Mission Editor

A forum for the discussion and development of programs to assist working on or playing with the Vegastrike engine and data sets.
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Darkmage
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Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

Hi,

I'm writing a GTKMM/C++ based Mission editor for Vegastrike. I will be embedding the engine directly into the editor and using Vegastrike's own code to draw all the assets. Think FRED2 for Freespace 2. I need a bit of help getting the engine code to build against my new main function for vsfred. If anyone is interested in helping. I am open to ideas/help.
vsfred.png
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If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

Awesome! 8)

I may assist in trying the thing out but I'm not a very experienced programmer. Furthermore I'm busy with another project right now, LMMS, and we're working on a release so I'm busy there for the next month or so. Put it on a code sharing service like GitHub (recommended), so we can study, comment and chip in.
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loki1950
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by loki1950 »

Second gonzo's suggestion about putting it on github as that's where most of the development what there is has migrated too.

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Re: Mission Editor

Post by TBeholder »

What's with smelly business at github, did it end?
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gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

TBeholder wrote:What's with smelly business at github, did it end?
Answered here.
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

I'll be ready to start uploading code to github soon. The main thing I'm going to need to get done is refactoring campaign/mission code. Right now it's a mess. Missions have to be separated from the campaigns. They're too closely integrated right now. I want to have an editor for writing missions and an editor for building campaign hierarchies. A campaign should be a linked list of missions with win/lose conditions. I want to be able to have both Wing Commander Privateer style fixer missions and Wing Commander 1/2/3/4 style campaign missions. In the same editor.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

OK, so here is a github project: https://github.com/DMJC/vsmed bear in mind I'm mostly focusing my efforts on the research folder right now. Working on code generators for the python for the campaigns.py file. I'm going to design the editor so that it splits missions into a separate file to the campaigns.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
TBeholder
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by TBeholder »

On the other eyestalk, it's a good idea to have icons/pictograms for ships anyway.
The broken (and before that, very crude) navigation screen needs overhaul.
And perhaps flightgroup types could be listed and marked as a part of radar/targeting interface.
IMO ship AI class and faction are enough to see what's going on, and if it can be Python-ified, it can be reused in game (system maps, etc).
And we already have some sort of faction icons (in trunk/data/textures/logos).
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gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

Darkmage wrote:I'll be ready to start uploading code to github soon. The main thing I'm going to need to get done is refactoring campaign/mission code. Right now it's a mess. Missions have to be separated from the campaigns. They're too closely integrated right now. I want to have an editor for writing missions and an editor for building campaign hierarchies. A campaign should be a linked list of missions with win/lose conditions. I want to be able to have both Wing Commander Privateer style fixer missions and Wing Commander 1/2/3/4 style campaign missions. In the same editor.
You need to get in contact with Klauss who is the main coder right now and I last saw him active in the Sourceforge bugtracker. Maybe open an issue for the mission editor there?

One thing I've thought about a mission editor for Vega Strike is how similar many of the components in space sims ( Vega Strike, Pioneer... ) are. Maybe one could create a general instruction subset that can be exported to more than one game?
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

That's a very similar idea to where I was going with it. I want it to ideally edit Wing Commander games, Vegastrike, Freespace/Freespace2 etc. It's time to end the ridiculous lack of tools in this genre.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

Cool! In any case you need to get hold on Klauss for input. Open a Feature Request (sourceforge), link to the code and top the whole thing off with a PM. That should do the trick. 8)
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

Ok guys, It took me a while but here she comes... This is the first image of the Vegastrike Mission Editor. It builds as a single C++ application using cmake. Relying on the Vegastrike engine for the rendering. I haven't written the 3d window management yet, but this is a big start. A single executable that fires up a GTK UI. including some editor windows for ships and wings.
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If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

Cool!
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

I have made the sourcecode to the mission editor available here: https://github.com/DMJC/vsengine/tree/master/vegastrike
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

I'm a bit unsure about how to compile this. In your source you have included a build directory that is already populated.

I get this note

Code: Select all

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:738 (add_executable):
  Cannot find source file:

    src/vsfred.cpp

  Tried extensions .c .C .c++ .cc .cpp .cxx .m .M .mm .h .hh .h++ .hm .hpp
  .hxx .in .txx
when running

Code: Select all

cmake ../ 
in the build directory.
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

Pretty sure that entry is wrong, try updating the code from git. Should be src/vsfred/vsfred.cpp in the VSFRED sources entry.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

Darkmage wrote:Should be src/vsfred/vsfred.cpp in the VSFRED sources entry.
I'm here: https://github.com/DMJC/vsengine/tree/m ... trike/src/
No /vsfred/vsfred.cpp
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

thanks, I've just pushed that folder up to git.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
gonzo
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

That one's fixed but I now ran into problems with package dependencies for gtkmm-3.0 so I'll be busy now with the package manager... :shock:
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by gonzo »

gonzo wrote:...I'm busy with another project right now, LMMS, and we're working on a release so I'm busy there for the next month or so...

Right. Sorry, still working on that other release some two years later... :shock:
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Darkmage
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by Darkmage »

All good. I've slammed into a brick wall with GTKMM/C++. It turns out that GTK is actually a terrible API for OO programming. Signal handlers in GTK cannot be autoconnected to class methods. They can only be connected to public functions. I am currently rethinking/reworking how I will proceed with this.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
loki1950
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Re: Mission Editor

Post by loki1950 »

Have you considered using QT4 or QT5 for the GUI with the one of the Python bindings packages that is if you are using Python as your primary coding medium I have found that it is more flexible than GTK considering it was designed to use with C++ so that OOP was part of it's design philosophy while GTK was developed for one program the GIMP.

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