Crowbar - an open-source editor

[NoodleCollie]

Re. Stream tool -


The modular idea is a very good one, actually. Intuitively I'm thinking the best way to accomplish this would be using events? Another thing I'm concerned about with regards to multi-platform-ness is that I was planning to utilise the material system/etc. DLLs created by Valve in order to avoid having to re-program a lot of that by myself (assuming this can be done - both the Source mod code and the leaked Hammer code have the C++ interfaces for these DLLs so I'm hoping it's possible, but I may be gravely mistaken) and so I would have to rely on these working on other platforms. Since TF2 now works on all of Windows, Mac and Linux I'm hoping again that it would be possible, but I'd imagine it would complicate matters insofar as I have no idea yet what the significant differences there would be in the code when writing one application for all three platforms.

 

[A Boojum Snark]

I just remembered something I've wanted for displacement work, due to the fact it is difficult to ascertain the 3D contour.

A "normals" rendering mode toggle for displacements. Tint the faces according to the face normal, as a combination of the three main axes. A flat floor would be blue, a wall with a normal on the X axis would be red, and one on the Y would be green. Blend them such that if you had a 45 degree angle ramp between the Z and Y normals, it would be cyan. Preferably with blending to the adjacent faces, not just a solid color per face. Then you wouldn't have to rely on moving the camera around constantly or crappy shading to know how much you are moving the surface when doing stuff like terrain, as the sharpness of the color gradient would make it obvious.

 

[NoodleCollie]

That sounds like a pretty good idea, I'll keep it in mind.

Progress report over the last couple of days: I've downloaded QT5 which looks nice and multi-platform, and which comes with its own IDE. I probably won't be able to do very much at all over the next few weeks because of exams, but I'm going to attempt to learn how it works and experiment especially with the plugin interface it has to see if I can get modularity working.

 

[Dark]

I'd love to see an editor with mac and linux compatibility. This sounds like a great project to attempt to contribute to; I might just have to try to learn QT5 and some general coding so I can help out.

 

[NoodleCollie]

Managed to get this so far:



Have endeavoured to learn the code and not the designer so that I can get to grips with everything better, hence the slow progress. If anyone fancies making a nice Crowbar icon for the app I'll consider putting that in.

EDIT: Also in the process of removing Carve from GitHub, replacing it with Crowbar and updating this thread.

EDIT: Here is my terrible rendering of what I think the interface should be like. The only modifications I can think of right now are that I won't make the UI in Paint.

 

[fubarFX]

it's kinda hard to make a crowbar fit in a square :\
but yeah that's my quick and dirty attempt at it

 

[Seba]

 

[A Boojum Snark]

As long as viewports can be easily docked/snapped/madelikehammer that is fine. I dislike floatiness and wasted screen space (sub-window title bars or whathaveyou). Also make sure you keep in mind having it be multimonitor friendly.

 

[NoodleCollie]

We have icons.



Multi-monitor support was something I was wanting to include but unfortunately I myself don't have another monitor to test with. I'm assuming that manually resizing the main window across an extended desktop would work? (Though I could see this running into problems if the monitors were at different resolutions...)

 

[Freyja]

If you make it able to render the parts in different windows (3d view, 2d views, etc) and float on their own, it'll work fine on multi monitors.

 

[NoodleCollie]

I'm using a multi-doc interface at the moment - not sure if the document sub-windows can go outside the main window, or whether I could utilise toolbars properly if I made each document its own separate window.

EDIT: WE HAVE LINUX.

 

[Tarry H Sruman]

I dislike floatiness and wasted screen space (sub-window title bars or whathaveyou).

A thousand times this

 

[NoodleCollie]

As far as multiple monitor configurations go, I have the following possibilities in mind:

- Have one large main window with an MDI interface in it and stretch it across monitors. This would only work with extended desktops and would look awful if one monitor had a lower resolution than the other because part of one monitor would not be able to be filled by the window.

- Have multiple windows, one for each document. The problem with this is that each window would have its own set of toolbars and menus which would A. be hell to keep track of, and B. probably be confusing. There is the option to have only one set of toolbars and menus and have them attach themselves to a window when it gets focus, but I'm not sure how doable that would be.

- Have one master menu/toolbar set and allow multiple document sub-windows - I'm thinking GIMP-style. The problem then arises of if you end up switching between documents on different screens, as the main menu/toolbar would be located on only one.

 

[Fish 2.0]

If you make it able to render the parts in different windows (3d view, 2d views, etc) and float on their own, it'll work fine on multi monitors.

Make that on option please, it's pointless and annoying for people like me with a single monitor, I like everything in one window.

While I'm here could you make the UI more streamline as in not massive bulky icons to the side, but rather icons like photoshop.

Also I like the idea of a node type editor for game logic etc... say you had an explosion event when a payload got to a certain place, you would create a new 'node sheet', add entities and tie them up in a nice UI interface. That would make logic management a hell of a lot more neat and fun to do.

Say you start off with the default node sheet 'Game Logic' that has all the logic for your selected gamemode you are creating, you simply add the elements that the different nodes require (gamelogic node requires the payload train, you simple add the train entity then plug that into that slot etc) and work from there. Then you can also have global I/O so the different node sheets can communicate with one another when need be.

A good example of what I'm talking about would be the blender node editor - here's what it looks like and I added some text so you can get the general idea of what I mean;

 

[stegarootbeer]

Make that on option please, it's pointless and annoying for people like me with a single monitor, I like everything in one window.

Well it would use a docking system, meaning you could pull out and drop back in the windows at will. I agree that it would be really annoying to have it as multiple windows on one monitor.

EDIT: Or rather that's how it should be.

 

[Terwonick]

I think that it would be convenient to have multi-windows, even though I'm on a single monitor, I do enjoy the notion of having it start as one big window and then you could pull one off, otherwise I don't think it's a really good idea.

 

[fubarFX]

for those who don't know, there is a logic view hidden deep into hammer where you can see these kinds of logic relations. it's kinda derpy tho, maybe you should check it out and take notes on what not to do.

the main problem with it I think is that 90% of entities don't have outputs so it kinda makes a mess

 

[Fish 2.0]

take notes on what not to do.

pls dont do whatever that thing is

 

[A Boojum Snark]

While we're on the subject of screen layout, remember to make toolbars toggled. I've long since turned off Hammer's because I know the shortcuts by reflex.

 

[Seba]

That's just what the entity view looks like when you have a lot of logic pathways. Shader pathways, like what you posted, can also get equally messy.