Level Editor now on CVS

[Kjurtyl]

Penguin Edit is now on the CVS, it's within the Hooptie module. You can access it either by checking out (co) the whole Hooptie module or just Hooptie/PenguinEdit . There's still a few outstanding bugs and missing features in this version, it'll be updated as the files I'm working on get more stable.

Regardless of what you may find in terms of missing functionality, etc. Reply here so that I may compile a list of requested essential features and outstanding/new bugs. Oh, and let me know if the CVS module doesn't produce a working build.

- Kjurtyl.

[ededed]

Whats bad about my code for HooptieEditor.
(I have never done any c++)

[Kjurtyl]

Actually, the code - in as far as it does what it sets out to accomplish - is fine.

The main issues that made it unusable by me, however, are:

- Does not follow the Model-View-Controller paradigm.

As far as I remember, it was really just two classes where one includes the other, that means everything had access to everything without need for accessor methods, that went counter both to what I expected and to the Object-Oriented vision. What I felt was the C++ -like part is the sense that when I read C++ code, I don't follow what is going on nor why it is doing it in that way. In that same vein, I don't know why you didn't follow the MVC paradigm more closely.

- Does not provide sufficient facilities in terms of functions.

Every feature seemed to me at the time to have been implemented to achieve a certain goal and that goal only. Functions were not versatile enough so that I could add my own which would make use of said functions and add functionality to the application. Essentially, if I wanted to add a specific feature, I came to the conclusion that I would have to re-write large sections of the code to allow the new feature.

Both of these really fall on one factor: Bad design. The application itself looks and works great, but it's way too difficult to work with the code.

That is not to say PenguinEdit is without design flaws. Despite John's and Josh's relatively better design, there were serious holes that needed to be filled specifically in the handling of level bundles with respect to adding, removing and ordering levels.

Although PenguinEdit had problems, it was easier to deal with them because it followed a paradigm I knew well and could both easily follow and easily correct the design mistakes present.

Overall, it was the combination of these factors that made me declare that HooptieEditor was bad versus PenguinEdit.

Still, you should be proud of HooptieEditor and its accomplishments. Some of its more useful features like the scrollbar on the right side might never make it in PenguinEdit and doing some excessively large levels for Hooptie was indeed fun.

- Kjurtyl.

[Kjurtyl]

PenguinEdit has been updated on the CVS, it clears up a whole slew of issues and is what I would term "feature complete" for now, though there are still a handful of (minor) outstanding issues.

The main issue being that when one goes to create an entirely new set of levels, you'll have to save your set before you start editing otherwise it won't save levels properly (missing file path). My suggestion right now is to forgo the New menu item and the new set button and just open up an existing set, save it under a new name and edit away. If you've checked out the Hooptie package, then you should have Alan's Levels.hlvls which works great for just that purpose.

Also once you've done the changes you want to a level, be sure to save it (command-s or the menu item) prior to opening another level because it will automatically discard the changes if they are not explicitly saved.

I won't be looking at/working on the code until next weekend, so its free pickings for whoever wants to make changes to the code.

There is no way at this time to test the levels from within the editor and to add this functionality would be impractical at this time.

- Kjurtyl.

[DaFalcon]

Well, I can't wait for a compiled release so that I can try it out...

Go Hooptie!

[Kjurtyl]

Forthcoming, although seeing as it is less than 1 meg in size uncompressed, I could shoot over a compressed archive your way should you so desire.

- Kjurtyl.

[DaFalcon]

I'd like that. My .mac account name is dafalcon if you could please e-mail it to me there :-) (or post it somewhere)

[Kjurtyl]

Hrrm, I sent it but I forgot that .mac had had some emailing problems. Did it ever reach you?

- Kjurtyl.

[Pazolli]

Hi Kjurtyl,

The inside of PeguinEdit's MainMenu.nib (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/inkubator/hooptie/PenguinEdit/English.lproj/MainMenu.nib/) (probably the classes.nib, objects.nib and info.nib files) have not been added to the CVS. As such PeguinEdit will not compile.

Best wishes,
Mark.

[Kjurtyl]

Thanks for the heads-up. Things should be fixed now, I rolled in a fix for creating new bundles/levels while I was at it.

- Kjurtyl.