[JasonB]

Oooh, awesomeness to the max. Much <3 for Steve.
He has done it again.

[Cerbera]

I've finally found time to give this a quick prod. The interface already feels quite mature and well thought out, but there are always things which can be improved.

Some little things which could be improved:-

1. Having to switch between "Edit Mode" and "View Mode" is very clumy, imho. Ideally, the input should allow the user to do either without switching modes.
2. The current sidebar setup requires the window to be about 825 pixels tall in order to avoid scrolling. This means users with desktop sizes of 800 x 600 will never be able to see all the editing controls at once; they'll have to keep scrolling the container up and down while working.
3. The editing controls in the sidebar feel extremely cramp; everything is very close together and is sizes so small its hard to click on.
4. One item in each main menu is emboldened and acts as the "default" item, automatically accessed by double-clicking the menu title. This is highly unconventional, not helpful and causes the emboldened item to distract attention from the other items. It looks bad, too.
5. Menu layout has unconventional positions for some standard items (especially in the "File" menu) and there is no clear logic to the menu items which are unique to this application.
6. The menus generally have good accelerator keys (Alt+Key) but some of the shortcut keys conflict with conventional usage. For example, F4 is sometimes used for "Properties" or opening dropdown lists. Ctrl+F4 is used for closing documents in an MDI application (or tabs in a multi-tabbed Web browser). And so on.
7. Many controls cannot be accessed using keyboard accelerator keys. This makes the interface slower to operate for advanced users as they have to move the mouse between controls instead of pressing the button combination.
8. Many controls cannot be tabbed to with the keyboard. Keyboard tabbing can speed up user interactions when many related controls are placed near each other on a form (like in the sidebar).
9. There isn't a "Find as you type" (FAYT) search box for long lists.

These are mostly minor niggles but addressing them will improve this already good application.

Probably the biggest change I'd suggest your make would be to the sidebar, so it became more user-friendly. I think using two sidebars plus a toolbar (or several optional toolbars) would work better, much like the GTA2 Map Editor has. The list of COLs would be on the left and would take up the full height, making it faster to locate and display objects. The detailed editing controls would be placed on the left, with common editing controls placed in a toolbar across the top.

Many of the special editing controls do not seem to be applicable to all available tabs. Controls should only be displayed in a tab if they can actually be used as part of that tab. By removing defunct controls from the tabs, you would have more space and so could lay out the controls in a friendlier manner. This benefit is magnified because they would be in a new, full-height sidebar--there would be fewer controls placed in a larger area. Additionally, the absence of controls which could not be used in that tab would reduce confusion of users (particularly beginners) who would wonder what they had to do to the file in order for those functions to become available.


(EDIT) Having said all of this, in general the interface is very good. Report windows inform the user of any potential problems during file processing. There are some fantastic usability features, such as Edit > Sort by IDE. I hope you decide to refine the interface further and make this even more awesome!

This post has been edited by Cerbera on Sunday, Jan 8 2006, 14:33

[DexX]

QUOTE (steve-m @ Jan 4 2006, 12:34)

QUOTE (ashdexx @ Jan 4 2006, 14:46) added real shadows to half the procedural objects Screenshots?

http://www.sabrehost.com/~tjbp/dexxhole/barrelhand.jpg
Objects dont always generate shadows, depends on the object and how far into the ground its..."submerged", since they dont generate 100& above the ground faces.

QUOTE

Too lazy to select and press the del button? But yea, I'll simply add a function that checks if an object with that name already exists and give a dialog where you can choose whether to replace, add or ignore. This would also serve as batch replace.

well it gets tedious when you have a considerable amount of objects. if you do the dialog, can you have a checkbox, to skip the check for the next objects? confirming 30-50+ objects is still...ugh.

QUOTE

Why?? You export your files for several game versions? Also, you can mix different versions within one file. If you can give me a convincing explanation I'll do it. (Otherwise, just enter '*' in the open dialog and you'll see all files.)

that was my convincing explanation
its not a big deal, although Cerb's idea might be an even better one. (col*)

QUOTE

The list of COLs would be on the left and would take up the full height, making it faster to locate and display objects.

one more thing about the COl list, is the object sorting. Could you add a "Sort -> Alphabetical" option, so finding specific cols would be faster? i tried selecting an object on the list, typing the first few characters of the object name in the list (just for example, typing "a51", to find "a51_rocketlab") and it does nothing. Essentially its mousescroll, or use the arrow keys to find objects.

[Gforce]

i only just saw you finally let this loose to the general populous, this tool f***ing Rocks bigtime!! .......... thanks

[Cerbera]

QUOTE (DexX @ Jan 8 2006, 09:23)

QUOTE (Cerbera) The list of COLs would be on the left and would take up the full height, making it faster to locate and display objects. one more thing about the COl list, is the object sorting. Could you add a "Sort -> Alphabetical" option, so finding specific cols would be faster? i tried selecting an object on the list, typing the first few characters of the object name in the list (just for example, typing "a51", to find "a51_rocketlab") and it does nothing. Essentially its mousescroll, or use the arrow keys to find objects.

If a dual-sidebar layout was used, the extra vertical space for the COLs list would allow space for a "find as you type" (FAYT) box, a lot like the Bookmarks and History sidebars in Firefox have. The list would be emptied of all entries which did not contain the sequence of characters present in the box. When the string changes, all items are checked against the sequence any any which match are displayed. Any results produced would be sorted according to the current order (natural, alphabetcal or by the ordering in a supplied IDE file).

All entries in the list would be restored when the box is emptied, using the current sorting method set by the user. A "Reset" button would be an optional addition to automatically clear the FAYT box.

[Drakos]

First of all i would like to say well done to steve for his great programs/tools.

i a question. i often use Sketchup to make my models, especially buildings. Now i use the CollMaker tool make the collision file for the object. In game, there are many invisible walls within the model they were not supposed to be.


Steve-m Reply to Deathsquad CollMaking tutorial:

QUOTE

Also, to get rid of Sketchup's invisible walls you'd have to use CE2's optimize function, which isn't done automatically when you're importing/opening an existing .col file (as in your tut).

This is the problem i have. Can you explain please how to fix this problem abd what to do with optimize function and so on??

This post has been edited by Drakos on Sunday, Apr 23 2006, 21:08

[MChanna03]

QUOTE

This is the problem i have. Can you explain please how to fix this problem abd what to do with optimize function and so on??

I've been having the same problem with the invisable walls...if you could explain the optimize function.. it would help me out a lot

[steve-m]

Well, these "invisible walls" are believed to be caused by degenerated triangles, but that has never been confirmed, and I don't use Sketchup myself. Degenerated triangles are those where 2 or 3 vertices are (almost) identical, thus making them effectively lines.

In the current release CE2's optimize function welds vertices within a distance of 0.01, removes triangles with identical vertices (also duplicated flipped ones), and removes isolated vertices. This gets rid of degenerated triangles and everything that's "invisible", but afaik it doesn't solve all Sketchup related problems.

To optimize collision objects, select them, right-click and "Optimize". Alternatively you can use the batch converter. All non-col files you import (i.e. cst and 3ds) get optimized automatically.

[MChanna03]

cool good job on the program.. im goin to try it on my object that has invisable walls..

[Drakos]

still NOT working.
I am very f*cking pissed off with these damn invisible walls, please stece is there any other solution??

1) I selected - right click - optimize - save - Run Game : still invisible walls
2) batch converter - optimize + Minimize Bounding Volumes ...... : STILL f*ckING INVISIBLE WALLS

This post has been edited by Drakos on Tuesday, Apr 25 2006, 17:34

[steve-m]

Applying optimization more than once won't help anything. Neither do tons of smilies.

And I don't know any solution other than switching to a "proper" modeling program.

And you are sure your mesh isn't flipped or rotated somehow?

[Drakos]

lol sorry steve if my smilies are annoying to you. when i clicked to optimized the mesh it was already flipped. i will try optimizing first- then flipping and Mirror X

[PlatinumSerb]

QUOTE (steve-m @ Apr 24 2006, 17:38)

In the current release CE2's optimize function welds vertices within a distance of 0.01, removes triangles with identical vertices (also duplicated flipped ones), and removes isolated vertices. This gets rid of degenerated triangles and everything that's "invisible", but afaik it doesn't solve all Sketchup related problems.

Would increasing that number(0.01) fix more of the "invisible walls"?

[Cerbera]

Increasing that distance could run the risk of removing legitimate faces?

[steve-m]

Probably. That's hardcoded atm, but I wanted to make it user-definable once I add an options dialog. But I doubt I'll update it anytime soon.

[jani201]

when i open sa vehicles.col, it opens the airtrain.col only. how can i change linerun.col o new one and how can i find it? i tried the edit->find option but doesn't find it...

[xmen]

its not there, its in dff...

[fincar]

Very useful tool!

[g4mGunner]

yeah nice bump

[bammargera]

QUOTE (steve-m @ Dec 29 2005, 14:32)

Yea. Click "Edit > Batch Conversion...", add all col files you want to convert, tick "Generate Lighting", "Material Conversion", and "Optimize" (not "Minimize Bounding Volumes"!); select "Col 3" as output version, press OK and in the lighting generator choose your lighting (I'd recommend simple non-directional lighting at ~30%).

what so does this mean it lights all the col's the same like pre lighting or am i way off the mark, and maybe even holding the wrong end of the stick