Irrlicht Engine

I'm new here - that is truth, but I'm quite impressed with the capabilities of the engine. As I see it the only thing missing( to make it compatible with the other game engines) is an Editor. Where you can build your level. Yes it supports bsp files but that is not an option for beginners. I'm suggesting Qoole. 3D Game Studio have build their engine on the Qoole texhnology. An the source of the Qooole is open and free under GPL( I'm not sure, but it was sth like you must provide your source and not sell the product.) The qle format is easy and we could use the engine for a real-time preview in the editor.
As I have other things to do. Many other things I'll require some help. I would like to know if there are people willing to help with this project.

sometime earlier, there was a similar discusion in the forum. The main argument against it, is that Irrlicht is not a game engine, therfore it will never have sound support and also because of this, there will never be a level editor, simply because irrlicht is not only for games(inpite of the options like setting gravity etc)
So you would have to build one yourself(should not be too hard) to meet your demands

I've been looking at making an "editor" but more for setting up a scene than designing level geometry - irrlicht can load BSP's which is quite sufficient for making the geometry, lightmaps, etc.. what I feel irrlicht is lacking, is a way to interact with the levels like doors, triggers, spawn points, etc.

To get this working we either need a fully working entity reader for BSP files (and there is one being made but its sadly very limited atm) or some sort of pseudo-editor which can create "scenes" comprising of: BSP meshes, Terrain blocks, point entitys and brush based entitys. I've been looking in to making something like this using 4 views (3d, top, left, right) and projecting the side & top views orthographuically.. then letting the user add point & brush entitys over the bsp so then a level file can be exported. I havent done much work on this though.. would anyone else be interested?

With "build your level" I meant setting up a scene.
Like the WED in 3DGS.

Anyone else interested. Yeah I could build the editor for myself or only for bulgarian users. That wouldn't be me ofcourse.

@Mercior what is your project like?

I think it is a great idea.

My project is not much - I've only spent a couple hours.. basically its a screen with 4 views of the world, 3 orthgraphic and a fps view that you can navigate with the mouse. I'm making another in-game editor for another project atm which is what im spending my spare time making.

cool, but wouldn't be better if we make the editor building on Qoole? It has many abilities, despite the fact it's old.

And for the file format I have severeal ides(not sure if I'm finding the weel)
What do we need for a cube, 4 values(hehe), a scaleable cube -> 6 values.
pos_x,pos_y,_pos_z;skl_x,skl_y,skl_z; for a sphere - 5 pos_x,pos_y,pos_z;sphr_typ(for hiw many polys to use),skale

I saw many demos with games >10k! I don't think I could beat them or even compete them. Just It'll use less data for some kinds of objects.

I see this hasnt had any progress, but you may want to pop in my plugin for Milkshape 3D for MAP exporting. I made it for prefabs mostly for Quake and Half Life type of game modifications, but I have succesfully used it for creating test maps that can have quite a few rooms in it. (If your willing to work on your map in a smaller scale, then scale it up later for exporting, you could concievably create an entire level with it).

Read about it and/or download the plugin here:
Milkshape 3D General MAP exporter plugin link

This could be a start for working with things, and I have been using it for my game creating for the IRRLICHT engine thus far

Interesting plugin rat, but it seems it should be the other way round ? Mappings hard enough in radiant, let alone milkshape! :p

Anyway - theres 2 utilitys that would be very helpful:

1) Program to read .map files and extract the entity info into a file containing a list of point file entitys, and brush based entitys (as a series of vertices? (and indices?) (and texture info?))

2) a hammer .map -> gtkradiant .map converter! How does your plugin export for both versions? I assumed their formats were different because you cannot load hammer .maps in radiant.. I find hammer a nicer editor than radiant so a converter would be great

http://www.recent-software.com

I found this a few days ago and it has source code available. It can load up maps from Quake and other formats, and you can make maps with it as well.

You can also make an entire first person shooter with it apparently.

You might want to salvage some code from that.

The tutorial is downloaded with the rest.

Mercior wrote:Interesting plugin rat, but it seems it should be the other way round ? Mappings hard enough in radiant, let alone milkshape! :p

...I assumed their formats were different because you cannot load hammer .maps in radiant.. I find hammer a nicer editor than radiant so a converter would be great

Actually, I have used radiant, and its spawn off gtkradiant, on and off. The user interface is hard for new users to get used to, and is frustrating to work with at times. Hammer is a lot sleeker to use.

As to it being the other way around, Hammer and gtkradiant do not as I know of have alignment, or snap tools, and milkshape has both. Plus the fact that using the vertex manipulator in either of the levele editors would sometimes make a mess of your product. Hammer would even write out the MAP file differently on brushes, than what you saw in the editor sometimes when you manipulated the vertices. I created a landsacpe with it onec, and the resultant level had brushes not matching what should have been a shared vertex space. (I imagine that this was due to how the programer wrote the output code to MAP using ints perhaps instead of floats).

I feel I have better control of making a MAP and can do it faster than having to fudge around hand alignining everthing, only to find a leak in a map later on!

As to how it exports to both, it does, as I used common entities for both, and made sure the MAP export used lines of vertex and texture information that is shared by both Quake and HL game types.

As to further development, I have been asked by others to make a importer for the MAP format, and I will possiably work on that in the near future.

Have you tried Quark ?

To me it looks really user friendly and powerful...


www.planetquake.com/quark

And is totally free, for comercial products. That for me is always interesting..

I've gotten quite used to radiant in the time I've been working with it, and while it has some nice features it also has some very weird controls (that are just plain slow to use) and its texturing tools are useless when compared with hammers. As for alignment & snap.. as far as i know you cannont actually turn OFF grid snap in hammer or radiant - its completely grid based which is a good idea for games - and means that there is no need to export co-ordinates as floats. In milkshape however, there doesnt actually seem to be a grid snap function? perhaps its just well hidden Still, trying to make a non-leaking BSP map in an editor with no grid snap feature and floating point co-ordinates is close to impossible - and you'd only stop leaking by overlapping brushes sloppily which would result in higher face counts in the compiled BSP.

The brush limitation I'm guessing you refer to is concave brushes - an issue in most 3d software... its quite easy to stick to using convex brushes and theres definately no bugs in hammer for brushes using the same vertex space... virtually every brush you make in hammer will have to use shared vertex space with the surrounding brushes!

Where did you find info on the quake 3 .map format? I found an article on valve erc about the hl map format Would making a hammer .map -> gtk rad .map converter be hard?

The more I think about making an editor the sillier it seems when the info is already there in both the .bsp and the .map - we just need to find a good way to read it !