Posted by Aristeus on February 04, 1998 at 06:42:27:
In Reply to: Re: General Q for all the Cog Wizards posted by Stealth on February 03, 1998 at 09:51:38:
> First you start in the exe and find all the verbs etc. Make some mighty long lists.(might have to make them several times to get the verbs spelt right)
> Extract all the cogs you can get your hands on into a directory. Fire up the custom file searcher (finds words in a great number of files):-) This displays all the files and the usage of each verb etc given to it.(this is how we tell if something is used or not) (and after a while you can guess pretty good what will be needed as params) Then by the sheer number of times they use things you can usualy tell what it`s function is. Of course this all takes a lot of time.Then you take all the info you gathered and start writing the html files.
There are a lot of freeware programs out there to assist in getting this done. I use SuperNoteTab as a
text reader, since it can open multiple text files simultaneously, and maintains text formatting.
For those of us who can't make a custom file searcher(*grin*), there are a few different UNIX-like
"grep" utilities for Win95 out there. Also, the program CSDiff can be used to load two different
files and examine file differences. As for GOBs, you can find all the extractors/compilers you
will need on this site. I didn't notice anyone else mention this, if so, oops: Gob files do not compress
data like a .zip file does. So far as I've noticed, gobs are BIGGER than the sum of their individual
file sizes(there's a bad pun in there somewhere). They probably do save actual disk space due to the
way Win95 allocates storage blocks, but you won't be eating massive amounts of disk space by ungobbing
all of the COGS into a separate directory.
> There is of course some experimentaion required.Using some trial and error the print verbs are handy too.
My usual method involves a trial cog, reprogramming the secondary fire of weap_fists.cog to include several
"get" verbs and a print section, running the game with the /dispstats option on, several game crashes, a
large pot of coffee(or two), and a pillow(to scream into). Personally, I've found that the COGS often
don't make sense without reference to the templates which use them, so you should ungob and read through
all of those ##levelname.jkl files(located in the jk/episode/jk1.gob for single-player levels).
> Realy anybody with a lot of spare time on their hands and a bit of programming language skills can do this.
(*nod*) I don't even know how to open and examine an .exe file, but using the programs/methods above in
conjunction with the Specs(see "Specs", left frame) I've been able to get quite alot done. My previous
coding experience involved making windows .hlp files(similar in difficulty to writing an outline for a
research paper), hexediting my Privateer game to make everybody friendlier, once having been a "Mudder"
and making it to wizard(all REAL coders are now laughing derisively at me :), some HTML, and Apple BASIC,
ASCII, and HEX code from back in the days of the II+. If you have the pure tenacity for the trial-and-
error part, the Wonderful Wizards of Darkjedi.com have already done the hard parts for you(giving you
editors/extractors/and a list of verbs). Good luck.
-Aristeus