Simple .mtr File Generator

[Fingernail]

Would anyone object or even think it was a good idea for me to begin to craft a simple way for people go easily generate .mtr file code for their textures, using most probably Java, since it's portable between Windows and Linux really easily, and has lots of gui functionality already in various libs?

 

It might evolve to manage whole .mtr file databases and be able to merge them, etc. eliminating unused textures, check all the links before going into D3.

 

I'm just ever so slightly concerned that there might be a little to much 'coding' for some people, and this would speed up the process significantly IMO.

 

Thoughts?

[Renzatic]

ConTEXT already has something like that...I just gotta find it again.

[Fingernail]

Alright then, what about a slightly more ambitious gamesys-style browser which also generates sound and model shaders?

[Renzatic]

If we can find someone that can program it I'd be up for something like that.

[Fingernail]

I offered myself up willingly, as long as I get to use Java.

 

At least, I'll have a go. That's all I can really promise.

[sparhawk]

What exactly would that application do?

[Fingernail]

just generate files based on groups of textures, to save authors the potential 'trouble' of actually getting their hands dirty with notepad and learning all (not really that much) syntax.

 

It just reflects my concern that, compared to certain other editors, D3 is not that "user friendly" in that it does require a lot of plain-text hacking.

[sparhawk]

Do you intend this to be a visual tool? I could imagine this as a kind of treeview which represents the texture directory where you can choose textures from. You have a listbox where you can add textures to from the tree. Then you press the button and an MTR entry is created? Something lkike that?

Do you intend to support all the various stuff that you can do in an MTR file or only the very basic structure.

Which Java library would use for the GUI part?

[Renzatic]

What I'd like to see would be a D3 equivalent for Q3ASE

 

Imagine not only a nice material editor complete with canned syntax, but also a realtime preview window to boot. Since D3's shader program is just a natural extention of Q3's, I'm surprised I haven't seen one out yet.

 

Plus D3:ROE has the (currently buggy as hell) Material Editor packed in with 1.2 Radiant. It might possibly be cleaned up and released with 1.3.

[New Horizon]

I would like to see tools for this kind of work as well. We really do need some tools to make this more user friendly than it currently is...and more user friendly than T3Ed..which I can actually get my head around...that says a LOT. :lol:

 

Of course, some rich tutorials that explain the menus of D3Radiant would be helpful as well. Renz, you were saying D3Radiant had something like T3Ed's trigger scripting system? What was it called again?

[Ishtvan]

You mean trigger_* entities?

 

I placed a trigger_touch in one map and it worked fine and ran the desired script when I went thru that space (aitest3 for example uses a touch trigger to make the AI's run at eachother when you come down the stairs). I don't know how much more complicated the triggers can get though. Try looking thru the various descriptions of trigger_* in the editor.

[sparhawk]

IOf you really start on this, we shouldn't make it into just an mtr editor. We will need other editors as well. For exmaple objectives comes to mind, equipment, relationship matrix and all that stuff. We don't want to have hundred little tools for this, so the consideration is to collect everything under a single app. You think you are up to this Finger?

 

I forgot which library I was using, but I don't want to use the IBM one, because it is much slower. There is another one, but I forgot the name. I have to look it up in my office, because I use there, and I would suggest we use this one. There is also a nice free WYSIWYG editor for this avialable which you can plug in into eclipse.

[Renzatic]

It'd be nice to have, but who'd we get to program it?

 

Most of the D3W guys are off doing their own thing, and I doubt you, Isht, or Dom could find the time to spare.

[sparhawk]

I think this is not exac tly urgent as it would just be a 3rd party app. I would prefer Fingernail to work on models or other stuff, because such an app is just "nice to have" but not strictly needed, and once we release the tools, there may be others who would want to volunteer to do this because they are annoyed by the workflow.

[pakmannen]

I dunno if this helps at all but mrD sent me a php script which generates shader files. I'm having trouble getting php to run from the console so I haven't been able to test it, but it should work seeing that he generated the existing (and terribly outdated) soundshaders currently on cvs.

[Fingernail]

I won't start on it right now, and not for a few months. Maybe over July -> September, but not before.

 

And yeah, it'd be a NICE THING.

[sparhawk]

The library that I use is SWT. Do you know this? It should be much faster then the official one.

[Fingernail]

Let's say it'll be a learning experience

 

I may need some help...but since I'm not starting yet, I'll just do some planning or something.