Big Daddy Jim wrote:
The MM8LevelEditor is able to reliably Import and Export any and all LOD-related files including .TGA.BMPs, .SPRITE.BMPs, .PCX formats, .SMK videos, et al. I've successfully done this dozens (if not hundreds) of times without problem or incident.
BDJ[/size]
Well, there have been some reports of bugs dealing with image imports over the years. Some years, I've been unable to address them in a timely manner. Recently someone reported a problem importing a sprite. In the process of investigating it, I noticed that sprite (and probably bitmap and icon) imports do not handle the situation where the palette doesn't exactly match the original palette for the object being replaced.
I checked in a change to the cvs version of the editor which ignores (with warnings) images with a missing or incorrect palette. In retrospect, that is probably not the right answer for imports, although it's a good idea for exports. The design of MM8LevelEditor doesn't handle updating two files at the same time easily, so I probably won't do a proper fix any time soon, which would involve searching for a matching existing palette and using that if found, or creating a new palette if none was found.
I'm not making any promises, but the release of the new TCC mod has piqued my interest in MM editing again. I'm considering a rewrite of the MM8LevelEditor (which unfortunately really is the MM8LevelViewerExporterViewer for practical purposes) which is focused on the task of actually changing the game data without having to know all of the fine details of the underlying files, especially since clever individuals like you and Greyface have shown there's ways to overcome some of the inherent limitations in the mm.exe engine.
I'm playing around with using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform as the basis, as it's ideal for everything such an editor should be able to do. I tried doing this a few years back, but hit enough issues that I didn't pursue the project.