Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

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Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

Post by Hanfling »

I'm working with own EditorEngine subclasses for some time now, and I'm looking for new ideas. As the EditorEngine interface is mostly virtual, one can do a lot of things, which sadly doesn't include much influence about bsp building (unless you rewrite it completely).

What I already have done includes but is not limited too:
- Adding PrecachePackages like Rune has.
- Addition of Engine.Engine.EditorViewportManager / Engine.Engine.EditorRender options.
- Format / bHasComp / CompFormat is displayed on Texture properties.
- Hack to include an #exec include directive for UnrealScript.
- Temporary remove the PF_Unlit flag when lighting is performed (this way you get Lightmaps and thus fog on unlit surfaces).
- Option to toggle whether the grid should be rendered inside substracted volumes in 3d view. (You get them by default rendered if you correctly interpret the LineFlags in your render device).

But I'm looking for other nice and feasable ideas to implement too.
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Cybernetic pig
Illuminati
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Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:21 am

Re: Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

Post by Cybernetic pig »

UnrealEd updates? I'm not sure specifically what you have access to, but I'll think of some things to suggest for you shortly.
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

Post by Hanfling »

EditorEngine is not exactly UnrealEd, though it implements nearly all editor functionality despite the UI (including bsp rebuild, rendering the editor views, most of script compile, event the input in the editor views, etc.). UnrealEd 1 is basically just a (small) VisualBasic GUI for the Editor which communicates mostly over text commands with the EditorEngine, while UnrealEd 2 is basically sth. like the game Launcher which is fully integrated into the engine and implements the UI functionality based on the Window package. The change to UnrealEd 2 was basically just a GUI change, the underlying EditorEngine remained (despite some minor updates) basically the same. And thus one can implement an own GUI for the Editor. Either using the hooking part the Visual Basic Editor used (maybe with QtQuick?), or making an own Window package based approach, or starting over with another UI toolkit like Qt. But that would first require some Qt based replacements for WinDrv/Window package. However I still have planed to do some Qt based WinDrv/Window package replacement and afterwards build an Editor UI on top of it, but thats nothing which is likely to happen soon, though one of the preperations for it was to have a working OpenGLDrv for the Editor.
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
atrey65789
Thug
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Re: Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

Post by atrey65789 »

I have a suggestion, not sure if it's possible with what limited, public source you have for the engine to work with,

but maybe a mesh viewer for guns so the modder can easily set the offset of the weapon's 1st-person view mesh, along with
maybe setting the mesh's origin, rotation, etc. so that way the player doesn't have to enter in numbers nonstop to find the perfect
position for the mesh. This would save from a lot of trial-and-error.
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

Post by Hanfling »

That probably works better ingame. Like some functionality where can you bind keys to move the offsets / modify the rotations and dump or have a display of current offset is probably the better solution go go with.
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
atrey65789
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Posts: 49
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Re: Ideas for improving EditorEngine.

Post by atrey65789 »

Also, this #exec include feature you mentioned. What are the details on this? anything fairly new?
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