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Old 10-23-2007, 07:55 AM   #76
shillingworth
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I may have found some help on this project, not entirely sure though since so many people have offered to help but run away at the sight of actual code. Working on converting the entire rendering stuff over to Direct X now, I've been considering it for awhile now, XNA has some nasty habits that I've been having to work around which is overly complicating what should be simple procedures.

Luckily the vast majority of the drawing stuff is modular enough to easily transition it over to Direct X, only things I really have to change are in the base object that it all builds off from, and a few small parts of animations.
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Old 01-24-2008, 09:37 PM   #77
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Was offline for awhile again, but got a lot of work on this done. The whole thing works with Direct X now. Got the preview panel working in the editing tool, even a caching system that handles maintaining a cache of images and animations. Currently adding a layer between the interface manager and the editor to handle default UI lookups (like referencing an animation in the default ui from some custom ui). That part is going slow though, it's tricky to allow a custom ui to access parts of the default ui without having conflicts between the two.

Also added some functionality to the interface manager, allowing it to build the equi.xml file with a reference ui in mind. What I mean by a reference ui is including an entire ui in the equi.xml file, similar to the <include>../default/equi.xml</include>, but not restricted to just doing that to the default ui, of course some validation comes into play, like if it tries to load a ui that doesn't eventually lead to the default ui, it will reject it and prompt the user to decide if they want to add a reference to the default ui in the root of it all.

In example the reference ui works like this:

You have a UI called BOBUI that has an equi.xml with <include>../BILLUI/equi.xml</include>
BILLUI doesn't make a reference to "default", so the program ask the user if they'd like to reconstruct the equi.xml file to include a reference to the default ui.
After BILLUI's equi.xml is reconstructed, assuming it just had a copy and pasted equi.xml from the default ui, all of the <include>s that pointed to files in the default ui would be removed and <include>../default/equi.xml</include> would be put in their place.

With that functionality came a new setting though, I realised that some of ya wont want that stuff, so I added a setting called Good Practice Guidelines, or GPG, which will disable or enable restricting code to what is theoretically safe. The GPG can be enabled for each node in the equi structure, for all interfaces, a certain interface, a certain file, even a certain element.

Also added a very powerful feature called Snapshot. What it does is take a Snapshot of a UI, not visual what it looks like, but of it's data. The Snapshot was originally going to be my Undo feature, but evolved to allow me to store an entire interface in a single file that's 1/65th the size of the actual interface. Each Snapshot is saved using a naming scheme, like EQIASnapshot_Default_01082008_1324.sns for a snapshot of the default ui on jan 8 2008 at 1:24pm. The snapshot's can be loaded almost instantly, with the compression I used on them, they actually load faster than the xml it represents. They store everything from images, to xml, even additional text files that describe what's in the ui.

After I get the main manager working I'll be releasing the first usable version of the program, without the main manager it's all so worthless since no custom ui replaces all of the default ui elements.
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Old 01-26-2008, 09:33 AM   #78
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You rock Shill & welcome back!
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Old 01-27-2008, 04:44 PM   #79
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Is good to be back. Things go slower without having the vast knowledge of the internet at my fingertips, though if I looked up a compression algorithm I doubt the snapshot would be nearly as efficient as it is having built one from scratch. The first couple weeks of messing with getting DirectX fully operational was a major PITA.

I use two monitors so it was important to be able to move the window to the second monitor while debugging, which just gives ya a black screen if you don't set DirectX up properly for multi-monitor support. Having virtually no documentation on the process of moving a DirectX surface from one monitor to the other without losing buffers, I had to play with it until figuring it out. I kinda cheated though, I keep a copy of the Texture buffer in system memory and just duplicate that copy to the video memory when the device is lost and recreated.
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Old 01-28-2008, 12:29 AM   #80
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Ya know what is scary... I actually sorta understood all of that lol. I also use 2 monitors for alot of coding.. sometimes 3, but mainly always have 2 up.
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Old 02-17-2008, 05:17 PM   #81
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I've got most of the manager stuff done, just working on replacing stuff like a overrided texture (say bufficons.tga) with one that's in the custom UI folder but not in an animation block of the custom ui. It's tricky, I'm finding the .Net DirectoryInfo class isn't holding onto the directory I open it with, when I change one instance of it, they all loose the directory they were pointed at. Downloading some updates to .Net, hopefully it was some kinda bug that was fixed, if it isn't fixed.

Mostly though over the past couple weeks I was moving and walking up and down the road with buckets of water. The plumbing in this house I moved to was ripped out by some lowlifes. Haven't worked on programming stuff to much the last couple weeks, never got a chance to fully recover from the pains of moving due to carrying buckets of water. Been taking motrin for my back and shoulders, but that stuff makes it hard for me to concentrate. Tomorow I get water turned on, so hopefully within the next week I'll have enough time to recover without lifting heavy crap again.
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Old 02-20-2008, 12:47 AM   #82
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I feel your pain... I have been battling back/neck problems over the past few months... going to the chiropractor... still an effort for me to sit in front of the computer for long periods of time. Hope you feel better
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Old 03-11-2008, 11:02 AM   #83
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Haven't touched this project in awhile now. Maybe after my current project at work I'll get back to working on it. Actually coding a GUI engine at work, started to get confusing working on EQIA and the project at work, so I put it down for awhile.
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Old 04-12-2008, 09:09 PM   #84
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Is this project finished yet? I'm eager to give it a try.
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Old 05-11-2008, 04:07 PM   #85
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It's not finished yet.

Currently reworking some of the graphic device set up code, something in the updated DirectX SDK (March) broke it. It's a real pita due to all the code in that system, was really hoping I wouldn't have to touch that part again.
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Old 06-09-2008, 10:58 AM   #86
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I've all but given up on this project. Just don't have the interest anymore to really work on it, been much to busy working on my game engine and a multiplayer game. With all the work the multiplayer game requires I seriously doubt I'll do more than touch the code to this project for more than a couple hours every week (which definitely isn't enough time to finish it at a noticeable pace).

If any C# developer would like to try to finish it, I have several versions of the source code saved. The versions mostly work the same, a couple are with XNA doing the rendering, others with Direct X doing the rendering, most the small variations are in the way it handles the entire UI. The only parts I can really call finished in all the versions is the XML serialization/deserialization, the structure of the files-interface could really use some work to be fully usable in an editor, however UI element structure is fully functional. Not all of the drawing code is complete either, the major stuff is there, mostly with drawing everything just needs to be pulled together into the actual behavior of the EQUI system. Even have the a lot of the editor coded up with collapsible panels using an old version of the Krypton toolkit. Most of the source is well documented and code is laid out in an easy to navigate manner.

Anyone interested in picking up source code to actually work on it, send me a message here with an email address I can send the source to.
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Old 09-12-2008, 09:50 PM   #87
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Sometime over this weekend I will post the source code to this project in the utilities section of downloads page. After seeing a lot of request for it in my inbox and being knocked offline yet again for awhile, I took the time to go through the source and straighten out the structure.
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Old 09-13-2008, 09:12 AM   #88
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That would be great, I've been thinking to make one myself but not much of a programmer atm so hopefully your source code would help me get started If any issues with hosting it here PM me i can put it on my website.
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Old 09-14-2008, 03:38 AM   #89
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Submitted the source code, long as there are no problem it should be up soon in the Utilities section of the Downloads page.

Well Kelso if you plan to give it a shot, you'll definitely want to study up a bit on working with 2D graphics in XNA Game Studio since that's a huge part of what needs to be done to make it into a full-fledged editor.

Even though I posted the Xna version, it wouldn't take to much work to convert to managed direct x if that's your flavor, I figured Xna would probably be the wiser choice since it's more friendly to work with.

Also to note is a dumped the old editor code, couldn't find the version of Kryton Toolkit i was working with and it appears the newer versions are fee based, the one provided though shows how to work with stuff I have established so far so that'll hopefully be enough help.
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Old 09-14-2008, 04:54 PM   #90
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OK thanks! Will give it a shot maybe eventually ill get something working 8)

Also CC'ed zip to my website just incase

http://ui.bloodrogue.com/utility/EQ...ceArchitect.zip
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