Wings3D Export Plugin: Improvements?

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Wed Apr 30, 2003 4:45 pm

After reading this message from PeteyG i asked myself about changing the behaviour of the plugin.

Would it be easier for you all if the export plugin exports without the ".xunit"-extension?

The only confusing thing with this would be that you export a "xxxx.xunit"-file and don't have one after the export. (maybe i find some better solution)

Also i wonder if the "xxxx.blank" file and the example-data in the xunit file is of use for you, because it's not created from vs-data right now?

Pontiac

Post by **hellcatv** » Thu May 01, 2003 2:35 am

ya I suggest not having people rename the units-- it's too confusing for the people too green or too lazy to open up the .xunit file and read the comments

V4X3N Being Lazy · Post by **V4X3N Being Lazy** » Thu May 01, 2003 3:21 am

Ideally, I'd suggest that once the model is complete, that it would prompt a stage two program which would hand-hold users through the process of assigning and tweaking stats for their ship/station/object of choice, plus adding in the bits and effects to the ship. This would double as a bonus for whomever went ahead and polished the ship repair, upgrade, and statistic-display screens in that they'd have something else to borrow from, or compare to at least.
I expect this to be easily as much work as the plugin for Wings3D was to start with, so I'm not holding my breath for it.

Still, I always liked games like the old CGA game The Ancient Art Of War (Broderbund?) that made it easy to create maps, and such.

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Thu May 01, 2003 9:01 am

This isn't exactly a suggestion for the exporter, but it certainly may affect it...

Why don't the units have a filename extension? I don't know how it works in unix or linux, but in Windows I can't associate a filetype with a program unless it has a filename extension. If I could associate the ship files with my text editor, it would be just that much more convenient to edit them. I also suggest making icons that can be used for the ship and the xmesh files, since if you associate a filetype, the extension dissapears (in Windows, at least)! If someone could point me in the direction of a graphics program that can export icons, I'd be willing to do that myself.

The obvious extension would be to just keep the .xunit extension, but if it isn't too much of a hassle programmingwise, I suggest something a little more exclusive to vegastrike: .ship for the ship definitions, and possibly .hull and .cockpit to differentiate between the hull and cockpit xmesh types.

Oh, and please have the game engine parse out the extensions you do have when displaying ships in game. If a bunch of Wayfarers warp in next to me, I don't really care if they're .blank or .begin or .pimpedout or whatever. I just care that they're Wayfarers.

Thanks for listening while I'm tired.

-pincushionman

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu May 01, 2003 1:20 pm

@pincushionman
You don't need a file extension, because in this case vegastrike 'knows' how the file is named.

if you want to start the file directly from a file-manager (without selecting a program) you must associate the extension and/or mime-type of this file with a program (and maybe a icon if you want).

To see extensions of a file in the MS Explorer you must have turned them on in the explorer settings.
(i think it's in options-view-[]hide file extensions ; no warranty, i don't have an english version of this

)

For the name in Vegastrike itself, i don't care about this much, but the best solution would be a to add a "name" entry in the xunit file:

Code: Select all

<unit scale="1" name="Wayfarer">
....
</unit>

or

Code: Select all

<description name="Wayfarer" combatRole="SHUTTLE">
...
</description>

So even the identification of the unit by filename extension would become obsolete.

@hellcatv: i know, i know -> another feature request

, but is this a good idea and/or easy to implement?

Pontiac

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Thu May 01, 2003 2:55 pm

sorry, my writing abilities go to blah at 3:00 in the morning...

I have no issue with the way Vegastrike opens and reads files. The reason I'd like to see an extension is that Windows doesn't have any clue what the unextended files are. I'd like to be able to associate the xunit and xmesh files with my text editor, but windows only associates filetypes by their extension (except for a very few specific unextended types). You can't "open with...always use this program" on an unextended file, and you can't create an association for it through "tools>>folder options."

so again, I'm not suggesting that Vegastrike needs to change the way it handles files, I'm saying that editing them can be a tiny bit inconvenient.

sorry about the confusion

-pincushionman

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu May 01, 2003 3:06 pm

A tip for editing files:
Just add a link to your favourite editor to your "send to" folder (in you profile directory). This is how i edit all my text files.
Just click RMB->send to-> editor
This is not as fast as double click, but i can do it with all files with any extension (if i want).

HTH

Pontiac

scheherazade · Post by **scheherazade** » Tue May 13, 2003 8:30 am

would be interesting if you could have model properties, and when exporting, you export an xmesh and a REAL xunit

and have tags in the editor, placed in the model, where you have guns, turrets, etc.

and upon export, the xunit file has gun and turret entries in the xunit file, entered and labelled properly.

also, we could add frames and submeshes to the format.
just have recurring model entries
a-la :

xmesh{
mesh1-frame1{}
mesh1-frame2{}
mexh2-frame1{}
mesh2-frame2{}
}

instead of the current separate-file system :
xmesh{}
xmesh{}
xmesh{}
xmesh{}

in-game it can be treated all the same as before, just when read in the parser would retrieve a few times instead of once per file.

-scheherazade

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Tue May 13, 2003 8:43 am

I would suggest having the default texture name for a mesh end in .jpg rather than .bmp

Also, in cases where there are units with an object with the same name as their overall file, which results in a Galaxy_Galaxy.xmesh file when exporting... if the names on either side of the underscore are the same, I'd just leave it as Galaxy.xmesh.

Unless of course you've recently changed this behavior... i haven't been keeping up very well on your new plugin versions. : )

scheherazade · Post by **scheherazade** » Tue May 13, 2003 10:20 am

oh, on that note, the plugin should just see what textures the model is using in the editor, and just use those names and extensions. if it doesn't already

-scheherazade

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Tue May 13, 2003 4:54 pm

I am searching for a way to save ship properties with the wings-file (even the texture path), but don't expect any improvements in the near future.

Leaving the file extension of the texture like it was in wings (i think this obly works if the texture-file is linked in wings, else it is saved in a wings-specific format) is not a good idea because wings currently does only support tga/bmp/tif

So i will change the standard extension to ".jpg" in the next release.

The current naming scheme is like this:
Wings:
export file name: myship.xunit
object1: body
object2: wings
object3: shield

Exported files:
myship.xunit (shield-object is linked as shield-mesh, see the latest updates on thenightlies)
myship_body.xmesh
myship_wings.xmesh
myship_shield.xmesh

I don't think this is a bad naming scheme (please correct me).
The only fault/problem is you can't give two objects the same name, because the latter saved object will overwrite the first (i will add a solution soon).
And the saving of the xunit file with an extension will also fall in the next release.

My aim is to make the output of the final-plugin (no specific plugin version) ready to use in the game (except for the template and blank files)

Pontiac

scheherazade · Post by **scheherazade** » Wed May 14, 2003 10:45 am

it would prolly be best if it were named like this

Object_<texturename>_#.xmesh

where # is the instance... like if you have multiple with the same texture.

you dont need to know what item a certain mesh is even, teh texture it uses is more useful.

simpley because if you have 'body'.jpg as your texture, you then know what xmehs it is, cause hte texture name is in there.

so as a result all items would be classified into groups of what they are.

-scheherazade

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Wed May 14, 2003 4:34 pm

Anonymous wrote:it would prolly be best if it were named like this

Object_<texturename>_#.xmesh

where # is the instance... like if you have multiple with the same texture.

you dont need to know what item a certain mesh is even, teh texture it uses is more useful.

simpley because if you have 'body'.jpg as your texture, you then know what xmehs it is, cause hte texture name is in there.

so as a result all items would be classified into groups of what they are.

-scheherazade

The very problem with this is, that we don't have a texture name in wings.
Just a material with some uv-data and an image map (no filename).
But like i mentioned in the post before there is now a way to link pictures in wings. I will look into this.

But how about this naming scheme:

Code: Select all

<!--- mesh name-->
<objectname>_#.xmesh

<!-- texture link name-->
<objectname>_#.jpg

<objectname> is the name you gave the object in wings and # is an counter to prevent double names.
The only thing you have to do is to name the texture-file like the link.

Pontiac

scheherazade · Post by **scheherazade** » Thu May 15, 2003 2:26 am

not sure what you mean.
explain the 'link' please

-scheherazade

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu May 15, 2003 4:13 pm

by link i meant the string in the xmesh file ie: texture="xyz.jpg"

HTH

Pontiac

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Wings3D Export Plugin: Improvements?

Wings3D Export Plugin: Improvements?

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