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TorqueLab - Revamped Torque3D editor (under development)


Mud-H

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I just wanted to share my progress on TorqueLab* (formely known as WorldLab*) which is a revamped Torque3D game editor project I'm working on. After a slow start with WorldLab, I decided to give a push to TorqueLab so I can have a stable editor to work with for my game projects instead of having a half developed editor (WorldLab) which wasn't helping. And I think it's getting close to something usable as a replacement for default T3D Editors.


I'm running out of time so I will make it short... I have make a new video showing overall progress made on the editor, it's quite long but show different new/enhanced features of TorqueLab. If there's some interest, I will try to work on more videos about specific features soon.

Here's a quick list of different features shown in the video:

  • SceneEditor - Objects manipulation

  • SceneEditor - Gizmo Settings

  • Camera view box overlay

  • ForestEditor - Brush management and generator (Global Scale require a small code change)

  • RoadEditor - Node managers (Node management require a small code change)

  • TerrainPainter- Enhanced layers management

  • TerrainPainter- Automated layers painter

  • Ambient Manager and GroundCover Manager

  • Drag and Drop Interface Customizer



Here's the youtube video which I made it quick and have some glitch...

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It's still far from being completed but I decided to make it available to everyone on GitHub. If you decide to give it a try, make sure to read the warning in the GitHub readme because it's still in early alpha development and untested on other PC and T3D project structure.

https://github.com/NordikLab/TorqueLab


I'm currently working on a Git branch which would contain the code changes needs for some features. I never done that but I think I will figure it out tonight... If someone decide to give it a try, I'd like to know if it went well or if something crash. There's still some random rare crash I need to figured out but in overall it's pretty stable on my setup.


*In case you wonder why Lab in the name of project, it's because my pseudo company is called NordikLab...


P.S. I almost forgot about the logo but before making it "official", I'd like to know if it's legal to use part of Torque3D logo in another product logo. I always have trouble understanding the licenses stuff... I have attached the logo I made, is it legal? :geek:


Edit: Video reuploaded with fixed Intro header text

TorqueLabLogoBg.png.effd817f4e3f618c599b41533e165509.png

Edited by Mud-H
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This looks really complicated, can you explain in short what the advantage is over the regular editor beside visual overhaul?

What you mean by "complicated"? The amount of Toolbar icons? If it's that, I'm planning to clean the default toolbar a bit by remove some icons which would be available in toobar customizer if needed.


First, my primary goal when I start working on TorqueLab wasn't necessary about making a better editor but more about making the editor easier to be modified. Now that I'm able to modify the GUIs without issues, I'm starting to enhance some existing features and add some new that I think could be usefull.


What are the advantages of using TorqueLab? For now they are still limited and it's only the beginning but if you watch the video, I think you can find some from it.

For example, the Terrain Painter allow to manage the terrain materials layers faster by simply changing the materials properties in the layer list and saving them without having to open the terrain materials dialog. I find it much easier to test different details/macros size and strength.

The Terrain automatic painter can also be quite usefull to update all terrain textures at once. You can also save/load the layers setup for reuse. I'm still planning to add better features to the automatic painter later...

I also think the GroundCover manager is very usefull. I never really liked to work with the GroundCover layers in the inspector, with the new manager, you can see all layers at once, play with the settings and see the result live.


I will try to make a better new/enhanced features description list soon but TorqueLab is still in early development. I'm not trying to say that every T3D developers should use my editor over the stock Torque3D editor, I just wanted to share my work progress on it to the community and give public access to anyone willing to give it a try. Also, it's a showcase topics as I don't feel it's ready to be listed as a T3D tool yet.

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I will test through the features when I get some time and see if it feels useful, does this also overwrite the overall theme?

Would you want to integrate this into my game? Then you would have your first user and I can tell you about issues while working with it. But it should be stable enough that you still can build levels with it and not break anything else in the game.

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And while you are already working on the editors you can look at JeffR's work, he is working on editor related things, maybe you can integrate his sketch tool: https://github.com/Areloch/Torque3D/tree/Sketch_Tool_Update_Experimental

then you would have one more really cool feature.

He is also working on lighting propagation volumes and taml asset management, no idea how far he is with that, but I think it is also editor related.

Maybe you could cooperate and integrate it all into one.

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I will test through the features when I get some time and see if it feels useful, does this also overwrite the overall theme?

Would you want to integrate this into my game? Then you would have your first user and I can tell you about issues while working with it. But it should be stable enough that you still can build levels with it and not break anything else in the game.

 

You are welcome to give it a try, like I said there's still a lot of work to be done but I'd say that maybe 95% of Stock Editor features are working stable so it "could" be use as an editor for your game. Also it's really simple to switch back to stock editor if you are facing and issue. Just need to remove tlab folder, put back tools folder and change the tools folder in main.cs. I haven't tested yet to run the 2 editors at same time, it was one of my goal to remove any conficts between the 2 editors structure.

does this also overwrite the overall theme?

Note sure exactly what you mean, but it's a complete restructuration/reorganization of the scripting. So, TorqueLab is completly independant of Torque Editor, it's why I decided to name the folder tlab rather than tools. But since the source code is refering to some images in tools folder, I had to keep the tools folder with only the code referenced images. I want to limit the code changes to minimum (I'm planning to make a "extended" TorqueLab version which would have much more code changes for better features). Yesterday, I have work on a TorqueLab branch on my Torque3D fork that list the minimal code changes needs which fix an submenu issue for the menu bar and also allow the RoadEditor/RiverEditor node manager to work by setting a selected node from script. The ForestEditor Global scaling also need a new variable in code. You can see the changes there: https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/compare/development...NordikLab:TorqueLab

 

But it should be stable enough that you still can build levels with it and not break anything else in the game.

I think it's stable enough to be used to build levels, I still recommend to backup your level files for the first test releases. If you have any issue, I'd like to know about them so I can fix them. Thinking about it quickly, the only thing that worry me is the .forest file, I will review the script today because I think it save the forest to [MissionFileName].forest by default but I'm not sure if I added a check to see if there's already a different .forest file used. I wrote it related to my T3D naming habits at start but now, I need to make sure it work for any setup.

 

I see some solutions to existing problems with the stock GUI!

Thanks for your feedback. I'm just curious to know what solutions you see?

 

And while you are already working on the editors you can look at JeffR's work, he is working on editor related things, maybe you can integrate his sketch tool: https://github.com/Areloch/Torque3D/tre ... perimental

then you would have one more really cool feature.

He is also working on lighting propagation volumes and taml asset management, no idea how far he is with that, but I think it is also editor related.

Maybe you could cooperate and integrate it all into one.

Thanks for letting me know about the JeffR Sketch Tools. In current TorqueLab, the stock ConvexEditor haven't been updated since I tought it needed a major update to be effective. I will have a look at Jeff work and would add it to TorqueLab if it's working fine.

I will also have a look at any other interesting custom T3D tools available to possibly make them compatible with TorqueLab. This is one of the reason I reworked the editor structure, to make it modular and simple to add remove plugins. Installing and removing plugins would be as simple as pasting/deleting a folder. I still need to clean up the scripting and once it's cleaned, I would work on a documentation explaining how to make a TorqueLab plugin.

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I had a look into JeffR SkecthTool works and it's a ConvexEditor source code update. I prefer to avoid adding tools that require major code changes but I think the best would be to add a new classes based on his work (SketchToolGui) and make it an optional TorqueLab plugin...

If any of you have a Torque Editor enhancement ressource to propose, I'm interested to hear about it. Also, feel free to propose features you think are missing from the Stock editors and I will see how it could be integrated into TorqueLab.

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The greatest improvement I could imaging at the moment would be the forest editor.

The content from brushes.cs and managedItemData.cs from art/forest should be moved into the mission file somehow, since the way it is now missions are not modular, they all need to be compatible with the art/forest datablocks or it needs to be edited each time you want to add a new mission with forest.

This would also limit the destructive capabilities of forest editor bugs, so it will just destroy one level and not all settings for all levels when it appears.

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The greatest improvement I could imaging at the moment would be the forest editor.

The content from brushes.cs and managedItemData.cs from art/forest should be moved into the mission file somehow, since the way it is now missions are not modular, they all need to be compatible with the art/forest datablocks or it needs to be edited each time you want to add a new mission with forest.

This would also limit the destructive capabilities of forest editor bugs, so it will just destroy one level and not all settings for all levels when it appears.

Well, I was working on some ForestEditor enhancements today, I could try to add your suggestion. I just need to understand your problem better, I think it's more about the forest items because if they are deleted or modified, it would affect all missions using it. So, I think that adding the possibility to store the Forest Items used in a levels in a level specific file could help, the editor would look for that file when launch and add those items to the Item group. I guess it should also overide existing items so you can store them with level specific settings.


Do I understand your request correctly? If not, could you provide more details about what you'd need?

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Yes, basically that's it.

There are also multiple weird forest bugs, some are in the packs I released from my first levels, one bug is, that I can no longer edit, add or remove items correctly in the brushes.cs/managedItemData.cs since when I select one item, the item 10 entries below gets also selected, so I can no longer select single items. Another issue is, that the brushes get mixed up, you want to paint pines, but the engine put randomly another tree in that slot and you paint birches now etc and the last bug is, that I painted rocks with the forest editor, but when you zoom out the rocks disappear, no idea what this is, since the same ones as static shapes work normally and correct with LOD etc. If you want to try those bugs, download my old levels from opengameart.

Yes and the other issue, obviously is, that you cannot modularly import/export mission files, since they depend on the item data in art/forest and the worst issue is that if it gets modified or broken, it affects all missions.

Many people may be able to live with those issues, since most just build a game and ship it and then done, but I want to be able to constantly add, enhance, change things over time and this could get risky.

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I'm working on a feature that allow to save brushes and items to a file using the same name as the loaded mission file. I have modified the Forest Brush/Items Trees to allow using standard forest data and level specific data. Still need to test it to make sure it's working fine but it will require modification outside of TorqueLab to load those level specific data. For now, I'm saving the Brushes and Items into a file named: MissionFileName.forestItems.cs so to use it, you would only need to check for that file before loading missing and execute it in LoadMission (before execing the missionFile):

 //Check for Level Forest Items
  %file = filePath(%missionName)@"/"@fileBase(%missionName)@".forestItems.cs";
  if (isFile(%file))
  	exec(%file);

Still need to make some test but it seem to work fine and should fix your issue. Thanks for the features suggestion:)


Edit: I have a little issue... Forgot that the ForestBrushGroup is used in source code.Will need to try something else...

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I have added the new level specific Forest brushes and items feature to TorqueLab and it's working quite well. There's still some litlle issues to be fixed but I'm done for today and I will be unavailable for the next 3 days... Then I will continue to improve it during my holyday week.

I made a quick video showing the forest level brushes in action and also showing more about the Forest data generator which I find very usefull to manage brushes and items, you simply need to specify a folder and the generator will create a brush element and item for each shape found. For the items, they are only generated once per shape but for the brushes you can create as many instance as you want. With the new batch settings feature added, you can specify the generated brush parameters (min/max scale,slope,elevation and sink). I also added a variations (%) for each which will tweak the settings randomly for each brush inside the variation range.

Also I found Duion UberPack content in my ressources which I had never examined. There's some nice stuff in there :o

So here's the new video about the ForestEditor Data Generator:

NB9y8XbOw7w

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Your video is private and cannot be viewed....

Sorry about that, I reuploaded the video with better quality and forgot to make it public. It's fixed now

 

I also cannot get tlab to work, I followed the instructions and the game loads, but I have no idea how to open the editors, f11 or editor button do nothing.

Anyone got it working?

I will re-test the setup and also commit a new build with my forest editor changes. I made it in a hurry and maybe forgot to change something because I'm pretty sure I test it on a stock T3D Full demo with the code changes listed. It might not work without the code changes, I will try to make a code change free branchs soon but without some feature and will need to figure out why the menu bar submenu items are not working with stock code. I have submit a issue about it on T3D Github but I don't think it have been examined yet.

Also I tried it on your UeberGame release and the game crash with TorqueLab. I will try to debug it and see why it crash. Sorry, about the install issues but it was a bit expected for the first releases, I will make it the priority in the next days to make it install fine without problem...

 

Hey impressive work so far, keep it up :) . Bonus points if the editor doesn't default to controlling the player object on launch.

Well I guess I get some bonus points then because it always launch with free camera (or last used camera view). You still can toggle control player using the menu.

 

This looks pretty cool - I only skimmed the video but in particular I noticed the multiple sliders for mesh road thicknesses. Nice stuff! And respect for what must have been a lot of work to get all that GUI happening.

Thanks for the good words, it's really appreciated because I have put a lot of effort in that. Much more that was I anticipated at start... The UI system still some improvement and more importantly a major script cleanup... Also, I don't know if you can see in future or not but I haven't modified the Mesh Road editor yet... I'm waiting to get the RoadEditor or RiverEditor node management system UI working fine before adding it to the MeshRoadEditor.

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

So now I'm back to work and for the next 10 days, I will use my holiday free time to keep updating it so it's usable for other developers. I will try to fix most installation issues and update the installation informations, so for those that try it, you are encouraged to post your issue somewhere (I guess the best would be to use the GitHub Issue system)

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I have push a new commit which include the latest ForestEditor improvements. I have also update the installation information which is now on the Wiki:https://github.com/NordikLab/TorqueLab/wiki/Installation


I have test this commit using the stock Torque3D development branch and it seem to work fine. For now, you need to apply all the code changes listed in installation for TorqueLab to work properly. Also make sure to put the helpers folder included in TorqueLab repository inside the tlab/ folder (as specified in instruction). I have also added in installation the changes needed to your project scripts if you want to use the ForestEditor generated data and the data specific to level system. In a future release, I will try to make the generated data work without scripts changes but for the level specific data, you need to load the data right before the mission file is executed.


If someone decide to give it a try, let me know if It's working fine or if you have an issue. I might have forgot something but now it's time to get at work.

I hope you understand that it's complex to handle the initial release for me and that it might not work for everyone yet. If you don't want to have any problems, well, simply wait for the Beta release which would happen somewhere in the future...


Thanks for your attention and I'm looking to hear about some features you'd like to see in future releases.

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Can you provide a precompiled exe for those who just want to test it quick?


And your major know issue that the game crashes when exiting, I have that also, so may not be related to your changes. It happens when for me when I make major changes to the look of the level, especially lighting related things, after I made those the editor is likely to crash on exit.


So did you decide to open source your editors now? Since on your site they are still for sale.

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Can you provide a precompiled exe for those who just want to test it quick?

That's a good idea, I will try to pack something up later or maybe tomorrow. I have update my demo to new 3.7 release today so I will pack a demo based on it.

 

So did you decide to open source your editors now? Since on your site they are still for sale.

Hehe, I should clean up the my website. It's not really ready for public use. And yes I changed my mind and decided to open source it. I will try to clean up my website then, it was mostly to test an online store component.

 

And your major know issue that the game crashes when exiting, I have that also, so may not be related to your changes. It happens when for me when I make major changes to the look of the level, especially lighting related things, after I made those the editor is likely to crash on exit.

Yes, i think I just need to add something to MissionCleanup, I haven't had a look at it yet but shouldn't be a major problem.


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

So I will try to get a precompiled version using the FullTemplate so anyone could give it a try simply. It should be available tomorrow, I will drop a note here when ready.

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I made a quick precompiled build using the T3D 3.7 Full Template with the ForestEditor scripts changes applied. It's not perfect and test proof because I found that something have changed about the ForestEditor. There's a new setActiveForest function for the ForestEditorCtrl. Without using it, it was not finding a valid forest and asked to create a new one but then it was saying can't create more than 1 forest. Anyway, it seem to work but I will need to investigate a bit about that new function, during some testing, I had to select another tool than paint forest tool and then switch back to paint forest tool to be able to paint new trees...


I will update the FullTemplate demos in the next days but at least it seem to work. You can have a try but before having a good demo, I will need some days to stabilize everything.

Here's the link to the first pre-compiled demo but there's no guarantee that it won't crash...

http://www.mud-h.com/T3D/TorqueLabDemos/T3D_Full_v3.7.rar

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@Mud-H

Quite a lot of features, testing them all will take some time, but what I already noticed is, that you cannot paint trees in forest, if you try to an empty popup comes with "yes" and "no" an no matter what you click you cannot paint trees.


And your site did not look very active, but I thought you may have plans for the future, even though it is not very likely, since the major engines going free the Torque market has become even smaller to non existing.

Yeah you should really clean up those advertisements for downloading big boobs videos in your forums.

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Quite a lot of features, testing them all will take some time, but what I already noticed is, that you cannot paint trees in forest, if you try to an empty popup comes with "yes" and "no" an no matter what you click you cannot paint trees.

About the paint trees issues, I mentionned it in previous post. In the demo I packed I had problem painting trees sometime but switching to erase brush and back to painting brush, it was working after.

Anyway, about TorqueLab, it's the first time I make something I made available to others and I guess I was trying to much to make it "perfect" after the last week release. It still in early development and I can't at this stage worry about everything at once. Thanks a lot for testing it and I will take in consideration all your feedback and comments to improve it but I have to stop trying to rush things. So from now on, I will take my time to make things right and I will prepare a real demo later. I will still keep the community up-to-date about new major commits.


About the website, it was never intended to be ready for public use but I should have think about it when I have put the adress in my videos. I will try to clean it more tonight and fix the big boobs advertisement video that I was not aware of... Also, like you said, I think the Torque3D community got smaller over the years and it's a bit the reason why I decided to not try to sell something that maybe 2-3 person would buy. I prefer to help the community getting better tools to keep Torque3D alive and competitive with other engine. I think Torque3D is still missing some important tools like a something to create 3D roads network, and it's a bit why I start working on TorqueLab after finding a lot of problem when trying to add new tools to stock editors. I hope to be able to add some advanced new tools in the future with TorqueLab but first I need to make the base solid...


Out of topic: About 3D roads editor, I remember in a old release of T3D (maybe TGEA) there was a profile editor for the mesh road, anyone know why it's gone? Also I have been trying to find some ressources about a way to add object along a spline but maybe my lack of english skill made me miss a ressource about that. Is it what the PathShape ressource is about? Anyone know about a ressource (old or new) about similar features?

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