Perfect ESF<->XML converter and revolution in ESF modding [Released!]

[Cursisanafou]

hmm... i think this needs to be a little more oragnized view lol..

edit: very nice though... nice work.

[taw]

I'm waiting for more that 20 minutes is this normal? I've put 1000Mb in .

1GB? Is it 2005 and we're still on 32-bit systems or what?
Just put some ridiculously high number there, however much memory you have is a good start ;-p

(I know how to make it much faster and use much less memory, but it's not like
we cannot just throw more hardware at the problem for now)

[taw]

Definatly not normal.

My 21mb esf took 20 seconds to make a 105,000kb XML file.

So NTW's Vanilla esf or ETWs, at around 34mb should only take a minute max.

But like I said, the difference between 21mb and 34mb for the converter, was too much for my PC to handle, apparantly.

Something about startpos.esf is making converter unusually slow, regions.esf is a few seconds,
and it's one tenth of startpos.esf's size.

Anyway, throw more memory at it for now.

[The Hedge Knight]

Doesnt work like that taw, its been tried :/

[taw]

Doesnt work like that taw, its been tried :/

It seems I need to add a goddamn progress bar then.

[ForteS]

1GB? Is it 2005 and we're still on 32-bit systems or what?
Just put some ridiculously high number there, however much memory you have is a good start ;-p

(I know how to make it much faster and use much less memory, but it's not like
we cannot just throw more hardware at the problem for now)

I think you didn't understand the 1000Mb haven't even get active at least the line that flashes still there.
I have also tried 750Mb but it stills don't working, what do i do next put 4000Mb? And yes i still 32-bit system

[.Mitch.]

2gb of RAM!

She cannot take anymore Captain! She's going ta blow!!

[taw]

I think you didn't understand the 1000Mb haven't even get active at least the line that flashes still there.
I have also tried 750Mb but it stills don't working, what do i do next put 4000Mb? And yes i still 32-bit system

I mean - it's not like Empire can run well with 1GB, right?

Just wait a few days if you cannot get it running today, it should get better.

[The Hedge Knight]

Made it work.

Using 2gb of ram and setting the priority of the process to high

[Okmin]

Does that mean your computer has 2GB ram or you allowed the process 2000MB? And which process? jruby.exe or cmd.exe?

[ForteS]

My computer has 4Gb but the maximum i can get in jruby is 1Gb but it stills flashing and flashing it never ends the process

[Primergy]

To encourage taw.

Runs fine on my system (4 gb and win7), also works with the farms.farm_manager file of the battle maps.

[taw]

Does that mean your computer has 2GB ram or you allowed the process 2000MB? And which process? jruby.exe or cmd.exe?

jruby.exe. This is Java design failure that they even need this limit. It should be more than physical memory, swap exists for a reason, but it requires a lot of -Xthis -Xthat options for JVM to make this work well.

Just wait for less memory-hungry version, it should come soon enough.

[King Sama]

Works for me on notepad, in fact the actual conversion took me under 2 seconds... then again it was an edited peninsula campaign startpos.

Sadly I have no idea what to do from this point, so I guess i'll just wait for a more advanced tool or a tutorial. Great work by taw regardless.

[taw]

Works for me on notepad, in fact the actual conversion took me under 2 seconds... then again it was an edited peninsula campaign startpos.

Sadly I have no idea what to do from this point, so I guess i'll just wait for a more advanced tool or a tutorial. Great work by taw regardless.

Right now, step two is "Get a Mac" but I'll be fixing that ;-p

[.Mitch.]

God dam Mac people. There is reason we segrigate you people in my Uni.

Come to windows man. Make your life sooo much easier. And ours.

[taw]

God dam Mac people. There is reason we segrigate you people in my Uni.

Come to windows man. Make your life sooo much easier. And ours.

I could probably get it working on Ubuntu in 30 minutes if anyone requested this.
Windows is the odd one here.

[King Sama]

Right now, step two is "Get a Mac" but I'll be fixing that ;-p

I'm running bootcamp actually (*goes to hide in a corner* )

Would it be any easier on a mac?

[taw]

I'm running bootcamp actually (*goes to hide in a corner* )

Would it be any easier on a mac?

Yes: just do
sudo gem install libxml-ruby
and converter works both ways with default OSX ruby (assuming you're running 10.5 or 10.6,
10.4 might need upgrade, but that's pretty ancient), or one from MacPorts if that's what you're using.

Just like that:
./esf2xml <startpos.esf >startpos.xml
./xml2esf <startpos.xml >startpos2.esf

[taw]

There's now progress bar when you run esf2xml. Also don't use < and > any more,
it won't be possible once multipart XML gets enabled, but we can drop this now as well.

Also esf2xml should be faster, while still using as much memory as yesterday.

Here's an example:

$ time jruby -J-Xmx2048m ./esf2xml esf/regions.esf regions3.xml
Done: 0.0%
Done: 19.0%
Done: 37.9%
Done: 37.9%
Done: 47.0%
Done: 48.0%
Done: 62.5%
Done: 84.8%
Done: 99.7%

real 0m10.026s
user 0m14.243s
sys 0m1.235s

~/etwng/esfxml$ time ruby ./esf2xml esf/regions.esf regions4.xml
Done: 0.0%
Done: 37.9%
Done: 57.3%
Done: 92.2%

real 0m3.862s
user 0m3.176s
sys 0m0.285s
~/etwng/esfxml$

Which Ruby is faster is quite random, JRuby has slower startup for sure like everything Java,
but often becomes faster later.

Use --quiet option to disable progress bar if it annoys you.

And finally, there's link to single-package JRuby installer in README now.