World Editor Update

Hey guys. I've been busy for a while, creating an editor for my game. But since it's going to be pretty multi-purpose, i decided why not let everyone use it. So, this is just a test to see what you guys think so far. It's going to be a fairly straight forward, yet functional editor.



DOWNLOAD - www.rosscrooks.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/editor_exp.zip

CONTROLS:

HOLD LEFT control key + LEFT mouse button = Camera move X and Z axis
Hold LEFT control key + RIGHT mouse button = Camera move Y axis

You can load meshes via the load mesh icon at the top.

Click on mesh to select it
Holding LEFT SHIFT key whilst clicking to multiple select.
Clicking and dragging the AXIS gadget moves it. Again, left mouse button control X and Z axis. Right mouse button controls the Y axis.
You can choose a transform mode. Your best with GLOBAL. This dicates the way the entity moves. Not finished completely.
You can choose an editor mode. MOVE, ROTATE or SCALE

Once in these modes, again, the left mouse button controls X and Z axis's, and the right button controls the Y axis.

The purpose of the Axis Gadget: If you are rotating, for instance, multiple meshes, the gadget will centre itself between the meshes. But you can move it manually, by clicking and dragging it.

The gadget acts as the centre of rotation. Also acts as the centre of scaling.

I know them instructions are alot to read, but you need to know how to work it :o)

Please let me know how it handles.

Looking good so far. a few suggestions:

All hotkeys and shortcuts that needs to be known should be displayed onscreen when the user hits F1 (toggle on off) , just as an overlay without to stop the editor from working.

All functions that are used often should be possible with a single mouseclick. Forcing the user to switch between move and rotate mode will produce a lot of clicks for no good reason IMHO. You may have to rethink your current GUI concept. In the same time you should prevent too much multi-key functions (eg. press shift-ctrl-mouse-coffemachine) because people tend to forget them soon.

3rd: Add a settings window that allows to set the entity properties: entityFX, entityAlpha, etc. I suggest to work systematicly, by parsing the command reference (online version is rather complete) and use everything in the entity section that may be set by the user.

Yea, still to come most of those suggestions. I'm basing my camera controls on other modellers, editors out there. I'm afraid i can't agree on the holding down control key and mouse buttons to move the camera, but i will look into that regardless :o)

I will also try and rethink the Mode switching, possibly with a keypress? 1 = move, 2 = rotate, 3 = scale ... etc?

Thanks for taking the time to have a look. Have you ran it yet btw?

edit: never mind... i can't find the freakin source.

Hmmm, no comments about my editor? Your editor looks nice man, but i'm really looking for some more feedback on my own.

>markd

I have another one with Xlnt GUI (some screenshots on www in my sig). Could you send me the source? I play with winblitz3d now but have some problems.

Hi Ross - this is looking very nice.
My only problem was trying to orientate myself in 3d space. I also had 2 mouse pointers on screen which didn't help - there was a second mouse pointer that would float in the middle of the screen over the gizmo. If you're using a custom mouse pointer then you can hide the windows one.
I found trying to manipulate objects a little difficult. When you are moving objects they can sometimes be off screen because the camera seems to keep focus on the gizmo, which seems to stay centered, rather than the object The "Scale" tool also seemed to move the object rather than scaling.
It could be that I just havent spent enough time with the interface and I'm using the wrong camera mode so I'll give it another whirl later - keep up the good work.

Well, the gizmo is the centre of rotation and scaling. When you click an object, The gizmo centre's itself in the middle of that mesh. When you select two meshes, it centres between the multiple selections. You can move the gizmo, by clicking and dragging on it.

I forgot to put in hideMousePointer in that :S Working in full screen too much.

As with moving the meshes, i wanted to keep the mesh on screen, so you didn't need to move the camera, move the mesh... etc. I guess that does need some work though.

What happens is the selections are held within a type list. Upon moving/scaling/rotating, they are all temporarily parented to the gizmo, which moves everything, scales everything... etc. You can manually move the gizmo though.

Thanks for the feedback though. I appreciate it. Alot of the code is written, just not enabled, as i want to get the basic controls right before anything else.

Ross. actually, I'm on linux here and a win workstation is totally unplugged, so I rarely test things. I only wanted to give some useful ideas from somebody who created several levels and started to optimize the user interface in the millisecs range. It's a fact, chanching the modes for example to switch between camera motion and object motion is a nightmare.
In my editor I am using virtual gadgets, so you only have to click for example the X-Position button, drag the mouse on a thought scrollbar to alter the X-Position. So it's one click only. Of course there are more ways to achieve the same.

At the other hand, if you use a well known interface of a popular app, a lot of people will like it and my suggestions my be useless here.

Ross editor seems to be a promise, it looks nice...
however, sorry Ross, I'm really surprised with the editors
Mikele has in his webpage!, all of them seems to be absolutely impressive and finished!!
Do you think about sell them or share with the community?
could be very interesting to know a little more about Mikele editors, as I've said yet, seems amazing!

regards!

I appreciate the comments jfk. I know of your work and it's pretty impressive stuff, so i don't take your suggestions lighty :o) The camera can be moved in any mode, just by holding down the control key. As soon as you let go, you will be returned to your choosen mode. I'm away for the weekend, but i'll put more work into it when i get back!

Pinete, yeah they do look good. I guess i'm coding this, to improve my general coding ability and challenge myself :o)

>Pinete
Thanks. My editors are rather finished but not perfect. I'm gfx artist and "weekend" programmer and many things, options etc. was written especialy for me :). But.. I think about releasing my b3d Viewer (based on my Meshtool editor) and particle editor (it use Noel's Lotus particle engine) for community (free ofcourse). Main game editor works fine for me but have too many "black holes".

BTW. I like and prefer stuff doing by RossC, jfk, sswift, fredborg and many others megablitzers.

>Ross C
I like your method to control move and rotate objects but i'm "maya man" and I would like to see "maya camera control" as option.

Maya? How does that work Mikele? Is that where you click on an object and you get a gadget next to the mesh, which you can use to scale, rotate and move the mesh? I think i know the one you refer to. Might have many different options like that. Thanks for the suggestion.

Btw, i don't deserve to be called a mega blitzer, but thanks!

Yes, I mean a gadget (gizmos?) for selected objects + simple camera movement: ROTATE CAMERA (with LEFT MOUSE BUTTON pressed), UP/DOWN/ + STRAFE LEFT/RIGHT CAMERA (MIDDLE MB) and FORWARD/BACKWARD CAM (RIGHT MB).
Additionally in Maya you have to press ALT key.