Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Kazan on September 30, 2003, 12:00:08 am
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I am entertaining the idea of writing PCS2
PCS2 would be a massive GUI upgrade from using straight win32 API to using the wxWindows library (platform independant object oriented GUI library)
First I need to hear a bunch of "HELL YES WE WANT THIS"s and then I need a list of suggestions for GUI changes
BTW: this would hopefully include completeing the preview window (and intergrating it into the window - PCS2 will look more like modelview)
also,..... my financial situation has gotten complicated, so even if there is a ton of interest and I want to work on this for you I may not be able too... im in a very sticky situation right now and barely had time to get FS2netD integrated... but it was something that I felt could not wait.
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While I don;t pretend to understand many...any... of those odd coder abbreviations, combining the ease of use and visual interface of MV32 with the functionality of PCS can't be a bad thing. Go for it (http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/images/smilies/yes2.gif)
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maybe it's stupid, but would be possible to use as render something similar to the game engine? I mean, something like the fred render, or pofview. It could be faster to check in pcs immediatly after converting if your model has problems.
Anyway, I admit it isn't surely very important.
About options, maybe you could work with bobbau to make an integrated tool pcs/aurora
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I'm interested, sure!
One thing I would ask for at a funtional level was improving the save function. Particularly WRT turrets.
Example:
Ship with two multipart turrets. I set the normals and firepoints, as well as all the coordinates and save.
Upon checking in MV32, I find that the normals are there, but the coordinates haven't been saved.
Returning to PCS and reloading the POF, lo and behold, it's saved the normals and firepoints, but NOT the coordinates that the firepoints are at.
Also, I can only do one firepoint at a time after this point, otherwise it only preserves the first thing I changed....
It's not too much of a problem with small ships, but when you've got a 3km long behemoth with a pile of turrets (the same thing happens for single part turrets) it can get very annoying.
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Hell yes, I'm interested, if it can convert from max or gmax files :D
"runs away from kazan, knowing how much he hates that topic"
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Yup. Especially as it doesn't seem to be working for me on Win2000 (may be down to out of date OpenGL drivers or soemthing,though.... there's a few GUI corruptions)
But anyway, yes. Big up PCS2.
Though, isn;t Modelview32 open source? If it's written in the right way, maybe you could rip the respective parts out of both and combine them to form some,er, tools thingie.
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:yes:
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Definitly go for it if you can :nod: :yes:
pcs is awesome for lots o' stuff already, adding features to it's current impressive arsonal would be sweet and yet another big boost for the modding community :D
btw, on a vaguely related would it be possible to get the collision(?) data generation fixed in this new version? it seems that using pcs to convert a non-angular model, (ie many curved surfaces), pcs somehow doesn't do something quite right and there are faces that become see-thru and fly-thru at quite a few angles. (i can pm a link to a few such models if needbe :) ) cob2pof doesn't do this at all, but also lacks all of pcs' really cool features such as auto turret and the auto gens and un-importable aspects such as smoothing on a per-face basis and mainly pcs' reliable and limitles conversions in every other aspect, :)
(i was using pcs versions 1.1 and 1.3.4 for the experiments, the latter of which is the latest versions isn't it?)
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the not saving a point should only happen on one point and it's because you didn't click out of edit focus - AND IT SHOULDN'T HAPPEN ON A RECENT VERSION
And there is a preview window.....
MV32 is written in VB... so it's useless
[1.3.4 is latest public]
1.3.4 has perfect collision data... - the see-thru and fly-thru isn't PCSs fault - the fancier the output data the easier it dies
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and i'll test those model conversions again on the new comp asap. :)
what is defined as 'fancy' output data also?
MV32 is definitly written in C/C++ btw.
i d/led it when it was released and bumped it's limits. it opened, and compiled in Visual C++ 6.0 :)
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Do it, Kazan. Or put the missing stuff in to ModelView...
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the snippets of MV32 i saw looked vb.... but i didn't look at all it's source
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cool, go for it, just don't tread on bob's shoes, he's got a decent one himself working
maybe you could work with him...
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Er, Dwarf mate, PCS has been around since the dinosaurs. Bob's editor is a relatively new pet project. And to be honest, no offence to Bob the code god, Aurora's still got 'issues'. PCS is Teh **** as long as you don't push it in ways it doesn't like.
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haha
miniDwarf.. bobboau's treading on MY SHOES - the cob to pof conversion code he plans to use - is _mine_
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then work on a bloody max to pof conversion instead and he won't step on you shoes ( raaah, that again :doubt: ) anymore.
Not being able to convert directly my stuff ( having to go through maxto3dstocobtopof and woomeister's forced help is kind of a drag away ) is one of the main reasons I gave up on making mods, you see ( not that you care anyway, I suppose ).
and on a side and completly unrelated note:
fuck that bloody Truespace shit.
Ah, feels better.
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HELL YES I WANT THIS!!!!
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Originally posted by Kazan
haha
miniDwarf.. bobboau's treading on MY SHOES - the cob to pof conversion code he plans to use - is _mine_
lol :D
anyway, go for it: combine ModelView and PCS. It will be an awesome editor to use! :hopping:
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[post expunged]
I am not qualified to write a 3DS converter - there is a plugin interface for PCS 1.X - use it
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I'm all for this. :yes:
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In the words of DG, "Do eeet".
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Hell ****ing yes we want this! :D (And I don't swear for just anything)
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One thing, Kazan, about all your programs (no offense): your GUI's are REALLY harder than they need to be. Try making them a bit easier to use ;) (try implementing 3D more)
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I just want something like Aurora, but only something that works... Aurora doesn't show 90% of the textures on ships, and crashes every time I close it...
So if there was a program that displayed models as well as modelview, had the functionality of PCS, and the specular highlighting, glow-mapping, and engine trails of Aurora, we'd have us a winner. :)
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I haven't used aurora - but my GUI's are "harder to use" because I was using straight win32 API - i'm going to use WxWindows if I write PCS2
if bob sticks in his render features into POFRender.cpp of PCS [which he has read-only access to the cvs of] then there you go
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Make him, but make sure it actually does work... I hated it not working on my PC
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Aurora is realy a messy messy thing, I'm not going to lie about that, it's got a basturdised half object oriented half procedural structure (the DX code is nearly all procedural, the GUI is all OO, the internal pof handeling stuff is... nether) that even I find absurd, Aurora was suposed to be for me mostly a learning experience, todays HT&L upgrade is a _direct_ decendent of what I learned from Aurora, now it does have a realy cool (IMHO) interface, if somewhat sloppy, another thing Aurora was suposed to be was my own personal customized suited to my desires and specifications POF editor designed from the ground up for expandability (new data chuncks) to this end it has suceeded, I can probly add a new data chunk in about an hour or two even after not playing about with it much over the last nearly year, and there is sort of a drag and drop interface, and I have some half fineshed polgon editing capabilities (UV editing and normal editing)
I am quite tempted to start over with a better design for the DX code and better integration of it into the MFC GUI code, but I know it would be better for practical reasons to try and ether fix Aurora's many bugs (I think i fixed the biggest one were it would overwrite what ever was in the pof with what ever was on the screen when it loaded a new model, wich when you loaded a new model would erase the mass and moment of inerta data, link in sig, test it) or focus on FSO entierly
I don't think there is anything other than concepts that Kazan can or would want to take from Aurora (especaly becase my renderer is DX and his is OGL) about the only thing that he realy could use would be the bit of code that takes the jumbled up FS BSP data structure and straitens it out for faster rendering (HT&L) and even then he'd basicly have to rewrite it (becase it's in DX not OGL).
now it is a very cool idea thinking of PCS2.0, a PCS powered pof editor with a better interface, something closer to what I wanted Aurora to be, but Kazan's time is quite limited, a situation I know all to well, would his limited time be best spent makeing a totaly new interface (I'm assuming he isn't going to rebuild his POF handeling class) for PCS, improveing the exsisting PCS code (there are a few things I'd still like to see, there is the auto-faceting thing I was talking about before, and check the path options I made for Aurora), or makeing improvements to his FS_Open network code (wich from what I've seen seems to work quite well) (or he could take a crack at implementing OGL's HT&L code wich is currently just stubbed out)
so improvements to the PCS interface (wich I like quite a bit as it is now), the biggest improvement would be integration of the render window into the GUI (I would like something that looks sort of like Aurora, obviusly, with a render window on one side and a tab control (that would look esentaly identical to the exsisting PCS interface) on the other) a bank of render control options somwere, an option for showing the model in full window or full screen mode would be cool,
I think I may photochop something together
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(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/pcs_2.jpg)
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Be nice to see something like that available. Looks extremely cool though. :nod:
Oh, Kazan, you mentioned that it wasn't PCS that caused dissapearing/fly-through faces. What does? It certainly isn't always gemoetry, as I've had the bug on triangulated models.
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StratComm: It's FS2
Bobboau: word, that graphic was kinda of my idea - but would look at lot better after the first view PCS2 betas because then i could use the power of the GUI library to beef it up
FYI: DO NOT USE MFC - use wxWindows, it's platform independant and more powerful
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can I get it to use MSVC's resorce editor?
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no - but there is no reason too - it's very easy to layout - it's all OOP
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Originally posted by Kazan
HELL YES WE WANT THIS
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Originally posted by Kazan
StratComm: It's FS2
I've had the fly-through problem myself with PCS and the models worked fine with cob2fs2.
What I ended up doing was converting the model twice. Once with PCS for the auto-turret etc and then again with cob2fs2 for the model itself. Then I'd import the auto-turret data into the cob2fs2 pof.
That solved my problem but it's obviously not an ideal solution.
It does show that the problem can't be with the way PCS saves the pof but more likely with the way it converts them.
As for PCS 2. I definately want it :D
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HELL YES WE WANT THIS
There - figured you needed another one of those :)
Good luck with the RL situation - hope it turns out ok for you.
H
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um... you were having collision problems with pcs but not cob2fs2? something is extremely wrong here - waht version of PCS? and was it having problems colliding with [V] ships or older mod ships converted with cob2fs2
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It was with an older version that I noticed the problem but it reoccured last time I tried converting with PCS 1.3.4.
I'll have to test it again (I last tried it a couple of months ago).
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Y 'know, i remember having fly through problems with a model...can;t remeber what one it was, but think it just came down to the Sheer size of the damn thing - presumably something to do with the limits the game engine places on certain ship clasess (?)
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I'm not aware of the game knowing a difference in actual classes, other than bombers, fighters, support, and big ships...
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something is funky with your model.. look at a model with BB and SS debug on