Rework of editor idea and such

Okay. Have been thinking on how would be best to edit a file that has in the ten's of thousand assets in it. I have decided to make a slight modification to the Q3 general format to allow me to pull apart the whole file and make subfiles of each tree of assets. They will all reference a central image file.

This way I can have a file that would be each ship UI in the game and hold all the information needed for that specific UI. The references to the central image file will be by image number and not by specific offsets as in the Q3 right now. This will allow images to change without having to worry about all the offsets of all images after it. Since when you write out a full intergrated Q3 file for use it will simply figure the offsets on the fly and insert them into the file as it is written out.

I am still kicking around an idea of a fully stand alone update format that can be integrated into the Q3 from stand alone editors that can be handed out to developers (like FoaS to make the UI's) These files would hold the new images in themselves, but reference the main image file for the images that are used in multiple UI's (like the image of a weapon point, or the shields).

This would allow the community to make updates to the Q3 with the stand alone editors and submit them. Then we can review them, make sure they look good and integrate them into the Q3 with minimum problems.

A full editor that can change anything in the whole Q3 will be worked on also, but will not be released to the general people (the first one might not also, have to kick the idea around to those in charge but who knows.) I am going to jump on modifying my reading and writing code to handle this edition to the data. This will mainly add the extra information to the parts needed and write a second set of read and write functions that use the different data so it will work.

The editor will be nasty to work with to start as I am learning the programming stuff needed to work with SDL/graphics and such as I go along. So start crude, and refine as I go along and learn more.

I am hoping to get the main functions modified before the weekend is over. This also might allow me to pull the Q3's of SFC, SFC:EAW, and SFC:OP apart and put together a new Q3 file using parts of each (with a probable need of updating images from the older stuff).

On to coding. . . .