MTS Editor

[bzt]

Hi,

It's less than a week when I announced mtsconv, and now it's already obsoleted :-)

Let me introduce mtsedit, which knows everything that mtsconv knew, plus it can import Minecraft NBT .schematic files, and has an interactive GUI for quickly editing MTS files.

It was written in C (so it's small and fast), and has only one dependency, SDL2. I've tested it under Linux and Windows (compiled with mingw), it worked like a charm. Enjoy!



Just for the records, because the Minetest wiki is very poor on documentation, I've also created a detailed description of the MTS file format (still incomplete).

Cheers,
bzt

[rubenwardy]

Oh wow!

What's the biggest MTS it can handle? CTF has some massive ones in its repo: https://github.com/mt-ctf/maps

[bzt]

Hi @rubenwardy,

The max size is 256 x 256 x 256. It's not for editing huge maps, but to edit structures. I've loaded detailed schematics of the Tower Bridge and the Notre Dame, both worked as expected.

Please note I've just put together this little tool in my spare time, it's free and Open Source. It does not want to compete with World Edit and such programs. It's main goal is to be small, fast and simple to use.

Cheers,
bzt

[rubenwardy]

Please note I've just put together this little tool in my spare time, it's free and Open Source. It does not want to compete with World Edit and such programs. It's main goal is to be small, fast and simple to use.

I was just wondering, I well understand the constraints of spare time

This serves a different purpose to world edit though, as world edit is done in game but this is external. Being able to quickly create and modify schematics externally is pretty cool

[BuckarooBanzay]

I really love the simplicity of it, even the code is well readable and structured :O

[texmex]

Yes, finally! The missing link in my workflow!

[bzt]

Hi,

Thank you, I'm glad that you enjoyed this little tool!

Here's a quick heads up on the last commit:

1. the cursor displaying part completely rewritten, now it is fast and responsive even with large files (comes at a price though, now when you clear blocks, you'll see the background color and you'll have to release the mouse button to refresh what's beneath)
2. now both CW and CCW directions supported
3. preview file dimensions fixed (depending on the contents, sometimes there was a big empty border)
4. added compilation instructions in the README.md under Linux and Windows
5. user interface translated to Hungarian, Spanish, French, German, Polish and Russian

I was wondering, which OS is used to play Minetest the most? For Linux, compiling the editor is trivial, but if there are many Windows users, I might provide pre-compiled binaries.

Cheers,
bzt

[bzt]

Hi,

New features! :-)

The GUI now supports history, you can undo and redo modifications. The block definitions file is almost entirely complete, and I've added default images for the nodes, so that the preview generation is working great (much better than mtsconv's).

So far MTSEdit lacked a very important component. It uses blocks.csv in the data directory to get the block node definitions. That file had to be written by hand, up until now, but no more! I've written an MTSEdit Export Minetest mod which is able to generate that csv using the Lua API from within the game. The mod is dependency-free, works with Mineclone2 and Minetest Game as well. As it can't export / import MTS files, only node definitions, therefore it suggests @Sokomine's excellent handle_schematics mod for that (that's the reason for the optional dependency).

Cheers,
bzt

[texmex]

I was trying to compile on macOS but alas:
No ui driver can be detected. Install libsdl2-dev.

This is when running make with the sdl2 package installed, which is the one used for SDL development on macOS. Is it an issue of unset paths? I found some similar issue in a Rust project but I don't know how I would go about adapting it to a C environment. Halp!

[bzt]

Hi @texmex,

Yes, it is probably a path issue. The Makefile gives that message when it's unable to locate the SDL header files. Under MacOSX, it is usually looks for /Library/Frameworks/SDL2.framework/Headers. Please download the latest commit, I've added support for user home libraries. If even that fails, then please open up a Terminal, issue the following command and let me know it's output: "find / -name SDL.h".

Cheers,
bzt

[bzt]

It looks like this simple editor is not so simple any more (if we are looking at it's list of features :-) ). But it is still a single small executable (less than 256k).

The latest features:

1. not only the UI is translated, but the user can provide block name translations too (same format as the Minetest mods). I've provided quite a few translations (sorry about the quality, courtesy of Google Translate, but much better than nothing), see data/blocks_de.txt, blocks_ru.txt etc.
2. implemented brush feature. Now you can paint with sphere, dome, cylinder, cube, etc.
3. layer operations, you can insert or remove entire slices along each axis individually
4. flood fill, you can replace entire areas of the same block with another block type
5. redo / undo refactored and moved to a new source file to accomodate storing info on these new features
6. the Minetest mod part can now load and save MTS files easily using an intuitive tool, still without any dependency.

There's one feature that MTSEdit supports but which is not implemented in the Minetest Engine yet, biome specific names. With MTSEdit you can create schematics that does not contain "mcl_core:dirt" or "default:dirt" names directly, but instead "biome:node_filler" or "biome:node_top" for example. The purpose of this is to create structures that can be built-up in the world depending in which biome they are spawned. There's already a node name alias support in ME, so I'm hoping the developers will pick this up :-) It would be great, would allow houses made of sand in the desert and made of trees on the taiga using the same schematics.

Cheers,
bzt

[texmex]

Hi @texmex,

Yes, it is probably a path issue. The Makefile gives that message when it's unable to locate the SDL header files. Under MacOSX, it is usually looks for /Library/Frameworks/SDL2.framework/Headers. Please download the latest commit, I've added support for user home libraries. If even that fails, then please open up a Terminal, issue the following command and let me know it's output: "find / -name SDL.h".

Cheers,
bzt

Cheers, I’ll check it out!

[warpnarget]

/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.10/include/SDL2/SDL.h
/Library/Frameworks/SDL.framework/Versions/A/Headers/SDL.h

[bzt]

/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.10/include/SDL2/SDL.h
/Library/Frameworks/SDL.framework/Versions/A/Headers/SDL.h

Thanks! Looks like the "Version/A" part was missing, and they have removed the version from the path since I last used Mac? Good to know. Makefile fixed.

Cheers,
bzt

[warpnarget]

ld: warning: option -b is obsolete and being ignored
ld: file not found: binary
make: *** [icons.o] Error 1

[Peppy]

Hi bzt

Would you add node force placement support ?
(some trees schematics from MTG do use this to get rid of sapling)

Thanks a lot for this very nice tool !

[bzt]

Hi,

@warpnarget: hahahaha, I can't stop laughing! Those loosers obsoleted a flag without knowing what it is used for! They have provided an alternative for just one of its usage but not the rest, hahahaha! I've created a workaround, you should try now. If you manage to compile it under MacOSX, it would be great if you could send the compiled executable to me somehow so that I can provide a pre-compiled package. There's only one feature left, when I'm finished with that, I'm planning to upload zipped versions, which the users can easily install without compilation.

@Peppy: thanks, you're welcome! Request granted. You can toggle the force placement bit with the key [D] (both F and P were already in use). Does not work with undo / redo, because it's easy to reverse, you can't really mess up a structure with this, and also because that would considerably increase the memory footprint of the history (right now only param0 and param2 are tracked, param1 is generated automatically on save, except for the force placement bit).

List of new features:
- now the Minetest mod is included in the editor, one can install it with "./mtsedit -i (minetest mods directory)".
- toggle force placement bit
- the executable now accepts not only mts files, but directories too as argument. If that's a directory, then the "Load Schematic from File" window will appear on start up. With this, you can add your world's schems folder in the shortcut.

Cheers,
bzt

[warpnarget]

./bin2h icons.png font.psf.gz ../mt-mod/mtsedit >data.h
/bin/sh: line 1: 7251 Abort trap: 6 ./bin2h icons.png font.psf.gz ../mt-mod/mtsedit > data.h
make: *** [data.h] Error 134

[bzt]

Hi,

./bin2h icons.png font.psf.gz ../mt-mod/mtsedit >data.h
/bin/sh: line 1: 7251 Abort trap: 6 ./bin2h icons.png font.psf.gz ../mt-mod/mtsedit > data.h
make: *** [data.h] Error 134

I honestly don't know what's wrong with your computer. That bin2h tool is just a small utility (less than 150 SLoC) which checks all function return values, I have no clue how it could throw a SIGABRT. I can run it without problems on Linux, BSD and Windows as well. As a workaround, here's the data.h which it should create. If you copy this into the src directory, then Makefile won't call bin2h to generate it.

If you manage to finally compile MTSEdit under MacOSX, then please send the executable to me! I definitely want to create a package if compilation is this problematic under Mac!

Cheers,
bzt

[bzt]

I've updated the source, please let me know if bin2h works now. If so, then the MacOSX core developers should really go back to school to learn a little bit of programming, as that would mean there's a serious bug in their libc's strcpy implementation... But what could you expect from someone who obsoletes a flag without knowing its function? :-)

Cheers,
bzt