Workin' in the shop, under the hood...

**Do not feed the ducky**

!!MOVIES NOW MAC FRIENDLY!!

So about a week ago I had a problem; I was working on some super cool stuff and being as single-minded as I am, neglected to notice the ever looming demand list growing in my inbox of things that needed to be done and fixed. When I finally did take a look, I found I had a whopping list to tackle in the near future!

First there was the problem with T2D that was admittedly of my own creation! I had, while developing the object creator/poly editor, implemented a new console type so that you could have nifty little drop downs in the GuiInspector that allowed you to choose via a drop down menu, which imageMapDatablock you wanted to use for your object.

What a horrible thing to do you must be thinking. Ahh yes, there's always a snag, right? Well, turns out this time, that one of the big things about T2D is its ability to be dropped directly into a TGE app and have it compile. Well, to implement the new ConsoleType I had to modify console/consoleTypes.h to declare it, and gui/editor/guiInspector.cc to make the inspector do what I wanted. Crud, that means that you'd now have to modify manually both of those files if you wanted your T2D to function properly with TGE!

This was unacceptable. Add it to the todo.

Second there was the file browser I had written. Seems 'round here people have good ideas, and it had been suggested (with threat of cutting off my caffeine IV) that I make the inspector allow you to browse for textureNames and file names for certain object properties.

Snag #2 - The gui inspector wasn't really set up to make this kind of 'custom field' stuff easy on a guy :(

Third while the scent of fresh modifications to the Gui inspector was still in the air, a Color picker control ended up in my lap, once again with threats of cutting off my supply until I got it implemented into the inspector as well.

The solution?
Well luckily for me, a little birdy dropped by and suggested that since the Gui Inspector was dependent on ConsoleTypes (see First) and it needed better support for creating custom edit fields (see Second and Third), I could just do it all and call it good!

So now it's been just a bit over a week and you can now implement console types without modifying core engine files, and the inspector can create custom edit controls for certain console types, without knowing directly about them inside of it. That is to say, you can create your type Foo and a custom editing control that lets your browse for bar all in the same file, without changing up your consoleTypes.h OR hacking up the gui inspector!

I won't bore you all with the details behind the implementation of said 'new stuff' (we'll save that for new TDN articles that I have to write because I changed stuff), but I will show it off a bit in the form of videos!

The Spoils
As we all know (or atleast I do) I love to post videos, because dangit a picture, or a thousand words, it's just not the same! So here we go, let's check out what this new inspector does!

Picking colors?! No more typing "0.001 1.000 0.456 1.000" into the inspector (unless you really want to)
Pick me some colors dangit!


Too many buttons to push
Yeah, I just needed to make more


Dynamic Fields? Easier? You tell me.
Point+click+type=ducky?


Changing the backgroung?Dangit, what was the path to that background image again..? /common/ui/bg/..? ERRRGGG!
I hate typing file paths


So yeah, it's been real. Hope you enjoy :)

-justin'