New AGH Viewer -> TGA exporter in the works.

[Fridlekh]

To download the latest alpha of this program,click here.

Suggestions welcome.

Below this line will change as I upload new versions.

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How to use:

The program will automagically find your HZ dir using the registry and populate a folder tree on the left with the contents of resources\textures_agh. When you select a folder, the list at the top will populate with any texture files that are stored in the selected folder. When you click on a file in the file list, the texture will be displayed. When you double-click on a file in the file list, that texture will be saved as 'texturename.agh.tga'. If you right click in the list, or in the texture view, you will be presented with options for saving to different formats, as well as being able to save multiple files at once (if multiple files are selected in the list).

Known Bugs/incomplete features:
Menus don't work, except for "exit". Nearly done with this.
Alpha isn't currently displayed, though it's saved on export.
RGBA 5551 textures not supported yet.
Status Bar is not being updated yet.
Might kill DX and require a restart (rare, unableto reliably reproduce yet.)

TODO:
Create menu elements:
- About box
- Options window
|-- Desired export file format.
+-- Option to export textures flipped (right side up when viewed) [can't figure out how.]
`- Default view preferences.
|-- Scale to window.
|--Stretch to fit.
+-- Fit to window.
`- Flip texture on load.
- Hook 'change root' to folder picker.

Add tooltips. (Working on it)

Create right click contexts:
- PictureBox
|-- Export to image.
+-- Mipmap level selection.
`- Zoom / tile / stretch / etc display options.
- File List
`-- Export to image [multi-selection capable]

Move texure load/display routine to OnSelectionChange instead of OnDoubleClick.

Load palettes from tints dir forindexing to greyscale images.
`- Create palette picker window.

History:

15/12/2005 Frist general release here.

16/12/2005 Second release, cleaned up code a bit, no longer saving to disk on every view. Better support of formats, very few unrecognized textures left (mostly tools)

03/01/2006 Third release, added support for type 65536 files (P8, tintables, mostly in the attach\* folders) Added functionality to some of the menu items. Created right click context menu. Added about box- first release with a version attached; arbitrarily called 0.1a

13/01/2006 Fourth release, version 0.15a (yay for more arbitrary numbering!) some cleanup, and fluff.

[Fridlekh]

Gah. apparently Managed directX libraries are oly obtainable by getting the DirectX SDK ... maybe with .net 2.0 framework, but I doubt it.... so unless you have the latest SDK, you're probably going to crash immediately when attmepting to run this...

Update:

I think I managed to find the missing dependancy. If you were interested in trying this program, please re-download the DirectX_DLLs.zip file and extract to the AGHViewer directory.

[Lethosos]

Yay! Finally I can get around to playing with the "modesty off" looks. There's just something not right about the fact that they don't have some of the proper bits. (And I'll even add some more clothing for the ladies, too.) I might even play with the Fiends to see if they can be made to be a little more different than just "Andorians with horns/tails."

[Fratricide]

So.. my question is.. if TG is already capable of creating these graphic images.. why are you working so hard to recreate the wheel... what is so "Privelaged" about the conversion tool that makes it so that TG isn't able to post it here for all to see.. or at least give us a link that we can go purchase the software that the images are converted on. Dont get me wrong Frid... Your mind and skills are something I could only wish to attain, and your doing a supurb job with this, but what is so "secret" about the software that TG uses to modify the images that are out there??

[Lethosos]

I've watched the previous thread on this sort, and, according to that, it's basicaly a DDX file with some extra bits that Tulga appended to it. Now, it's actually not as easy to get the DirectX SDK as it seems--I got mine off a disc, and it's prolly an old version. The code behind DirectX is just as arcane as OpenGL (and I peffer that system over D3D methods.) So it's easier to let someone commit to building an exporter than have Tulga do it because it prevents Tulga from having to do it themselves--their inhouse tools also involve the 3D mesh, animations, and other complicated stuff that's not neccesary at the moment, for us. (Although being able to fiddle with the Khutit model would be nice...)

Edit: Frid, the current build keeps throwing an exception at me. Don't have much info, except that it does it during startup.

[Fridlekh]

There is no tool that's used to convert the images besides the client itself. Theroutine used to convert images to AGH seems to be a mix of in-house code and the wonderful black box known as Alchemy - all done in C++ which I don't really grasp all that well. I remember seeing a routine that dumped an image out, for making the hotkey baricons I believe (image is dumped from memory to a file, not copied), but that was another amalgamation of custom code and Alchemy, and still in C++.

The DirectX SDK is actually fairly easy to get. You just need a 'genuine' copy of Windows. (and a lot of free HDD space) The images that are DXTn compressed are fairly easy to convert to a standard DDS image, since they have a DDS header as part of the file. Just have to extract the data that makes up the first mipmap level and put it at the end of the DDS header. The uncompressed formats are the tough ones. Have to construct a DDS header from scratch.

It may be easier, I suppose, to make available the raw images... but that wouldn't be my decision to make. So instead I'm working on my programming skills by writing this converter.

[Tzael]

I might even play with the Fiends to see if they can be made to be a little more different than just "Andorians with horns/tails."

Haha ! Unfortunately not many fiends know what an Andorian is, but that's never stopped me referring to my fiendish buddies as Andorian [:)]

[Nisse]

I can't extract the .dlls--I get an error message that the zip is either in an unknown format or damaged. Using WinRAR

edit: DOH, just noticed that it dosen't seem to be downloading all of the file.
edit edit: I had to download it bit bit, over and over again. o_0

[Fridlekh]

New version available. Try it if you want, getting much closer to a general forum release now instead of hiding in Tech.