A while black I was playing around with the editor of spore galactic adventures. I was pretty amazed by it's ease of use etc etc. Actually if it wasn't for it's poor event and actions feature set and the impossibility to import my own models I would probably have tried to develop a "game" on that and be done with all the coding required for jME. So today it occurred to me: why bother making an entire game instead of just an editor? After that, the game would be peanuts! (well not really, but for me, a lot easier at the least). About a few seconds later it occurred to me that something similar probably already exist. So, does it? And if not, would people be interested in such a thing?
I would personally be interested in making such a thing but I don't think I have the skills or knowledge it requires. So I would require something of an "advisor" at the least.
A rough concept is about like this:
Use mapspinner as the terrain editor.
A scene editor to place objects, adjust the to ground level, rotate, etc (or at least that's what I gather a scene editor does)
Physics implementation (and the possibility to switch it off) and designating what nodes are physics nodes
Attach "behaviours" to an object (actually "attaches" it to a custom rootNode with the object as argument)
Pre-create basic items/units like bullets, tracked vehicles, explosions on death etc.
Some form of multiplayer/online implementation
Be developed for jME3
Basically the editor should enable the end-user to make a basic and very standard game (like soldier based deathmatch shooter) with just a few clicks, more complex and original things would require more work as new classes should be written.
This is probably one of the most sorely needed features as jME, as it right now remains mostly restricted to those with a decent amount of programming savvy… There's no startup experience like importing a model straight into a scene editor and saying "oh man, that was easy!" (not that it's currently a difficult task)
That said, ncomp mentioned JGF, which could certainly be up your alley
JGF and SceneWorker would be of help. SceneWorker also has a standalone version. But at this time it’s too early to adopt JGF unless you are willing to accept major bugs and changes.
Last I heard JMW3D was discontinued. I read that somewhere on this forum, not sure where anymore though.
While adopting JGF would mean you'll get a lot of missing features and bugs etc. it would help us a lot in determining what features people would need. There's only so much we can come up with ourselves…
Last thought I had on this was building on SceneWorker (if permission is given ofc) and cannibalizing as much as possible from JGF (again, if I get permission for it). I've put this idea on hold however while I finish my university project (a supposedly simple raytracer that got a bit out of hand when I became too enthousiastic about it).
Ah nice, I haven't managed to keep scene worker working on my Ubuntu desktop yet but from the videos it looks very nice. Also I'm currently working on an event editor based on what I saw from UDK, perhaps we could integrate that as well. Still a long way to go though and I'm dividing my free time between that and 3d modeling.
hehe, I know what you mean! And the problem: too less freetime
I haven't managed to keep scene worker working on my Ubuntu desktop yet
Where is the problem? Maybe we can help!? I have installed it from svn inside eclipse and it works quite well
(although I'm not really using it,yet :D )
It freezes, locks up or starts behaving "funny" after a short while… go figure. But I haven't really tried anything yet, like you said, free time constrains.
