The Dawn of the level editor

[AndyCR]

(* means finished, no mark means planned soon)

* Better selection based on scene query flags, excluding scripted objects
* Selection indicator now takes into account multiple materials on subentities
* Framework for support for dragging transform widgets in viewport
* 3DS MAX-style move widget, mouse movement, selection movement
* Rough static mesh addition code
* (Shell) Initialization code complete

Level file saving and loading
Persistent world test code
Beginning of entity code

[Danimita92]

"Persistent world test code"???

Is this as in a code to making Massively Multiplayer Online games with persistent worlds??

[AndyCR]

No, sorry to disappoint you, it's for if you walk from one level to another, then go back to the previous level that the enemies will still be dead, the entities will still be in the state they were, etc. Paradox and I had a long discussion about how to best do it and I'll be writing a test version of what I think will work to see if it does.

[paradoxnj]

Danimita, V1 will not contain network code...however...network code will be there. We are not sure of the extent of the network code, but at the very least you will have multiplayer capability of a first person shooter or an action/rpg like Diablo or Dungeon Siege. Again...this will not be in the first release.

[Danimita92]

Oh, ok. Never mind.

[Jay]

Hm. I have a question/request:

Will RF2 render the world in sectors, or in levels? One thing that would really break one of the limitations of RF would be to render the world in sectors (which uses a grid). I mean, you can say a 'cell' has a size of XYZ and then only thinghs that are in the cell where you are and the cells that surround your cells are rendered or executed. This is very handy for outdoors.

Or/And:
Could it be possible to pack all thinghs into a big world which is loaded at the beginning, but with many small 'levels' like in Morrowind (I know for sure that RF does it differently, it unloads all thinghs of one level and then loads the ones of the next level...thinghs could be cached somehow) This is very good for indoor/outdoors.
'Global Ressources' would be very handy, because they would save a lot of loading times, for example it would be good if the thinghs you need for your hud would not be loaded/unloaded every time you start a new level/game (At the moment, if you use a scripted hud like i they are loadedand unloaded every time... )

[AndyCR]

No plans currently exist beyond the load a level, load another level paradigm which is used in RF, with the addition of keeping state between levels within the current RF2 instance. We might change that later on (possibly after the initial release), but for now that's what we're working on.

[paradoxnj]

One severe limitation that RF2 will break is the ability to have an extremely large world. At this point, if you use a terrain and populate it with meshes, there is pretty much no limit to how large it can be. There is also the new Ogre PagingSceneManager which allows endless terrain that will be factored in here.

We have to get away from the notion of a level. RF2 terminology will be "world". Instead of saying "The Ice Level" or "The mansion level", it will be the "Ice World" or just plain ol "Mansion". Reason is that Ogre is capable of much larger geometry sets and there can be 3 types of worlds:

Indoor
Outdoor
Mesh Based (world built strictly from Ogre meshes (octree based))

Indoor world is the run of the mill Quake 3 BSP
Outdoor is heightmap terrain or paging terrain
Mesh based can be used for making a 3D tile engine or modelling your world using 3DS Max, Blender or some other modelling program.

We are hoping to have examples of all 3 once the release happens.

Jay, what you are asking for is very doable, it's just that Ogre does not work that way out of the box. We would have to do quite a bit of programming to make that work. Not saying that we won't do it, but it definitely will not be in the first few releases. I am sure you will be very pleased with the new larger worlds...

[AndyCR]

I should clarify that indoor is perhaps an unfortunate name for using a Quake 3 BSP; sure, you'll be able to use one, but the "normal" way to make an indoor level is with the Octree scene manager with static meshes from a modeling program and primitives in the editor.

[Sorington]

...but at the very least you will have multiplayer capability of a first person shooter or an action/rpg like Diablo or Dungeon Siege. Again...this will not be in the first release.

Ooooohhh I'll await this version! you are doing a great work!

[AndyCR]

* BSP loading, including camera re-orientation to account for z-up worlds
* Fixed "time since last frame" value
* Made attempting to load an RFL level load a blank world instead of crashing (until we can load native RF2 world files)
* Beginning of unified attribute system (massive task that will basically rip apart the entire GameObject system)

Finish unified attribute system
Entity class
World manager?
World-owned event managers?
Cross-world state keeping ("persistent worlds" again)

[Jay]

Nice. If the 'Persistent world test code' does its job right, all of the worlds can be seen as one big world altogether. I mean, you could easily go back and forth between the levels and it would still be the same it was before you went to the other world, not like it is currently. This will help greatly in building massive worlds.

[paradoxnj]

Large worlds will be supported directly via the PagedGeometry plugin for Ogre. We just have to figure out how to fit that in the design. Hopefully you won't have to simulate a large world with object persistence.

[AndyCR]

Nice. If the 'Persistent world test code' does its job right, all of the worlds can be seen as one big world altogether. I mean, you could easily go back and forth between the levels and it would still be the same it was before you went to the other world, not like it is currently. This will help greatly in building massive worlds.

Yes, true. The biggest issue there would be that there would be Half-Life 2-style sudden load interruptions between portions of the game world, but focusing on things like that right now would be a bit silly, though it would be prudent to keep them in the backs of our minds - the shell has more issues than load time.

[Sorington]

like hl2? then it'll be great!