Titan Network
Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: TonyV on February 22, 2014, 05:31:41 AM
-
If you listened to tonight's Save CoH talk show (with special guest, Guy Perfect!), you know this already. If not, what is WRONG with you!!?
...But I digress.
One of the things we discussed is the release of a new utility called Senticon (http://cit.cohtitan.com/senticon/index.php). The general gist of it is that it can export your Sentinel+ XML files that you used to export all of your characters prior to the shutdown (you did export all of your characters prior to the shutdown, right?) into .costume files that you can use to import into Icon (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/board,174.0.html), which will allow you to load those costumes up and run around the city in the ol' tights.
It's a command-line utility that requires Java, and the instructions for using it are on the page at the link above.
Post your questions or comments below, and as always, enjoy!
-
I'd love to play with this, but alas I cannot until/unless it is a plug-and-play program. Something is unstable in my computer that makes the JRE barf hardcore when anything more than a couple lines are fed into it. :'(
-
First off, my thanks to Guy and any others who were involved in this. Thank you so very much.
Any chance that you'll make a topic referencing this over in the Icon subsection?
-
Ok im not very computer literate.. I made a file.. put my sentinel+ files in there.. and downloaded the sentinel jar file there.. yet when I tried the command prompt i get an error that reads unable to access jarfile senticon.jar
so I assume im doing something wrong.. but have no idea what I am doing
We need some instructions for the computer challenged..
-
Thanks to all involved in this! (I didn't personally save any characters because I'd rather rebuild from scratch anyway).
And Tony, is this by any chance one of those mysterious "things" the SCORE folks have been focusing on that would be very useful in a world of many small private servers? Are we seeing the beginnings of transportable character record standards here?
-
I think my issue is that I really dont know how to get the directory to work... >:(
-
yet when I tried the command prompt i get an error that reads unable to access jarfile senticon.jar
You need to navigate to the directory containing the senticon.jar file and your Sentinel+ XMLs. When you first open the Windows command prompt, you'll see something like this:
C:\Users\YourNameHere>
The default location of your personal desktop folder is Desktop. You can navigate there with the cd command (http://www.computerhope.com/cdhlp.htm):
C:\Users\YourNameHere>cd Desktop
C:\Users\YourNameHere\Desktop>
Similarly, if your exports and senticon.jar are in a folder called Exports on your desktop:
C:\Users\YourNameHere\Desktop>cd Exports
C:\Users\YourNameHere\Desktop\Exports>
At this point, you'll be able to issue the java command:
C:\Users\YourNameHere\Desktop\Exports>java -jar senticon.jar all
-
What's the most common cause of a failure to convert? Is it just costume parts that got renamed?
-
ok Thanks Guy I was able to convert the costumes.. Some of them failed.. and I remember some of them being extremely simple.. any reason why some fail and some dont ???
-
just to be able to SEE some of my heroes again was so very awesome !!! Some of the costumes failed and I dont know why.. maybe Ill try them one by one to see what happens.. but to just be able to SEE them again was so special...
Man I hope SCORE eventually does score.. I dont care if its 5 years from now...
-
Hi there. I've been lurking quietly for a LOOONG time, but I've been waiting for this for even longer so, first of all, thanks a lot! I can finally play with my costumes again! :)
What REALLY finally made me post, however, is that I ran into an error while running Senticon that just might get in the way of other people. I did find the solution, so here it is:
When I ran it for the first time, Senticon stopped and threw an "OutOfMemoryError: Java Heap Space" exception while "Loading costume database". Apparently the Virtual Machine sometimes only uses a rather small amount of memory, no matter how much you have available. :P
That's easy to fix, though, I simply used the -Xmx option to tell it to use more memory. More specifically, what worked for me was: java -Xmx512m -jar senticon.jar all (512MB was apparently more than enough).
Hope it helps if someone runs into the same error (and my apologies if someone had already posted something similar somewhere else).
-
Oh, and by the way... 112 costumes recovered from the sentinel files. Damn, there goes sleep...
-
Sorry for spamming the thread... But there were also 27 costumes that could not be converted. While I think most of them were marked with that padlock icon for using old parts, not all were. If anyone wants to have a look at them, I can send the Sentinel+ files (and also screenshots of the costumes from the latest live client).
-
I didnt quite understand who some of the oldest simpler costumes I made came up as failed..
Strange..
-
A lot of costume parts were renamed or retired. That's probably the cause.
-
What does "then navigate there with your command prompt" mean? I can open the command prompt and all...but no idea how to "navigate" anywhere with it.
-
What does "then navigate there with your command prompt" mean? I can open the command prompt and all...but no idea how to "navigate" anywhere with it.
The rest of that post explains exactly how to do that.
-
Brilliant stuff, thanks so much for this :)
-
A lot of costume parts were renamed or retired. That's probably the cause.
yeah quite a few of mine failed to covert... but i did get a lot of them..
-
Too bad there is no debug mode so we could see which parts are the problem.
-
The rest of that post explains exactly how to do that.
It does, but for the less computer savvy, more specifically the command you need to type to navigate is "cd FolderNameHere", which only works if the folder directory you're currently in contains that folder. So in that example "c:\users\YourNameHere>" is essentially the same directory system that your normal Windows based "explorer" uses, except without a graphical interface for the folders and files.
So say your username on your computer is Kevin(using my own name for this example...), it would be "c:\users>" so you'd type "cd Kevin" to get to the "Kevin" folder("c:\users\Kevin>"), and to go to the desktop you'd type "cd Desktop" and it would change your directory to "c:\users\Kevin\Desktop>", and so on for each other folder. To go backwards to the previous folder it'd be "cd.." I believe(Just in case you go into the wrong folder or something...).
If you're still iffy on what you're doing, google search for "DOS commands" or something like that, since the Command Prompt is basically Microsoft DOS, and uses the exact same commands.
Jeeze... It must have been over 20 years now since my first computer, and I still remember how to use DOS... You young whipper snappers have it easy with your fancy Windows 8 and your giant flashy icons to click on... In my day, we had to navigate to every file/folder/game with commands like the ones above, and we LIKED it...
-
And Tony, is this by any chance one of those mysterious "things" the SCORE folks have been focusing on that would be very useful in a world of many small private servers?
Nope! This was purely a Guy Perfect one-off.
-
COOL!!!! Thanks, Guy!!
Um....now can someone remind me where I put all my Sentinel+ files...?? :-[
-
Whew, found them!
Regarding the failures, is there any way to make them show up like the non-compliant costumes that I did save to file before the game shut down? You know, where the file loads for preview but says it won't let it go live because of the listed parts that fail? At least then we would know what needs to be fixed.
EDIT: Huh, apparently that's not what the failures are, cuz I have plenty of costumes that converted fine from Sentinel+ that come up with the old "Failed to load because of these parts" error. Now I'm confused.
-
Jeeze... It must have been over 20 years now since my first computer, and I still remember how to use DOS... You young whipper snappers have it easy with your fancy Windows 8 and your giant flashy icons to click on... In my day, we had to navigate to every file/folder/game with commands like the ones above, and we LIKED it...
I use Total Commander every day. It's better than Windows Explorer in every imaginable way... and if you're used to CLI? It's totally supported. (aka: I LOVE moving through my HDD typing in the directory names from memory... yes, I'm weird like that)
-
This is awesome to have, thank you
-
It does, but for the less computer savvy, more specifically the command you need to type to navigate is "cd FolderNameHere", which only works if the folder directory you're currently in contains that folder. So in that example "c:\users\YourNameHere>" is essentially the same directory system that your normal Windows based "explorer" uses, except without a graphical interface for the folders and files.
So say your username on your computer is Kevin(using my own name for this example...), it would be "c:\users>" so you'd type "cd Kevin" to get to the "Kevin" folder("c:\users\Kevin>"), and to go to the desktop you'd type "cd Desktop" and it would change your directory to "c:\users\Kevin\Desktop>", and so on for each other folder. To go backwards to the previous folder it'd be "cd.." I believe(Just in case you go into the wrong folder or something...).
If you're still iffy on what you're doing, google search for "DOS commands" or something like that, since the Command Prompt is basically Microsoft DOS, and uses the exact same commands.
Jeeze... It must have been over 20 years now since my first computer, and I still remember how to use DOS... You young whipper snappers have it easy with your fancy Windows 8 and your giant flashy icons to click on... In my day, we had to navigate to every file/folder/game with commands like the ones above, and we LIKED it...
Ok...just so I know. I open up the "command" from the "run" function on Windows? That gets me the window called "C:\WINDOWS\system32\command.com"
I then see the line "C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1>" with a flashing cursor. I tried to type "cd C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\CoH stuff" and it said "too many parameters - and"
I did just manage to get to the "desktop"...so it now says "C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI\DESKTOP>"
Tried to add "documents and settings" but can't navigate there. I know zero about DOS so this isn't intuitive for me.
-
Put the path you're navigating to in quotes.
cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\CoH stuff"
Since your prompt looks like it's using short paths, it's not likely to do that for you automatically, and it isn't going to like spaces outside of the quotes.
-
Ok...just so I know. I open up the "command" from the "run" function on Windows? That gets me the window called "C:\WINDOWS\system32\command.com"
If you're using Run, type "cmd", not command. Command Prompt in the start menu also links to cmd.
command.com is the old 16-bit DOS compatibility shell, you don't want that. cmd.exe is the 64 or 32 bit native windows command interpreter. While some of the commands are inspired by DOS, it's not the same by any stretch of the imagination.
-
Ok...just so I know. I open up the "command" from the "run" function on Windows? That gets me the window called "C:\WINDOWS\system32\command.com"
Use "cmd" rather than "command". The COMMAND.COM file is an old compatibility shell from the early Windows days and was superseded by cmd.exe with the NT overhaul. cmd supports long filenames.
EDIT:
I had the idea first. Codewalker was just a preemptive copycat.
-
Thanks guys. That got me on the right track. Got to the right folder and put in: java -jar senticon.jar all
It said "loading costume database..." so that's progress!
It took a few seconds then came up with:
Exception in thread "main" java.lan.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
It then had a long list of things beginning with "at".
Nothing appeared in that folder though. I'm assuming the "out of memory" thing was the problem.
Is that demorecord thing someone mentioned in another thread a better option? I used it to get a file of one of my costumes but no idea what I would actually do with that. :P
-
any feedback on why some costumes fail and some dont.. weird a lot of my earliest simple costumes just didn't work for some reason... i wished they would load anyway and allow me to fix it manually..
-
any feedback on why some costumes fail and some dont.. weird a lot of my earliest simple costumes just didn't work for some reason... i wished they would load anyway and allow me to fix it manually..
Most likely pieces moved around in their dropdown location, or got rid of entirely (e.g. when they implemented ears as a detail option, a few ear-specific head types [like elf ears] were removed).
-
Thanks guys. That got me on the right track. Got to the right folder and put in: java -jar senticon.jar all
It said "loading costume database..." so that's progress!
It took a few seconds then came up with:
Exception in thread "main" java.lan.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
It then had a long list of things beginning with "at".
Nothing appeared in that folder though. I'm assuming the "out of memory" thing was the problem.
Is that demorecord thing someone mentioned in another thread a better option? I used it to get a file of one of my costumes but no idea what I would actually do with that. :P
Try reinstalling java, and checking windows is up to date with service packs etc.
If that fails again, PM me, and I'll give you my mail to send the sentential files too & I'll send back the costumes file for you.
-
Try reinstalling java, and checking windows is up to date with service packs etc.
If that fails again, PM me, and I'll give you my mail to send the sentential files too & I'll send back the costumes file for you.
Thanks Ice...I'll try that and see what happens.
-
This is fantastic! I've got just about every costume I ever created in CoH. Costume folder currently has 792 costume files! I really enjoyed toying with concepts and ideas. Thank you!!
-
Thanks Ice...I'll try that and see what happens.
Did you find success?
-
Did you find success?
I have to admit my eyes crossed and I gave up. :(
-
I have to admit my eyes crossed and I gave up. :(
Okay, I will send you my email via PM (and anyone else that cant get it working).
If you can zip the costume files, that would save some time but it's really only going to take a few minutes to convert them for you.
-
Okay, I will send you my email via PM (and anyone else that cant get it working).
If you can zip the costume files, that would save some time but it's really only going to take a few minutes to convert them for you.
I just opened up Icon yesterday and noticed 5 costumes when I opened up the "load" button. They must have come from my attempts to run the costume converter. Not bad.
Only two of them are valid though...the others are missing costume pieces.
-
I know this hasn't been posted in for a couple months but don't see a reason to start a new topic on the SentIcon costume converter.
I am having an issue of where to place the .costume files, I never saved any of them prior to the export so there is no folder in the C:\ for city of heroes for the .costume files to go, can anyone tell me where to move them so Icon can read them?
-
Go to your City folder (wherever your Icon is), then create a folder named "costumes" in that main directory, so it would look like so:
C:\path\to\City of Heroes\costumes
Then paste your costumes in there.
-
I have icon and all my costume files (you all remember that issue where the skirts went on sideways? I think I kept a toon with that and of course it doesn't convert right :) She was on a mission to find the person who'd done it and make him/her pay). Anyway, still mourning the loss of my Sentinel files because of computer crash...
-
Hi,
When I try and run this from the directory in which I saved my Sentinel files, I get:
'java' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
I know I've got the JRE on my machine, I've checked twice. Any bright ideas what I'm doing wrong?
As ever, thanks in advance.
Gate
EDIT: when I run the suggested command from the folder that contains Java, and feed it the path of the senticon file, I get further, but still seems to be in error:
Loading costume database... Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at java.util.Arrays.copyOfRange(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.String.<init>(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.String.toLowerCase(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.String.toLowerCase(Unknown Source)
at Struct.setValue(Struct.java:157)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:24)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:17)
at Schema.decode(Schema.java:167)
at Senticon.<init>(Senticon.java:189)
at Senticon.main(Senticon.java:5)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin>
-
when I run the suggested command from the folder that contains Java, and feed it the path of the senticon file, I get further, but still seems to be in error:
Loading costume database... Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at java.util.Arrays.copyOfRange(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.String.<init>(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.String.toLowerCase(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.String.toLowerCase(Unknown Source)
at Struct.setValue(Struct.java:157)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:32)
at Struct.decode_one(Struct.java:37)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:24)
at Decoder.decode(Decoder.java:17)
at Schema.decode(Schema.java:167)
at Senticon.<init>(Senticon.java:189)
at Senticon.main(Senticon.java:5)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin>
Try this:
Hi there. I've been lurking quietly for a LOOONG time, but I've been waiting for this for even longer so, first of all, thanks a lot! I can finally play with my costumes again! :)
What REALLY finally made me post, however, is that I ran into an error while running Senticon that just might get in the way of other people. I did find the solution, so here it is:
When I ran it for the first time, Senticon stopped and threw an "OutOfMemoryError: Java Heap Space" exception while "Loading costume database". Apparently the Virtual Machine sometimes only uses a rather small amount of memory, no matter how much you have available. :P
That's easy to fix, though, I simply used the -Xmx option to tell it to use more memory. More specifically, what worked for me was: java -Xmx512m -jar senticon.jar all (512MB was apparently more than enough).
Hope it helps if someone runs into the same error (and my apologies if someone had already posted something similar somewhere else).
-
URGH.... Lost all my CoH... everything... screenshots, costumes, etc... because of a drive crash after a house fire. So, all this is moot for me, and makes me sad.
The funny thing is, we rescued the PC from the house, and a friend who does drive forensics for a living rescued all the data off the drive. I went out and bought a brand new Seagate external to house the files until I could get a new PC... and the BRAND NEW Seagate crashed before I could get the files moved. And it crashed HARD. No recovery possible. Unbelievable.
-
Pengy, I'll certainly try that tonight when I get a chance, tyvm. I'll keep you posted. :D
-
Okay, so I finally got it to work. Things I had to do:
- I had to run from the directory where the java is located, not where the jar file is located.
- It cared about case-sensitivity on that switch, so it wanted -Xmx512m, not -xmx512m.
- I then had to give it the fully qualified path out to the senticon.jar file.
- It then put all the .costume files in the folder where Java is located, so they had to be moved to the COH folder.
That said, once I doped out those things, Mission Accomplished! :D
Later on,
Gatecrasher
-
Okay, so I finally got it to work. Things I had to do:
- I had to run from the directory where the java is located, not where the jar file is located.
- It cared about case-sensitivity on that switch, so it wanted -Xmx512m, not -xmx512m.
- I then had to give it the fully qualified path out to the senticon.jar file.
- It then put all the .costume files in the folder where Java is located, so they had to be moved to the COH folder.
That said, once I doped out those things, Mission Accomplished! :D
I was able to get it to run from the folder where I stuck senticon.jar; putting everything in the folder where Java was installed failed because it's protected by Windows 7, so the folder couldn't be written to. What I did was add the path to Java to my environment's PATH variable:
- Open the start menu.
- Click on 'Computer'. This opens the 'System' window.
- Click on 'Advanced System Settings'. This opens the 'System Properties' window.
- Click on the 'Environment Variables' button near the bottom. This opens the 'Environment Variables' window.
- Highlight 'path' in the upper textarea, then click on 'Edit'. This opens the 'Edit User Variable' window with the variable name in the top box and its value in the bottom box. Select all of the text in the bottom box and copy it.
- Open Notepad or another text editor and paste the path variable value in.
- At the end of the value, add a semicolon, then the path to the Java executable (typically something like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin"; because it has spaces, it will need to be in double quotes).
- Copy the whole line, then paste it back into the lower box of the 'Edit User Variable' window.
- Click 'OK' on each window to save changes and close until you get back to the 'System' window, then close it as well.
- Open a new cmd window and navigate to the folder with senticon.jar and the Sentinel+ files.
- Run the jarfile on your Sentinel+ files, using the -Xmx512m switch if necessary.
I got several failures processing my full set of files, including, oddly, every single costume for my Staff/Willpower Scrapper, who was a recent creation. All the costumes failed for my Energy/Energy Blaster, as well, but that character had hung around unplayed for some time, and was chock full of ancient costume pieces. The Scrapper, though, was created close to the shutdown announcement, so there shouldn't have been any retired costume pieces in her outfits.
Going back in with Icon, I was able to recreate the one costume for my AR/EM Blaster that had failed -- most of which was the Mecha Armor set, and everything was listed correctly in the costume-selection menus; makes me wonder if there's a mapping issue between the labels in the Sentinel+ files and the costume pieces. Checking the set of character images I archived, and examining the .xml files themselves, all three characters with costume pieces from the Mecha Armor set failed conversion on the costumes that contained parts from that set.