What I've been up to
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/What I've been up to
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| Here's what my editor looks like so far. As you can see it's heavily influenced by maplet. Making a room is exactly the same too, drag out the floor then raise the walls up. There's no UI atm because I totally started over. My first attempt was just too sloppy and just looking at the code made me wanna puke. Each room is one mesh comprised of 6 surfaces. I did it this way to make it easier to implement basic CSG funcions. The texture algorithm keeps the floor and wall textures seamless no matter where you start drawing on the grid. I really need to get that carve function in there. In my first editor i was dragging out rooms and they walking through it and removing triangles manually (it sucked). Also you can preset the floor, wall, and ceiling texture before you make the room so when you drag and click, it's totally textured and ready to go. It took me about 2 min to make all the rooms below!  |
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| ...And this togeher with the models you have shown so far would be used to do a dungeon type of game? |
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| Very interesting. For a long time people have been saying that they wished Maplet 'could be finished'. Keep going at this, please. My own wish on the list would be that you could design as you are doing, then form say a cube around the internals to create external 'castle walls', then be able to punch through windows from the external to the internal. But that may be a lot to ask for. |
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| @Mustang....Yep that's the plan. The game mechanics are really simple...it's just based on the old basic d&d from 1983. I'm actually using the art in the book for modeling. I really like the Carve and Fill stuff in maplet and I am planning to add something similar. I have been checking out the csg functions in the archives too. We'll see how it goes. Finally got the texturing algorithm straightened out.  |
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Ahh yes, I remember those old black and blue grids from years past, too, sort of like this style of grid, but yours just hurts my eyes a bit, but nice concept of that editor, nonetheless. This was the type of grid I was thinking: No doubt that you've seen editors with thicker lines, that get thinner as the grid spaces get smaller. |
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| @Ram: I've now made the aqua color lines a bit darker for better visibility against the white "paper". I also changed the scale so now 1 blitz unit = 1 feet. You can switch the reference grid to snap to .5, 1, or 10 increment. The whole theme is constructing a traditional dungeon on graph paper. Next on my list is a CreateStairs() function where you just select the type of stairs and just drag out the dimensions then raise it up to the number of stairs you want. Gonna do a few different types of stairs/ramps too. Also, I'm about to add raising and lowering the graph paper grid so you can construct mulit-level dungeons. Everything created is defaulted to the Y position of the base grid. |
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| Yeah, it's enough to reminisce on the old level editors that used grids like the one I've posted above, but your editor is just as easy, if not easier than any commercial-scale editor that I've used in the past, including ones that used the standard black and blue from Quake editors and Doom editors. |
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| Chroma, it's generally agreed on these forums that 1 Blitz unit = 1 meter. If I were you, I'd change it to that now before I go any further. Remember most of the world now works in meters for architectural design. |
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| I originally had it as 1 unit = 1 meter. But I'm workin in feet in the level builder and 3 blitz meters (units) would equal roughly 9.2 feet. It doesn't jive with the 10x10x10 dungeon corridor. Plus when you're trying to write an algorithim that makes the mouse coordinates snap to floats it's a real pain. So now I have it at 1 foot in the game = 4 blitz units. The smalled cube that someone can make in the editor is 1 blitz unit which would be a 3 inch square in game. Hence 10 feet in game = 40 blitz units. In some map editors, 1 of their units is equivalent to 32 blitz units. Yeah, that is super huge but it keeps the vertices in integers (which I think is just peachy), and generally makes lining the walls up easier. Changing it back to 1 unit = 1 meter though is as easy as changing 1 number. So if later down the road I need to change it, it's no problem. |
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| strangely enough it looks resemblent of what im doing for Hunted, Hunted tho you have to drag the wall's and floor and ceiling out. I want to do some CSG stuff tho so I can make an editor like maplet will have to wait and see what I come up with :) |
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| Ed...so instead of creating an entire room at one time as 1 mesh with 6 surfaces, you're making the floor, then each wall, then roof separately then addmeshing to the main room mesh? |
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Here's the latest. Got some Fill type stuff going on now. Any side of a cube that shares the room wall is left off. All the stair type objects are separate meshes, which isn't efficient. Gotta lump em together. Still working on this. |
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| What I do is create the floor then the walls then the ceilings, these are all merged with the main mesh and are created at a vertex level then triangles are added. Texturing is done by alloting a different surface per texture and then texturing that way :) |
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| Hmm, if you could compare this to an existing engine, would you say that this would be closer to a Quake-style engine, or an Unreal-style engine? |
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| @ RAM .. it's a 3d level editor .. not an engine! |
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| @Edzup: So your level is one big mesh? In my editor you feed the function x1,x2,y1,y2,z1,z2, and it builds the room with 6 surfaces. The hitch is allowing L shaped rooms or round corners. I really don't wanna do CSG but I freakin love maplet. I wish Mark would release the source! I think what I may do is make different room pieces and just let the user snap them together. |
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| @ RAM .. it's a 3d level editor .. not an engine! FYI, it takes a game engine to spawn a level editor in the first place, and to design the game WITH those levels. I mean, just like with your Dooms, Quakes, Duke 3Ds of the world, Unreals, what have you. It all has to start with the brains and skeletons behind those level editors. |
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| @ RAM, Thanks for enlightening me with your infinite wisdom. I present to you a definition of a game engine, of which level editing tools are a very small part :- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine @ Chroma, This looks very promising. I agree that it would be best to build a load of level sections and allow the users to piece them together. If you create enough variations then, in a similar style to TimeSplitters you can avoid balooning the poly's with CSG. If you were planning on having undo functionality then I think CSG could be a potential nightmare. Stevie p.s. Sorry for going OT above! |
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| Wow - Chroma this is looking great - please keep working on it. This is the sort of level editing that's fun, especially if you can zoom the camera inside the room and work from the inside too(?) |
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| Chroma: thats what im gonna do with Hunted now as level building is quite a lengthy process, although my editor is nice and I will use it for other things. One thing im gonna look at is a cubed area that extends as you build the level ala UnrealEd where you cut out of the world and the level is there. |
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| Well I wasn't worrying about rewelding vertices but I just looked at Josh's Inca Pro demo and gawd the seams were cracking with white artifacts. I'd be pissed if I bought 3DWS and I could see artifacts in the seams!! grrr @ John: I'm stuck in limbo atm with it. I'm not sure if I'm wanting to just have it so the user snaps room pieces together or actually gets down and dirty with verts and surfaces. I'm really stumped on this one. |
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| Thanks, Stevie, guess that's what you get from a lowly screen saver developer such as myself. |
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| Chroma: I would get down and dirty, im still gonna work on me world editor but I will continue when I get me new laptop. TBH a home made level will be much better and look better than a tacked together one where people can see the repetition. Hunted is quite dark and the rooms are quite large so repetition will be kept to a minimum. A vert editor like your (ala maplet) would be a brilliant editor IMHO. |
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| I really don't wanna do CSG but I freakin love maplet. I wish Mark would release the source! *#$*&! I lost the *#$&%ing source! I have no idea how - I back up quite often etc. but somehow the Maplet source code just disappeared one day - and with it, an early version of BlitzPlus, and a freaking awesome BSP merge algorithm. It was a fascinating algorithm, and if I'd been a more 'moneyed' man I would have pursued it further. |
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| *#$*&! I lost the *#$&%ing source!  source code just disappeared one day   nuff said... |
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| O Njet... Well, I guess that this is another blow for the motherland, known as Blitz forums, comrade. :D |
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| Oh wow, this must hurt. My deepest condolence! Something similar happened to be - tho my source wasn't that precious. It's the same with those pens. they frequently disappear, No matter how many of them you buy, they all disappear over time. Regarding to the hitchhikers guide trough the galaxy they escape to a secret asylum-planet for pen refugees. ok back on topic :o) |
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| one thing that XP does when it restores is nicely restores the tables removing ya files in the process, this has happened to me numerous times. I back up every day now. |
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| Ever go back over your old posts and see a long forgotten project of yours and wonder stuff like...how did I do that? Where's the source code? Man, I should have finished that! |
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| yup you should ;) still have the world editor source for my project gonna move it to Tombstone :D |
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| Ever go back over your old posts and see a long forgotten project of yours and wonder stuff like...how did I do that? Where's the source code? Man, I should have finished that! I agree with EdzUp[GD], looks like a nice clean editor. |
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