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TGB Tool Development
TGB Tool Development
| Name: | Dan Maruschak |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Jan 02, 2008 | |
| Rating: |  5.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Dan Maruschak |
Blog post
Hi everyone. I thought I'd introduce myself, and give you guys an idea of what I'm working on. I work on the Tech & Tools team as a Tool and Docs Engineer. On the Tech and Tools team, our job is to focus on usability and the user experience, to let the Engine Dev team focus more on just the core technology. One aspect of what we do is documentation (you may have seen my Torque X tutorials), and another aspect is working on tools to make the game development experience better. Most of you have probably heard about the future plans for Torque 2, and until that's ready to go (which won't be any time soon) we've got a balancing act -- we want to make sure that we'll be ready with a great engine and tools experience when we get to the Torque 2 launch, but we also want to make sure that our current products and customers get the love and attention they deserve. One of the ways we can help our current products (while also looking forward) is by making tool design and usability improvements. This will let us improve our current products, and it will let us try out designs and ideas that we might be able to use in our next-generation tools. To that end, I've been working on the linkpoint editor in TGB:
The first difference is that this editor is in its own window, instead of a mode of the main editor. Personally, I hate modes: they're disorienting, it's easy to forget you're in them, they tend to introduce complexity and bugs, and they're harder to test. The second difference in the new editor is that it adds the ability to directly change the X and Y positions of the individual linkpoints via text entry fields, so you can set things precisely (when you want to). The third big difference is the ability to create linkpoints outside the object's bounding box, a feature that the engine has always supported, but that the old tool didn't:
Now, this is still a work in progress. There are some changes I want to make to the GUI layout, there are a few other things I need to finish up, and then I need to do quite a bit of cleanup under the hood before it's release ready. Once it's polished up a bit, I'll also probably be able to use it to update the Collision Polygon editor, and also create an editor for the t2dShapeVector object. I'm hoping to have this ready for the next release of TGB (no promises on release dates yet!). So what do you guys think? And if you have ideas about other things that would make TGB better, let's talk about it. We love hearing ideas from the community. Obviously we can't do everything, but we can definitely consider anything.
The first difference is that this editor is in its own window, instead of a mode of the main editor. Personally, I hate modes: they're disorienting, it's easy to forget you're in them, they tend to introduce complexity and bugs, and they're harder to test. The second difference in the new editor is that it adds the ability to directly change the X and Y positions of the individual linkpoints via text entry fields, so you can set things precisely (when you want to). The third big difference is the ability to create linkpoints outside the object's bounding box, a feature that the engine has always supported, but that the old tool didn't:
Now, this is still a work in progress. There are some changes I want to make to the GUI layout, there are a few other things I need to finish up, and then I need to do quite a bit of cleanup under the hood before it's release ready. Once it's polished up a bit, I'll also probably be able to use it to update the Collision Polygon editor, and also create an editor for the t2dShapeVector object. I'm hoping to have this ready for the next release of TGB (no promises on release dates yet!). So what do you guys think? And if you have ideas about other things that would make TGB better, let's talk about it. We love hearing ideas from the community. Obviously we can't do everything, but we can definitely consider anything.
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 01/31/08 - TGB 1.7 Released 01/02/08 - TGB Tool Development |
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Submit your own resources!| Stephan (viKKing) Bondier (Jan 02, 2008 at 22:22 GMT) |
Quote:
but we also want to make sure that our current products and customers get the love and attention they deserve
What should we request, this sentence is summarizing so well? 8-)
| Saiko (Jan 03, 2008 at 01:00 GMT) |
I think most TGB users would love audio file support in the editor even a drop down to pick from audio profiles in behaviours would be really useful too.
One thing I would like is a friendlier gui for the particle systems. I know some would probably disagree but I think it suffers, as with most things that are very powerful, it can be a bit clunky to use. The particle system editor is not quite as intuitive as it could be. I think it would be nicer if it was separated out into its own dialog with a nice little render box and options...maybe its just me tho.
Anyway, the new changes sound pretty cool :) keep up the good work!
| Joe Rossi (Jan 03, 2008 at 01:39 GMT) |
I'm not bashing your work by any means, I'm glad to see TGB getting ANY new development. I just hope there are methods to the madness ;D
| Glenn Thomas (Jan 03, 2008 at 04:48 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
I also have a good idea for a sound editor and a suggestion to use OGG Vorbis as the format was given to me today in the forums today. Here's my post:
It would be nice to be able to drag and drop mp3's or other formats directly into the editor and then apply behaviors to them, such as collision, looping or non-looping, triggers, and so on. Then we could visually just mount the sound files to the desired object. They could be clear boxes just like the scene objects with a different outline and maybe a small speaker emblem that could be clicked so the user could easily play a short preview through the editor. I know this option can seem to get cluttered so as an alternative you could add a new tab to the object roll out. Like the ones that allow the user to edit the collision points or world limits for a particular object. Then a sound editor specific to the object can open up that would cover the sounds for the object other objects or particles mounted to it, and other animations associated with it. I'd include a master sound editor in the top menu so users can adjust the audio level and create a master mix for all the sounds in their projects. This top menu would allow users to group sounds into a clear, precise, and organized manner.
| Glenn Thomas (Jan 03, 2008 at 04:52 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Ireally like this feature the most though. It would assist me greatly.
| Glenn Thomas (Jan 03, 2008 at 05:26 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Benjamin L. Grauer (Jan 03, 2008 at 05:46 GMT) |
edit: bad typo :p
Edited on Jan 03, 2008 05:51 GMT
| Magnus Blikstad (Jan 03, 2008 at 06:11 GMT) |
| Dan Maruschak (Jan 03, 2008 at 18:29 GMT) |
@Joe - Deciding what to work on is a complicated process, and there are good reasons for tackling this particular problem. If you have specific suggestions for other things, let me know. I do read the forums, but I don't remember any groundswell of support for specific animation builder features, but maybe I've missed something, so if there is, try to present it to me in a way I can digest.
@Glenn - A lot of your sound ideas sound like they could be accomplished already if we had support in the editor for creating the sound datablocks, as Saiko suggested. For example, you could create a t2dTriggerObject, and create a behavior with the onEnter callback that would play a specific sound, which would be specified by a behavior field with the object type with an AudioProfile class. I don't want to set any expectations about if or when it might happen, but support for creating sound datablocks in the editor is definitely something for us to consider.
Better asset management would also be cool, but is also a much bigger challenge to tackle. :)
@Benjamin - Try to be more specific about what you want. I checked out the 1.1.3 animation builder, and it seems like 1.6 is better to me. In 1.1.3 everything is too big and it's hard to see what's going on in the window. I don't think that one isn't coming back, but if you can be more clear about what you need, or what problems you're having with the current tool, maybe there's something that can be done.
@Magnus - I don't think I followed your explanation of what your problem is with the color picker. Can you try to explain again, or maybe link to some screenshots of color pickers you think would work better? I'm not going to make any promises about changing the color picker, but I can't even consider it if I don't know what people actually want. :)
| Glenn Thomas (Jan 03, 2008 at 19:34 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Magnus Blikstad (Jan 03, 2008 at 19:45 GMT) |
| Joe Rossi (Jan 04, 2008 at 01:59 GMT) |
It could use a bit more polish that's all. Comparing the new Animation Builder to the 1.3 version, I also find the old one more intuitive. The current version has no frame numbers, and sometimes its hard to tell if a frame you clicked was even put into the storyboard. Sometimes with large animations you can't see all the frame images you have available, because you can't scroll through them like in 1.3. The old version let you replace specific frames in an existing animation, but the new one doesn't. It just inserts a new frame next to the one you try to replace. I miss the old Animation Timeline slider that let you step through an animation at your discretion. The "add all frames" checkbox is also sorely missed. It'd also be nice to have keyboard controls such as the delete key.
On a side note.. yesterday I uploaded two behaviors that allow people to make new audio datablocks within the editor. It's not the best way to do it, but it seems to work.
Edited on Jan 04, 2008 02:03 GMT
| Benjamin L. Grauer (Jan 04, 2008 at 09:58 GMT) |
Joe pretty much summarized what's wrong, and, bigger frames are better, in 1.6 it's too tiny and I can't see any details on big resolution sprites.
| Saiko (Jan 04, 2008 at 10:22 GMT) |
@Joe - nice one. They are quite useful :) I'll add some behaviours that use them later.
| Mike Lilligreen (Jan 04, 2008 at 11:11 GMT) |
1. The preferences menu has a few bugs in it. The effects and music volume seem to be hardcoded at 0.8. Changing them and clicking apply does nothing. Clicking OK after trying to change the volume reverts custom background and grid colors to defaults.
2. Creating a new imagemap no longer brings up the image builder, TGB assumes the image full mode. It's a bit annoying having to go back and change it to cell. Not sure if this change was intended or not in 1.6.
3. Could an option be added to the image builder for scrollers? I would much prefer when I set an image to full mode, to have a check box if I want that image to also be added to the scroller rollout in the create tab. Most static sprites I add I would not use as a scroller, so it's just extra clutter on the create tab.
| Joe Rossi (Jan 05, 2008 at 01:02 GMT) |
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=70566
@Saiko, great I can't wait to see your behaviors!
Edited on Jan 05, 2008 01:04 GMT
| Magnus Blikstad (Jan 06, 2008 at 08:39 GMT) |
First of all, a couple of extra buttons would be nice; save/load/duplicate/reorder emitters (all the functions to make that work already exist, it's just missing from the UI).
Then we have the graphs, the workflow there could be improved some without too much effort. Having the graph window resizable (and let you move around and zoom in it) would make it much easier to work with. The ability to show and edit more than one graph at a time would be nice too (have a toggle button for each graph that would turn that graph on/off?). This would let us say turn on both the R, G and B graph and edit them all instead of having to switch back and forth about 2 million times to get what you want.
While I'm on the subject of the RGB graphs, a preview of how your resulting "gradient" there would look might be nice. I have some ideas how to do this, but a bit difficult to explain the concept; basically just have a set of polygons blended together to create a gradient preview bar.
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