My (future) LBA tools in C and C#

[Battler]

So, as those on both the unofficial and official LBA Discord servers already know, I have recently returned to the LBA modding scene. But, things have changed considerably since the last time I was doing this. What exactly do I mean, you may wonder? Well, the last time, I was doing everything in Viusal Basic 6, which was already outdated then but now it's outright ancient and even broken in the more recent versions of Windows, not to even talk about other platforms such as Linux and Mac OS which have gained prominence since then.

So as such, my future LBA tools are going to be made in C for older Windows versions and in C# (.NET 5.0) for moder Windows versions and other platforms.

And of course, this time, I'm using GitHub to store the source code. The repositories to watch are the following:
- https://github.com/OBattler/lbatools-c - for the C version (currently, some code is committed but there's no actual usable tools yet);
- https://github.com/OBattler/lbatools-cs - for the C# version (currently, nothing is committed but I do have some C# code already written, which I'm going to commit once it's good enough, as parts have to be rewritten already).

I'm trying to write the libraries first (but they're going to be accompanied with some command-line tools to make sure the libraries work correctly), before beginning the work on the proper GUI tools. The aim is to eventually have new tools to replace all my old tools that were written in VB 6 and even some new ones.

Please note that not all of my time is going to be used on this, since I now also have a job I'm beginning the supervised training for next week (which is going to be 8 hours a day), and I also develop my 86Box emulator, but I'm going to do my best to be able to do it all.

Edit: And the LBA 1 and 2 source code released on GitHub under GPL v2 is going to be of great help as well, as it means no more guessing the file formats.

[Battler]

The compression and decompression code is now complete in both C and C#, complete with a test program, and there's already some HQR code up in C: https://github.com/OBattler/lbatools...ster/hqr/hqr.c .

I also have some not-yet-committed changes in progress.

[bloodhound]

Cool that looks as clean as source code only looks when it's a rewrite

By the way, while it of course doesn't hurt to write a GUI for this, there already is a pretty good GUI by Lupin, the LBA Packager.

What are the other modding tools about, that you're planning to modernize?

[Battler]

I'm planning to modernize all my tools. The compression and HQR stuff is the very foundation for it as it's going to be the library. The current programs on GitHub are just test programs to make sure the code compiles and work correctly.

GUI's are planned for all the tools when I get to that stage - each tool is going to have two versions, one in C for old Windows versions, and one in C# for modern cross-platform.