Is there something like /reloadui for AC/Decal, or some other method for refreshing a plugin without having to exit the game and start it up again?

Any advice is appreciated

 

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Nope. However, if you're developing a HUD or working on your view layout, you can run your plugin in the D3D Container (in the Decal folder). It will load all of the enabled plugins, but you won't get any AC network packets and AC hooks won't work.

When I was developing GoArrow, I made a build configuration* that defined the constant USING_D3D_CONTAINER and started the D3D container exe for debugging. I put #if USING_D3D_CONTAINER around some additional initialization code to make the plugin load settings etc. when it's created, rather than when the player logs in (since you won't get the login packet/event). I also put it around code that used hooks, to make it use canned data instead. You can see the code here.

*I don't think Visual Studio Express editions support build configs beyond debug/release. If you're using Express, you can instead #define a constant and just comment it out when you're not building for the d3d container.

 

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Cool, thank-you for the info.

 

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The express editions do support build configs. The option was hidden by default in 2005; I haven't looked at the 2008 versions.