GGE Live Editor
Contents
1. m ggeGame GGEReadyCallBack new GGE GGEReadyEventHandler OnGGEReady Where OnGGEReady is the function called when the GGEReadyCallBack even is called private void OnGGEReady object sender EventArgs e if GGE sender m_ggeMV m ggeMV MV GetListParticleSystems PropertyTuples GLE PropertyTuples are used to both send and receive information about property retrievals or changes on an object GLE PropertyTuple contains a Property and a Value and can for example contain the Position on X axis where Property Pos X is the Property and Value is 13 37 The value is stored as a string because it can be more than just numbers it could for example contain a name or an enumeration value But even then we can look up the type of the Property in the static GLE PropType dictionary Using this dictionary and C s type casting creation functions allows us create an instance of the object using its actual type This can be done as follows Type T GGE PropTypes propTuple Property if T BaseType Name Enum valueCell Value System Enum Parse T pair Value else valueCell Value Convert ChangeType pair Value T But I suggest reading up on C s type and reflection documentation before attempting any trickery with it Forms All forms are defined in a separate file in the Forms folder The most important one is the MainForm defined in MainForm cs The2. Mode Controls mimic Maya Controls The Editor Mode Controls are used in the Model Viewer To rotate about the pivot point hold left alt and the left mouse button and spin your mouse To zoom in hold left alt and scroll the mouse wheel To move around the scene hold left alt and the middle mouse button and move the mouse around To pick an object in the scene from the renderer window click it with the left mouse button CONFIGURATION FILE GLE has an XML based configuration file that is loaded on application startup It is in the same directory as GLE exe and is named GLE exe config It can control the following settings AutoStartModelViewProcess Controls whether or not to automatically load the Model Viewer process on GLE startup Value can be 1 or 0 HideOutput Controls whether or not to automatically hide the console output window numbered 6 in the Initial Window picture Value can be 1 or 0 CameraRotationSpeed Controls the sensitivity ofthe mouse rotation speed in GGE Value can be any float number the default value is 0 13 CameraMovementSpeed Controls the sensitivity of the mouse movement speed in GGE Value can be any float number the default value is 0 02 PROGRAMMING ARCHITECTURE The idea for this project was simple building an editor for an existing game engine written in C As it is well known the user interface written for C is not the best one We decided that C and the windows framework was perfect fo
3. can cause timing issues at lower frame rates turn VSync on if you observe this problem GGE D3DSTestureManager recreated GGE 0 unmanaged textures GGE D3DSHardwareBufferM anager recreated GGE 0 unmanaged vertex buffers 6 GGE 0 unmanaged index buffers GGE Direct3D Device successfully restored A SM M d GGE Process connected From 127 0 0 1 19001 GGE State Editor Bytes In Out 626 1664 1 This is where GGE is rendered 2 File Operations from left to right a Open Game Opens a game file in a new tab b Open Mesh Opens a mesh file in the Model Viewer for display c Save Scene Saves the current Scene to the scene file defined in the game file for whatever Screen is loaded Note that Save Scene As can be accesses from the File menu 3 Camera Setup from top to bottom a Perspective Camera b Ortho Top Camera c Ortho Front Camera d Ortho Side Camera 4 Grid Setup from top to bottom a Grid Toggle Toggles the grid visibility on and off b Grid Setup Shows a configuration screen for the grid settings where you can control the size and color of it 5 Console Controls from top to bottom a Clear Console Erases all line in the current console b Toggle Console Shows hides the console 4 6 Debug console This displays all output from the GGE process 7 Status bar Displays the state of the GGE process 8 ModelViewer Tools from left to rig
4. most important thing about that form is that it contains references to 2 GGE instances one for the GGE game m_ggeGame and another one for the Model Viewer m_ggeMV Both of them might not always be initialized so it must be checked whether they reference null before usage or not MainForm also has a function GetActiveGGE to determine which GGE instance is the one currently in use that is which one is in the foreground and being interacted with Even still this function can return null and must be checked Another Key thing to consider is the Evaluate functions There are a number of these functions one for each part of the form The purpose of these functions is to maintain the state of the GUI for example whether or not a button is enabled or disabled They should be called whenever the state of the active GGE instance is changed in any way 14 TO DO From the final review e Core o Dynamic Screen loading by the screen s name o Engine stats displayed on screen with a keypress min max fps triangle count etc Editor o Press F for focusing the camera on the selected object o Control generic cameras in the editor o Mouse right button for smooth zoom like in Maya o Adda billboard frustum maybe to visualize lights in editor mode Model Viewer o Dynamic resource group initialization on the folder in which the model is o Auto fit model to scrren with the ortho cameras GLE o Combo box for the light type
5. them into a GGE_Message and then queues that message to be sent by GGEComm GGEComm The GGEComm class defined in GGEComm cs is the network communication implementation of the program The GGEComm class handles everything network socket related Every GGE instance has 1 GGEComm instance It handles setting up a connection to GGE receiving messages and sending them Prety much everything in this class is threaded There is a separate thread for polling GGE for connection another thread for handling incoming messages and a separate thread for EVERY outgoing message Events Since GGEComm is all threaded whenever something needs to be done in the GUI because ofa packet was received it needs to be done though events because the GUI in C is not thread safe One simple example is the handling the GGE_Ready packet When the packet is received by GGEComm it calls the HandleMessage function in the GGE instance We now know that we want to notify the GUI that the GGE process is ready so we must invoke an event like this here Parent is a reference to the MainForm Parent BeginInvoke GGEReadyCallBack this new EventArgs 13 The delegate GGEReadyCallBack and its corresponging event are defined in GGE cs as such public delegate void GGEReadyEventHandler object sender EventArgs e public event GGEReadyEventHandler GGEReadyCallBack But the MainForm must subscribe to the event
6. GGE Live Editor User Manual Bjarni P r rnason barnasonOusc edu Pol Jeremias jeremiasOusc edu Game Engine Development Fall 2008 University of Southern California CONTENTS CONCEP NN 3 A OT 3 Installation ii A 3 SEARING LE a a E 3 Command line APO As 3 Tica 3 TheGame Wind OW oit rep pee e pee eus 5 Ne hcec MEc p 6 Adding a Scene Node eter e a e edi ere e tee nouit 7 Adding a Mesh riae A 7 Adding a Light 2 di 7 Grid Settings AN 7 GGE Controls nr ER I e a te n pic ide ite ice rate ros 8 Configuration Eileen ERR A aras ti ipei esee 8 Prosrarmmlfng nitet idee ee e e tera S a re aut dec teda ta t de d ea iaa iaa iz 9 Architecture te titra enticement 9 A eit aren 10 Cu cada sade sisted tenets NON 10 MODEE A VADE MS 12 GLE 12 TODO ld tad 15 CONCEPTS GGE is short for GamePipe Game Engine and is USC s Game Engine It uses Ogre3D as a renderer but relies on many other libraries as well Screen is a concept within GGE that acts almost like a level in a game A Screen encapsulates game logic and creation and can have multiple Scenes within it Scene is a concept within GGE that represent the collection of objects in a game environment The same Scene can be used by many Screens Scenes can be defined by hand in C code using Ogre3D s API or be defined in scene files DotSc
7. ame file has defined and highlights the one that is loaded b Scene Tab Displays the scene tree as well as information about the selected object THE SCENE TAB The Scene Tab can be used to add remove and modify objects in the Scene 1 Add Objects from left to right a Add Scene Node Brings up a window that lets you add a new empty Scene Node to your Scene See in detail below b Add Mesh Brings up a window that lets you add an existing mesh to your Scene The mesh will be automatically parented to a new Scene Node See in detail below c Add Light Brings up a window that lets you add a light to your Scene See in detail below 2 Refresh Scene Tree Refreshes the tree Should not be needed 3 The Scene Tree Displays the hierarchical structure of the Scene Tree as it is represented by Ogre3D Clicking on an item in the tree will display information about it in the Property Editor 6 as well as displaying any children nodes in the Scene Tree It will also display the object s bounding box in the scene if it has one 4 Delete Selected Object Deletes the currently selected object in the Scene Tree 5 Refresh Selected Object Refreshes the information in the Property Editor 6 for the selected object in the Scene Tree 6 The Property Editor Allows you to view and edit any the selected object has The functionality of the property is shown on the left side and the value is on the right side Only the value ma
8. and all enumerations in the property editor o Change the name of the configuration file o Hotkeys for functionality o Automatically scroll to an object in the scene tree when it is picked in the scene o Translation rotation and scale by interacting with the object in the renderer window TabIndexes in the property editor Commit changes in the name property editor o Modify ambient light and background color Known problems o Picking after reparenting o Grid settings are not displayed correctly in the GUI when switching between Screens From the milestones UI o Undo Redo o Resource management tab CORE o Different types of GameObjects Dynamic objects Character functionality expanded for physics Particle systems Keyframe objects Vehicles 15
9. ene is a plugin for GGE that reads in scene files and populates the environment with whatever objects defined in the scene file GLE is short for GGE Live Editor and is the game editor and model viewer for USC s GGE It can create scene files GLE is basically a control panel on top of GGE When viewing a model or creating a screen in GLE the actual GGE executable is launched and GLE connects to it through a local network connection All commands to GGE including all input are sent through this network socket USAGE INSTALLATION GLE is distributed as a self extracting Zip file Execute it and select any folder to extract it to STARTING GLE GLE can be started by executing GLE exe in the folder it was extracted to COMMAND LINE OPTIONS GLE exe can be launched with command line argument The argument can either be a path to a game file which causes GLE exe to automatically launch that game file or it can be a path to a mesh file which causes GLE to automatically open that mesh in the model viewer THE INITIAL WINDOW This is the initial window that should appear when GLE exe is launched with no arguments The major parts of the graphical user interface have been numbered and each part is explained in detail below By default the Model Viewer is opened GGE Live Editor File About E ModelViewer TET Tools tj 4 Animations gt Particle Systems md GGE D3D3 WARNING disabling V Sync in windowed mode
10. folder usually bin Release or bin Debug contains a 12 ModelViewer game file that contains the path to the GGE ModelViewer executable that GLE will use The default one assumes the USC SVN folder structure to be intact Data Structures DataStructures cs contains small simple classes that serve no purpose but to pass on information It also contains all Enumerations Enums that define various things such as the types of Objects recognized and all protocol packets supported GGE The GGE Class defined in GGE cs is a wrapper around a GGE process Each GGE instance of the class corresponds to 1 GGE process executable It handles starting and stopping the GGE executable as well as encapsulating all interaction with GGECommm see below from the programmer All data that needs to be sent to the GGE process goes through a Protocol function defined in this class These functions have the exact same name as the protocol packets as well as the same arguments as defined in the protocol document This example shows how the GLE_SceneNode_Create protocol packet is implemented public void GLE SceneNode Create string name GGE_GenericCommand int GLE EditorProtocol GLE SceneNode Create name So in order to create a new SceneNode in GGE all you need to do is m ggeGame GLE SceneNode Create myNode GGE GenericCommand is a function that takes in any number of arguments and converts
11. ht a Bounding Box Toggles the display of a bounding box aroung the model on and off b Lighting Toggles predefined lighting on and off c Wire Frame Toggles wire frame rendering on and off 9 ModelViewer Animations from left to right a Play Animation Plays or restarts the animation selected in the combo box b Stop Animation Stops the current animation being played c List of animations from the loaded model 10 ModelViewer Particle Systems To load a Particle System select it from the combo box To unload it select the topmost blank entry 11 GGE Process Controls from left to right a Game Editor Mode Toggles between game and editor mode This is not possible to do in the Model Viewer b Restart GGE Restarts the current GGE process completely All data will be lost THE GAME WINDOW To load a game file go to File gt Open Game and browse to the location of your game file and hit open A new tab will now be opened and a sidebar will pop out from the right that allows you to analyze and edit your current Scene GGE Live Editor Project Scene MainMenuS creen Screen Screen2 Screen3 Defense GGE Process connected from 127 0 0 1 19000 GGE State Editor Bytes In Out 705 2805 1 Using this tab bar you can now switch between the GGE process and the ModelViewer process 2 Using this tab bar you can switch between the following tabs a Project Tab Displays what screens the g
12. name tokens 2 Destroy the node by its name m pRenderer getCurrentSceneManager destroySceneNode Ogre String name break 11 ii Add a new case such as case GLE Shadows Activate break b Now we want to detect if the packet contain a 0 to deactivate shadows or 1 to activate them Luckily there is a function that parses all the arguments in the packet and put them in a variable called Tokens c Ifyou need to work with parameters that are integers floats booleans or tuples there are functions that automatically handle the conversion to these types For example ParseInt or ParseFloat MODELVIEWER The model viewer is a viewer it is not possible to edit anything Internally it is just a GGE game screen BlankScreen with special functionalities enabled E i LB sm rr rr 13 m 795 B 9 C rms Partide Systems GE Process connected from 127 0 0 1 19001 GE Sate Editor Bytes Injcut 594 1752 Some of the functionalities are Load a model Load an animated model e Animation controls for the models if it has animations e Visualize particle systems using ParticleUniverse Grid with a default separation size of 1 unit Simple lighting system Camera configurable between perspective projection and orthographic projection GLE GLE is written in C using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 To successfully run GLE from Visual Studio you need to make sure that the output
13. r the idea This decision brought a new challenge how do we communicate both pieces of software The approach chosen was to embed the C application into a C panel and communicate both applications using sockets In order to maintain the communication between C and C stable we decided to create a shared document on internet where the team could add remove change the protocol in our case we used Google Docs There are three components GGE Live Editor C app GGE C Protocol Document All of them are very important GLE is UI to interact with the engine GGE is the engine by itself and the protocol defines how both applications interact Protocol PROTOCOL The protocol is a document that defines how GLE and GGE talk to each other The protocol is the dictionary for their language without it they will not speak the same language and if it is not updated they will not use the same words to speak with each other We strongly recommend sharing this document and keeping it updated In our case we used Google Docs to share it and keep it updated but it is up to you to decide the best software to do so It is now stored as an Excel worksheet in USC s SVN The document should contain the following information from left to right 1 PacketID 2 Packet Name a Starts with GLE ifthe packet will be sent from GLE to GGE b Starts with GGE if the packet will be sent from GGE to GLE c Starts with MV if the packet is
14. re executing the application through GLE what happens is that GLE becomes client of GGE and then the conversation using the protocol starts The main function in GGE Editor module is the packet parser called Editor_Parser This function basically uses the constants defined in Editor_Packets h to identify which packet is and execute the correspondent function Adding new functionalities Once an idea is approved and correctly designed proceed to the following methodology For this example we will develop an example of how to add a packet to activate shadows from GLE 1 Open the shared document with the constant definitions a Add the new identifier i Forinstance define GLE_Shadows_Activate b Adda unique packet ID i Find a unique available packet ID if the shared document is correctly updated this should not be a problem c Define the parameters that the packet will contain i Inthe example we can assume we just want to activate deactivate the shadows So that we just need an integer as 1 or 0 2 Open Editor_Packets h and add the identifier and the unique ID as constants 3 Open Editor cpp a Go to function Editor_Parser i Go to the main switch in charge of identifying the packets case GLE SceneNode Create Ogre String name tokens 2 Create a scene node m pRenderer getCurrentSceneManager getRootSceneNode createChildSceneNode Ogre String name break case GLE SceneNode Del Ogre String
15. the Scene click the Add Light button numbered 1 in the Scene Tab picture The window pictured Specify Light on the right will be shown and allows you to select the type Light name of Light to add as well as the name and diffuse and specular Light type Point v colors To pick a color click on the color wheel buttons and select a color from the color picker The Light will be Diffuse AGB Specular AGB automatically parented to a Scene Node that will have the name of the Light appended by a Node This Scene Node BN EN will be parented to the root Scene Node but can be moved under whatever other Scene Node GRID SETTINGS To set the Grid Settings click on the Grid Settings button numbered Grid Settings EX 4 in the Initial Window picture The window pictured on the right will be shown and allows you to edit various properties of the grid Size X 50 Size X and Z represent the extent of the grid while Separation Size Z 50 represents the number of units in between cells in the grid The color m Separation 5 of the grid and axises can be changed by picking a color from the Grid Color 7 Axis Color LO color picker that is shown when the respective color wheel buttons are pressed GGE CONTROLS There are two types of controls Game Controls and Editor Controls When in Editor Mode the Editor Controls are used but when you switch to Game Mode whatever controls if any the game defines take over The Editor
16. used by the ModelViewer 3 Packet description 4 Parameters This is what the protocol document looks like 14 GLE SceneNode Create Creates a SceneNode on string name the active context SceneNode 15 GLE SceneNode Del Deletes a SceneNode string name 26 GLE_Entity_Create Creates an Entity string name GLE ObjectType string params 27 GLE_Entity_Del Deletes an Entity string name 28 GLE_AttachObject Attaches arg1 to arg2 string objToMove string objRecieve When we send a packet through the network we send it as a string using this format PacketID UniqueID Arg1 Arg2 ArgN The UniquelID is actually not used right now aside from 1 packet but the idea was that it was used for integrity checks The document contains a sheet that translates the definition of the protocol into C and C code that can be pasted right into your source code to maintain absolute correctness GGE We created three files located in the Editor folder in Visual Studio under the GGE Engine source folder Editor cpp Editor h Editor Packets h 10 Editor cpp and Editor h contain the Editor class Itis in charge of communicating with GLE parse any packet that arrive and execute them Editor_Packets h is just a header file with the definition of the packets extracted directly from the Protocol document so that both applications share the same IDs How does it works internally When the application starts the editor creates a connection if you a
17. y be changed To do so either double click the value or select it and press Project Scene eS da am y MainMenuScreenCamera 3 C9 EUMD Ll OgreHead Property Value Unnamed 1C Type SceneNode Pos X Pos Y 6 Pos Z Rotation 3 Rotation Y Bytes In Out 903 2931 F2 Press Enter when finished entering the value If it does not exit edit mode the value you picked was not valid ESC can be pressed to exit edit mode without committing the value change ADDING A SCENE NODE To add a new Scene Node click the Add Scene Node Specify SceneNode button numbered 1 in the Scene Tab picture The window pictured on the right will be shown and allows SceneNode name you to pick a name for the Scene Node to be added This Scene Node will be parented to the root Scene Node but add can be moved under whatever other Scene Node ADDING A MESH To add a new Mesh to the Scene click the Add Mesh specny mesn way button numbered 1 in the Scene Tab picture The Mesh file window pictured on the right will be shown and allows OA you to select which mesh you want to add and name the entity that will be created in the Scene Tree It will be Add automatically parented to a Scene Node that will have the name of the entity appended by a _Node This Scene Node will be parented to the root Scene Node but can be moved under whatever other Scene Node ADDING A LIGHT To add a new Light to
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