dim3 Forum

Dr. Infested Wrote:Brian, are we going to get another version of the Editor out anytime soon? No rush, but I had some stuff I wanted to show, and I need the working Editor to do it.

Relatively soon, I'm trying to work in a couple fixes and things and figure some stuff out.

[>] Brian

So far so good; I really like the multiple angles in the new Editor, as well as the menu screen transparent instead of black like it used to be....

I haven't had the chance to look at it much, but I did discover a rather odd bug which has been plaguing me since 2.2, and that is when you rotate a certain way, say to the side, any projectile that has rings on it still act as if they are facing forward. It looks a little strange to fire the raygun and see the rings coming out facing sideways....

In the interest of furthering dim3's capabilities, there are a few things I'd like to mention and see that they get covered. I know you're busy with mapping, and that's a big step up. But there are other area's that badly need attention, especially if you're interested in doing something besides a streight first person shooter.

A, Is it possible to have seperate parts of a vehicle or player rotate individually on their own axis? A tank for instance, is it possible now to have the turret be aimed by the mouse, but the main part steered using keys? Controling vehicles and players by keys is another thing, is that possible yet?

B, Rotation. A couple people are working on space type games right now. But I think they'll find themselves frustrated by the lack of axis control. There needs to be provision for controling an object on the pitching and rolling axis. At the moment only rotating on a flat plane (yawing) is easily possible. Complete control over pitching and rolling needs to be added asap.

C, Don't forget the ability to seperately script individual parts of one object, infinate possibilities with that.


This is just to make sure that these features don't get forgottet.

I did not look on v2.5 yet, but I understand there have been extensions on the interface and people tell me they are useful for my game. No it would be nice to learn what exactly happened and how to use it.

Why don't you download it yourself? Best way to understand it is to learn for yourself.

Sorry but that's no way of learning.

I will not go on writing to avoid offending you.

EDIT: v2.5 just gave me a hard crash, but in Console I see no report. Should that be?

Bradamante Wrote:Sorry but that's no way of learning.

If someone just told me how to do something I'd forget it, but if I spent ten minutes with no idea how to do it and finally figured it out myself, I'd remember as I spent so much time trying. I forget everything I don't need, and if I don't use it I usually don't need it. Some people are self taught some people aren't, so I understand if you don't learn that way but it is a good way to learn.

About the crashing: Does it crash every time? Try spotlighting for "dim3 engine crash log" or something (it should say the date in the file).

Update

Location: http://homepage.mac.com/ggadwa/Misc/dim3_v25b2.zip

These are just updates to the applications. Again BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA BEFORE USING.

Got really busy and ran into some tricky things so I didn't get as much done as I wanted, and certainly not all the suggestions, but I think I hit some of the big ones.

Editor
* added snap to grid for vertex meshes
* ctrl-drag for changing UVs offsets
* shift-drag drags on a uniform scale
* editable UV coords in mesh dialog
* texture offsets in liquid dialog
* fixed scroll wheel movement
* created meshes appear near any selected items
* fixed a bug where the mesh transform menu would have bad dimming
* first draft of the new map auto-generator (not done, but workable)

Animator
* added "skip blended" to pose bone moves

Engine
* fixes for speed decrease when using tesselated meshes
* will fail-over to non-widescreen backgrounds if wide screen version is missing

Couple notes:

[1] Alex -- use the "snap mesh to grid" to fix your problem with meshes not fitting together. Select a grid, snap it, then drag it together. Your speed problem should also be fixed.

[2] teh1ghool -- check out the new "skip blending" flag and see if it works for you.

I think Editor is going to end up having a problem with UVs. When you UV map in a modeler, it has some additional information that I won't have (through the OBJ) and wouldn't keep around, anyway. So, right now you can use ctrl-drag to alter the UVs, or edit them in a dialog -- though right now there's no way to tell which is which vertex. This will need a lot of work.

[>] Brian

Cool!
Some problems/ideas (don't remember which I posted last time):
Editor:
moving a segment should move the UVs the way it used to if they aren't locked (this is VERY usefull).
Need a reset UVs for portal button.
Still, if you go into front only view and scroll it works, but if you rotate the camera it zooms sideways. This makes the whole front only view useless as you can only move on one axis. :|
It would be really nice to show the skybox in the editor
Moving things with arrow keys doesn't work
tessalate mesh should only tessellate selection (vertex mesh or face, whatever mode is on)
The fact that you can't rotate the camera in the front/side/top front/side sections is very annoying.

Engine:
Run forward and while moving hit esc, then try it running backwards. The weapon model is displaced ALOT.
Hitting esc closes the console, but that doesn't really matter....
I think I said this before, watching a movie or something should immediatly return you to the menu you got it from when it's done and hitting esc shouldn't close the menu but move to the previous one.

[EDIT]Brian, specular mapping is WAY to intense. (not in the beta in the current version) It should be less intense than the real lighting, right now if you have a room lit about 75% the specular map glares so much that you can't see anything. Really what we need is a slider/number input to decide how intense it is in the texture settings.

There needs to be a shortcut key for skip blend. Torture to open up dialogues for so many poses :\ Also up/down arrow keys should go up/down in any of the lists, be it bones, poses, anims, vertices. One last thing, You switched what I had. Mine was 'Use in Blend' default 'no' and you made it 'skip blend' default 'no'. If it's going to be 'skip blend' then it would have to be default 'yes'. I don't feel like going through all these bones and poses yet without the shortcut and the default reversed. Will take too much time. xD I'll let you know how it works next release. lol