Plan for Coleman Nitroy
by Coleman Nitroy · 12/12/2004 (6:44 pm) · 3 comments
Decided it was about time to have a plan!
Being almost 100% of a mac guy now, I have been really really REALLY disappointed in the options for .map editing. As everyone know and so have I, CSG editing on the mac side of things sucks. So I broke down, fired up my old x86. First thing I did was install linux, fool with gtkRadiant, realize it sucks for anything other then the quake pipeline and with the liscening it was not worth the effort. Then I just nuked that and installed quark on a fresh windows install. Cool cool, but if anyone hasn't noticed Quark sucks, quark sucks BAD. Its bulky full of crap and needs a serious UI revamp. I do not want need or care about being able to listen to sound files in a fucking CSG editor. I hate quarks philosophy. Modularity is making seperate tools that are all open enough you can use whatever tools you want for every aspect of your pipeline. I got fed up with Quark and I am no dummy, I understand CSG editing and did a lot of very involved mapping a few years back with Worldcraft. I just thought why bother with this crap when I can do it on my own.
So I bought "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass, read it, got my love for coding back on and started into the examples and little things.
Progress! I have parsed my first map file and loaded all the planes and data. Map files are really really easy to work with, especially when you have the power of objective-c and cocoa at your side. I am looking forward to getting into some of the interesting parts of plotting the points in the usual views top. sides, front, persepective. I know some OpenGL, enough to get that job done, but I really want this to have a good interface and since Cocoa development is very interface driven I need to plan that out before I go much further. Any interface researchers out there, input needed, same goes for CSG mappers, I need some thoughts on the views you use and how you would like to see texture and asset managment work.
I am having some trouble finding good resources on the different versions of .map files. Right now I am using valve220 as a base. Personally I am going to make this thing work the best so it fits into the torque asset creation pipeline, but the main goal would be to make a great CSG tool that people actually do video game work on the map side. That meaning everything has to be general enough that it works with any content pipeline with ease. That is why I want to be get all the varitaions of the map format worked out.
So far this is what I have as the general map file.
[code]
{
"classname" "entity_name"
"property" value"
... ...
{
(plane_x) (plane_y) (plane_z) TEXTURE [texture coords ] ...
... ... ... ... ... ...
}
}
My goals for this next week is to have map parsing bullet proof and to create a Panel window that displays a bunch of useful map information like entities in a list and number of brushes and there cooresponding faces, as a way to show some of that information I parse in.
Being almost 100% of a mac guy now, I have been really really REALLY disappointed in the options for .map editing. As everyone know and so have I, CSG editing on the mac side of things sucks. So I broke down, fired up my old x86. First thing I did was install linux, fool with gtkRadiant, realize it sucks for anything other then the quake pipeline and with the liscening it was not worth the effort. Then I just nuked that and installed quark on a fresh windows install. Cool cool, but if anyone hasn't noticed Quark sucks, quark sucks BAD. Its bulky full of crap and needs a serious UI revamp. I do not want need or care about being able to listen to sound files in a fucking CSG editor. I hate quarks philosophy. Modularity is making seperate tools that are all open enough you can use whatever tools you want for every aspect of your pipeline. I got fed up with Quark and I am no dummy, I understand CSG editing and did a lot of very involved mapping a few years back with Worldcraft. I just thought why bother with this crap when I can do it on my own.
So I bought "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass, read it, got my love for coding back on and started into the examples and little things.
Progress! I have parsed my first map file and loaded all the planes and data. Map files are really really easy to work with, especially when you have the power of objective-c and cocoa at your side. I am looking forward to getting into some of the interesting parts of plotting the points in the usual views top. sides, front, persepective. I know some OpenGL, enough to get that job done, but I really want this to have a good interface and since Cocoa development is very interface driven I need to plan that out before I go much further. Any interface researchers out there, input needed, same goes for CSG mappers, I need some thoughts on the views you use and how you would like to see texture and asset managment work.
I am having some trouble finding good resources on the different versions of .map files. Right now I am using valve220 as a base. Personally I am going to make this thing work the best so it fits into the torque asset creation pipeline, but the main goal would be to make a great CSG tool that people actually do video game work on the map side. That meaning everything has to be general enough that it works with any content pipeline with ease. That is why I want to be get all the varitaions of the map format worked out.
So far this is what I have as the general map file.
[code]
{
"classname" "entity_name"
"property" value"
... ...
{
(plane_x) (plane_y) (plane_z) TEXTURE [texture coords ] ...
... ... ... ... ... ...
}
}
My goals for this next week is to have map parsing bullet proof and to create a Panel window that displays a bunch of useful map information like entities in a list and number of brushes and there cooresponding faces, as a way to show some of that information I parse in.
#2
Coleman, I feel your pain on when it comes to map making on the mac. I use radient and I'm having a hard time when things are not 90 degrees. Another person and I have been working on a blender exporter and such. Let me know if you figure out the texture coordinates. The map tool expects the texture coordinates to be in ST space not UV space so heads up on that.
Good luck and let me know if you need any help. If you make a good tool you will make a lot of Mac people really happy.
12/13/2004 (7:35 pm)
Chris, your editor is not longer so hush hush. :)Coleman, I feel your pain on when it comes to map making on the mac. I use radient and I'm having a hard time when things are not 90 degrees. Another person and I have been working on a blender exporter and such. Let me know if you figure out the texture coordinates. The map tool expects the texture coordinates to be in ST space not UV space so heads up on that.
Good luck and let me know if you need any help. If you make a good tool you will make a lot of Mac people really happy.
#3
@Chris - Working on a TGE map editor is a cool idea. As of right now I am just doing this in Cocoa so as to be a good project to learn cocoa with, but I would love to collaborate in any form. We will in a sense be doing the same things. The only problem I have with doing it in TGE is that I do not have the time to get up to speed with the TGE codebase. When it comes to TGE I'm pretty much a designer (artist/scripter) and have never divuldged too much into the engines internals ... yet ;)
12/14/2004 (4:39 am)
@Joe - Thanks for the heads up about the texture coords. Although I will not be touching texturing for a while, at least until I have a good solid idea of how I want this thing to work.@Chris - Working on a TGE map editor is a cool idea. As of right now I am just doing this in Cocoa so as to be a good project to learn cocoa with, but I would love to collaborate in any form. We will in a sense be doing the same things. The only problem I have with doing it in TGE is that I do not have the time to get up to speed with the TGE codebase. When it comes to TGE I'm pretty much a designer (artist/scripter) and have never divuldged too much into the engines internals ... yet ;)
Torque 3D Owner Chris "DiGi" Timberlake