Rime: Final Stages, I need your help

Hello, It’s been awhile again. In that time great progress has been made with Rime due to NoFaTe’s help once again. I currently have been struggling with a bug that I haven’t figured out how to solve yet, but I found a workaround. With that being said the workaround isn’t very good either, but I’m not graphics or UI artist I’ve been using Rime looking like the below screenshots for months and haven’t even noticed 😛Colors Continue reading “Rime: Final Stages, I need your help”

Rime: January Progress Report

Time flies, I really thought I wrote the last entry last month, but apparently its been quite awhile. Here’s a bit of a status update…

I’ve been swamped with work and fixing issues and researching more cool things for Venice Unleashed. So work on Rime has been slow, but after reading the last blog post, there has been a ton of work behind the scenes that have been done with Rime.

  • Converted quite a few parts to use the MVVM for raw speed and performance
  • Added chunk reading via the VFS
  • Implemented a “new” ebx reader written by NoFaTe almost 3 years ago (+- a year)
  • Corrected issues with said EBX reader
  • Implemented ebx VFS and cross-ebx reading
  • Ebx reading and parsing is all async and threaded now and done in the background without affecting initial map loading times. (Maxed out my laptops i5 for ~9s before finishing)
  • Updated all projects to Visual C++ 14.0 and .NET 4.6.1 (fixes all UI issues using C# 6.0)
  • The bundle browser is now sorted alphabetically
  • Updated bundle browser plugin to use the VFS instead of manually parsing bundles itself.

And many many more changes to increase performance etc.

Rime: September Progress Report

Hello there, I know it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this and a few people thought the project was dead (I don’t know why, but they did lol).  Here’s a quick update of what has happened over the last few months. Most of the work has been done by the other member of Venice Unleashed NoFaTe!

Fixes:

  • Fixed a crash that would occur due to plugins without UI’s being added as UI elements.
  • Fixed various threading issues and collection changed issues due to the asynchronous nature of Rime.
  • Fixed a ton of issues dealing with the UI and how they interface with plugins.

Updates:

  • Updated WebLink security (cross communication to modders link to prepare for the community)
  • Updated the BinaryReader/Writer with more efficient versions.

Refactoring:

  • Removal of a lot of deprecated, unused, commented out code.
  • Deprecated all previous (semi-functional) mounting code (due to the new readers/virtual file system).
  • Moved a TON of shared code (used between Lib/Rime itself) to the RimeCommon and restructured it.
  • Moved a TON of Frostbite specific utilities and classes to RimeLib.
  • Refactored the plugin system again (Will have to update the RimeExamplePlugin github soon).
  • Refactored the handling for Frostbite Guid class.

Features:

  • Added the ability to auto-start certain plugins on launch
  • Added all available plugins to be launched from a menu if you are unsure how to launch them (only ones with UI).
  • Added auto-detection of game builds and information.
  • Added BuildInfoProxy for x86 and x64 versions of Frostbite to read out the engine’s build info natively.
  • Added detection for Frostbite2014.4 (Star Wars Battlefront Alpha Trial).
  • Implemented a new Virtual File System.
  • Loading of patch files and patched superbundles completed.

Changes:

  • Added Rime to a CI solution to prepare for testing builds for those who have already been selected for testing.

 

H2UnlockPatcher: Halo 2 Beta Unlocker

Here’s a little side project that I didn’t have very much time to fully complete. It is a unlocked Halo 2 Beta! Currently when you sign in, just select “do not sign in” and then from there you can use System Link, Split Screen, Xbox Live (arranged game).

Just a note, the System Link is missing some code to allow xbox’s to see each other, I am slowly working on a fix for this. I spent a few weeks a few months ago working on my own xbe (Xbox Executable) patcher and patch creation system, which allowed me to build patched executable really quickly. In this time I recoded the entire main menu in assembly to “unlock” everything, I even had force loading which is disabled in this patcher due to unforeseen crashes.

Features List:

  • Removal of the EULA screen
  • Removal of all watermarking
  • Removal of all main menu limitations (if code is still there)
  • Re-linking of System Link, Xbox Live, and System Link screens.
  • Controller input hook (not active)

Pictures:

Unlocked Main Menu
Unlocked Main Menu

Halo 2 Beta Ingame

You will need the executable matching SHA1: C42E58FA8EEDCD4F46707C2FD0D8CEFCC61A6410

This will not be redistributed.

Download (Requires .NET Framework):

H2UnlockPatcher

peace,
-kiwidog

Rime: Closed Alpha

Well, it’s been a month since the last update. But in that month, Rime went from being non-functional, but powerful tool to a semi-functional extraction for Frostbite 2 (and 3) games. There has been a huge overhaul in the back-end to allow it to function in a modular fashion.

Currently there are many bugs, but to poke around and open up various resources has been implemented and soon(TM) integration with Venice Unleashed will be finished and the community will have the first taste of modding the Frostbite engine.

Continue reading “Rime: Closed Alpha”

Rime: May Progress Report

Sup,

Just a few updates. As read in my previous post, security is something I take very seriously as a developer, and I was going to allow plugins to run unrestricted until the beta. Luckily with enough debugging and trial and error, I finally got proper locked down sandboxed plugins that can be loaded from any directory! With that being said as well, I have resolved issues with the internal messaging structure for Rime as well as changed the way that plugins function. I also will be updating the example plugin git repository.

Fixes:

  • Overhauled and fixed internal communication of all parts of Rime
  • Fixed loading of plugins
  • Implemented plugin security sandbox
  • Cleanup of old code, refactored entire plugin system

Removals:

  • Removal of SharpDX and all DirectX 11 related mesh rendering
  • Removal of IPlugin interface.

Implementations:

  • Moved all plugin logic and abstract classes to a common module (RimeCommon)
  • Moved most message logic and listeners to a common module.
  • Setup an OpenGL based renderer to replace SharpDX. Proof of concept finished.

Also I’m moving, so there may not be any work done until I find a place to live. Peace.

Rime: April Progress Report

Hey,

There have been a few things that have been going on in the last few months. I just wanted to give everyone an update on the current status of Rime and the Venice Unleashed interop. First things first, plugin’s are hard, if you have checked the previous post on plugins and open source, I am making use of a plugin system for all external and internal plugins. That way you, the hobby modder can look at what we have to offer, and the functionality of it and be able to write your own code to interact with the Frostbite engine. That’s all fine and dandy, but I am a security-oriented coder. I have been working on for the last week a system to overlay the plugin interface’s to allow the code to be sandboxed, only allowing read/write access to the folder where the plugin resides. This will lessen the chance of someone writing a malicious plugin to steal sensitive information, or execute code that could potentially be harmful.

The way that I was going to get around these issues, is force the sandbox to run as lower-level privileges than Rime itself. (Even though Rime does not require to be ran as administrator, some people will anyway). That a malicious plugin writer won’t be able to gain privileges via Rime. And all of this is where the problem comes in, I have been debugging and researching the best approach to this in C#, and there just isn’t one (publicly at least). So I am making the decision to scrap the secure plugin system for the closed/open alpha of Rime until we get a functional system for the beta. With that being said, I highly recommend that any plugin creator open source their plugins so people can compile it from scratch. If you download a pre-built executable, use caution and only download from trustworthy people.

Fixes:

  • Fixed incorrect TextureHeader structure
  • Fixed DXT1-3 native C# processing.
  • Fixed EBX reading code
  • Entire application structure refactoring for prep for release (removing unused/old code etc, that’s why we have source control ain’t it?)
  • Abstracted multiple classes to prepare for multi-game Frostbite support.

Broke:

  • Internal communication of all parts of Rime. (Yeah… I fudged up bad)
  • Plugins in their entirety (which means all the built-in editors for Rime have been disabled as well, Rime’s internals uses the same plugin system)
  • DirectX 11 Mesh Renderer (Instead of using laggy WPF for everything)

Additions:

  • Battlefield 4 Resource Types
  • Proper loading of all game files and resources. (Just like how it gets done in-engine, no longer needs to decompile the entire map/game to mod resources)
  • Retrieving encryption information, and real time modding via Venice Unleashed.

Rime: Let’s go Open Source

Hello all,

Just an update to give some progress on Rime, what’s determined to be the worlds greatest Frostbite tool other than DICE’s internal FrostEd. (endrant.)

Rime's Project Explorer

There has been some confusion on when, or where Rime will be released. Currently the answers are both, “Soon”. But as a step forward to speed up development certain parts of Rime will be Open Source. This is the first open source project that I will be hosting and hopefully people will be contributing. Now back to that word “certain”… As it stands now, Rime itself will NOT be open sourced, that way there can be tight control over builds, coding style, and management. What is currently open source as of a few minutes ago is the Plugin System, and eventually the RimeLib will be open sourced.

The plugin system will allow anyone to write plugins to interact with new content, or just write better editors than the built in ones if you are so inclined. But the plugins will be called upon each time a certain style of content is requested to be opened. All of Rime’s internal editors, content loaders are all just built-in plugins, so the system has been tested so far as working. With the exception of IPlugin (which is included in the repository) you will not need ANY other source from Rime to get started writing awesome plugins. You have full reign over C# at this moment with plugins so you can load external files etc, just as you would any other C# application.

Now, what is this RimeLib? Well RimeLib is currently the native C# library that was designed to handle all of Frostbite’s various classes and formats. Pretty much RimeLib does all of the hard work for you, so you don’t have to worry about alignment, hex editors, or any of that. For example, loading a mesh into a nice C# class with formatting is only 1 line of code with RimeLib. The library is still in early development phases and has not undergone a huge re-write since it’s first inception in IceEditor Alpha, this will all need to change along with proper documentation for all of the classes and a separation between release and debug builds (release will only have FINALIZED and 100% confirmed structures, methods, classes; while debug has everything including experimental code). You will be able to find RimeLib’s source code sooner than later (Hopefully a few releases into Rime’s Closed Alpha testing).

What are you waiting for? Go check out the awesomeness of Open Source!

Rime: Why not make things easy?

Well, its 5:09AM when writing this, I haven’t slept in forever and I’m probably about to go to bed. I noticed when developers are using FrostEd they seem (at least from Frostbite’s Main Page) like the UI is fluid and very easy to use. The primary drawback of modding in Bad Company 2, is there are barely any good editors for the map format. Yes, we have our beloved rukqoa’s Bad Company 2 editor with 2d map placement. But I feel its time to move forward above the old python scripts and manually doing everything yourself. Rime has been planned to be as much as an all in one tool for as much as possible. If there is something Rime can’t do, it will try it’s best with assisting you with data viewers and raw hex dumps of what its using. Pretty much so far, I will just list off a few things that Rime will make very easy to all of its users, SO FAR.

  •  Easy to use wizards for de-compiling and re-compiling a map, and any assets that Rime will need
  • Form integration
  • Easy to use UI (will be changed based on user feedback (yes you!) )
  • In-app model/mesh viewer
  • In-app texture viewer/converter

There is probably more, but its super late and I can’t remember. I have been working hard on this project since the new Star Wars game is coming out and I would love to have space troopoer models on a very less blue Strike at Karkand. Anywho, let me stop my useless ramblings and show off some screenshots.

 

User no longer has to work hard to prepare to mod a Frostbite engine based game.

Continue reading “Rime: Why not make things easy?”

Rime: Mesh Viewer Preview

This project hasn’t been touched in quite awhile. I last left off with figuring out mesh data and with help from dani we got it all done.

This is a very rough preview, that we can load models and load them into a model viewer all using engine files.

Whats to come is proper lighting, faces, texturing etc automatically from the new backend that Rime has been coded on. Instead of forcing data into a million different formats, why not live edit?

tl;dr; This video was showing Frostbite 2 model data being loaded natively and being displayed using WPF.