DeleD Community Edition

Guest · Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 10:52 pm Post subject: Export as .X with Solid Colors

It appears that when you export as .X and one of your materials you have is a color, not a picture, it tries to make a temporary texture picture for that material. The error is that it cannot open an hex number. At first I thought it was another memory error, but then I looked into the .X file (before I got DeleD, I was making .X files without an editor! Ahh!) DeleD appears to be making a temporary picture named "fix_######" in place of flat color materials. It crashes somewhere in making that temporary picture file.

It works fine when you have all textures.

-Dr. Zoop

Jeroen · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 7:45 am Post subject:

Ah yes, I'm aware of that problem. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, it'll be fixed in the next release. Smile

Dr. Zoop · Member Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

No problem! Glad to be of help! I know EXACTLY what it's like to be in your position.

-Dr. Zoop

Jeroen · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 7:01 pm Post subject: Re: No Problem.

Dr. Zoop · Member Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

Materials: When you export into .X, I believe (not 100% sure) you can not only select the texture (a bitmap or whatever), but a material too. A material in DirectX is basically a color. You will have to probably look up the DirectX .X structure to see where material colors go and how they are formatted inside the .X file. I am guessing there is some kind of structure where you simply say the RGB value of the material color. This would be more efficient, less space, less files, and a lot easier for the user if they did not have to deal with make-shift textures that really arn't textures at all, but just a flat color.

History: I work on my own freeware projects of my own at http://www.zooptek.net. I had the game Paint Ball 3 EXTREME up for five years before finally retiring it. Basically it's a top-down shooter mixed with role-playing-game elements based on the popular sport paint ball. The game's downloads exceeds 80,000. Just like you guys at Delgine, worked on my own as a hobby and made no money for it. And I know exactly how painful (and embarrassing) to have bugs in something you've worked so hard on. It's simply annoying when a user cries about a bug but doesn't give you enough information to fix it. Let alone, the fact usually they arn't patient and do not understand it's not easy to fix bugs, or to program in general--especially when you're working alone. I know you guys have more than one person working on it, and that's great. I had a little "partnership" with one of my friends for a while on Paint Ball 3 EXTREME and it helped so much. I wish you guys the best of luck on your projects and pray that the users don't nag you to death like they did, and still do, for me. Hehe. Wink

In fact, the reason why I am learning Delgine and all of this is to upgrade Paint Ball 4 into 3D. But, as my fans still don't understand, it takes a lot of time to program that. Haha.

Good luck!
-Dr. Zoop

granada · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:25 am Post subject:

interesting site Dr. Zoop, good luck with your game Very Happy

dave
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Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:32 am Post subject:

Ah, interesting and cool background info, that clarifies quite a lot!

About the DirectX .X format, I believe you are correct about it supporting color-only materials. However, there is the problem of 3rd party programs actually _supporting_ that, most seem to only support textures.

Maybe we should make this an option of the .X exporter or something, but that's up to Jeroen to decide: he is Mr X Export Smile

Dr. Zoop · Member Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

I cannot see a reason why not to support "real" color-only materials. It's just a matter of figuring out how to script it in the .X. To me, that seems like it'd be a lot easier to manage than making 2x2 bitmaps of the color and having the user copy them around.

Just because other third parties don't export color-only materials doesn't mean you can't be better than them all! Razz

-Dr. Zoop

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:40 pm Post subject:

*lol* Actually, the problem is other parties not _importing_ our exported .X files if we put solid color materials in them. That is why it would have to be optional.

Lots of 3rd party engines don't support solid color rendering. I think there is good reason for that, when was the last time you saw a commerial game do solid color rendering? (besides cellshaded graphics, that is)

Not much use in making DeleD a 'better product' when nobody wants to use it because they can't use the models it spits out Smile

Dr. Zoop · Member Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

I understand your arguement. I've had people recommend seemingly good ideas, but not worth it because so few people would use it.

Get it, got it, good. But yeah... still need that group rotating. Razz

-Dr. Zoop

Jeroen · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:03 pm Post subject:

Nevertheless, I think I will implement this idea as an extra option when exporting to X. Wink