IAS: Imagine Attribute Searcher ------------------------------- © July 1997 by Oovis. Freely Distributable Version 1.06. First Public Release. What is it? ----------- IAS is a small program which will scan an Imagine object file and tell you what textures and brushes have been applied to the object(s) within that file. IAS will scan all groups and subgroups contained within a file and give the name of any subpart with textures and/or brushes applied. IAS can automatically convert files from PC to Amiga versions or vice-versa IAS will scan for TXT2, TXT3 and TXT4, BRS3, BRS4 and BRS5 chunks within the TDDD object file How Do I Use It? ---------------- Firstly you must copy the program IAS to somewhere in your search path, e.g. your C directory. Secondly you must have a version of Imagine installed on your hard drive, as installed by the included Installer program. IAS tests for the existence of textures within the imagine/textures subdirectory. IAS should work with version 2, 3, 4 and 5 objects. If you find an object on which IAS misses textures or brushes please send the object to me on disk and I'll have a look and try to send you a fixed IAS in return (see below). If the object's texture information contains assigns to partitions or disks which AmigaDOS cannot find a system requester will appear asking for the relevent disk. If you do not possess the named disk click CANCEL, otherwise insert the disk in any drive. IAS is CLI only at the moment. If there is enough demand I may try to get my head round intuition and provide a GUI version in the future. IAS needs input parameters as follows: IAS {*options} OPTION ------ option is as follows: *p to redirect output to the printer. *b to give more detailed information about applied brushes *c to convert and re-save PC files as Amiga files *u to convert and re-save Amiga files as PC files These can be combined in the command input as *pbc or *bcp etc. N.B. *u and *c are mutually exclusive. You cannot use both at the same time. If you try this you will get an error message. If you do something like *cC you will also get an error message. Options can only be specified once each on the command line. In order to convert files the disk must be write enabled. Therefore you cannot convert a file straight from a CD-Rom. Copy the file to RAM or another disk first. OBJECT ------ object is the name of the object file you wish to examine. It must be in the current directory. HOME DIRECTORY -------------- Home Directory is the directory where you have installed Imagine on your system. You can use assigns if you've set them up. EXAMPLE: My copy of Imagine is in a subdirectory called Imagine5 in the tools directory of dh1:. Therefore my Home Directory is dh1:tools/Imagine5 To test and object called star.ship on df1: I type the following in a CLI (Shell) window: cd df1: IAS star.ship dh1:tools/Imagine5 The path to Imagine is assigned in my user-startup as Imagine5:, so I could also use the following cd df1: IAS star.ship Imagine5: A table will then be output something like this: IAS: Imagine Attribute Searcher. Version 1.06. © Oovis 1997 See Documentation for details. This program is FreeWare. This version revised 7 July 1997. Part name Texture/Brush applied Test ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HULL textures/dethstar(.itx) OK PANEL.1 brushes/name.ilbm OK # of textures required : 1 # of textures not located : 0 # of brush applications: 1 Number not found: 0 The test column will tell you if you have the texture on your harddisk or not. Brush details such as size and colour count will only be output if the *b option is specified. N.B. 1: I only have the specification for BRS4 brushes, so some application information from older versions of imagine than V4.00 may not be entirely correct. 2: If brushes are not in the directory specified within the TDDD file they will fail to be found, even though they may be somewhere else on your hard disk, and Imagine will also fail to find them. You should copy the brush files to the directory as it appears from IAS in order to use them. IAS searches as follows: 1) Search for the texture as its name is saved in the TDDD file using the Home Directory as input by the user 2) Add .itx to the name and search again 3) Try to find the name as saved without using the Home Directory. This enables a search of assign paths, or other disks. Now, Imagine saves all texture names without the .itx extension. I think that the .itx versions are used by the floating point version of Imagine and the non .itx by the Integer versions, and are therefore incompatible. IAS will add '(.itx)' to the name on the info line if this version has been found on your hard disk. If the texture names come out with a \ instead of / they will all fail. This is because the object is for the PC version of Imagine not the Amiga version. The *c option will convert the files and test them at the same time so you don't have to run IAS twice to convert then test files. A short info line appears at the bottom of the output table if the object appears to be a PC type object and *c was not specified. Redirecting the output ---------------------- If you want a hard copy of the output from IAS you can use the standard redirection technique as follows: To print the file use IAS >prt: or using the option switch *p IAS *p To save the table as an ASCII file use something like IAS >Ram:testtable Who wrote this and why? ----------------------- This program was written by Oovis contactable at Strand Theatre Aldwych London WC2B 4LD ENGLAND If you want a reply please include correct stamps/money for return mail. I cannot afford to pay postage out of my own pocket. Sorry. I am the Chief Electrician and am 28 years old. This is the first bit of programming I've ever released to the general public. You might never use it, but I've found it useful. I wrote this program because many objects have come my way from magazines and a friend's internet connection which have been either PC format files, or have needed textures I don't possess (e.g. the Essence II package), and it's a real pain having to manually search a large grouped object to find which part is stopping Imagine rendering. Now I can get a printout of an object's structure and convert the file format at the same time should I wish to do so. Is this a useful program? It is for me, and it got me back into assembly language programming again after a break of a few years, so what the heck. Great Britain only: If you want a copy of the source code for this program, send a cheque/postal order for £5 payable to D I Roberts to the above address and I'll send out a copy on disk within 7 days. Finally ------- Thanks to: Dave for the internet cruising Impulse Inc. for Imagine All the modellers out there for the great work Hi-Toro, Commodore and Escom for the Amiga Gateway 2000 for buying the Amiga technology. Let's hope they can do something with it, and not over stretch themselves as Escom did! Amiga Format for keeping me inspired and enthusiastic Spoons and Duncan for keeping the ship going when I'm not there All trademarks and copyrights acknowledged. Oovis, London 1997.