Ultima 0.40 Public Alpha #1 Readme -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Welcome to the new generation of FF7 3D Editiors! I am very proud to present you Ultima in C/C++ ! Heh, enough for that ... ^_^ As you know, this is just an Alpha-Release, means a rarely-tested pre-version. So you should expect a lot of crashes when trying to work with this tool. First I think I'll put a file listing here: History.txt Version History KnownBux.txt Listing of known Bugs LogFileErrors.txt Listing of Errors written in the Logfile Readme.txt this file ToDo.txt Things that have to be done Ultima.exe Main Application Since Ultima is now written in C/C++, it is now more flexible and powerful. However, I hadn't enough time to port all functions of Ultima 0.31 to this new Release. Most of the VB Features aren't implemented yet, but this'll be done later. The basic things you can do with Ultima now is: - Loading a model - Displaying a model - Saving a (basic) model - Loading Skeletons - Editing Vertices and Polygons [- Adding Vertices and Polygons] All the pretty little things as Color Patches and blah blah will be done later. Oh, and you should take a look at the Known Bugs in KnownBux.txt, since the engine is very "fragile" until now. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = Handling -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Okay, now let's see how we can open and view, edit and save a model... 1. Loading ---------- Pretty easy, simply open a model. You should see that the model you want to open should have a filename that is either 4 chars long (wildcat: ????) or that has a .p extension (wildcat: *.p). Otherwise you could get problems with Ultima's File-Open-Function. Supported are Field Models, Battle Models and Battle locations. 2. Viewing ---------- As soon as you have loaded a model (or created a new one), Ultima will automatically start Rendering it in its window. If you right-click the renderer area, you can reset the view back to the default. As Ultima in VB, Ultima is C++ usually doesn't start at the default position. I'll fix that as soon as I find the reason for that. In the menu "View\Model Mode" you can change the View Mode of the Renderer. This will change the Renderers Zoom and some other internal values. In the Toolbar, there are some the main viewer functions. Let's start with the first button to the left. It's a figure made of the coloured lines. Guess it. Yes, that is the Option for Axes. You can (de)activate its rendering with this option. The next figure are three point. Yeah, Vertices. This is just available in Wireframe view (see below) The next figure is a triangle. This option renders the first Group, which is usually a pure Model Group w/o Textures. The next, coloured triangle renders all Groups from 1. That next strange, erm, thing is the Wireframe view. That skeleton has no meaning yet. Adn there is something many of you most probably wouldn't even recognize: Ultima is a 4-View-Renderer. But if you start Ultima, there is only 1 View. If you want to see the other view, you will have to activate them. How? +----+ | | <-- +----+ | /\ | | | +----+ Now, what is this? This is the scrollbar to the left. If you take a look over the Scrollbar's top arrow, you will see this, erm... "block" Double-click it, and ... taadaaa ... here it is: the second view. The same thing is possible witht the horizontal bar, too. BTW: Every View has its own Viewing Functions, so you can have different Views of the Model, Wireframe, Texture... try around with it... 3. Editing ---------- There are not much Editing Functions in Ultima yet. You can only edit Vertices and Polygons until now. 3.1 Menu "Edit\Edit Vertex" --------------------------- If you click here, a dialog will pop up. 3.1.1 Vertex: ------------- In this box you can specify the Index of the Vertice you want to edit. The Index is the Index in the current Group, not the absolute Vertex Index. 3.1.2 Offsets ------------- Take a guess... here you can edit the Vertice's Offset in the XYZ-Space. 3.1.3 Color ----------- Since every Vertex has its own Vertex Color, you can edit it here. Though you can edit the Alpha channel, too, you should better let it be 255. 3.1.4 Save Vertex ----------------- When you have edited a Vertex, you will have to save it manually. This is maybe a bit unpractical, but I thought it would be saver. So everytime you change a Vertice's Values, before scrolling to another Vertice or closing the Dialog, save it. 3.1.5 Reset Vertex ------------------ If you have edited a Vertice's values and you have recognized that what you have written there is crap, you can click here to read out the Vertex again. IMPORTANT: This will only reset the Vertex UNTIL you have NOT clicked on "Save Vertex". Once you have saved a Vertex, its Values are saved to the buffer. 3.1.6 Copy Values ----------------- If you want to copy a Vertice's Values (Offset + Color), you should click here. 3.1.7 Paste Values ------------------ This one pastes the Values in the Buffer, which was filled by "Copy Values" into the current Vertice. 3.1.8 Insert New Vertex ----------------------- This option inserts a new Vertex at the current Index. All Vertices that are behind this index will be moved. All Polygons and Edges Indexes will be corrected so the model *shouldn't* get messed up. 3.1.9 Delete current Vertex --------------------------- Deletes the current selected Vertex. All Vertices that are behind the current Index will be moved. WARNING: If you delete a Vertice from a Model, the Polygons will be missing some of their Indices! The model can get messed up by this! 3.1.10 Add new Vertex --------------------- Adds a new Vertex at the end of the Buffer. 3.1.11 Delete last Vertex ------------------------- Deletes the last Vertex of the Buffer WARNING: see 3.1.9 3.2 Menu "Edit\Edit Polygon" ---------------------------- I think there is not much to say if you have read the instructions for editing Vertices. The dialog is almost the same; the only difference are the Values. I think you are skilled enough to figure that out ^_^ 3.3 Menu "Edit\Recalculate\Edges from Polygons" ----------------------------------------------- When you add or delete a Polygon and View the model, you will see that in the Wireframe view your new Poly is not shown. This is b'cause the Wireframe model is not build from Polygons, but from the Edge Pool. So you will have to recalculate the Edge pool to update the Wireframe view. NOTE: When you save your model, the edge pool is recalculated automatically. 4. Saving Models ---------------- Like I said before, it is only possible to save very basic models yet. I think everyone is fimiliar with a "Save File"-Dialog ;) 5. Handling ----------- Something very important is the Handling, means the "navigation" within the Renderer Views. It has changed a bit from Ultima 0.31- MB = Mouse Button SH = Shift What Direction Result ------------------------------------------- Left MB Up/Down Move Z+/- Left MB Left/Right Move X+/- Right MB Up/Down Rotate X+/- Right MB Left/Right Rotate Y+/- Middle MB Up/Down Move Y+/- Middle MB Left/Right Rotate Z+/- Left MB + SH Up/Down Zoom+/- Right MB + SH Up/Down Move Y+/- Right MB + SH Left/Right Rotate Z+/- ------------------------------------------- MouseWheel Up/Down Zoom+/- 6. Important Notes ------------------ Like I said, this is an Alpha Release. You can play around with it and load models, but you shouldn't start any serious work with it yet. Since the loading and saving functions are alpha-quality, too, you should wait for the first final release of Ultima 0.40. Then there will be also a lot of useful saving, exporting, loading and editing functions, so you modellers should have a useful interface for your work. If you save your work with this Ultima version, it might be, that the future Versions of Ultima will be not compatible to your files... but let's not hope it. 7. Special Thanx and Greetings ------------------------------ Every "good" Readme end with a Special Thanx section, so here it is: -=-> Special Thanx to <-=- -------------------------- Darkness halkun ficedula mirex NeutopiaW phaeron Qhimm SaiNt Sephiroth 3D ShinRa Inc. -=-> Greetings fly out to <-=- ------------------------------ Ajax AMD Bigast Bruce Deppe goliath0 Kaddy #17 Kaoru malmelitia marcelinho Metallica nVidia Schnatti Squaresoft Vivi ..and all Qhimm's Forum's Members! Visit or contact me: -------------------- Home : http://www.alhexx.com Forum : http://forums.alhexx.com Mail : alhexx@alhexx.com - Alhexx 21:49 22.12.2002