LBA Resource Manager [Discuss]

[Battler]

Firstly, I'm making this thread because this program has no thread about it yet.

Secondly, I would like to announce that version 3.0.0 of LBA Resource Manager is to be released this week.

Now, what is LBA Resource Manager? LBA Resource Manager is my LBA archive utility, formerly known as WinHQR, or in the beginning, LBA 1/2 HQR/DeHQR Utility.

Version 3.0.0 will have a lot of improvements, the most important of which being - standard Windows common dialogs (for open, save, etc.) instead of my custom ones, and of course, menus.

[Battler]

LBA Resource Manager version 3.0.0
==============================

Current features:
- Loading the existing .HQR archives, and creating new ones;
- Performing various operations on their items;
- Comparing two .HQR archives;
- Running scripts, in order, to perform several operations on one archive, in just a few clicks;
- Hex-viewing the items of the .HQR archives.

Changes from WinHQR version 2.x.x:
- Renamed the program from WinHQR to LBA Resource Manager;
- Added this read-me file;
- Re-wrote all the code, and re-made all the interface (so basically, re-did the whole program) completely from scratch, only retaining some of the old WinHQR's icons;
- Improved the stability (and not to even mention the speed) greatly;
- Added compression (both types 1 and 2), in the scripts as well;
- Add the .HQR items descriptions, which are loaded, along with the extensions, from an external file;
- Changed the script "language" completely;
- The "Run Script" dialog now also has a debug text box;
- Added the option to choose, which algorithm you want to use for Compression (for both types 1, and 2, separately), and De-compression;
- Using C/C++, and/or Delphi routines, for Compression and De-compression, instead of the very slow VB ones;
- Revised the archive contents file extensions, this also means that the extensions for LBA 2's LBA_BKG.HQR archive, the contents have now correct extensions;
- Added a proper About dialog;
- Added the possibility to set an external viewer for each item extension;
- Added, and/or improved, a lot of things, including most, if not even all, that was ever requested (this includes, but is not limited to, a "Save As" option, item operations on multiple items, etc.).

Things to do:
- Add a built-in script editor, as well as a possibility to run scripts right away, whithout saving them into a file first;
- Drag-and-drop capability.

Description
-----------
This is a program, which allows you to edit the LBA 1/Relentless and LBA 2/TO (Twinsen's Odyssey) archive (or, to use the original name, High Quality Resource) files. Those files are very well recognizable, because they have the following extensions: .HQR, .VOX, .ILE, .OBL.
All older versions of the program were missing a lot of features, which have been added in this versions (see the "What's new?" section above for more information).
Also with this version, the program has been renamed from the old, short name WinHQR (which is the second name for the program, the first one being "The LBA 1/2 HQR/DeHQR utility") to its third name in its history, LBA Resource Manager. Hopefully, this name is permanent now.

How this program works
----------------------
You either load an .HQR archive, or create a new one, and then you can do various operations on its items.
You can add them, remove them, extract them (both with, or without de-compression), change their compression types, etc.
You can also compare two .HQR archives, and run scripts.
The items, that should be extracted/extracted "As Is"/removed with the respective commands for performing these operations on multiple items, have to have their check-boxes in the ListView checked.
The files with the .HQR items extensions, and descriptions, are located in the FILEINFO sub-folder of this program's folder. Also, RMScript.txt documents the LBA Resource Manager script format.

Credits
-------
Me (OBrasilo): for starting the program and general coding.
Adeline Software International: the original LBA de-compression code.
Alexandre Fontoura: program-friendly adaptation of the above-mentioned original LBA de-compression code.
Kazimierz Król (Zink): the Delphi implementation of both the LBA compression, and de-compression algorithms, and overally, the main source of inspiration for this program.
Karnakis Georgios (George/kargeor): the C++ implementation of the LBA compression algorithm, and a VB LBA de-compression algorithm.
Haruhiko Okumura: C implementation of the LZSS (Lempel-Ziv-Storer-Szymanski) compression algorithm, which, with some modifications (that I, of course, applied to Haruhiko's implementation of it), is exactly, what Adeline Software International used for the original LBA compression algorithm, though Haruhiko's algorithm produces bigger output, that the other LBA compression algorithms, when used for compression type 2 (and this is the main reason, why I'm not using this algorithm for that compression type).


Links
-----
The program: http://www.obrasilero.com/RManager.zip.
The source code: http://www.obrasilero.com/RManager-source.zip.


Screenshot
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I hope you'll find the program useful.

[Quetch]

obras, U JUST MADE MY DAYYYYYY

[LBAWinOwns]

Not working emulated with WinE , LBAPackageEditor does mostly though ...

Well, I'll try it out when I'm on a Windows OS.

[Quetch]

it's way better than the PackEditor trust me it offers imporved compression, BOTH types, an integrated Hex editor and other features

[LBAWinOwns]

It crashes all the time for me, probably because of Vista...

[Battler]

- LBAWinOwns: It crashes with what error message?

[LBAWinOwns]

None, the main windows just closes.

And there are for almost more than half the clickable buttons.

[LBAWinOwns]

For your next release, I would be happy to a new feature:

Optimize compression feature, to replace all the entrys in a HQR with the same data but with the compression type that will make them as small as possible.

The issue is that LBA Image Creator uncompresses all the entries it will load, and if it doesn't a hell of a lot bugs appear, making it crash now and then. Doing this will have a lot of improvements in general as well, but the big catch is that the HQR files becomes bigger than they should.

So for the final version of the HQR, it could need the entries getting compressed, and it also needs automation of course, since you can't go through all the entries by hand.

[ElDoRado1239]

Umm, does anyone know where could I get this tool from...? The link is broken (no wonder after ... whoa, 1030 days) and I would really like to have it. Any help appreciated.

[Zink]

Write a pm to Battler. I'm sure he will send it to you.

[Kobold]

Originally Posted by ElDoRado1239

Umm, does anyone know where could I get this tool from...? The link is broken (no wonder after ... whoa, 1030 days) and I would really like to have it. Any help appreciated.

For most causes, LBA Package Editor does the same job as well. And I think it's more stable than Resource Manager.

[Battler]

- LBAWinOwns: For automated recompression, just write a script, as LBA Resource Manager supports scripting too. From what I remember, I had even included a documentation of the script commands.

- Kobold: Actually, LBA Package Editor IIRC can't create new .HQR's from scratch, can't add/remove items, can't turn items to item pointers (items which point to another item) or back, isn't able to compress the items, etc.
And as regards stability, this is being worked on. The main reason why my program is so unstable is because I use a lot of Microsoft .OCX controls, but I am currently planning on replacing them with this: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...on-controls%29 which are more modern, support Unicode, and can be added directly into the project thus used without the .EXE requiring any dependency.