Remnantmods

Standalone RTH

What is it?
An application that allows you to connect to a debug xbox and make changes to the map you're playing in real time.

How does it work?
Most xbox's just have one thread running, but debug xbox's have another thread that listen's for a tcp connection. This allows you to connect to a debug xbox and send and receive information while you are playing a game. Xbox7887 and Kornman01 made YeloDebug.dll, making it easy to communicate with a debug xbox, so I simply implemented a way to make use of real time halo.

Why did you make another app? Why didn't you just add it to Entity?
First and foremost, I didn't want to have to make a bunch of changes to Entity's code, because I'm lazy and it's hard to work with.
Secondly, having it in a separate app gives you the ability to use it with any version of Entity that you choose(or any map editor that closes the File when it's not reading or writing to it). I think it's a lot better to have the freedom to use whichever program you like.

What is different in v2?
In v1, when you synced, it would sync the whole tag to the xbox, as Detox pointed out, this can cause problems, even if you sync the meta without modifying it. In v2, it now will only sync the changes that you have made from the time you opened the tag in Standalone RTH until you sync. This should help to avoid some of the freezing caused by syncing values that shouldn't be. This should hopefully work with any tag that can be modified with Real Time Halo.

Again, all the hard work of this came from xbox7887 and Kornman01, thanks to them.

Pics



Edit:
Since YeloDebug has seemed to not work with Vista, I decided to try using the RthDLL.dll from entity. I think Tural made it if I remember correctly. This version will only work as well as the dll will, so it might not be that great, or it might work fine, I'm not sure. I synced only the changes instead of the whole meta like entity, so it could potentially work better, but who knows. Try it out if you have vista, otherwise stick with the other one.

Thanks OwnZ joO.

I'll test it out soon.

Thank xbox and korn, they did 95% of the work.

Still not working on Vista. >.<

Yeah I'm not sure why that is, might be YeloDebug, or it could be another problem.

Tested some basic things I do.

I have a slight issue: when does it create a comparison of the original map and the changes? Is it when you open the actual .map file and it creates a snapshot of the entire map, or is it taking a snapshot every-time you select a new tag?

Other than that it seems to work fairly well: I just wish I knew the method its using to test changes.

It creates a snapshot of the tag when you select it in standalone RTH. If you select another tag it will throw away the snapshot and create a new one if you select that same tag again. It's actually somewhat of a hassle to get used to, but it's better than freezing everything. Hopefully this lets people use RTH until another more advanced method comes out.

Upon reviewing your source again, I discovered the problem. This code causes the application to fail to start: xbox = new Xbox( );

I remove it and it loads, but none of the RTH features work.

That means that YeloDebug is not compatible with Vista. Xbox is the connection to the debug xbox.

I guess I'll have to make a RTH class myself.

Haha I guess so...

Eaton check the RTH for vista one. I made it using the rth dll from entity, so it will only work as good as that will. Hopefully it's not too buggy, and hopefully I got everything that I could done right. Tell me if it gives you any problems too.

Luckily this one loads, but I don't have time to test it out. Thanks for the fix though.

Not working. The program loads, but I get this when I try to connect:



I actually got that error before in Entity. It happened when I tried to Sync to my Xbox. Only Entity 1.5 UE worked.

I didn't test it at all, because I really have no need to, I will try to get it working for you later though.

OwnZ joO wrote:I didn't test it at all, because I really have no need to, I will try to get it working for you later though.

Thanks a lot!

Who knows, maybe I'll ask either Tural(I think he wrote the dll for entity) or xbox7887 on just the basic commands of how to communicate with a debug xbox and implement them on my own. I'm pretty sure you just send commands on TCP 731, but I don't know which ones to send.

OwnZ joO wrote:Who knows, maybe I'll ask either Tural(I think he wrote the dll for entity) or xbox7887 on just the basic commands of how to communicate with a debug xbox and implement them on my own. I'm pretty sure you just send commands on TCP 731, but I don't know which ones to send.

Tural? I'm pretty sure it was Shalted. Also, Detox told me you want to learn how to use Sockets and Telnet if you want to communicate with an Xbox.

Yeah, I knew you needed sockets to communicate with it, but I don't know what commands to send, eventually I will probably get more interested in it, but I think I'm just gonna take a break for a while.

Doesn't work on Xp x32 for me.

It says it can't connect, it's just this app, minirth works fine. But minirth syncs the whole tag, so it takes ages to do even the most basic swap.

Then it started to say something like "Disconnect before starting a new connection"

So it would seem it was connected, but it wasn't. When I make a change and click sync, it says the sync was succesful, but there are no changes to be seen. Again, minirth works fine, it is just this app.

So basically it's not finding the xbox, or something, I tried with firewall off, no difference.

Any ideas?

It works for me but not all changes to the map work through RTH. Its good for effect swapping but for markers and bones it doesn't seem to do anything 90% of the time.

That's because some tags are already loaded into memory in order to reload them you would need to restart the map with the Yelo checkpoints thingy.

Here's a little rule of thumb for RTH:

Pretty much all the values; Floats, Shorts, Bytes, Enum8-16-32, Bitmask8-16-32, SID; will take effect immediately.
Others like Idents require a respawn of the object. (Yelo restart respawns everything)

There are exceptions to this. For example: I've been able to swap attachment Idents instantly. When I did that gothic candle stand, I was able to swap the attachment Ident from a [ligh] tag type to a [lens] without respawn. However swaping it the other way was no possible.

Another example is physical attachments like a turret on the hog. You can move the marker the turret is attached to but the turret itself will remain in place until the Warthog is respawned.

Dr Flatulator wrote:minirth works fine, it is just this app.

Minirth?

oh, I don't think it was supposed to be released publically.

I think it was yamagushi but don't quote me on it.