D2kEditor with Structures Editor (TibEd replacement) preview release!

[Klofkac]

Hello all, it's finally here!

So much promised and advertised Structures Editor, which is going to be a better replacement of TibEd gets its preview release. I was working on this really hard during the last month, and spent countless hours and long evenings coding this stuff. It's probably the MOST COMPLEX thing I ever programmed in D2kEditor so far, I would say several times more complicated than mission and events and conditions editor I made years ago. I also need to say, that honestly, now I understand why TibEd was a paid application that needed to be ordered. Heh... I won't want any money or donations from you. But what will make me rewarded and satisfied is seeing that my program is being effectively used by people to make interesting and innovative mods that could not exist before.

Download: Outdated, get a newer version (v2.0pre4) from this post: https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/29026-d2keditor-with-structures-editor-tibed-replacement-preview-release/?do=findComment&comment=401444

Feature description:

Added Structures Editor where you can edit buildings, units, weapons, armour and much more.
This is going to be a better replacement of TibEd, having much more features!
- Available from main menu under "Structures" -> "Structures editor", or Ctrl+X shortcut
- Support for editing Templates.bin, BUILEXP.BIN, ARMOUR.BIN, SPEED.BIN, TECHPOS.BIN files
- More user-friendly user interface than TibEd, many unknown bytes were given correct meaning
- Live preview of building and unit appearance
- Support for adding, removing and renaming of buildings, units, weapons, explosions, armour types, warheads...
- Support for editing building/unit/projectile/animation art count and direction/frame count 
  (DATA.R16 needs to be edited separately to match proper frame count!)
- Use "Apply changes" to see changes in map and misssion editor
- Use "Save and test" to immediately test your changes in currently loaded map

Limitations (this is important, please read!!!):
- Althrough Structures Editor is able to load and save Templates.bin and other .BIN files from/to CustomCampaignData Mods folder, Save and test feature will not work because testing map won't copy BIN files from Mods folder into Dune2000\Data\bin folder! Save and test feature is usable only if you edit the files directly in their original game location (Dune2000\Data\bin folder). If you work with Mods folder and want to test your changes, you need to save first and manually copy modified .BIN files or use Mission Launcher. Copying of files from Mods to game folder when launching mission is a feature I'm planning to add in future.
- Althrough it is technically possible to add new buildings, units, weapons, building art, unit art etc, this is not usable at this moment because adding a building/unit or art requires to add frames into DATA.R16 file. If you add a building/unit without adding frames into DATA.R16, graphical frames from DATA.R16 will get mismatched and graphical glitches or game crashes will occur. I'm not sure whether the resource editor supports adding new frames, but as far as I know it does not show empty frames which is a big problem. I'm thinking about adding support for DATA.R16 manipulating into Structures editor, but this is going to be another load of work to do.

D2kEditorv2.0pre3.zip

Edited January 12, 2021 by Klofkac

[Feda]

8 minutes ago, Klofkac said:

Hello all, it's finally here!

So much promised and advertised Structures Editor, which is going to be a better replacement of TibEd gets its preview release. I was working on this really hard during the last month, and spent countless hours and long evenings coding this stuff. It's probably the MOST COMPLEX thing I ever programmed in D2kEditor so far, I would say several times more complicated than mission and events and conditions editor I made years ago. I also need to say, that honestly, now I understand why TibEd was a paid application that needed to be ordered. Heh... I won't want any money or donations from you. But what will make me rewarded and satisfied is seeing that my program is being effectively used by people to make interesting and innovative mods that could not exist before.

Download: D2kEditorv2.0pre3.zip

Feature description:

Added Structures Editor where you can edit buildings, units, weapons, armour and much more.
This is going to be a better replacement of TibEd, having much more features!
- Available from main menu under "Structures" -> "Structures editor", or Ctrl+X shortcut
- Support for editing Templates.bin, BUILEXP.BIN, ARMOUR.BIN, SPEED.BIN, TECHPOS.BIN files
- More user-friendly user interface than TibEd, many unknown bytes were given correct meaning
- Live preview of building and unit appearance
- Support for adding, removing and renaming of buildings, units, weapons, explosions, armour types, warheads...
- Support for editing building/unit/projectile/animation art count and direction/frame count 
  (DATA.R16 needs to be edited separately to match proper frame count!)
- Use "Apply changes" to see changes in map and misssion editor
- Use "Save and test" to immediately test your changes in currently loaded map

Limitations (this is important, please read!!!):
- Althrough Structures Editor is able to load and save Templates.bin and other .BIN files from/to CustomCampaignData Mods folder, Save and test feature will not work because testing map won't copy BIN files from Mods folder into Dune2000\Data\bin folder! Save and test feature is usable only if you edit the files directly in their original game location (Dune2000\Data\bin folder). If you work with Mods folder and want to test your changes, you need to save first and manually copy modified .BIN files or use Mission Launcher. Copying of files from Mods to game folder when launching mission is a feature I'm planning to add in future.
- Althrough it is technically possible to add new buildings, units, weapons, building art, unit art etc, this is not usable at this moment because adding a building/unit or art requires to add frames into DATA.R16 file. If you add a building/unit without adding frames into DATA.R16, graphical frames from DATA.R16 will get mismatched and graphical glitches or game crashes will occur. I'm not sure whether the resource editor supports adding new frames, but as far as I know it does not show empty frames which is a big problem. I'm thinking about adding support for DATA.R16 manipulating into Structures editor, but this is going to be another load of work to do.

Thanks a lot for the preview release, can't wait to get some free time and try it out, sounds amazing! I also hope there will be a way to get around the DATA.R16 issue in regards to adding more units and buildings, we always thought this would be impossible without maybe exe modifications but from what I understood from your post it might be possible.

[Cm_blast]

Good. I am already pretty much done in terms of Tibed on the new campaign I am currently working; but before I start doing a sequel I have plan to do after this I will 100% move on on using the most recent version released of the editor (so, this one) and any "tibed" changes I may do, even if they are small, I will do them by using this version instead Tibed.

Edited October 18, 2020 by Cm_blast

[Klofkac]

9 hours ago, Feda said:

in regards to adding more units and buildings, we always thought this would be impossible without maybe exe modifications but from what I understood from your post it might be possible

Yeah, I confirmed this is possible. I added Atreides modified outpost and it worked, but graphical glitches occured as I had to add extra building icon frame into DATA.R16 which I was not able to do. However, what should be possible right now, is adding building or unit TYPES, as these are not anyhow dependent on graphics frames in DATA.R16. In order to be able to pre-place new building or unit type on map you must edit TILEDATA.BIN to include special value for the new building/unit type. With this, you can actually add new buildings by replacing duplicates (i.e. for turrets there are three building arts which are exactly same so you can replace those duplicated ones) and you should be able to have i.e. gun, rocket and autogun turrets at same time.

9 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

Good. I am already pretty much done in terms of Tibed on the new campaign I am currently working; but before I start doing a sequel I have plan to do after this I will 100% move on on using the most recent version released of the editor (so, this one) and any "tibed" changes I may do, even if they are small, I will do them by using this version instead Tibed.

Well, I really tried to develop this Structures Editor really fast so that you are able to use it for your new campaigns as soon as possible. I think I'll take a rest for some time now, as the main and coherent feature is already out.

[Fey]

2 hours ago, Klofkac said:

I added Atreides modified outpost and it worked

😮

I had a look at the new editor and ohmygoshit'ssoprettyEVERYTHINGISLAIDOUTANDIT'SEASYTOREADANDSOPRETTYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Thank you.

2 hours ago, Klofkac said:

adding building or unit TYPES

Would it be simple to add parameters in the editor's AI parameters list for these new structure / unit types? How about text entries for mousing over those new unit / structure types? Anything else tricky that we perhaps should know about this process of adding new units or structures?

2 hours ago, Klofkac said:

I think I'll take a rest for some time now

Hey wait! Don't go anywhere just yet, I need more info on how that barrels behavior works! XD The bytes! I think I posted all my questions in the other thread, so if you could elaborate there before you go taking a break, I'd really appreciate it.

Edited October 19, 2020 by Fey

[Cm_blast]

5 hours ago, Klofkac said:

Well, I really tried to develop this Structures Editor really fast so that you are able to use it for your new campaigns as soon as possible. I think I'll take a rest for some time now, as the main and coherent feature is already out.

Yes, the campaign I am working on it is almost done with only 1 mission to do, and the editions I have planned to do with tibed for it are minimal, increasing the ROF of a unit (or the HP) only and that's it, the most heavy modifications are already done, so I will finish this and take some days/weeks to rest and toy around with your editor and learning how it is used and all the options it offers, doing modifications into a portable dune 2000 version I have here (I have it this way so gruntmods it's never touched directly).

There I will mess around and use the stuff I already saw in a few screenshots here and there, like the building decaying even on concrete I may think on adding that kind of stuff for the dune 2 campaign (retro version), or the option that you have around there of a building that you cannot capture or sell, so that's totally dune 2 behaviour.  The multiple upgrades for the heavy factory and so on.

So yeah, by the time I begin doing the tleilaxu sequel I will use this tool and not going back to Tibed anymore. I know for sure I will use it because Sardaukar were part of the previous one as deliveries, and here I may use of the double upgrades to have Sardaukar or even Fremen to produce for the player, things like that.

[Klofkac]

11 hours ago, Fey said:

Would it be simple to add parameters in the editor's AI parameters list for these new structure / unit types?

When you add a new building or unit type, you click Apply changes (or save) and the AI value list on Mission settings dialog gets updated with current list of buildings/units.

11 hours ago, Fey said:

How about text entries for mousing over those new unit / structure types?

When you add a new building type, then you need to add a new entry into TEXT.UIB where key is same as building type. Then such building name will show in game when you mouse over that building or building icon.

11 hours ago, Fey said:

Anything else tricky that we perhaps should know about this process of adding new units or structures?

Adding building/unit types is pretty easy and straightforward. Can be done with just a few clicks. Then you need to fiddle with TEXT.UIB to add text entry and TILEDATA.BIN to be able to pre-place such building on map. See:

Very simple. Just add text entry with key HARK_WIND_TRAP to TEXT.UIB.

Adding buildings and units, however, is tricky. The game references same amount of building/unit icon images from DATA.R16 as there are buildings or units. When you add a new building or unit and do not add respective amount of new entries into DATA.R16, then image index references between game logic and DATA.R16 will mismatch and graphical glitches will occur, most importantly game crashes if you attempt to build a building. See:

For building buildup animation, you will also need to fiddle with buildup animation frames.

11 hours ago, Fey said:

Hey wait! Don't go anywhere just yet, I need more info on how that barrels behavior works! XD The bytes! I think I posted all my questions in the other thread, so if you could elaborate there before you go taking a break, I'd really appreciate it.

Heh, actually, I did not answer intentionally, as I wanted to release the structures editor first and let you play around with it and discover this on your own! It's that easy so I can just give you a small hint: Have a look at "Other" tab.

Edited October 19, 2020 by Klofkac

[Fey]

Ah, thanks for all this info, Klof Hey, like I said, I'm kind of an idiot, so I like to have things spelled out at times lol

But, I tested this:


And, uhh... nothing happened. I blew up a Silo, everything stayed intact. I sold it, nothing happened. Tried changing the exploding barrel to the wall, same thing, nothing happens if I sell or blow up a wall segment.

Is there something else I missed? 😅

EDIT: Although literally everything else is the same about Gruntmods, perhaps it's the different installation? I dunno if it would make a difference, but I've been using dunemaster. The "Dune 2000 online" installation. It has a very small system footprint and you can actually view the briefing in-game, it's not broken in this version, which is really nice. No debug mode, but I think I know the AI well enough by now to expect certain things from it after certain changes I make without needing to babysit it in-game.

This is the link to said version:
https://dunemaster.webs.com/files

If it actually is the different installation, that would be really weird if this behavior is just supposed to be in D2k. It should work in either version. Hopefully we can figure this out.

EDIT: Uhh, nope, that definitely wasn't it. I just loaded the BARRELS map in both dunemaster and gruntmods versions (I must have done something wrong before to get that error, IDR I was pretty tired I guess lol) and the 'barrel explosion' behavior works in both. But, setting that setting in the editor has zero effect, nothing happened, the Silo or Wall or whatever just blows up and nothing around it also blows up. Could it be that there's something wrong with the editor?

Side note, this behavior is gorgeous. I love it, I want to use it. Just as soon as I figure out what the problem is lol

EDIT: I just did a little bullshit edit for the graphics. Here's a pile of crates:


Here's the pile of crates in-game:


Needs some color correction, but this is just to check out the idea.

I blew up some of those crates:


So, yeah. I guess that looks okay. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I could do some different edits of arrangements for those crates. I literally just cropped out one of the Heighliner tileset crate arrangements and slapped it over the Atreides Silo graphic. Maybe could use a few variations. Obviously that'd be tricky to implement, but hey, as long as they're available...

Edited October 19, 2020 by Fey

[Klofkac]

8 hours ago, Fey said:

But, setting that setting in the editor has zero effect, nothing happened, the Silo or Wall or whatever just blows up and nothing around it also blows up. Could it be that there's something wrong with the editor?

Humm, I think that the problem could be that the weapon you selected as exploding barrel weapon might be just too weak to see actual effect. In my mod, I used DEVASTATOR weapon, which is the strongst weapon with largest radius and it really has a BIG effect. I don't know of anything else that could be wrong.

[Darlax]

This is really great work, what you did Klof!

If you select the original Dune2k folder and than you want to switch to a modded folder, how I'm able to do this ? ^^" 

 

Darlax~

[Fey]

5 hours ago, Klofkac said:

Humm, I think that the problem could be that the weapon you selected as exploding barrel weapon might be just too weak to see actual effect. In my mod, I used DEVASTATOR weapon, which is the strongst weapon with largest radius and it really has a BIG effect. I don't know of anything else that could be wrong.

The "Grenadier" death was changed to be the Saboteur's on-death damage, more like a superweapon. So it certainly would be noticeable! Barrelhit would be noticeable too, but I didn't see that either. I'll keep fiddling with it and see if anything changes, I suppose...

@Darlax That has something to do with Feda's new Mission Launcher 1.2. Here's the related thread:
https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/28811-release-dune-2000-mission-launcher-12/

Hope that helps.

EDIT: @Klofkac Apparently the "save & test" parameter didn't test properly. After loading it up through the Mission Launcher, changes loaded. I guess that was it? >.>

Also, how about the DHC Silo assets for this 'exploding thing' thing? The crates looked kind of silly, you might not be able to get away with putting a ton of them in one place because they'll all be in the same formation, but these things look distinct.


Those look pretty good. Maybe recolor the Spice in there a bit, call it 'munitions' storage or whatever, and there ya go.

If it's of any interest, here are the other frames:

Edited October 20, 2020 by Fey

[Klofkac]

1 hour ago, Fey said:

I'll keep fiddling with it and see if anything changes, I suppose...

The only thing that came into my mind is that ANY changes you make in Structures editor do not make it into actual game. Just for sanity, you could try to change anything that would have obvious and very visible effect in game (i.e. changing building graphics, HP, or anything) and see if your change makes effect in game. If not, there's something else wrong. Don't you have the Templates.bin and other files under CustomCampaignData Mods folder? I already explained that this won't work...

To make you sure, I noticed an effect when changing just "B Exploding barrel" byte immediately when I tested in game. This is how I discovered meaning of this byte. I just set it randomly to value of 18 (IX research centre) and then I was poking into IX centre in game, and when I tried to sell it, I noticed by PURE CHANCE, that the nearby buildings got damaged. If I did not notice this by chance, we would have no exploding barrels, unfortunately!

[Fey]

1 minute ago, Klofkac said:

Just for sanity

I edited my post! It works now, for some reason the changes weren't going into the game. Save & test from the editor didn't work, but loading via the Mission Launcher did. More details in my prior post, and some potentially useful new graphics to apply with this sort of behavior!

[Klofkac]

5 minutes ago, Fey said:

Save & test from the editor didn't work, but loading via the Mission Launcher did.

This is something I explicitly mentioned in my original post. Probably you somehow missed this information:

On 10/18/2020 at 10:44 PM, Klofkac said:

Limitations (this is important, please read!!!):
- Althrough Structures Editor is able to load and save Templates.bin and other .BIN files from/to CustomCampaignData Mods folder, Save and test feature will not work because testing map won't copy BIN files from Mods folder into Dune2000\Data\bin folder! Save and test feature is usable only if you edit the files directly in their original game location (Dune2000\Data\bin folder). If you work with Mods folder and want to test your changes, you need to save first and manually copy modified .BIN files or use Mission Launcher. Copying of files from Mods to game folder when launching mission is a feature I'm planning to add in future.

 

[Fey]

1 minute ago, Klofkac said:

you somehow missed this information

😂 Probably because I'm an idiot. lol

Anyway, glad to have that sorted. I'll see if I can bug AZ about a proper sidebar icon for one of those Silo variants. You suppose the empty Silo would look best, or maybe recolor the orange Spice in there to something else that doesn't get fucked up from the, uhh... palette conversion? Blue worked with the plasma in the SLasher Silos, but I'm sure that rarely works.

[Klofkac]

1 hour ago, Fey said:

Anyway, glad to have that sorted. I'll see if I can bug AZ about a proper sidebar icon for one of those Silo variants. You suppose the empty Silo would look best, or maybe recolor the orange Spice in there to something else that doesn't get fucked up from the, uhh... palette conversion? Blue worked with the plasma in the SLasher Silos, but I'm sure that rarely works.

I just think this building should look more like a munition storage rather than a silo. The graphics you posted seem like a very good base for this, do adjustments and recolors as you think might look the best. I'm not a graphician so I cannot say much.

And I suppose you might try to add this explosive munition storage building without actually replacing silo, so that both building types would coexist! What you could do at this moment, is to replace duplicated building art for i.e. IX centre and Imperial Construction Yard, because they contain both healthy and damaged frame (respective buildings can use the remaining available building art). Then for munition storage building itself you can replace some duplicated buildings that look same for all three houses (you leave just one and set its "Owner side" and "Owner side needed" checkboxes to all sides). And lastly you add a new building TYPE and in order to be able to pre-place munition storage on map, you add special value for such building type into TILEDATA.BIN. Did not try myself, but this is my idea how it could work!

[Fey]

4 hours ago, Klofkac said:

I just think this building should look more like a munition storage rather than a silo.

I was just speaking with Cm about this and we believe using the empty variant works best. Having it black in there could make it appear like some kind of fuel, and otherwise would just be a generic structure graphic.

Regardless of how it might seem, I'm not a graphician either! I just kind of fuck around until something presentable occurs. lol

4 hours ago, Klofkac said:

replace duplicated building art for i.e. IX centre and Imperial Construction Yard

SLasher megaturret and new Imperial ConYard graphics. I used the duplicated RC graphics since it has blue in it, and I needed that exact sort of palette for the SLasher to look good. The new Imperial ConYard has a mixture of Atreides and Harkonnen graphics, seen here:


However, I could overwrite one of the walls or turret bases or something. I overwrote the wall graphics for one new structure already; that worked just fine.

4 hours ago, Klofkac said:

this is my idea how it could work!

So I figured out how to add stuff to tiledata via hex...

Spoiler

each thingy is 4 bytes, the last one has to be 80 if you want to read from the building list. the first byte is index number, I assume the second byte is related but I only see zeros on those at a glance, and the third byte is just faction number from 0-7.

I put together a helpful one-minute video showing that your idea was indeed successful:
https://i.imgur.com/t7q6txL.mp4

so enjoy, I guess 😜

oh, but I do have something to report, I suppose. umm... your structures editor doesn't seem able to comprehend more warheads. I've been adding warheads and none of them are being read for some reason, so a bunch of weapons had their warheads set to W_BULLET, which I guess is the default or something lol and I guess I need to go into tibed to set the warheads back

EDIT: oh lol that thing about warheads was in the OP. I double-checked this time!! never mind! xD

anyway yeah

Edited October 20, 2020 by Fey

[Klofkac]

2 hours ago, Fey said:

So I figured out how to add stuff to tiledata via hex...

  Reveal hidden contents

each thingy is 4 bytes, the last one has to be 80 if you want to read from the building list. the first byte is index number, I assume the second byte is related but I only see zeros on those at a glance, and the third byte is just faction number from 0-7.

It's nice you figured out the TILEDATA.BIN stuff. You were faster than me, because just now I posted another thread (https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/29029-modified-tiledatabin-file-with-support-for-extra-building-and-unit-types/) where I crafted an extended version of TILEDATA.BIN which you can take and use. I also have TILEDATA.BIN editor program, so it was easier for me without messing up with hex editor. But on the other hand, I can see you are now pretty well experienced modder, yay.

2 hours ago, Fey said:

I put together a helpful one-minute video showing that your idea was indeed successful:
https://i.imgur.com/t7q6txL.mp4

so enjoy, I guess 😜

Hehehe, that is hilarious. I can see you are astonished by the possibility to make exploding barrels kind of stuff in Dune2000. I liked the video, and like the munition storage graphics too!

2 hours ago, Fey said:

oh, but I do have something to report, I suppose. umm... your structures editor doesn't seem able to comprehend more warheads. I've been adding warheads and none of them are being read for some reason, so a bunch of weapons had their warheads set to W_BULLET, which I guess is the default or something lol and I guess I need to go into tibed to set the warheads back

EDIT: oh lol that thing about warheads was in the OP. I double-checked this time!! never mind! xD

Hmm, did not really get what you meant, but as I understand it, everything is working okay for you now?

[Fey]

1 minute ago, Klofkac said:

I crafted an extended version of TILEDATA.BIN

I saw!! I picked it up. It's really nice to finally have room for more units!

Aye, I have the tiledata editor but it wouldn't let me put more new stuff in. So, I only used it as a reference while I went picking through the hex. Perhaps you have a more modern version, or spotted a way to input new numbers where I did not.

3 minutes ago, Klofkac said:

hilarious

Yes! Exploding barrel behavior is tremendously fun, I am very happy to see such a thing in D2k. D2k is unfortunately missing lots of incidental environment depth. We rectified that with our findings regarding tilesets, we've been able to create some new artificial structures and add detail with stuff like Launch Pads and Mass Deposits, but interacting with the environment had yet to be done. Now if we could only figure out a way to toggle Repulsion Field Generators on and off. lol

5 minutes ago, Klofkac said:

I liked the video

Thank you! I like your findings. I had a lot of fun memeing with them. It will soon be time to produce something productive. lol

6 minutes ago, Klofkac said:

everything is working

Nnnot quite. I added a ton of new warheads to my mod, which were working just fine in-game, but the structures editor only read the original ones:

Spoiler

A bunch of weapons using custom warheads were reset to W_BULLET, and this isn't a purely visual glitch. It was actually reset. I killed an exploding unit using GRENDEATH and all the units around it took zero damage:

Because that warhead is precise and so all the damage was dealt to the tile where the unit was present; no damage got out to the surrounding tiles, like the custom warhead the weapon was supposed to be using would have done.

So... I dunno what to make of that. Is there something wrong with the warhead modding using your new editor? Come to think of it, I don't see the option to add a warhead anywhere. Am I missing something?

[Klofkac]

42 minutes ago, Fey said:

So... I dunno what to make of that. Is there something wrong with the warhead modding using your new editor? Come to think of it, I don't see the option to add a warhead anywhere. Am I missing something?

You can edit and add new warheads on Armour tab.

I looked at this and found out what I was expecting - it is actually TibEd who is not doing it right. In ARMOUR.BIN there is a byte that says number of used warheads. TibEd does not increase this number when you add new warhead in it (but game will still work).

Try to add a new warhead with Structures editor. The name will be reset, but the numbers should remain intact. Hope this will help. Do not go to Weapons tab before you fix warheads.

42 minutes ago, Fey said:

Aye, I have the tiledata editor but it wouldn't let me put more new stuff in. So, I only used it as a reference while I went picking through the hex. Perhaps you have a more modern version, or spotted a way to input new numbers where I did not.

All that is needed is to edit the units.txt and buildings.txt file that come with Tiledata editor. You can add new lines into these files, then you can set those extra numbers in tiledata editor.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Klofkac

[Fey]

52 minutes ago, Klofkac said:

TibEd who is not doing it right

Wow! Come out with a new version, smack down literally everything about the old, that's brutal my dude

Imma fix it up Thanks again!

[firefly101]

truth is truth, TibEd offered a lot but has major holes in it.

[Fey]

@Klofkac Yo, is there a 'replace unit/structure' function similar to 'remap tiles'? You know, if you swap some stuff around on the sidebar for instance and want to replace every structure on the map that's a Silo with, say, wall segments.

If not, it's a suggestion for the next version of the editor, whenever it comes out.

[Klofkac]

10 hours ago, Fey said:

Yo, is there a 'replace unit/structure' function similar to 'remap tiles'?

There is no such functionality available. But I can extend the "remap tiles" feature to be able to remap special values as well.

Btw I hope you're having fun playing around with Structures Editor. I hoped there would be possibility to edit every single byte in Templates.bin and other bin files, but there are still a few unknown bytes. Maybe you might discover what they do, but I was not able to see any effect in game when editing them. You might get lucky, but who knows.

[Cm_blast]

I only scratched the surface, but I think the editor will load the bunch of .bin files directly from whatever place you are loading maps (gruntmods), and correct me if I am wrong but it seems there is no way to load other .bin files from here.

I think it could be a good adition being able to load .bin files from other folders. For example I never do modifications directly on gruntmods, but on a portable version of the game (with funky moded files), so I always do all the modifications on that portable and, when they are ready, I apply them in gruntmods, this way if I still didn't finish to do all the modifications I still can play the game with nothing modded without having to move multiple files around. Sometimes I am simply testing if certain thing is possible to do, but it is not going to be used for a campaign or anything, so I don't mind having those sort of things on the portable version.

There are a few things tibed does well: The first time you open the program will create back up files, with the option of reverting into the original state at any moment. Also when you open tibed it will load with the default values (with the option of import the changes done in game); I like this because sometimes I modded something that make the game crash, but with no idea what it cause it so I may open a second TibEd just to check which values or bytes or whatever I altered compared to the original.

TibEd also have the option to save the set up as a .tib file, which allow me to have the modifications ready to use but still don't apply, as maybe I didn't finish them; but on top of that I create multiple .tib files, as sometimes I have the thing done and save it, but later I realize I am missing something (or want to add a second modification) so I do it and save it as a separated .tib file, and apply the changes. If for whatever reason that doesn't work I can load the first .tib file so I recover the lastest state that I know for sure that worked withouth having to start from zero (and more manegeable that creating multiple templates.bin with different names or something).

And finally, with the custom data from the launcher, for the new campaign I am doing it uses around 6 different templates (only templates, not the other .bin files) so, having the option to open the structure editor with all the default values but then apply whatever specific templates can be something good to do. I may found that the mission that you play with the reduced tech (like only tech 2 but not being able to build barracks) it only happens for one mission, so it uses his own template.bin, but if you editor load on the gruntmod-default folder I need to move the template into the game (and then reverting into the original one) just to do a small modification or simply if I need to check exactly what I did in all my 6 different template.bin which are in different mods.

Sorry if any of these things can be done already but I didn't saw the option.

At least it seems that does things more easily than tibed and it's more an editor "for dummies" as it self explanatory from the most part.

Edited October 23, 2020 by Cm_blast