Tie::ChangeProxy
================

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

DEPENDENCIES

  Tie::InsertOrderHash
  perl 5.6.1

DESCRIPTION

This module, like all of the Games::Freelancer Tree provide an interface 
to datastructures and files used in the Game "Freelancer" from Microsoft.

See: http://www.microsoft.com/games/freelancer/

The sourcecode was written according to a now removed article on 
http://www.lancersreactor.com with some improvements

UTF-FILES

Freelancer uses UTF files for various files, for example it is used in models 
(.cmp, .3db), materials (.tex, .mat) and scenes (.dfm).
It uses compressed of uncompressed .ini files for other data (See 
Games::Freelancer::BINI), .dll for string and XML resources and there are some 
.ale files used for effects which nobody can really decrypt as of now.

These files that this module can work with are called UTF files, because of 
their characteristic header starting with UTF. I have no idea what that means,
it certainly has nothing to do with Unicode, so I hope it means something cool 
like "Unified Tree Format" or so.

REPRESENTING UTF FILES IN PERL

The UTF files consist of binary Nodes which have a name and may have childs 
and/or siblings.

The easiest way to represent these in Perl are with Hashes of Hashes of ... of Values. Since the UTF file can contian arbitrary depth and has no enforced 
structure other that what Freelancer awaits from them, I belive those files can
represent any form of Tree. The tree and treenodes are represented as Hashes,
and the leaves are always scalars containing the data. Nodes seem to contain 
only data or childnodes, but the specification might allow for nodes with both,
but I have yet to encounter this. So if you find a file contain this structure
please send it to me at perl@marc-s.de. 

If you are not sure about what I tried to discripe up there, just throw a tree
at Data::Dumper (See the manpage for example). 

Games::Freelancer::UTF provides the ability to read and write back those files.
This also generates a new problem: The order of the nodes in one level seems
to be important enough to be saved in the file, yet Freelancer doesn't seem to 
care for it according to my tests. Perl hashes are always unsorted so this is
where Tie::InsertOrderHash comes in. Every hash in the returned tree is tied
against Tie::InsertOrderHash, so the order is preserved for writing back. If 
you plan the generate files out of the blue, you also should use that module
(or a similar), but Games::Freelancer::UTF does work either way. See the 
manpage for examples on how to preserve the order.

You can easily inspect UTF files with the free UTFedit tool, which can be found on the internet by searching for "Utfedit Freelancer". With some file UTFedits
representation is a bit buggy, but it works with most files and has a nice GUI.


COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2002-2008 Marc Lucksch

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

