[wssd] What should Spidey do?

[bagheadspidey]

Well, I gave up on linking my program with slade (made the size ridiculous) and went ahead and wrote the wad building stuff by hand, using the UDS and zdbsp as a reference. It was much easier than I had expected; I'm actually beginning to like C++ again.

The terrain generator now has enough features for an alpha release:

• create random terrain
• load terrain from image
• real-time terrain editing
• save as zdoom wad

There's still some more features I want to add:

• export water level
• auto-texture terrain
• real-time texture editing
• user interface enhancements

I need volunteers to build this program for Windows. Everything should compile easily on windows, but you'll need to set up your own build scripts and get all the right headers and libraries and crap. I think Nash has already agreed to help with the windows builds, but he might need a little help getting set up. PM me or respond here if you want to take a crack at compiling it; I'll send you the source.

Just so you know what you're in for, this program links against the STL, OpenGL, GLUT, GLUI, GraphicsMagick, and I think that's about it. Everything is written in a cross-platform way (I think), and the source is fairly small.

[Cutmanmike]

So how flexible is it? One thing I might need soon is a canyon sort of thing with no liquids. Would that be feasable in your editor?

[Kappes Buur]

@bagheadspidey

I certainly would not want to detract your attention away from The Terrain Editor, since I am really looking forward to it, but one tool which I miss is a PWAD Viewer. Something that can show thumbnails, of adjustable size, of all pwads in a folder. If, in addition, it could open a map in Doombuilder when the thumbnail of that map is selected, that would be really the cat's meow. Maybe something to keep on the backburner until your current projects are done.

great utilities so far

[bagheadspidey]

Kappes: I'm pretty slammed right now, haven't worked on the terrain editor or any side projects really in over a month now. I've been hired on at the ass end of a big project to do a lot of stuff that probably should have been started like two years ago. The project will be over in less than three months, so after that I'll probably have a much more relaxed schedule.

That's an interesting idea, though... what kind of thumbnail would you use for a pwad? The title screen I guess? I think I could probably write something like that in an afternoon, if I understand what you're after... If you want to write up a somewhat detailed plan for the thing I can probably squeeze it in.

[Penguinator]

Following up on on Kappes' suggestion and another issue I had before, could you add a way to add information such as authors, rating, tags, additional information, ect to files so they could be sorted easily? I may send you a PM for ideas, if you don't mind.

Maybe after that you could solve world hunger or something like that.

[bagheadspidey]

PM away. That gives me a very interesting idea though. Instead of writing it as a desktop app, maybe I could use something like XPCOM or Adobe AIR or YUI or GWT or or or... hmm. Play whatever pwad you like, it's already rated and tagged, you can rate it too, if you don't have it yet it auto-downloads... kinda a desktop / web hybrid pwad arcade / doom builder loader thing. Cool ideas.

[leileilol]

Quake/Quake2/Odamex Console font generator, only this time it's a strict 128x128x8, or any resolution by the power of 2 for generating Quake3 font (256x256, 512x512, etc) from a TTF, there is a program that does this called Bitmap Font Builder but it's got an evil proprietary usage rights to it

[Kappes Buur]

...
That's an interesting idea, though... what kind of thumbnail would you use for a pwad? The title screen I guess? I think I could probably write something like that in an afternoon, if I understand what you're after... If you want to write up a somewhat detailed plan for the thing I can probably squeeze it in.

I had in mind something in the line of IrfanView's thumbnail viewer, so I made a simple mockup



Because I was focused strictly on the view of the map layout I hadn't thought of which other lump could be used for the thumbnail display.

Thanks for even entertaining the idea.

[bagheadspidey]

Because I was focused strictly on the view of the map layout I hadn't thought of which other lump could be used for the thumbnail display

You know, I kind of thought that might be what you had in mind but wouldn't that only work for wads with only one map? Or would it show one of those montage type thumbnails like xp's folder of images view (like what enjay and zippy were discussing in the show your desktop thread)? Then wads containing multiple maps could be treated like folders in the directory tree, and each map would show as a separate image within a multi-map wad or pk3.

I think Penguinator's tagging idea would fit in well here; thumbnails of maps or title screens or whatever could be stored in the wad along with the tags.

So, there's two ways this could be done.

One, All of it could be stored as xml, with the thumbnail images stored as xpm cdata or svg at the end of the xml file. The whole thing could be stored in one lump that way.

Two, the tags could be stored in one lump in a simple config file type format (maybe easier to edit by hand than xml), the images could be stored in separate png lumps (you could display maps as textures in-game like that), and all of that could be put between markers or in a tags directory in a pk3.

Either way, there would also need to be some extra data to track the size of map lumps and so the program can regenerate thumbs when the maps change. Thats kind of a lot of lumps if we use the multi-lump approach. Not that that necessarily matters...

So, what do you guys think? One lump or two? PNG, XPM, or SVG? I think scalable SVG thumbs would be slick, and would fit in perfectly if i use XPCOM and YUI...

[Kappes Buur]

You know, I kind of thought that might be what you had in mind but wouldn't that only work for wads with only one map? Or would it show one of those montage type thumbnails like xp's folder of images view (like what enjay and zippy were discussing in the show your desktop thread)? Then wads containing multiple maps could be treated like folders in the directory tree, and each map would show as a separate image within a multi-map wad or pk3....

Again, I hadn't thought of levels with more than one map.
My idea was just for the case when one works on a map and has several saved development files. I can see, however, that that would be helpful. Could it be treated like Deepsea does, when browsing the maps in one specific level? The new maps in a level are shown in purple and the original maps of the IWAD in white.



If the PWAD Viewer can be made more universal, I would not complain.

[Kappes Buur]

It's been a few months now.
Is there still any possibility for the The Terrain Editor and/or the Map Viewer to be released in the near future

[bagheadspidey]

KB, I've put those projects on hold for a while in favor of a lump editor I've been working on. The little command line tools like unwad and grabpng are all going to share their code with that tool. This is my priority right now because there are no native wad management tools for linux besides really-old-ass deutex.

The lump editor is a gui tool and is being written in wx so it should work for linux and windows. So far it's got a sound/music player, image viewer, text editor, and some conversion features. I hope to have a useful version finished sometime relatively soon. I may make it scriptable via lua so I can integrate some of those other weird tools like the font generator.

[Blzut3]

Heh, and I was hoping I would have been the first to do a native wad editor for Linux. Of course your much further ahead of me.

[Grubber]

Meh, I was the first one doing that Let's see whose tool is released first.

[bagheadspidey]

We'll see ;)

My tool is going to be a little different from a normal wad editor, I think... It will manage "projects" that consist of a project file storing some options and a bunch of lump files in folders, organized like a pk3. It will compile projects into wads or pk3s when the author is ready to distribute or test. That way, you can edit images and stuff directly without doing the export -> edit -> import thing, and wads will never get corrupted or screwed up.

Of course, it will be able to convert a wad or pk3 into a project for editing. It will also be able to browse a wad or pk3 in read-only mode (gotta convert to a project if you want to edit it.)