Unseen Studios

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It's finally here!!!! The Volucris World Editor. Just run the installer, and away you go! It will put a folder on your desktop with a little world I made just for testing (example.mvc). Be sure to read the readme! Go! ENJOY!!! Let me know what you think!

Karl

Edit: I forgot to mention, POST SCREENSHOTS!

Well uh, it gives me a windows error box with (i gotta translate that from german windows here) 'the application cannot be started because the application configuration is incorrect.'

Re-installing didn't help, maybe i'm missing some .dlls or something? (allthough my windows should be pretty up-to-date atm).

I give you two thumbs up anyways though for releasing it hehe. :J

AHHH not this again! Do you have AIM or GTalk? I want to get this sorted out once and for all.

For now, try this: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

Edit:

Re-download the installation package. Uninstall the old version, and install this version.

I only had msn and icq but removed that long ago. :p

Just pm me here or on xentales though, i check both quite often (and i'm still on for two hours or so tonight).

Let's see if the visual c++ package does the job, maybe it's just my windows which is missing fingers...or vital visual c++ files. hehe.

Edit: kk, will do as you said.


News report: Now he's giving me a more specific error box: 'd3dx9_33.dll' is missing.
I did not install the visual c++ pack, only re-downloaded and re-installed the world editor.

AHA! We are getting somewhere Ok I'll fix this one up, then put up another download.

Hehe, i helped myself now with simply downloading the proper dll and now...it works!

Time to play around a bit. ^^

Oh, sweet!

For those of you who get errors, try this download. It's even better than the first one!

http://www.unseenstudios.com/volucris/d ... tor-dx.msi

Yeah it was most likely directx which was not up-to-date.

Btw, a really minor thingie: you forgot the lava texture. :p

just serch through your computer and find the lava file in the old map editor, pretty easy.

Hehe i wasn't exactly being serious there.

I really dig the way of using images as the 'basic' source for a map.

Edit: Damn is this handy and fun, that's pure awesomeness in editorform, here's my first test:




Now for some more complex testing, the following map includes four different layers, custom textures in different sizes and formats, and a manually edited part (the 'sq' at the left bottom):



Btw, how are walls handled? I used a terrain layer with a wooden texture and marked it as 'high wall', but when i press 'v' to change the view it's still flat (marked red in navigation though). Does it need a mesh?

To make walls, adjust the "Height" value of the Map Location Info. The navigability only changes how it affects characters.

There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor.

^^ from the second download. First one worked but got the dx error about the missing dll. I run vista home premium.

Yeah I just tried this on a friend's computer with Vista. From what Microsoft has to say, I think you need to update to the Windows Installer 3.1 package. What a pain in the bum, eh? I'll just include the DLL file in the download (if you got download d3dx9_33.dll and put it in the same directory as your app, it will work fine)

Cool, walls work. I also tried making a roof via a terrain layer, but failed there. I guess it has to do with a terrain not being able to have anything 'under' it (reminds me of good ol' doom).

Making triggers and scripting points isn't possible yet, right? (or was i being blind there?)
I ask because i thought about making doors or a dungeon-entrance.

Btw i have a kinda broken graphics card in my compy here so i couldn't test any meshes yet (polygons get displayed with nasty errors here, but that has nothing to do with the editor, only with my card), so i'll leave you a mesh-less town, guess which one it is ^^ :

Yeah I haven't quite figured out what to do about roofs yet...they're objects that need to disappear when you're under them, which is a little weird. I'm sure I can come up with something but it's not a huge deal right now. Xenimus didn't have roofs for quite a while if I remember correctly...

Man Karl you really outdid yourself, this editor is awesome!

One question, when I'm adding meshes, do the textures for the meshes need to be added to the project first, or if I use the bulk mesh import tool, in the same directory?

If you use the bulk import tool for .X meshes, the textures should be in the same directory. If you want to add everything individually, do this:

Add your textures as Images
Create Static Texture definitions for the Images
Add your models
On the Skins menu, use Create Unique Skin for Meshes and select all of your meshes
For each entry in every skin's Map member, right-click on the Texture Reference and select the texture to assign
Create Scenery for each of the meshes, and be sure to assign a Skin for them (or they won't show up)

Karl

Just noticed something really minor (no pun intended this time): If you don't set any priorities for your layers they show up in their insertation order the first time you check the map-preview. But the second time only the first layer shows up.
So allways set priorities hehe. ^^

I agree on the roof-thingie, it's barely noticeable anyways.

Aha!! Good catch I'll add it to the list.

Just thought about another thing (i hope i'm not coming off as impertinent here hehe):

Currently the maps cannot be made 'curvy', meaning all diagonal ways are looking kinda blocky. That could be solved by using textures with transparent parts (there's a triangular 'dirt'-texture in xenimus for example), does the editor support textures like that? (i found something with alpha-channel but couldn't figure out what it does)

Edit: Just some pics of play-around-maps i made (nothing exciting, just thought this thread needs some pics hehe):

under images > color key, set to enable then set the color that you want transparent ie black is 255 255 255

I really like the skull one

The editor does support transparent regions/color keys, but if you import dirtover from Xenimus and try to use it, you'll end up with transparent areas that show the background color (light blue) instead of some other texture. This has because this is a tough issue to solve--I'll explain next.

First of all, I solved the problem last time by hard-coding the dirt-over stuff into the editor (if a fluid bordered dirt, it automatically generated the right kind of dirt overlay). This worked well because it was automatic--no need for you to go around your thousands of tiles of coastline and change every single one. This was a temporary solution at best, and something I hoped to fix with the new editor.

In this editor, there are multiple ways of solving the problem. I could make the dirt-over automatic, as I did before, but that doesn't seem right because it ties the editor to specific content--and the whole point of this editor is to promote flexibility. So another solution would be to introduce a second Map Layer list under Atlas called "Map Overlay". These layers would be applied on top of the layer below and could be used for all sorts of fun things, such as roofs on buildings, in addition to the regular map information definition. The problem with that would be how to update the overlay when you, say, add a new island. There could be a command to generate the overlay, but it would difficult not to make it erase any specific changes you make to the overlay on the coastline. What's more, you'll have to specify some sort of pattern for it to work off of (i.e. tell the program, "hey, if you have any one of these dirt ground types to the north of a water block and, any of these dirt types to the west of it, put this west-north overlay on top of the water).


Hmm...actually that rules thing isn't a bad idea. It could be used to import these textures, which contain blending between grass and bush-like textures, for example:
http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/02/250-f ... tures.html

(P.S. Try using those in the editor, they look really good!)

I really like the skull one sankt... Really sweet.. Seems like you still got the mental image of the long hours spent on pinky island...lol

Sankt Pauli wrote:Just noticed something really minor (no pun intended this time): If you don't set any priorities for your layers they show up in their insertation order the first time you check the map-preview. But the second time only the first layer shows up.
So allways set priorities hehe. ^^

I agree on the roof-thingie, it's barely noticeable anyways.

Sankt: I've fixed this problem by making new terrain layers set their priority to insertion-order automatically. It can always be changed, of course, but this will set up a default value so they show up as you would expect.

That's very helpful, sweet. :J
Btw the texturepack you linked to is awesome and fits the medieval/fantasy-theme very well (especially the neat overlays).
So btw, what kind of maps do you guys need (concering style and size). Whenever i get a new gfx-card i can help making lots of them (with meshes/models).

@Blue: Hehe, actually i had more velanthra imps in mind, but yeah, pinkie island fits it too. ^^