Format Object - Beta

After showing an early development beta version to a few people, I have completely re-written this extension in EDIF.

The Format Object allows you to define a file format, then use that format to save and load files. Formats can be made up of bytes, shorts, integers, 64-bit longs, float, 64-bit doubles, and strings with either a size or a null terminator. Additionally, a format can contain in itself another format (it is recursive) so that you can break up even the most complex formats into simpler ones. You can also control how many times a sub-format is used to read data from the file, be it 0 or 65537 times.

This is the example MFA file from in the zip:
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Download link will be maintained here, beta or not: Please login to see this link.

There is a brief flurry of helpful dialogs in the properties, which can easily be accessed from the event editor. This is just until I get a help file going.

If you have any questions on how to use it, refer to the example or ask here.

Enjoy!

Quote from SortaCore

It's an epic idea by an epic guy.

Jamie's only role in this extension's development was making the EDIF SDK

Has anyone found any issues?

Haha, Eliyahu admitted he was joking about that a long time ago.

Anyway, I've updated the link to version Beta 2 - I've added support for plain out raw data that does not have a format. You interact with it through its memory address - see the example MFA.

Same link as the first post: Please login to see this link.

Yes, using the Raw Data feature,as long as you can interact with the sounds via a memory address.

Again, it depends on whether you can load/store the image data by memory address. Try Surface object...

The version Release 1 has been released: Please login to see this link.

Quote from Dines

This is really cool, but there's one feature I really wish it had: either a dialog, where you could set up your format in a visual display,

That's a long way off, I'm afraid.

Quote from Dines

or a text property where you could put in some kind of text format which would get interpreted into a file format. A bit like a C++ Struct, maybe, but simpler.

That's for the very next version

Quote from Dines

Otherwise, trying to create a struct in MMF through action after action after action is painful XD. It also feels a little hard to read on the screen. One nice touch could be to change the strings which show up in the editor, so instead of the lengthy textual representation shown Please login to see this link., you could have something like this:

Create format: "Main"
--- CustomFormat - Game Settings
--- Byte - Lives
--- String - Player Name
--- Float - Player IQ
--- String - Signature

Something like that. It'd make it instantly readable, which is one of the nice benefits of the old C-style struct. Just a thought

I don't entirely think that's possible to do. For one thing MMF2 doesn't handle line breaks in the action text, and for another actions can't communicate with each-other to know how much spacing to have. I like the idea, but how would you implement it?

I'll do it, but keep in mind MMF2 enforces the quotes around the strings, not me