DeleD Community Edition

[dantheman]

I normally use Cartography shop 4, and am getting annoyed with it due to the lack of import functions. I am starting to like DeleD. Trouble is, I cant seem to find a way of putting 'entity information' into objects.
eg. "classname=DOOR", "status=LOCKED", "key=RED" etc.

Is this something DeleD pro does? and can it be extracted from the B3d in blitz like it can from a cartography shop?

[Jeroen]

Glad to see you're starting to like DeleD.

Entity information could be put in the Tag property of objects. See the Object Inspector to alter that particular property. Your engine (Blitz, etc) should then be fed with that property and you're done. This could either be done by putting it in the B3D file by using the B3D exporter (don't know if it supports that already) or by writing your own custom DMF loader (which wouldn't be hard as DeleD uses simple, well-defined ASCII files - see the Help).

If you have other ideas on how to put entity information into objects, please do tell us.

P.s don't use ; characters in the Tag property - it screws up the DMF loading routines because DMF's use the ; character as seperator.

[dirkk]

Jereon (or rather PJ), does the .b3d exporter put the custom tags into the .b3d file?

If not - there is this way (that Gile[s] uses): you could put the custom tags in to the entity names in the .b3d files. This way they can be parsed from the Blitz3D program.

[Jeroen]

[Paul-Jan]

Nope, the B3D exporter doesn't support it, but I should be able to add it in the near future. Although I think I will make it optional, because replacing (or is it simply 'adding to?') the entity names is a real hack. Or maybe not optional but smart: only replace the entity names if any tags are found in the exported objects, otherwise just keep the names.

Replacing entity names is pretty ok if you want to export things to blitz3d, but what if I want to export my b3d model to a different exporter? Having the entity names replaced with tags would be pretty silly then I think. Then again, loosing the tag data is also pretty silly. Hmmz.

Also, I'd have to check if Blitz supports multiple entities with the same name, but I think I recall it does.

Cool!

[DarkSeraph]

I hate to revive an ungodly old topic, but I'd really like to see something that can export information for an entity, no matter how simple it is. For example the .map format just uses text:

[_kohai]

Regarding entities, why not just use a simple object ( ie. cube ) with spcial decorated name ( ent_1, ent_pstart ... ), then it's just your engine duty to parse/store/use the position/ rotation/... of the object as parameters ....

And you could just texture it with a plain dummy transparent texture to prevent it from being displayed !


Entities is also a pb for me, so adding basic entities support would be a great addition, but for now, that'll be my way of doing things.

Cheers, kohai

[BorisTSR]

i think a good idea for implementing it would be an entity list, which can be edited, and picked. it contains a few user params (maybe user set?) and they get placed in the file format, after the lights, you first have the entity list, then you have the actual entities that have been placed, similar to how the materials work (i.e. the declaration then the implementations)

i don't think i explained that very well, if you would like me to clarify a few points i will.

[Paul-Jan]

Entities are on the todo list (and their storage implementation will probably not differ much from what Boris suggested above), but until that time: if you use your own engine/parser combination just do what _kohai does, that's how most users solve it. We made "user properties" exactly for things like this

[DarkSeraph]

That will work temporarily, but the problem with your solution _kohai is that it isn't very effecient. The geometry is still rendered, even if it is just a cube, and most engines would still read the cube and give it a collision, even if people can't see it.

[Paul-Jan]

If you use your own loading code you would of course simply convert the object to 'whatever you feel like' on load time. You definitely don't want it to end up in the rendering pipeline.