Working on it slowly. Here's what I've done so far:

- Thing limit in JKL is raized to 2*thing number+200
- Added an option to dock the item editor, toolbar and 3D Preview windows
- When you try to select one of the several sectors/surfaces/edges/etc. that are on top of
each other JED now cycles through them in order of increasing distance from you.


Now I have questions about some of the things you requested:



Anybody has any 3DO that RELIABLY gives this problem? If you do send it to me so that I could see what's going on.



So how are those done?



What is that about?




Cool idea, but many gotchas. For instance - what attributes to have for sectors, things, etc?

Nice fixes!

so, are you gonna work any on making jed for sith2?

Sounds great, Alexei!

Osibean, I think you are jumping the gun.

For the 3do texture mis-alignments, it always happens to me with any of the MP player models. Mainly the head and torso.

Someone should make a news post.

Oh god, I wish fix #3 was in Jed .89 and on... I really coulda benefitted from that.

I like the fixes, but I have only one gripe with the thing limit value. There should be an option to choose how you want it set...if you're designing a level that you don't want to require the thing limit remover, you never want the JKL's thing limit value to go over 640, otherwise JK will crash without the patch (or some other severe error). Your equation should be good for general purpose, but there may be times when the thing numbers will be waaay high dynamically, like with the automatic rain COG I've written. Thing numbers can get to be insane, and thanks to some clever coding and help from Sige, my COG has no overhead that isn't created by JK itself. So you can really load up on the raindrop sprites.

Personally, I think it should default to 640. Then in a simple dialog allow the user to choose other algorithms (like your 2*thingnum+200) or setting it manually. That would clear up most problems I think.

Also, the distance-from-camera selection sounds great! When you said that one might have been a little more difficult I didn't think it would happen any time soon. Least not with the pages of other suggestions.

Oh, and as for the 3DO texture misalignment...try any of the player models. Move the sectors around a bit, try scaling them (with both scale textures on and off) and see the results. The only workaround I've found is to manually copy the vertex data from the new 3DO to the old one, keeping texture and face data as is. Of course that only works when have the same number of vertices between files.

But why, sith2 should read jkl files.

Re: bot paths, why are we spending time on that, does anyone still use rbots?

The docking sounds like it ROCKS.

Jon and Sige want to switch over to a new binary format (for just about everything I think) eventually. So JED should support that, but that wouldn't be a necessity for quite some time.

I do.

Mat3 support in the 3d editor mostly. Of course, they dont even have that hammered out yet so

Yes, the format is done.

And there's a publicly-available MAT3 compiler/extractor.



For JED it would be fine to seek ahead to the first diffuse section - this would be the color/texture for cell 0.

http://web.telia.com/~u31115556/desc/programs.htm

Scroll down to BabbelFisken. This thing can translate Delphi to C#. I might try it but I don't have a compiler (I assume it's C#.NET).

One might be able to use the Visual C++ 2003 Tookit as a free alternative to compile it.

I'd rather have it ported to unmanaged C++ tho.

[Edit: Check the JKHub for my program which handles MAT3 files. It's written in VB.NET, and it will be open source as soon as Jon`C tells me he's tested it and any bugs he's found (HINT HINT)]

JED puriests would probaby want to have my shot for asking this but any plans on implementing a 4 window view so you don't have to keep rotating the grid or pressing ctrl+number (or was it shift+number? I haven't used JED in ages) to change views?

Yep.

But I'll let it slide since you used Jed to make like the best JKSP level ever.

I think this means that we have found out more about flags that JED knows about, and that we have found meanings for some of the unknown flags in JED.

It might be good to have JED read a separate file that lists each flag group (thing flags, surface flags, etc.) with a description for each of the 32 bits in that group. This would allow descriptions to be changed without the need for a recompile.

All of the known flags are described in the DataMaster.

Thanks again for your work and help.

How about making it so you can right click or wheel click and rotate the grid around that way? Or wheel the mouse button to zoom in and out.. that would be able easier than hitting + and - and using arrow keys to move around I think.

This thread makes me so happy it almost brings a tear to my eye.
Keep up the good stuff.

I have to admit the usefulness of Savage's request. (Maybe I'm no longer a JED purist?)

Maybe similar to botpaths (don't know never used Rbots), but I always missed having a line which shows the path of a 3DO (box, ship, enemy) you gave a path with a cog.

I've noticed some discrepencies between lighting in 3D Preview and JK's actual rendering. Am I the only one?

True it's not a 100% match.

BTW, another thing - what was that deal with 16-bit MATs not showing properly in JED? What exactly happens there?



I'll just add a warning in Consistency checker and an option to ether honor or disregard this maximum.



It turned out to be easier. What the possible difficulty was that I wasn't sure how easy it would be to untangle the code to pass the Z value to the procedure that compiles the list of selected objects. I didn't want to go back and recalculate the entire thing again.

Turned out it's pretty easy.



I'll see.



I suggest what you do is make a converter from .JED to whatever format you like. Also I'll add a DLL plug-in interface for loading image file (and perhaps other simple formats as well), so you can add support for any texture formats.



No plans. Not because of purism, but because it's a big remake and I don't have time.

Besides, I couldn't never make any sense out of this 4-view thing and I can't write something I can't understand.



I'll check it out.



I remember I tried it out and I didn't like one bit the way it came out. I might try it again.



This happens out of JED - in Direct3D. Both are supposed to be Goraud shading but I suppose JK might do it diffently...

It's only on transparent 16-bit MATs, they show up like 16-bit MATs without hardware acceleration (or 16-bit MATs in the old JED). You know, the psychadelic colors. I think Mat16 was updated a year or two ago to properly support transparent 16-bit MATs, I think JED 0.95 was created before that.

The texture misalignment happens on any small surface that is moved in JED, not just on 3dos.

Sit down to MS3D or any 3D modeler sometime soon. Take a look at some of their features and PLEASE consider them. I'll list my wants:

% I'd Like
^ Would save a lot of time and effort, would attract more users and are pretty much the things that'd need to be done to fix this program.
* Expansions of the program that extend beyond its current abilities

% Hold CTRL and drag the mouse around to rotate the entire view. Shift to zoom. Scrollbutton does these same features.

^ Actions on multiselected vertices, surfaces, and sectors. [Extrude entire planes, not single surfaces, etc.]

^ Allow for multiselected sectors/vertices/surfaces to REMAIN multiselected until a certain key is pressed.

% Scale function should be a mouse drag, rather than numbers, with an option for dragging by snaps, or free flowing.

^ Scale function should work on vertices.

* Hide selected surfaces, sectors, and 3DOs with a click of a button then [This is a REALLY big request] a mode for texture mapping.

% Should be able to convert a sector to a 3DO in real time to where it instantly converts, saves into my directory, and refreshes.

% Boolean functions would make JED The best 3D Modeler on the market.

% Allow for a cog loader to where I can pre-load a level cog that can be applied to any level with a click of a button. Things like the flicker cog, adjoin-removers, JKA cogs, and what have you won't need to be reapplied every single time you make a new level.

% Mouse control in the 3D Preview.

^ Dynamic Light rendering.

% A mode to render 3DO's hitboxes.

% Texture Mode in 3D Preivew which shows the selected surface and changes dynamically while scrolling through surfaces, rather than actually chosing a surface.

^ Transparencies should render, while true black shouldn't.

* Bot Paths WILL be a needed thing soon if Sith2 fixes JK's netcode.

* Even if we had a 3DO frameset path with animation playing it'd be nice.

%* Speaking of frames, a built in camera system would be PERFECT. To where I can set the entire path of the camera, timing, and rotations with my mouse, then allow me to play it in the 3D preview window to see how it'll look. This particular little gem would make a lot of what I do 100000000 times easier.

I KNOW I can think up more, but I want to hear your opinion on these first Mr. Bender.

JediKirby

This sound like a full time job

I don't have time to do anything major now - I have like half an hour a week to work on it. So I'll go through this list but don't hold your breath... A lot of these things are well beyound the scope of what I'm prepared to do.



So where do I find the format specifics on 16-bit transparent MATs?

BTW, that's already there.

Can you be specific on what you can do, etc? I'm not looking for a promis list, but I want to elaborate on what is possible.

[I'm going to go through and highlight features that are pretty much necissary to improve jed without adding new functions in general.]

How about being able to minimize the map settings window like the item editor? I know if you have to close it out, F4 brings it back, but alot of times when I really get into something I forget keys for stuff like that and it would be easier to have it minimized with the item editor.

Anything but MS3D. MS3D is a piss poor peice of crap.

That's about as specific as I can make it. I can comment specifically on the things you asked:



I'll try that. As I said, I tried it before and it didn't come out right, maybe it'll be better this time.

Wasn't Detty working on a new 3D preview which had transparencies and all sorts of other cool features and what not?


EDIT: Yes, look here:

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=32823
http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=32635

Very cool, perhaps Detty and Bender could collaborate.

A little thought(I have not used JED enough to have an opinion or suggestion on any part of it), but how hard would it be to make a newer 3D Preview using OpenGL or some other good base to render JKL files? I don't know how hard this would be, just an idea. It would look cool.

OK, you're not really seeing my points on any of these, so I'll be more specific:

When you select multiple surfaces all on the same plane, currently, you can't extrude them all as one, and instead, must extrude each one seperatelly. Not to mention, surfaces on a curve that are each selected and extruded move away from the surface origin. If all of those surfaces could be selected as a whole and extruded in a direction, rather than away from the actual surface, it'd make a LOT of things easier. Allowing multiple surfaces to be scaled together, along with vertex scaling would help make JED a great modeling program.

Allowing us to select a group of sectors and surfaces and they STAY selected even after a cleave would make a LOT of my hallways and windows and whatnot work a whole lot better. Pressing space would revert to only one selected sector if needed.

As for a hiding certain surfaces etc, I want to be able to multiselect surfaces and sectors, hit a key [Like P?] and suddenly all of those surfaces/sectors disapear. A different key would make all hidden sectors and surfaces reappear. I know this is already done with layers, but having it on a key press, and having it work without naming layers and whatnot would make a lot of cleaving jobs go by faster.

Booleans would be for modeling, allowing me to minus 1 sector from another, bevel, yada yada yada. Some of those booleans would even work for levels. [Bevel sure would.]

If you can't give a preview of the camera, at least a feature that allows me to build camera/3DO paths would be a godsend. As well as the ability to render those colision spheres would allow us to arange our 3DOs so that gameplay is still smooth.

JediKirby

OpenGL thinger doesn't look like it has perspective, but very interesting

Lookie here.

I have to agree with kirb here, group extrudes would be a godsend. I know I could do some downright amazing stuff with some of the tools in 3DStudio MAX (only geared toward negative space editing).

And I know I've gotten you to do this before (if it's a sore point, I'm sorry :p) but brush support would be fancy (although the brushes will have to be clipped to a single sector, which is probably several billion times outside the scope of what you want to do, but I'd rather not fork JED).

For texture mapping I think what most people are asking for is a U/V unwrap mode.

This sentance is KEY. A low-level 3DSMax for negative space would be PERFECT. And yeah, 3DSMax is a 3500 dollar program; but the features we're asking for are pretty basic. A snapping scale would fix a lot of my messed up scales, too.

JediKirby

GMax is free, albeit not quite as good as 3DSMax, so there's a chance of having something like 3DSMax for negative space editing. Albeit tiny.

How is a modeling program positive or negative space? It's just for creating models, they can be "positive" or "negative" depending on how you build them.

Also, kirby, if you think JED and MS3D are good modeling programs...um...I don't really know what to say. If you stuck any professional with MS3D or JED for a day he wouldn't have any hair left. They are both missing a LOT of features. JED isn't even a modeling program so this is understandable. MS3D *is* a modeling program but also manages to be a counter-intuitive piece of ****.

You and I have played this game before. Let's just break it down to the fact that I can model far more proficiently in something like MS3D than I can in 3DSM depending on the fact that it's organic or inorganic.

JediKirby