Editors groupings

Just thought i'd point something out.

The game WILL HAVE EDITORS.

Weither some or all of these editors are available to the player is another matter entirely.

Which brings me to my point, the editors really do need to be split into:

1. Development editors
Editors used to actually create the game.
Most importantly the part editor.

2. Ingame editors.
Editors used in the game by the player, weither this be a "creature editor" or vehicle editor or whatever.
Some of these editors may actually be a replica, or lmited (as in say what parts are available or whatever) versions of the development editors.

Well, the parts editor could be given to moders, allowing for many new parts for the community, that we don't have to make. But, I would like to know exactly how the parts editor would work.

The idea of a "part editor" has been tossed around for a while, with different definitions. What do you mean by "part editor".

We want to give as much power to the player as possible, so they will be able to edit pretty much anything they want.

Before we had a few different Editors

Organism

Technology

Planet

Now, organism editor included an AI (behavior) editor, and the discovery of Computers brought about an AI editor for anything in the tech that had a programmable computer inside. We've figured out how the OE works, you've seen that, and he planet editor shouldn't be too hard. The hard part is the Tech Editor. I think you can see why.

In biology or earth science, there's certain limits to what can and can't happen. However, in the Tech editor, You could essentially build anything you want, which is a major problem. One of my past ideas was to use the Google Sketchup 3D modeler as a base and let players build from that. We would include components called "Function Parts" such as motors, hydraulics, springs, circuits, etc. that the player could add to their model to make it do things. However, we haven't gotten much farther than that. And it willl probably be changed again.

- I chose sketcup because it is easy to use, easy to learn, and supports add-ons. My idea was to run a modified version of the program in a game window as the TE.

Ahaha i realise how vague i was. Alot of posts from this morning (gmt+8) were in a severely hungover state.
Oh, and before the rest of this post, i'd like everyone to know that when i WRITE LIKE THIS I'm not inferring shouting. It's a bad habit from writing up technical documents

Okay, Part editor. Internally, (in the code) It's called a patch.

A creature file is basically a collection of patches, layered onto each other.

The file would look something like this (It's actually a binary file, but yeah..)

Spine_1:
20 bones long
join between bone 12 and 13 is bent by 14 degrees
bone 7 is scaled by 1.35 in x direction
etc etc etc

Arm14:
Attached to bone6 of Spine_1
bend limits for join on bone6 at Spine_1 are 6 degrees to 84 degrees
Mirrored
Tagged as arm part

and so on.


Then, if you looked at the patch file arm14,

Bone1
scaled by 2.0 in x direction

Bone2
joined to Bone1

Bone3
joined to Bone2

Bone4
welded to Bone3 (in other words, its not some form of movable joint. useful for creating more complicated bone structures)


Muscle1
end1 attached to Bone1's front
at angle 30, 40, 60 degrees
end2 attached to Bone1's back
at angle 50, 20, 40 degrees
thickness: 2.5

So, the part editor edits patch files (visually), which then get put together to create a creature file.

Going even lower is the bone editor, which is the spline extrusion concept i came up with that is really hard to describe, and you will have to see for yourself, when its done So yeah, even if we don't have an in-game creature editor, there will at the very least be a part editor that is needed to create the many different parts.

Having said all that, I could very well write a generator that dynamically creates many different paches either from scratch, or by modifying existing patches.

Also, right from the start i decided to include support for ageing. The system is (suppposed) to be able to produce a creature from more or less any age, even taking into account the ageing process after adulthood (bones stop growing, and posture become gradually weaker.)

Also not that any part can have a tag (or possibly multiple tags, but at first just one) applied to it, which will load an associated script that helps define animation

For instance, the creature engine gets instructed to perform a pickup action.
The engine works though the parts and finds that two parts support that action,
picks the part that is most suited to the task (in the case of a pickup action, possibly the nearest part, or strongest, etc),
and runs the associated script

Which will probably be somehing akin to:

pickup script:
find nearest part with hand(?) tag to object in question
If the arm attached to part is not strong enough
find next nearest part, rinse repeat.

Scripts can also be attached to the parts themselves, which can modiy available actions, or even behaviour.
For example:



some crab pincer part script:
add action click.

pince action:
alternate snapping left and right pincers once


hook for walk action:
run action pince.

Therefore, every time the creature walks, as well as moving its legs etc, it will snap its pincers like zoidberg as it scuttles along.

Sooo, a leg part will actually have an action and hook that defines how to actually move those particular legs.
This way, for our crab creature example, the crab leg part could define a completely different way of walking (you know, like sideways)
that differs it from a "normal" leg part.

A few things to clear up-
there Will be an organism editor in game, the debate is over whether it will be accessible during gameplay, instead of just a main menu editor.

Your systems sound pretty good, everything is nicely compartmentalized. The patches here are just how i thought they should look.

Part editor will probably not need to be included in the game, but i understand what it is you're doing with it.

If you could code something to dynamically make parts instead of us having to do it ourselves, that would be great in my opinion.



I just wonder, could we, in any way, encourage the evoltion of our species? Like, how will we interact with them? How can we affect the world around them? That is, however, if any of that is relevant to the topic.

Gameplay>evolution
discussion going on in a thread there.

~sciocont wrote:

Part editor will probably not need to be included in the game, but i understand what it is you're doing with it.

Yeah, anything like this, where it is used by devs but not by players, will be in the game, but not accessible without cheats (That way the bug testers can use it QA the game)

Bashinerox wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Part editor will probably not need to be included in the game, but i understand what it is you're doing with it.

Yeah, anything like this, where it is used by devs but not by players, will be in the game, but not accessible without cheats (That way the bug testers can use it QA the game)

In fact, 90% of cheats in games are for debugging purposes (There's a reason its called debug mode lol)

Just remember anything unnecessary, we don't need to switch. One of my favorite games (an fps) got shipped and later people gliched/hacked into a testing map the developer's made. Pretty amusing, but we don't need things like that.

Would buildings go under the tech editor?

DragonEye4 wrote:

Would buildings go under the tech editor?

Previous statements say "yes", but it could have changed.

DragonEye4 wrote:

Would buildings go under the tech editor?

Yes.

DragonEye4 wrote:

Would buildings go under the tech editor?

Definitely yes.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

DragonEye4 wrote:

Would buildings go under the tech editor?

Definitely yes.

Well, now that I think of it, the creation of technology necessary for the building would be in the tech editor, but would the building style that culture has go in the CUlture editor?

That would not be only for buildings, but all tech objects. These styles then would be applied to procedurally generated objects.

Commander Keen wrote:

That would not be only for buildings, but all tech objects. These styles then would be applied to procedurally generated objects.

Procedurally generating techs may be a little far fetched...

~sciocont wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

That would not be only for buildings, but all tech objects. These styles then would be applied to procedurally generated objects.

Procedurally generating techs may be a little far fetched...

So, AI countries will use just pre-made techs? We could base it around templates, adding random variations depending on the "style" and research level of that civ. That should not be as difficult as procedural from scratch.

Commander Keen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

That would not be only for buildings, but all tech objects. These styles then would be applied to procedurally generated objects.

Procedurally generating techs may be a little far fetched...

So, AI countries will use just pre-made techs? We could base it around templates, adding random variations depending on the "style" and research level of that civ. That should not be as difficult as procedural from scratch.

It does sound better- or we could consider a different approach to the TE entirely, making it more like the OE.

The problem with templates is that we will need to create a lot of them, probably counting in thousands, and thats going to take quite a lot of space.

Also, could you explain how do you mean to make the Tech editor more like OE? I just can't imagine it.

Commander Keen wrote:

The problem with templates is that we will need to create a lot of them, probably counting in thousands, and thats going to take quite a lot of space.

Also, could you explain how do you mean to make the Tech editor more like OE? I just can't imagine it.

Do we really need templates? It makes a lot more sense to me to be able to build you tech and critters from the ground up.


Also, I cannot imagine TE being like the OE. Sounds.. weird.

InvaderZim wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

The problem with templates is that we will need to create a lot of them, probably counting in thousands, and thats going to take quite a lot of space.

Also, could you explain how do you mean to make the Tech editor more like OE? I just can't imagine it.

Do we really need templates? It makes a lot more sense to me to be able to build you tech and critters from the ground up.


Also, I cannot imagine TE being like the OE. Sounds.. weird.

These templates should be used only for AI, because procedurally generating techs would be even harder to do than procedural animals. We can make procedural techs for AI after releasing game. Players will of course be able to design from scratch.

I think tech should be finite because players will be creating all this weird and diffrent tech and they will get confused on how to get to space i mean, if players had to design everything from every part and design all the tech i wouldnt want to play this... i'd think of it as more of a lifetime thing than a game. it would confuse players alot if they designed their tech and all. casual gamers, think about them. they wouldnt want to have to design everything in a game.

Of course, if players will want to leave this (or any other aspect in Strategy mode) to AI, they will be allowed to do. Player's AI will then work like the AI of any other nation.