7 replies to this topic

[Idobek]

Let's say we want to remove the 'lore to identify' value from all items so that we never have to have them identified. If we didn't want to copy all the item files to the override, we used to use IF_EVAL, like so:

BEGIN ~Identify All Items~
COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*\.itm~ ~override~
   READ_SHORT 0x42 "loretoidentify"
      WRITE_SHORT 0x42 0x0000
   IF_EVAL ("%loretoidentify%" > 0)

With the invention of BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES we can don't need to evaluate the current lore value, we can just patch:

BEGIN ~Identify All Items~
COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*\.itm~ ~override~
    WRITE_SHORT 0x42 0x0000
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

Edited by Idobek, 01 April 2004 - 08:57 AM.

[Idobek]

Note: BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES will trip over the iplot0xx items if you use C_E_R to copy all the items. See "this" thread. I have added this peice of code to the top of my tp2 to deal with this issue.

ALWAYS
  ACTION_IF NOT FILE_EXISTS ~override/iplot01k.itm~
    THEN BEGIN
      COPY ~IKTest/blank.itm~ ~override/iplot01k.itm~
    END
  ACTION_IF NOT FILE_EXISTS ~override/iplot04g.itm~
    THEN BEGIN
      COPY ~IKTest/blank.itm~ ~override/iplot04g.itm~
    END
  ACTION_IF NOT FILE_EXISTS ~override/iplot04h.itm~
    THEN BEGIN
     COPY ~IKTest/blank.itm~ ~override/iplot04h.itm~
    END
  ACTION_IF NOT FILE_EXISTS ~override/iplot04i.itm~
    THEN BEGIN
      COPY ~IKTest/blank.itm~ ~override/iplot04i.itm~
    END
END

I do it like this because then I don't have to remember copy the iplot0xx items everytime I use C_E_R on items.

[Idobek]

I would prefer I if Wes came along and answered this definitively, but until then...

I am using BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES on patches with WHILE loops, that definately contain some patches that will not change the file. WeiDU will only not copy the file if no change is made at all, not if any one change is not made because the value is already the same. After you asked this I did a test:

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~AMUL.*\.itm~ ~override~
  WRITE_SHORT 0x42 0x0000
  WRITE_LONG 0x34 0x00000000
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

This code patches all the files in the regexp (27 files). 11 of these already have a zero value at offset 0x42.

I hope I understood what you were asking, my track record on answering the questioned asked (instead of what I thought was asked) is not great recently.

[weimer]

Without being too blase about it, BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES can never hurt you and basically always does exactly what you are thinking :-). If there would be no point in writing out the new file (because it would be exactly the same as the old after all of your patches), it will not be written.

In your amulet example, making the lore-to-indentify 0 and the price 0 changes every amulet, so every amulet will be written out.

The PLOT thing is annoying -- basically, the game biffs include malformed items. One approach would be to have WeiDU not flag errors when you try to read or write from an offset that isn't there. Hmm. Or maybe invalid reads could always return 0. The thing I'm worried about here is masking actual errors in mods that people are developing. If WeiDU silently walks over your errors, you won't realize that your patch makes no sense.

[Avenger_teambg]

What about an error override option.
So, if you are aware of a problem, you could skip it gracefully, then turn the error reporting back.