[Mud-H]

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...


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?

Edit: Video reuploaded with fixed Intro header text

[Duion]

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

[Mud-H]

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.

[Duion]

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.

[Duion]

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.

[Nils]

Mud-H, this looks really awesome! You have put a lot of work into this.

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

Cool stuff!

[Mud-H]

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 ... :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.

[Mud-H]

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.

[Duion]

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.

[Mud-H]

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?