New Scenario Editor

[Ormus]

As some of you know, I'm creating new scenario editor. At this moment, I have some basic application which can read and save scenario files, edit texts, view and edit outdoor terrain, choose outdoor sections and edit terrain properties. I'm creating it in in VCL, which is class library native for Borland C++ Builder. It is NOT portable and therefore I should change it to something cross-platform like Qt or wxWidgets. Unfortunately, I am not going to this at this time. The reason is simple - I do not have time now to learn new GUI. Generally I do not have time to do anything - I do not have any free time now. What I am going to do when I will find some: build the very first version of editor in VCL. I will do it quite fast because I know VCL and there is no need to experiment with unknown constructions, components, concepts, utilities (debuggers and such). When the application will be complete it would be MUCH easier to port it to some better GUI.

 

Now, the good news. I've written class called Scenario which is responsible for reading and writing scenario data. It is isolated from GUI and uses standard C++ libraries only which makes it portable. Now I'm writing documentation for this class. With this class and technical data it would be possible to write any sort of scenario editor AND rewrite the game itself very easily, which is my goal.

 

Generally, it is much more important for me to make portable, reusable classes that encapsulate vital elements of the game and the editor than working on GUI.

 

Again, screen recording in BB Flashback format:

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/165058509/boe_new_se_test1.fbr

[keira]

Need any help? I can't program worth a *bleep* but I sure can beta-test if you need it.

[Ishad Nha]

I can't download or open the file, not even when I use the Alt + D then Enter trick.

[keira]

you have to wait a bit. It opens up to a page and you have to click stuff

[Ishad Nha]

Oh right, I had to hit the "Free User" button.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Are you using dynamic memory allocation where appropriate?

[Ormus]

Memory for towns, outdoor sections and text strings is allocated dynamically but at this time this isn't done in a right way. It allow to remove some internal game limits in the future but now it always creates constant size arrays so there is no profit form allocating memory dynamically now.

[Celtic Minstrel]

The benefit of dynamically allocating the memory now is that when the game is also modified to dynamically allocate, you won't have to change the editor code as much.

[Ishad Nha]

If you only want to play the above fbr file, there is a free program available here:

http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/FlashBackFreePlayer.aspx

 

From what I can see, the new Scenario Editor is much better integrated than any previous version. There is no need to hop from one screen to another all the time.

 

Edit: using the Player, if you click on the Timeline you can use the Left and Right arrow keys to move through the thing at your own pace. Thus you can take as long as you want to look at each frame.