FlowED OSM Scene Editor + .scene loading (Updated 5/15/09)

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:16 am

Hi we have the first beta of FlowED ready to share with the ogre community. This is the editor for FLOW, the Ogre game dev framework for blitzmax were hoping to launch a beta for that VERY soon.

Feel free to try it out, So far we have concentrated on transforms, and object placement portions of the editor. The Beta version of the editor currently supports the loading of .OSM and Mesh files, and saving OSM files since these are what we use in the game framework and our internal projects.

Plans for the future are to keep improving the feature set and adding support for .Scene.

For those of you that haven't heard of blitzmax, it's an OO Basic that compiles to C++ underneath, making it very easy to quickly make games with.

Anyway, feel free to try out the editor, there is some media you can play with from our maze monkeys games. Feel free to comment on the editor, we need to know what direction to take the beta in the future.

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:51 am

I am really impressed!

Even though I felt the controls were all backward: zoom in/out and rotate were opposite of what I expected.
Consider making it an option to flip axes.

Otherwise: This editor is just so god-damn pleasurable to work with!

Is it possible to snap to grid?

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 2:57 am

Hi Jackmo, you can snap to grid, and there are rotate snaps too

.

Rotate snaps are in the transform type-in dialoge.
Snap to grid is in the display properties dialogue, on the main toolbar, top right next to the help ? button. The tiles in the media snap correctly when set to 2 units.

I forgot to mention there's an undocumented feature if your using tiles or any kind of geometry. If you have any duplicate geometry with duplicate transforms, pressing space will select all duplicates. If you press delete all the dupes will be deleted

.

Just happens that our WIP game uses those 3D tiles in the demo media for constructing levels. So the select overlapping dupes and right mouse button doing the 90 degree rotation are currently default actions.

Damiensturdy · Post by **Damiensturdy** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:25 am

I'm *REALLY* glad you're enjoying it Jacmoe! after all the time and effort our team has put into this it's fantastic to see it out.

I wonder if many others feel the Zoom is backwards? I guess it could be personal preference, or just the fact we've been working on it for so long that it feels natural now.

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:32 pm

I put up a updated version on the server with a couple of bugfixes.

A bug where merging a couple of scenes caused a crash. You should now be able to load TerrainONLY.OSM and merge in tiles.OSM etc without flowed crashing.

The zoom has been corrected and works properly now.

A few typos in the manual were also fixed.

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:24 pm

Here's a couple more youtube videos:

Heriarchy linking and rotation snaps. Includes instance/cloning, multiple selections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aGJaqSKyZI&fmt=18

Scaling is simple but fun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzrr4wZtn_0&fmt=18

Snap to grid. Includes cloning/instancing and rotation of multiple selections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awmsY0_U2HU&fmt=18

kutraj · Post by **kutraj** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:27 am

Finally! I've heard quite a bit about this, can't wait to get my hands on it... downloading

heavymental · Post by **heavymental** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:22 pm

Great!

Thanks ^_____^

dodongoxp · Post by **dodongoxp** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 8:19 pm

im interested in this.. what are going to be your plans to release this to the public??

will it be a commercial product with some kind of paid license??

if so what are going to be your terms??

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 11:09 pm

The editor will be free since we want to give something back to the community. We plan to update it with .scene loading and possibly saving if .scene has good compatibility between the different versions.

Flow the game framework will have a fixed price, but the demo will be fully functionaly and allow you to run your app for 4-6 minutes before you will have to start the exe again.

It won't be very expensive for the full version and no limits on how many apps you can create with it. Last figure we were throwing around was $80 for the framework. And we may throw in the source for the editor. With the source you can integrate the editor into your game as an include.

You can see that working in an early build from this summer at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVmhScL1jI&fmt=18

Hope that answered your questions. Oh and were aiming to release the first public beta for christmas

kutraj · Post by **kutraj** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 7:40 am

Hope that answered your questions. Oh and were aiming to release the first public beta for christmas

Wow! Nice! A free-for-all public beta? Or do we need to own something?

You're referring to the game engine demo right?

dodongoxp · Post by **dodongoxp** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 7:49 am

sounds like a very nice solution for people like me..

however i never programmer with blitzmax in the past , i have used visual basic, delphi and currently i use C# .. but i still like the concept of a easy to use language concept

i suppose i need to own a license of blitzmax to use flow3d and the ide you recommend in your website...

is this true?

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 9:20 am

the IDE has a free version, and the commercial version is $15. You have to buy Blitzmax which is $80. But flow does work with the 30 day trial.

If you are still interested in trying it, I suggest waiting till the flow demo comes out before installing the Blitzmax trial version. 244 indie games made with blitzbasic have been released (not including demos and unfinished games) over the years, it's pretty popular for game development.

There's a list at:

http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=69886

dodongoxp · Post by **dodongoxp** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 8:08 pm

hi there

yeah im still interested...i will wait for the demo release

Post by **sinbad** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:51 am

Looking really nice, well done.

nikki · Post by **nikki** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:25 pm

Nice to see you've got a good editor there! Can't wait to check out the game too.

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:24 pm

Extremely well done!

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:12 am

Thanks guys, Just a quick note that we released the Flow3D beta demo to the blitzmax community today. It's an OGRE wrapper for blitzmax OO Basic combined with newton and CEGUI plus the beginnings of fG flow graphics helper functions. And it's what the FlowED editor was specifically designed for.

Here's a simple code example of setting up an ogre app and manipulating a mesh.

Code: Select all

REM----------------------------------------------------
fG_GettingStarted.bmx

This demo will show you how to get started with initialising Flow3D and fG and start buidling your 3d applications as
quickly as possible. Note that with fG init you can use the config window, or specify several options. You don't HAVE 
to use the config window and you should have a look at the fG.init docs to see what you can do with it.
ENDREM-------------------------------------------------

Import flow.main

'Used polled input, fG does not FORCE you to use a given input system.
EnablePolledInput()

'fG Uses the AppTitle variable for its window, but later you may use fG.changeAppTitle()
AppTitle = "fG - Getting Started [Press ESC to Exit]"

'Init fG and let the user pick the options from the ogre config window
fG.init()

'Load some robot walker legs and scale them down
Global RobotWalker:TEntity = fG.LoadMesh("RobotWalker", "walkie.mesh")
fG.scaleEntity(RobotWalker, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5)

'Throw in a plane for them to stand on and give it the standard unit tile material
Global plane:TEntity = fG.createPlane("Plane")
plane.setMaterialName("tile1")

'Add some quick stencil shadows
fG.enableShadows()


'Basic Render Loop
Repeat

	'Put the FPS and triangle count in the apptitle
	fG.changeAppTitle("fG - Getting Started - FPS : " + fG.getFPS() + " Tricount: " + fG.TrisRendered())
	
	'Turn our entity 1 degree along the y-axis every frame ( LOCAL )
	fG.TurnEntity(RobotWalker, 0, 1, 0)
	
	'Render at (very) roughly 60fps
	fG.renderWorld()
	Delay 16.6666667
	
Until KeyDown(KEY_ESCAPE) Or fG.appTerminated()

Will post more information and links tomorrow when were confident that the demo runs well with no hickups and is ready for the ogre community

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 3:04 am

Just a quick update. Were getting ready for another FlowED release with some of the suggestions people asked for. One thing of interest might be realtime physics.

Here's a quick teaser video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH50OH69X2A&fmt=18

The new version will be released in the next few days along with a new Flow Beta which has been upgraded to Ogre 1.6.1 and Newton 2.

Pancakes · Post by **Pancakes** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:55 pm

that looks amazing, it's for Blitzmax, what does that mean? I know Blitzmax is an easier to use language, but are there any scripting options and things like that?

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 12:06 am

Yeah there are plenty of library/modules for blitzmax that can be used with flow so long as they aren't for rendering. Having said that MaxGUI can be used which is what we use for OS native dialogs since its very small and cross platform. For scripting LUA is very popular. There is a module avaliable, more info at http://lua-users.org/wiki/BlitzMax

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:12 am

We finally released Flow3D and a new FlowED Beta.

11mb Download

The latest version of flowED includes the physics support shown in the video a couple of posts above.

The colour picker crash bug that a few people experienced should now be gone and the standard windows colour picker dialog should work correctly.

Renaming works now, making it much easier to create hierarchically linked gameplay objec rigs with mount nodes, wheels, cameras, lights or whatever attached. When you couldn't rename nodes you were somewhat limited in this area.

We also added a simple one level undo function, after performing a transform, a right click will undo the last action. So it's much easier to correct.

Was added some extra keyboard shortcuts

R Rotate
M Move
F FPS (WASD and Mouselook)
G Snap to Grid on/off

Alt+L Load
Alt+S Save

Alt+R Rotate 90 degrees (usefull for tile based levels)
Space select duplicate overlapping meshes (useful for tiled levels) delete to remove them.

F10 Hold/Store current scene
F11 Fetch/Retrieve current scene

-----------------------

The next release of Flow3d and FlowED will include .scene loading so you can use either .OSM Xml/Binary scenes or dotScene XML scenes.

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Fri May 15, 2009 11:14 pm

FlowED has a new update to reflect some of the recent changes in Flow itself.

This opens up flow to loading scenes created in a variety of 3d applications eg. Maya, Blender and quite a few others. It also makes FlowED a useful .scene to .OSM converter for teams that use 3ds max with ofusion combined with other 3d tools.

We added some basic UI enhancements to allow switching between views and returning to your last perspective view.

We also added a triangle count counter for the current view (currently includes the UI) The node properties dialog shows you the actual tri count of the selected mesh.

You can also switch render modes between Shaded, point, and wireframe rendering. As well as having a physics debug lines button that shows you the collision geometry in the current viewport as wireframes.

You can now load animated meshes and play back their animation tracks/sequences. If you have tried Flow you will have seen the basic key frame animation example source code. Something we hope to incorporate into flowED at a future date.

One other thing that’s still in testing is that you can now load media from remote locations on your HD. It works perfectly so long as ALL the media for the scene is self contained in a single folder. This is something we will be addressing in the next version

seasons · Post by **seasons** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:08 pm

Hi , i was testing flowED and its indeed a great tool , just a question , the loader i should use is the ofusion loader no?? the CE version , since i read that the program is a bit outdated from ofusion pro and i dont have that $ to spend

.

thanks,

Post by **jacmoe** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:14 pm

seasons wrote:Hi , i was testing flowED and its indeed a great tool , just a question , the loader i should use is the ofusion loader no?? the CE version , since i read that the program is a bit outdated from ofusion pro and i dont have that $ to spend .

A bit off-topic, but compared to what you paid for MAX, oFusion isn't really *that* expensive.

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FlowED OSM Scene Editor + .scene loading (Updated 5/15/09)

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