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[Gregg Williams]

So still plugging along on the map editor. Got a basic tree view style control working. Hope to have something more to show this weekend.

[koiwai]

Don't know how to say it and not feel stupid, but, somehow, I really admire this devlog, and the way you develop M.I.N.T.

(follow)

[Gregg Williams]

Don't know how to say it and not feel stupid, but, somehow, I really admire this devlog, and the way you develop M.I.N.T.

(follow)

Haha, well cheers I'll be keeping at it, and hopefully as some other projects drop off things will only increase.

[Gregg Williams]

Some more progress on the editor. Basic tree control is working, though ideally need to work in icons on the left side of the items.



Also need to work out an XML spec or something to define what actually goes into the tree, and how these items work.
For instance Roads should act a single brush, but should randomly pull from tile ids 0-20 when painting.

Any suggestions for the editor's name?

I was amusingly considering M.I.N.T.E.R

[Gregg Williams]

So work continues on the map editor.

One of the slowest parts of everything is just figuring out how to break down and organize all the data.

Part of that is deciding how to organize the tile sheets themselves, which then factors into rendering performance and other engine characteristics. I've decided to break down tiles by environment set, and then layer. So you would for instance have a jungle environment, which than has tile strips/sheets for base ground, fringe, shadow, objects and structures, and maybe overhead/foreground.

Each layer than can have its own tile ids starting at 0 and incrementing for however much is needed. This is important since you have properties associated to tiles as well which are looked up by tile id like height for instance. Its also needed in the editor to handle the definition of brushes. Though this does also mean I need to create tile property data on a per layer and per environment basis as well, vs just in a single giant file. Potentially a bit more annoying for us, but on the plus side its not nearly as memory wasteful.

Now I just need to create the actual sheets, and also figure out how to define it all. I'll probably actually use XML for that bit, despite generally disliking XML. Given the early stage of development, being able to easily hand edit some definitions is likely a big win. These can always later be converted to binary or some other format down the road.

[Gregg Williams]

So developed the initial draft of the the data format to feed into the editor.

Its using XML and basically defines an environment, which contains a number of tile sets, followed with a number of brush categories, that contain a number of brushes.

I can loop through and read the brush categories to generate the parent folders in the tree view, and then read in each individual brush and add that as a child.

The tricky part is the brushes themselves, as I need quite a few different types, given you have terrain, buildings, obstacles, units themselves, and even meta stuff like marking deployment zones.

[Impmaster]

This sounds like the game will need to process quite a bit.

[Gregg Williams]

This sounds like the game will need to process quite a bit.

Tons, and its complicated by all the single player campaign stuff, where you want to be able to lay out map triggers, and other junk.

Also we want most things in the maps to be destroyable, so there needs to be alternate graphical states for tons of stuff, as well as associated data like health, armor types, and so forth. (Like infantry machin guns are likely to do squat to a concrete building, yet larger weapons from a tank or a mech, etc...)

[Impmaster]

You guys feel like you're ready for all this?

[Gregg Williams]

You guys feel like you're ready for all this?

Haha well thats an interesting question.

I like to think so at any rate.

Combined I and Kawe have something like 30+ years of experience in the associated fields. No doubt the project will take a good amount of time to do though.

[Gregg Williams]

Alright won't be much activity here for the next week or so. Need to wrap up the last bits of Gravitum and get it out of the door.

[DustyDrake]

Any suggestions for the editor's name?

I was amusingly considering M.I.N.T.E.R

SPEAR sounds like a good name if you can get a backronym outta it.

[Impmaster]

How about C.H.O.C.O.L.A.T.E?

Creative
Helping
Organization
Code
On
Lightweight
Abstract
Tiling
Engine

[Belimoth]

I dunno about editors but you plan an expansion pack called "Condition".
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...
...
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M.I.N.T. Condition

[Gregg Williams]

I dunno about editors but you plan an expansion pack called "Condition".
...

M.I.N.T. Condition

On another note, Kawe has started up some mockups of user interfaces, below is an early concept for a unit display.



I'm still tied up wrapping Gravitum, but hope to return to M.I.N.T as soon as possible, and with far less projects competing for attention.