Hi,
[This is a rather long post, with lot of technical stuff, you can just scroll and check plugins for the most interesting part]
It's been a while since I posted any update, so here I go.
There have been so much changes that I will probably forget a lot of stuffs, actually most of the new features would deserve a whole post on their own.
1. Refactoring
As mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to refactor and split up IWE in multiple modules :
- GUI - The editor interface
- Render module - Implement all the render logic (also possibly the game logic) and expose some of it. The render module can be user-defined, but a default one is provided.
- Editor module - Define base editor stuffs, it's sort of a glue between the modules.
- Plugins - Every tool is defined in plugins. There are 6 of them at the moment.
All these modules communicate through C++ interfaces, and make extensive use of an event system (very similar to C# delegates - you'll see some of this if you keep reading).
Most of the refactoring work - apart from splitting everything up - went in GUI abstraction.
This is especially important for plugins. I wanted to make it easy to create new plugins, and interact with the GUI.
I'll go quickly through each of them :
Abstracted GUI parts
a. Property grids
One of the most important part in a world editor, is editing object properties - (right panel on previous screenshot).
Therefore it is only natural that exposing an object's attribute should be convenient.
With the help of several classes and macros, I reached a result I am rather happy with. Here's a small snippet from the Light plugin :
Code: Select all
IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_OVERRIDE_BEGIN(CLight, CIWESceneNode)
IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Light");
IWE_PROP_COMBO_S("Type", "Sets the type of light:\n - Point light sources give off light equally in all directions.\n"
" - Directional lights simulate parallel light beams from a distant source.\n - Spotlights simulate a cone of light.",
m_vecLightTypes, m_sLightType,
FastDelegate2<const std::string&, int>(this, &CLight::onSetLightType), false);
// More properties
IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Attenuation");
IWE_PROP_FLOAT_S("Range", "Absolute upper range of the light in world units.",
m_fAttenuationRange,
[pInst](float f) { pInst->m_fAttenuationRange = f; pInst->refreshAttenuation(); }, false);
// More properties
IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END();
// More properties
IWE_PROP_BOOL_S("Lock Visual Helper", "",
m_bLockVisualHelper,
[pInst](bool b) {
pInst->m_bLockVisualHelper = b;
pInst->m_pVisualHelper->setVisible(b || pInst->m_bTargetSelected);
}, false);
IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END();
IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_END();
This snippet describe how to expose the properties of a CLight.
CLight itself derives from a CIWESceneNode (I am currently changing this hierarchy though as this is bad OOP) which also expose some properties (position, scale, orientation, ..).
Therefore it uses the IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_OVERRIDE_BEGIN macro which just appends the properties after those of CIWESceneNode.
The properties themselves are bound to a variable and can define a getter and setter. These can be either lambda functions or FastDelegate (
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/715 ... t-Possible).
The variables are wrapped in a class which automatically detects (most of the time) changes made to them, and update the property grid accordingly.
You can find more about how this works
here.
b. Project files / Drag-Drop
The project explorer (left panel on previous screenshot) displays the available assets. Every plugin can register its own assets.
For instance, IWE_PluginEntities which deals with the .mesh files and entities (no kidding) register all the mesh files this way :
Code: Select all
IUIProjectTree* pProjTree = GetUIManager()->getProjectTree();
m_pAssetsCat = pProjTree->addCategory("Assets");
m_pAssetsCat->addRegexFilter(".*\\.mesh");
As you can see, it is registering a regular expression matching all *.mesh files. The result can be viewed on the screenshot, every mesh files available are listed under the "Assets" directory.
Once the assets are displayed in the project tree, they can be drag-dropped in the scene. To do this, we register a delegate to handle drag-drop events :
Code: Select all
GetUIManager()->eventDragEnter +=
FastDelegate3<const std::string&, IViewport*, const CIWEPoint<int>&, e_dropEffect>(this, &CPlugin::onDragEnter);
GetUIManager()->eventDragOver +=
FastDelegate2<IViewport*, const CIWEPoint<int>&, e_dropEffect>(this, &CPlugin::onDragOver);
GetUIManager()->eventDrop +=
FastDelegate2<IViewport*, const CIWEPoint<int>&, bool>(this, &CPlugin::onDrop);
GetUIManager()->eventDragLeave +=
FastDelegate1<IViewport*>(this, &CPlugin::onDragLeave);
I'll skip the drag-drop handling as there is nothing exciting with it, but this demonstrate how easy it is to add and deal with project tree items.
Context menus are not yet abstracted, but I am planning on doing this very soon.
c. Main menu (Ribbon)
This is where most of the tools buttons and items are displayed (Top panel on the screenshot).
So far I have abstracted the following components : Button (small / Large), Separators, Gallery (image gallery) and Slider (numeric input).
There's nothing really special about this so I'll just paste a small snippet :
Code: Select all
IUIMainMenu* pMainMenu = GetGUI()->getUIManager()->getMainMenu();
IUICategory* pCat = pMainMenu->addCategory("Terrain", 1);
IUIPanel* pPanel = pCat->addPanel("Terrain Tools", 0);
int iPos = 2;
// Linear Height Button
m_pLinearHeight = pPanel->addButton("Linear Height", "HeightEditToolIcon.bmp", "Plugins", iPos++);
m_pLinearHeight->setLargeButton(true);
// [...]
// Separator
pPanel->addSeparator(iPos++);
// [...]
As a side note, simple tools with a single button can simply override an helper class which automatically deal with all the button registering, callbacks, mouse inputs, etc. process.
d. Scene objects [WIP]
This is where all objects in the scene can be viewed, searched, and filtered. It is currently WIP but will work mostly like Project Tree.
e. Tabbed Documents - CLI/C++
This is one of my favourite new feature. One of the main problem I saw with splitting up IWE was the ability to create new GUIs in plugins.
With CLI/C++ support, plugins can use C# WinForm components, and create interfaces. These can then either be dialogs, or User Controls.
User Controls can be tabbed in the main area as a document, much like files in Visual Studio or your favourite IDE.
A document is basically a tabbed window in the main area, for instance, the render viewport is a document.
Here is a GUI plugin I put together quickly using WinForm, for a future NPC editing tool I will be working on :
2. Plugins
Another job that came with refactoring was moving all previous tools code to plugins. Hopefully that wasn't too hard as they were already coded in a modular fashion.
So far I have implemented 6 plugins :
- Base Tools plugin - This adds the Move/Rotate/Scale tools, which apply their respective actions on objects that implement the ISelectableTarget. It also includes some other minor features.
- Entity plugin - Create and edit entities
- Terrain plugin - Create and edit terrains (Ogre::Terrain) - Same features as previous version
- Light plugin
- Sound plugin
- NPC Editor plugin (WIP) - Will allow to edit NPCs in a somewhat generic fashion
The newcomers are the last 3 plugins, the other tools were already available in the latest version.
The terrain plugin went through some work though, and now support multiple terrain editing, which wasn't the case before.
Here's a screenshot showing some lights editing, rendered with a custom render engine I've started putting together for my game :
Another feature which has been implemented (or at least finalized) is the full support for undo/redo in plugins.
I am not very happy with the way I deal with it as of now though, and would like to write some helper functions/macros to ease this process.
To conclude, a smaller but still cool feature, plugins can be embedded in their own .zip files, along with all their resources.
For instance, when I resume my work on voxels, and write the Voxel plugin, I'll embbed all shaders, materials and other resources in the plugin .zip file.
so don't give up and keep up the good work.
