DeleD Community Edition

st.srki · Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:41 am Post subject: Few level editing sugestions

Since Deled is level editor, it would be nice if there is some 'Game specific' options. So here is list of my ideas.

1. Objects like particles, billboards, sounds, cameras... All of this objects will have same properties like position and orientation. Others like Sound will have "source filename"; Particles will have speed, lifetime, acceleration...

2. Path animator. For example, I can set start & end position(or any number of points), and time to go from one point to another. Then the camera (or any other object) will move. This does not necesary mean that moving these objects should be implemented in Deled. Just the object properties need to be exported, so when i load it in my game engine i can use them as i want.

3. If any object (light, camera...) is selected than in 3D window will be showed object "Gizmo". This would be nice but it's not very important.

4. Every time I import any objects (be it .X or .OBJ, or any other format), UV coordinates are lost and i need to do it manualy. It can be very frustrating.

To keep compatibility with current file format all of these objects can be saved in separate file.
For example if there is "level.dmf" then these will be saved in "level.dsf".

Thats all for now. Keep up the good work. Cool

elementrix · Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject:

Mr.Fletcher · Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:44 pm Post subject: Re: Few level editing sugestions

st.srki · Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject:

I know it is not easy to implement, especially Path animator but it would be nice to see. Entities are not that hard. What I had in mind is something like point-light. You add it into scene, move it where needed, than right click and you can change any property as you wish.

Mr.Fletcher · Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:38 pm Post subject:

st.srki · Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:49 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:58 pm Post subject:

Hi Razi3l,

Thanks for your feedback, that's some good points you've got there! Smile

1) In one of the upcoming DeleD versions, the singular 'tag' property will be replaced with a user-definied 'dictionary' of properties. This means you can add your own key-value pairs to any object. We won't include this in the first 1.6 version, but will soon. Predefined sets of attributes (which I would call 'entities' if we were talking business applications, but won't now because it would be confusing Wink

) will probably be added at some later point in time.

'Entities' (as in: primitives that are not actually geometric objects, just a bunch of characteristics with a position/orientation for use in the engine) are on our list, but imho they are not really necessary:
a. If you run your own file loader, you can just filter objects based on the tag. Any primitive can function as an entity. Having a separate 'entity' primitive (with it's own shape) will serve mainly to make them easier to recognize within DeleD.
b. If you load the DeleD file through one of the exported file formats, that file format will have to support 'entities'. Currently, I don't think any of our mesh based file formats does.

2) Your suggestion for Paths seem very specific, but I see their use... interesting.

3) What do you mean by "gizmo"? A 3D editing thingy with axis-handles like the one featured in 3D Studio / Maya?

4) If one of our importer doesn't handle UV coordinates correctly, that is a serious bug, please report it in the plugin section (or here). One sidenote: many times, we have found it is the exporter of the 3rd party application that doesn't export them in the first place.

st.srki · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:07 am Post subject: