Hi everyone

Presenting the HDCardTool for Carte, a custom made tool that will update/build HD card packs with great ease, just click one button and you're done.

This tool can do much more than that, you can customize the size of the textures, the resize filter to use, you can also specify if dds compression is used or not (for highest quality possible), create only the small card textures, only the large card textures or both.
Best of all is that all operations are done in memory and only written to disk if everything checks out, that means it's somewhat safe . Also you can stop any running operation and it won't corrupt the files. I wanted it to be very simple to use so it works with the HD card pack provided by Rico , just click update. Now every time there's a big update or a new episode get's released just run it and click update.


If you have any problems with it don't bother Rico or DQA just explain the problem here and attach the log.txt file or upload it somewhere and i'll try to help
The source is available for download (the C# code) so anyone could improve or add new things to it, see Source code section for details.

Enjoy!


How does it work

- Each mrq file in data/card/Image is scanned and all entries found inside that are dds and end with _l will be downloaded from any of the eu, kr, jp servers set in the configuration file (example: flash_l.dds will be downloaded from http://carte.gamescampus.eu/images/cards/flash_l.png if the eu server is set in the configuration file), if it doesn't find the file on the server it will simply skip the entry.

-The files got from the servers are png with 470x752 size so the app will first create 2 textures for both small and large cards resize them to specified dimensions(using filters customizable in the config file),convert them to dds(compressed or not) and finally after all entries have been processed if there are no errors create or update the .zip archives.

-This is what happens when a texture gets changed in the mrq file, the tool knows when the cards change because it generates and stores a list each time it runs with all the card texture names and the CRC they had at that time. If the CRC doesn't match next time it runs; it assumes that the file got changed and will update it, else it will consider that the card texture is up-to-date and skip it. In short each zip archive or HD pack will have a file named hash.data filled with CRC's.

-Now when a new episode is released it will detect that because it scans all the mrq files and if the new cards are found on the servers it will download them and create a new HD pack if not it will create a empty pack and update next time it runs (if the new card images are found on the selected server that is).


Things to know before downloading

- This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors (me) be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. In short -> Use it at your own risk.

- when starting if it complains something about .net then you will need to install the .NET4 framework from microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/net/download most computers already have this installed




Download and Installation

1. Download the compiled tool from my minus profile here http://minus.com/m8wjTr3KC/3 or from my minus folder http://minus.com/m8wjTr3KC/1l
2. Extract it somewhere, run it and it should ask you where the game is located, set the game path and your all set.




Known issues

-didn't test on 64bit systems so there might be problems there




Source code and compilation

For people that prefer to compile the executable themselves instead of using the exe provided by me.
The source is released under the zlib license.
You can grab the latest source code from my minus profile http://minus.com/m8wjTr3KC/4
To compile on your own computer you will need to follow these steps:

- first download the .NET4 framework SDK from microsoft site
- secondly download and install #develop (SharpDevelop) IDE from http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/
- download the source code and unpack it somewhere
- after #develop is installed you can click the unpacked HDCardTool.sln file and it should automatically launch the IDE; after it starts select the project and click build or press F8 and wait a little for it to compile
- you can find the newly compiled exe inside the bin/Debug folder

- NOTES:
- same steps apply if you want to use Microsoft Visual C# instead of #develop
- compile only in 32bit mode even if you have a 64bit OS or else the tool won't run properly because dds.dll, and resample.dll are 32bit only




Updates

- fixed download links on this post

i didn't even know the us verision cards looked worse. Good work ;D

The cards in game are the same in each version. I believe these are the card images from the korean website.

And I might just have to use this myself. Very cool!

Coooooool.

I just did this. Now my cards look less foggy.

That's pretty cool. I wonder if I can get official support for that.

.bat is just a series of commands that run in CMD. Your install of windows should be able to run it correctly by itself. (Double clicking it once you rename it).

Did you change it from .bin to .bat?

Because there is a good chance if you are having problems its still a .bin .

Oh my gosh. Ghrhglglglrglllglglll. Zenity. I love you.

Changed my first post a bit also added some nice Ridori-like text color effects but i like orange/red so


Glad you found it usefull, official support will be very nice so we could start the game normally not with a script file that bypasses the launcher



Sorry for your trouble minus does not allow bat files and changed the extension to .bin.I uploaded a new bat file this time in a a zip archive please replace your old start.bat with this new one.


Thanks, glad you like it. Ghrhglglglrglllglglll. I love you too

sounds cool. did all the right stuff. ran the start.bat.... the images are all of the same quality as what i got from the original download of carte! maybe i am in a location that already download the HD images.... who knows.... but thanks anyway!!


it seems that windows 7 has to run the start.bat as administrator... i was getting alot of access denied messages.... i will let you know more in a while.

ok... playing the HD cards and the original carte... sorry to say, but there is really no difference in what i see!


maybe because i am hdmi connected to my computer??? who knows....... (not i - thats for sure ha ha ha)

Well this is superepic.

The only thing abou it that makes me sad, is now that everything is HD, the zoomed out version of Errant Soldier no longer looks sort of like an oldschool Spanish Armada ship.

Great thread though, and I agree with the earlier sentiment of "ghglhghghlgllhghg"

Yay! Thank you for the sticky ^^


Thank you, but what does that mean anyway, seems like the cat jumped on his/her keyboard




@Jay_Go i'm pretty sure you followed my example to the letter and put option 2 as the argument in your shortcut . Try this, run start.bat ( not the shortcut ) and select option 1 or replace 2 with 1 in your shortcut target field. It really should work; made 2 images to show a card original texture compared to the HD version (full view please and sorry Delimiter i didn't use this texture on purpose )