Gendal

The first thing I did was make a control that loads up several screens at once, so there will definatly be a window where you can set the screen resolution, then check or uncheck what windows you want to show up and then move/resize them to your hearts content.

Actually its one of the last things I am going to do, since its also the most fun and probably easiest its driving me along to finish up all the boring mundane crap thats left. All the fun/hard stuff has been done, its just work now

buzweaver

Looking foward to the release

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Retired
BuzzFelinous (26 Bard)
BuzzVar(40 Shaman)
BuzzSilverThor (68 Storm Warder )

Stregar

All I can say is...wow.

Hat is off to you my friend....well done.

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Faille

I'm just curious how you managed to parse out the graphics from the .tga files and apply them to the skin windows (this is for visual representation in the program, not in game). I've never done anything with skinning and am unsure how to approach that. Is there a way to tell the program to only display a portion of the image, or does it have to create temporary copies of just that portion. For example there is one .tga that has eight billion little interface buttons. Do you have to create eight billion temporary files to then display, or is there a simpler way to do it.

Sorry if this makes no sense, I have plenty of college-level programming experience but haven't found any reason to take it to the next level until now.

Gendal

All most all graphics api's will include a function for copying a bitmap section to another bitmap, so no, you don't create tons of temporary files heh. You could always write your own if they didnt, not hard just tedious.

I would start with learning games programming since they cover this topic in depth usually, with an ear towards 2d sprite management.

Kalvorie

I am looking forward to playing with this when it is available. VI gets to you after a while, heh.

tadashya

/drool


boy do I ever want this. Looking forward to its release!

xguix

Wow! Verrrrrry nice!

Being a developer myself I gotta ask...

Is this your first .NET project? How is C# as compared to let's say VB.NET (which I'm familliar with)? Are you making any enterprise features (e.g. built-in sharing of mods/skins), or is it a strictly desktop application? What is the most difficult component for you (XML parsing, Graphic handling, etc.)?

A friend of mine wrote a very similar application on VC++ for another company. Well, it wasn't very similar, for instance the data was drawn from database (SQL Server), not XML. But the overall structure of that application was very close to what you're creating. It took him over a year co realease a version 1.0 (with countless betas before that of course), so I'm wondering how long you've been working on this project.

From the looks of it this editor will be everyone's dreams come true. I know I can't wait to play around with it

Binnamar

Ohhh. Binn wants! Can't wait for this to go live. Maybe then I will make my own mod

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Binnamar- 50 Dwarven warrior

Gendal

Been working on it about 2 weeks after the SIDL.xml was available on test. Its my 4th or 5th .net project, which includes a website (www.talismanguild.org), and several internal enterprise apps all in c# (c# = vb.net for the most part, just I like c# syntax and some minor abilities, nothing that you couldn't replicate in vb) If I was writing this in c++ with out the .net framework I would be no where near the point I am now, as of now the hardest thing was getting alpha transparent tga's into the framework. Was using a dll I found but because of licensing considerations I had to spend some time and rewrite my own c++ dll which has lost me some time.

I have lots of dreams of skin sharing/filesharing/net enabled apps floating in my head but I am forcing myself to put those aside till I get something basic out and working. Right now I am concerned about gdi+'s performance. Its useable but slow while using the graphics features on less than top of the line computers, and it doesn't have to be. A solution would be a directx or gdi rewrite but that would take quite a bit of time so I have put that on the back burner. GDI+ is slow but its very nice and easy to work with. Figured I would get something usefull out first then go back later and redo the graphic part if necessary (which it probably will be).

This is my first xml project, I usually work in sql too heh. This was a learning experiance to get some xml knowledge under my belt, and its gotten way out of hand =p

Overall its progressing nicely, should have something basic very soon for you all to break.

Hroar

very nice

Lythander

I know that my biggest nightmare right now is working on window tabs, will that option be in this? (BTW the program looks simply amazing ;-))

~Lythander, of Bristlebane~

Gendal

Currently you can add tabs, open an individual page, and add items to each page via drag and drop from a toolbox. You can click on the tabs on a tabbox and it shows the correct page etc (double click on each page to open the page editor etc). It doesn't handle scrollbars atm though, that will probably be much later.

Things left to do before I release a version to the public are finish up the autostretch handling (it renders correctly, but it doesn't respons to user drag/resizing like I want it to, though you can atm set it fine using the properties editor) and finish implementing the command layer (so you all can have undo/redo/cut/copy/paste etc). Hopefully should be 1 week before private testing, and if all goes well a public release shortly (less than a week?) after that.

That's assuming my work (real work =p) responsibilities don't interfere like they have been

Web site is up at www.sidlwidl.com but atm there is little to no content, and will probably remain that way for awhile.

UniDyne

Wow! When I saw those xsl transformations, I had absolutely no idea that you were *this* far along on an editor! Great job - truly great!