until it’s actually working, I’ve got a few interesting things planned though .

df

edit: at some point I'll have to start a topic to ask what can't be done or is difficult to do in rct2

Edited by darkfire, 18 August 2006 - 05:21 AM.

the thing about codex is that you have so much control so quick at hand that it becomes very very powerful.

You have no idea eman. Once I started playing with it I found out a lot of things were possible which were not before. The cloning feature is huge. You can turn an object into something else! You don't even know how useful that can be until you try it. You can also stack rides, not just scenery, and that's a big thing if you want to make custom ride-types or sculptures. Or bridges or buildings. I guess with RCT2 people got used to making everything with those 1/4 tile blocks -- and people have gotten very creative with it -- but that isn't always the best looking way to make things. And now you can use coaster pieces too which means better bridges and sculptures and buildings. You can build whatever you want and the supports will be gone if you build it all underground and then raise it. You can alter land tiles after you've placed objects on them -- this is incredibly useful. For one thing, it means you can have objects which are normally only allowed on flat spaces on any type of terrain. You can have bushes on the water which wasn't possible before. AND you can raise or lower things by 1/4 tiles so you can create all sorts of incredibly detailed gardens by stacking bushes and flowers all over and inside each other. You can put things exactly where you want them, not just "close enough". And you can alter the height of something after you've placed it, not like RCT2 where you have to delete it and place it somewhere else. You can have two tracks occupy the same space without merging. That's huge! And the codex trainer offers the easiest way yet to merge tracks, which makes really difficult merge jobs much much more accessible without the hours of headaches. It's really incredibly powerful. And if darkfire ever does make it so you can move objects around in the memory too, it'll be that much more powerful. I'm telling you, it's like night and day. Without the codex trainer and with it. The kinds of parks people could make with this tool blow away what's been done before. I've been using it for just a couple of weeks and already I've discovered a dozen or so hacks which I have never seen before. Parkmakers using the codex will be like Neo in The Matrix. The impossible becomes possible. Trust me. I've seen it.

Thanks a ton Ed. That was exactly the kind of post I was hoping for, like a shopping list of discretely awesome features . I figured I was overlooking a lot of the majorly helpful aspects, and after reading your post I see I was right. Even just the first couple things you mentioned would be excellent additions, but then the other things as welll...let's just say I can't wait to see this for RCT2. Darkfire, work faster.

tell me more about that new way to merge coasters please :' />

Page 1, First post, Paragraph 6

I was working on another flash tutorial for merging a couple of days ago, this is what I have so far.

So this is basically the 4cars/8cars method just that it works a lot faster with codex?

Nice Flash tutorial, would really like to see more of those.

to be honest, for a quick merge, i think i'll prefer beast's zero clearance merge trick.
when multimerging though, this can be rather handy.

so you know what would be cool? a water flowers feature. because i like my parks to look pretty while i build in them.

unless there's already one. in which case i would be very happy if someone told me where it is.

so you know what would be cool? a water flowers feature. because i like my parks to look pretty while i build in them.

unless there's already one. in which case i would be very happy if someone told me where it is.

4cars?

the less trainers you need to use, the better.
i too think all the "standard trainer features" should be added to codex.
freeze weather would be good for building, too.

Hmm, yeah water flowers is one feature I still have to have the Beast trainer open for. And it's something I find myself using a lot because the flowers die while I'm building something else and then I need to see what everything looks like with the colored flowers there so I need to water them. But since I'm using the Beast for zero clearances still anyway, it isn't really any extra hassle so far. And you can just put it on a timer with that. Eventually that would be a good feature to add though. You could put a little rain button right next to the sun button to do it. And maybe have them work like a toggle so the sun stays active until you unclick it?

I don’t see how it’s too hard to click the sun every time it starts to rain , but I’ve changed it so it will keep setting the whether every so often. I’ve put water flowers in there too; it’s in the leftmost menu.
Having originally written the vast majority of the trainer for only my personal, it had always been aimed at parkmaking (as that’s what I am/was interested in), and there are other trainers and the SGM available for playing scenarios and creating workbenches etc so
Adding features that are available in other trainers is a very low priority, I can see the advantage of only ever having to use one trainer, but I think my time can be better spent on other things.

I haven’t fully tested this latest build yet but everything seems to be working ok.
If you’re already using one of the nightly builds I uploaded then not that much has changed, but if not there are some massive improvements in this one all mentioned before.

Exe | Zipped

But since I'm using the Beast for zero clearances still anyway

I’m interested to hear what exactly can’t you build through with lower clearances, or is this the problem you were describing before of the trainer not working after a long time?

- - -

Moving onto the subject of the rct2 derivative; the actual (activex) control component map control works with rct2 without a single modification (though I’ll probably have to add a bit to it). In codex, all of the functions, constants etc that are used by the map control, but not actually part of it (for example the function that returns the description of a given object) are in a separate module and it’s only parts of this module that need to be changed for compatibility for rct2.
Basically what I blathering on about is that if I change some of the map control (there are still a few things to add, like when your dragging an object to clone the list should start scrolling up or down when you get to the top or bottom, and there’s no option to hide a lot of squares at once e.g. hide all the squares that don’t have an object selected) then I’ll be able to copy the same files across to the rct2 version just taking a few seconds. This is a very good thing.

I have hit a snag though, as I’ve said before the game map is stored in 2 data structures; one that stores all of the unmodified squares that were loaded from the saved game (the one you use the map editor in codex to edit) and another that stores all the things that have since been built upon (the one you use the construction map control for). If you build something new and then delete it the square stays in the later structure, it’s not moved back even though it’s the same as it was before being moved. To cut a long story short, the white/translucent piece of scenery/path etc effect (that shows where the scenery/path is going to be placed in rct2’s scenery/path tool) is created by the game building the object there and deleting it when you move the mouse.
This means that if you have the scenery/path/etc tool open then almost every square you move the mouse across with appear in the construction map control. So there are loads of squares in there you’re not interested in editing.

Other than that though, things are progressing nicely.

df

Edited by darkfire, 23 August 2006 - 05:50 AM.

I’m interested to hear what exactly can’t you build through with lower clearances, or is this the problem you were describing before of the trainer not working after a long time?

Yeah, it's the same problem I described before but it seems to be a rather big problem. It might have to do with the amount of hacking I'm doing on each square, but now that the map is mostly full I encounter things that the lower clearances won't build through all the time. I haven't been keeping a list or anything, as I'm mostly just trying to get this park done, but it is more than just coaster track. Sometimes it's objects too. And (I guess this shouldn't be surprising) the more objects I have on a tile the more likely the lower clearances feature won't work on something. So it's easier for me to just use the Beast for that. I have noticed though that the lower clearances tool works reliably on everything if I only use it to work on new objects. But if I try to stack stuff over or through something that was already there when I loaded the saved game file, it won't work a lot of the time.

Oh yeah, and something else I was messing around with yesterday is moving things around in the memory. I remember you said earlier that the order items appear in the map editor is the order they appear in the game's memory. That helps a lot when trying to target specific bushes for stacking because I look for the last one listed at the base land height and I know that one is the one I built last. And then I noticed that you can stack two pieces of track on the same square and have them both be visible. Pictures would really be helpful here but I can't show any just yet. Anyway, I accidentally created a cool look by raising two pieces of track to the same square and I think because one of them was built lower than the other, it appeared earlier in the memory and was visible through it. I tried to do this again and it didn't work (because I tried to lower the track instead of raise it) -- so in the process of figuring out why I discovered the solution. If I switch the order of the tracks in memory, then it works. I did that by using the cloning feature and dragging over pieces of the same track from another square. Another related phenomena is how stacked objects on path look glitchy if you build them over the path, but if you build the objects first and then build the path they look a lot better. Also if you're using multiple coaster pieces to create a building, it matters a lot which one you built first. I figured that out in Blood Island when I was making the huts. Which is to say I've already discovered a couple more reasons why moving objects around in memory would be really useful.

Oh and one more thing -- this is just a mystery I've been trying to figure out and I thought maybe you could help. When I was working on Aquatica, I noticed after awhile that the rides wouldn't generate stats anymore. I could test them again and again and it would never generate stats. Then I noticed that if I used the Beast's ride stats editor, the ride stats would save with the game. Someone else could load it and it would still have the edited stats there and not the real ones (which were stuck at 'not yet available'). Well at some point the same thing happened to this new map I'm working on. I went back to an earlier save which has all the actual ride stats still there -- but I can't re-edit those tracks at all now or the rides stats won't reappear when I test them. I was doing a lot of stacking on Aqautica, a lot more than I ever have before, and I'm doing even more stacking on this one. The only thing I can figure is that I keep zeroing clearances and restoring so much and then stacking things all over the place and one of those things at some point corrupted the file in a certain way. I really don't know.

(If you want to try to figure this out, I can send you the old save games so you can compare them to the corrupted ones. You can download Aquatica from the H2H3 site and if you want I can find an earlier version where the ride stats still work. The other one I can't give you yet, but I will eventually.)