I had a thought while coding tonight... since it might be possible that thinStudio 3D Level Editor Viewer (thinStudio3DLEV) might be added onto by others. I thought maybe we should agree on which language and IDE to use.
thinStudio3DLEV will be an opengl panel in a window that has regular windows GUI items around it.
Possible choices:
Delphi 6 (costs not too much these days if you can find it)
TurboDelphi Free Edition (this is free) (this needs .net, so hence Delphi 6 as I know Mike, Petr and I have it)
FreePascal Lazarus Edition (this is free)
wxDevC++ (what I started with tonight) (this is free)
As you can see I am looking for something that can compile and supports a nice graphical form designer.
I am open to other application suggestions, these just came to my mind.
I am interested in starting the program and developing it to a point to pass it on to another developer after I add these features.
Selecting and setting up skybox/skydome if needed.
If no skybox/skydome then providing different backgrounds frameworks.
Loading of m15 objects.
Placing lights, cameras and trigger objects (triggers would be implemented by probably Mike since he developed the cool event manager)
Full control of placement, rotation, scale and possible path animation of all objects in a level.
Selecting control systems, keyboard, gamepad or joystick
All of the things in the level editor viewer would have access to GUI based property controls.
All info for the level would be saved out to a file to be loaded by the game developer.
When I am done, any user could probably develop a real time 3D movie type of scene that would playback like a walk through or fly through.
Maybe even one item could be setup as the control object for the input device on playback. All of this info would be saved out to a file.
Hand off for possible features to be added to by other programmers:
Triggers (Event Handling)
Special Effects Handling
Artificial Intelligence for units
I guess it makes sense to select an application we would all like to use and have.
Maybe we can add applications to a poll and see which is most popular and that we all have.
Just had another thought too, that is to use Blender for the viewer editor and perhaps all of use work in python and write
an export level script that can be read by a program written in thinBasic that could react to the dynamic effects, like animation.
Open and looking forward to any feedback.
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