DeleD Community Edition

[morris]

hi! i'm planning to use deled for a small game project, and i wondered if it is possible to set properties on a single face/edge/vertices of a complex object, e.g. a prefab. i understand that i can set tags for whole prefabs, that's also very useful, but i haven't found anything like that for the primitive stuff. this would be useful because i'm planning to implement climbing on certain walls, hangling on edges, disable collision for some faces etc. and i wanted to have that functionality insided deled, so i won't have to program a second editor.

if it's not possible (yet), would it be possible to make a plugin that could help with that? if yes, could you give me a good starting point on how to make plugins work with c++?

edit: another suggestion would be implementing a script window, just the same like the "comments" thing, where designers can write small scripts the game engine can handle... maybe one could make TAB not jump on the OK button but write two whitespaces or something. but i guess this might be a lot of work. is deled written in c++?? or delphi?

thanks in advance,
morris

[Mr.Fletcher]

Hi morris,

what you ask for is currently not entirely possible. Concerning faces, you could simulate that via different materials, you can also add comments to a material where you would enter your script then.

[morris]

okay, but generally speaking, a plugin could provide with a similar functionality? because then it would be possible to export the "additional" data to an extra file. i'd then have the .dxs or .dmf file, plus an additional file which describes the properties of certain faces/edges. wouldn't something like that be possible?

[Mr.Fletcher]

Theoretically yes, but the assignment would have to happen after you built the whole map, because once you've modified the geometry (added or deleted a face), the indices which you would have to save in the addional file wouldn't match.
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[morris]

thats bad well then just take it as a suggestion maybe it would be appropriate to introduce a consistently incrementing ID system per file, so that every new triangle gets a unique ID, which stays reserved even if the triangle is deleted again... just brainstorming right now.

thanks anyways

[jwatte]

The plug-in system is missing a few important features.

1) It needs to give plug-ins access to the sub-object selection level.
2) It needs to give plug-ins the ability to "listen" for changes in selection set.
3) It needs to give plug-ins the ability to "listen" for changes in geometry (ideally with more information than just "this thing changed").

I've been suggesting that DeleD could go further if these things were available to plug-in writers, but so far, the team has decided to prioritize other features higher.

If I had my wish list, I would also see support for the following:

4) Plug-ins can add buttons to the command panel, fields to the property panels, etc.
5) Plug-ins can interact with the user in the viewport (mousedown/hittest/drag/mouseup hooks).
6) Plug-ins can interact with the Undo system.
7) Plug-ins can interact with file save and load, such that they can store their own XML data (in addition to the "tag" system).

If these things were solved, then not only could most DeleD built-in commands theoretically be built as plug-ins, but also DeleD could be used as a base for various "game editing" solutions, such as what you're suggesting.

[morris]

that would be GREAT. i'm currently in a standstill with my development, because i cant decide what editor to use... and i'm on the edge of creating my own.

[Jeroen]

jwatte's suggestions are certainly good ones (we've heard them before ) and we will take a look at the plugin system eventually. For now, other things have our priority, like animation.

@ morris: creating your own editor is, of course, an option. But I would seriously take another close look at existing editors out there. Perhaps you can combine some of them into a pipeline that suits your needs. Creating your own editor will take a serious amount of your time. Time which is taken out of the development of your actual game. My two cents.

[jwatte]

Rather than creating my own editor, I would build my own editor based on whatever is out there. Right now, DeleD isn't quite enough to do that, because you can't grope deeply enough in the scene graph. If I were to do it for work, I'd probably base it on 3ds Max, because it has access to EVERYTHING, and it can do EVERYTHING, and I already know the SDK and scripting language. Maya would be a good choice, too, although I don't know that SDK.

If you don't want to pay a lot, it becomes harder. You could see if the Python scripting in MilkShape is enough to get you going. It may very well be. If it's not, you can also look at open source options, such as Blender. I would, however, strongly recommend against making your own. I've been thinking down that path a few times, and every time I go down that path, I have to slap myself on the hand and back up -- that way lies nothing but lots of wasted time, and no completed game.