now that we have finished version 4.1 of MonkeyWord 3D, we are focusing on the next release. We have a lot of ideas and plans for this release, but we want to know, what you think should be part of one of the next versions.
MW3D is "almost" complete, in terms of what can be done, but still its a long way to improve the tools in terms of how they can be done.
What i'm interested in is, what features are completly missing, but should be in it in your opinion.
I'm starting here, with the things i want to see in MW3D:
After the release of 4.1, I assigned the Radakan team to evalulate MonkeyWorld's terrain editing capabilities, being that I cannot run it on my vista system.
Recently the programming department have been discussing the use of MonkeyWorld3D 4.1.
"MonkeyWorld3D currently is a scene graph editor for the jMonkeyEngine." . Supposedly, this tool should also serve as a usable terrain editor, with features on-par with our own WorldTool. With our tests so far though, we've concluded with little less than that this piece of software is extremely unintuitive, being very user-unfriendly.
Being that the primary aim of Radakan's editor is to be used by the design department, it is important that it's easy enough to use by casual people rather than programmers, who are more technical oriented.
To be honest, I don't think any of the features you mentioned in your post really needed (or as important right now). I think I might have some better suggestions. Please contact me by MSN/AIM/ICQ, it's easier to talk that way..
I think it would be nice to be able to set key-value pairs for spatials in a "User Data" property pane. I do this myself for my own editor. The key-value pairs can be stored via Spatial.setUserData and also accessed via UserDataManager.getAllData.
I think it would be nice to be able to set key-value pairs for spatials in a "User Data" property pane. I do this myself for my own editor. The key-value pairs can be stored via Spatial.setUserData and also accessed via UserDataManager.getAllData.
Great idea, I think its the only place where users can add there own properties to the game with out changing classes in jMe.
Also, if it doesn't already exist, a way to group similar types of objects or a way to import Java classes(So, in a level, all the ladders in the level let the player climb up them when a player goes near them, and then just load multiple levels into the actual game). Do you understand what I mean, or should I try to explain?
theprism: Or editable at both run time and design time. I personally hate editing at run time.
This is gonna be hard to explain, I'll do my best. I'll try to explain with an example. Let's say I have a level that portrays the inside of a spaceship. There are ladders around the level, some items, and other stuff, designed by a level editor. I load the .jME into the game and drop the player at a certain node. 1st, how do I make it so the game knows what the name of the node is? It would have to be the same through multiple levels. (We are trying to make this dynamic, so you can load multiple levels easily.) But what if you had a ladder? Then how would the game know which nodes he can climb up? So there are 2 things I am asking a for. A way to identify similar objects in a level(like a id or something that can be used multiple times to access all of the same id), and a way to import a class. By importing a class, I mean take a template for an object made by you guys specifically for loading into jME, and change the template to be an object(like an item, or the player). Sorry if I'm bad at explaining, but I hope this helps.
The landscape and scene should be editable at game run time, not at design time.
I would like to see monkeyworld3d have an api that allows its usage at game run time
But that would mean, that the game has to be an eclipse application (rcp or simple plugin), because the MW3D tools are tightly integrated with eclipse.
But why not create some OSGi games, this might be a good idea anyways.
