The FFilmation Editor is on the way ( Thu 9 Oct 2008 )
I think the engine has come to a point where it is robust enought to build something with it ( I know of people already doing it ). However, in order to make it a viable option for real developers with tight deadlines a WYSIWYG editor is mandatory. I myself get bored after several ours of copypasting XML lines in order to build a crappy-looking village.
So I have started building The Ffilmation Editor. It is a big endeavour and I don’t know how long will it take, but everything is clear in my mind. It will be an Adobe AIR application ( I hope this is OK with most of you ).
Here’s a snapshot of how is it going to look:
So far I only have the load/save functionality working ( even with “Are you sure?” confirm dialogs, how about that ! ) but well it’s a start.
Great!! Keep of the good work!! I’ll be glad to help you test it.
MikeHuntington said this on October 10th, 2008 at 6:32 am
awesome!
jun said this on October 10th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
This is good news! So you anticipate that the editor will allow live preview of a scene or will it need to be compiled out first?
Stefan said this on October 13th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Hi Stefan
The editor will be 100% live. You will drag things around, create, remove, etc.
To achieve this I’ll be changing the engine slightly ( only internal changes ). For example, I need to be able to change a wall’s material on the fly, something that is not possible with the current engine.
admin said this on October 13th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Sounds good to me, will be very helpful in a production environment. In the course of recent work I’ve been doing using the engine I added a createWall method to fScene which forced a new wall into the depth sort however it was hacky and incomplete since much of the wall logic occurs in fSceneInitializer so I look forward to seeing how you implement the new internal changes!
Stefan said this on October 13th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I’ve been monitoring your project with interest for the past few months. I was toying with the idea of writing an iso-engine myself for a horror/puzzler game idea I have but since your engine is robust, open-sourced, and seemingly supported by many others on their games I’m now planning to do the same. Here’s hoping you don’t abandon the thing halfway through and others jump on the bandwagon and we can build a nice little community.
By the way, are you planning on adding some routines for element/object interaction- ie you walk over a coin and pick it up in an inventory, or use a key to open a locked door? I know you’re obviously busy but do you ever give personal advice/support to other developers when questions wing your way via email?
EvilKris said this on October 25th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi,
I try to help other developers when they email me with questions on how to approach a given problem or solve bugs or whatever. I do know of some people building real projects with the engine and I try to help as much as possible.
As for the engine, it does offer several tools such as collision events that you can use to build your game. However, I don’t plan to develop a “game engine”. Don’t expect additions too game-specific such as inventory control because this doesn’t belong here. Trying to write something open enough to match everybody’s needs and yet powerful enough for enyone is impossible.
The engine will stay as an isometric graphics engine which hopefully will get better performance, cleaner code, more element types ( boxes, balls ), more real physics and such, but anyone planning to build a game on top of it will have to write the game from scratch.
Regards,
admin said this on October 26th, 2008 at 7:17 pm