Pie Viewer

[Black Sabbath]

Mysteryem was wondering if I still had the Pie Viewer program I wrote so here's a link to it.

http://www.st165-all-trac.net/warzone/PieViewer.zip

[Mysteryem]

Thank you.

[Mysteryem]

I've taken all the files from editworld and added them to the files used by pie viewer. There are some quite interesting ones.

[Black Sabbath]

Here is another program you might like if you have designed your own Pie models and they have custom textures. This program will convert your Texpages into DDS format. I use it because it compresses the textures really well and offers me the ability to create tiles with transparency which I wanted for the land editor I was writing so I could create Alpha and Base tiles.

http://www.st165-all-trac.net/warzone/dxtex.zip





Land Editor showing only Alpha tiles.


Land Editor showing only Base tiles.


All tiles on. Along the bottom you can see the Base tile on the far left and all the Alpha versions to the right of it.

[Mysteryem]

The only problem is that pie files seem to have changed a bit since you made your pie viewer and don't work with it. At the moment I can't seem to work out what the problem is.
That land editor looks good.

[Black Sabbath]

I can get your Fortress Base to load.

File names must be 8 characters or less no spaces so I renamed fortress base.pie to fortress.pie and placed it in the PieViewer/warzone/structs folder and added "fortress" to the file structs.gam and used dxtex to create page-31.dds and placed that file in the folder PieViewer/warzone/texpages

[Mysteryem]

I can get your Fortress Base to load.

File names must be 8 characters or less no spaces so I renamed fortress base.pie to fortress.pie and placed it in the PieViewer/warzone/structs folder and added "fortress" to the file structs.gam and used dxtex to create page-31.dds and placed that file in the folder PieViewer/warzone/texpages

Ah I see 8 characters or less and no spaces. It's working now. Thanks for the help.

[Buginator]

Here is another program you might like if you have designed your own Pie models and they have custom textures. This program will convert your Texpages into DDS format. I use it because it compresses the textures really well and offers me the ability to create tiles with transparency which I wanted for the land editor I was writing so I could create Alpha and Base tiles.

http://www.st165-all-trac.net/warzone/dxtex.zip

All tiles on. Along the bottom you can see the Base tile on the far left and all the Alpha versions to the right of it.

Hey Black Sabbath, we could always use another developer.

[Black Sabbath]

Hey Black Sabbath, we could always use another developer.

Been there done that.....maybe at some point in the future.

For now I plan on developing a single player skirmish game useing the warzone data (maps, models, sounds...) but that may also benefit you guys because I will also be developing the

land editor that I pictured above which will use the same format as editworld for the data and will append the extra alpha tiles at the end of the file so if you don't use alpha tiles it would produce an editworld file.


and PFE editor pictured below which will allow the creation of PIE files with floating point precission. The PFE format is the same as the PIE format it just replaces integer values with floating point numbers.


PFE editor pictured above in the primary screen where you can edit/add/delete points & polygons


PFE editors texture mapping screen. You can either select a polygon on the primary screen and transfer to this screen to map the texture or you can select a polygon in the mini floating toolbar. The texture page is displayed fullscreen in the background and can be scrolled to display parts of the texture page currently offscreen. The results of the mapping of the texture will be displayed in realtime on the model in the mini floating toolbar.

[Black Sabbath]

Right now I'm working on a research program so you can load the research data and other statistics files and find prerequisites and statistics about upgrades and costs. Hopefully you'll be able to pick a research topic you want to achieve and the program will display all prerequisites and give you statistics like total cost and time for all the research as well as detailed statistics for each of the prerequisites. Ultimately I hope to use this as a tool to better ballance the research options and the strength of various weapons. Eventually it should load all warzones data and then I can create different report screens that will allow me to view things like detailed statistics on a group of weapons that I select like rate of fire, damage per round, time to research, total cost and hopefully by being able to view detailed data like that it will make it easier to ballance various aspects of the game.

[whippersnapper]

.

Oh my Black Sabbath it''s gonna be really hard NOT to wanna work on WZ MODs and Maps with these set of tools. A tremendous
boon for the creative folks in the neighborhood and those that will play with the results.

Still have the first release of your land editor with the ability to make tunnels. While you can do good work with 32EW it's a bit
of a mess and has no alpha channel support..

That skirmish game project of yours sounds mighty interesting too.

Regards, whipper

.

[Mysteryem]

Still have the first release of your land editor with the ability to make tunnels.

Tunnels?! O_O

[Zarel]

Right now I'm working on a research program so you can load the research data and other statistics files and find prerequisites and statistics about upgrades and costs. Hopefully you'll be able to pick a research topic you want to achieve and the program will display all prerequisites and give you statistics like total cost and time for all the research as well as detailed statistics for each of the prerequisites. Ultimately I hope to use this as a tool to better ballance the research options and the strength of various weapons. Eventually it should load all warzones data and then I can create different report screens that will allow me to view things like detailed statistics on a group of weapons that I select like rate of fire, damage per round, time to research, total cost and hopefully by being able to view detailed data like that it will make it easier to ballance various aspects of the game.

...you do realize that's exactly what Warzone Guide does?

By the way, you can have its source code if you want. It might help.

[Black Sabbath]

.Still have the first release of your land editor with the ability to make tunnels. While you can do good work with 32EW it's a bit of a mess and has no alpha channel support...

Yes if you look really close along the right edge of the mini map thats in the top left corner you can just make out the edge of a cave entrance. Unfortunately I have decided that for all the trouble they would be to introduce into the game they don't really offer that big a gain.


I think alot more can be gained by just ballancing everything out better and improving the AI. I really want to improve alot on the strategy side of the game. I read one of the articles you had a link to where they refer to RTS games as real time tactics not strategy. I want a more detailed interface where I can easilly wage war on multiple fronts and be able to stay on top of all the battles. Warzone is the ultimate base of data to start with but the original game is to focused on individual battles, its very hard to create 4 groups of units and send them off in different directions and then effectively monitor all the groups with the original interface. I don't really plan on changing the game at all just the interface (GUI's) so the user can get a more detailed view of everything.

A very simple idea would be the ability to display a fullscreen version of the minimap which would allow alot greater detail of the whole world. I know a 2D minimap may be a step backward in video technology but even in todays modern warfare most generals are still going to be looking at some sort of 2D representation of the overall battle. I think the fullscreen minimap will be the primary tool for the game player to access the game. I would imagine the user spending about 5% of total game time in the 2D view with the other 95% of game time being devoted to the 3D view and various GUI's that will available in the 3D view.

Of course you have seen before other things like splitting the screen into 2 or 4 different sections so you can view multiple parts of the world and that will also be an option and I also think there's alot of room to explore letting the user develop some sort of "AI Generals" that they control/script to aid them in controling the game.

[elio]

to get you up to date quickly:

land editor that I pictured above which will use the same format as editworld for the data and will append the extra alpha tiles at the end of the file so if you don't use alpha tiles it would produce an editworld file.

a new terrain renderer will be introduced viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379 where we don't have to adjust the tiles anymore.

and PFE editor pictured below which will allow the creation of PIE files with floating point precission. The PFE format is the same as the PIE format it just replaces integer values with floating point numbers.

no need to reinvent the wheel
check out WZM_format and viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2156

regards
elio