Reply to New *WORKING* cross-platform editor
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June 25th 2011, 05:00 AM
shevek
So what's holding me back in dmod making? That I always end up creating tools to do it better, and never get to actually making a dmod.
I'll start with some history. While thinking about writing a dmod, I read some threads on this forum about problems people were having with DinkC. I was shocked by the solutions. How can a language be so broken? Still, it is appearantly possible to write some impressive things in it.
Anyway, I thought it'd be nice to write a dmod. But now that I knew about this language, I really didn't want to use it. It's just asking for problems. Many of the quirks in it lead to bugs which are almost impossible to find. So what did I do?
As I wrote: I started writing a tool to fix this problem. That would be a DinkC preprocessor. I'm writing something that resembles normal C (no whitespace problems; for and while; no goto (I know C accepts it, but it shouldn't), real expression with operators that do what they seem to do (a *= b / 3 + 2)
Also, I don't like to memorize or look up numbers. So I use names where appropriate (for referencing sound, graphics, brains)
The next thing that stopped me from working on a dmod is that I wanted to "see" what the edited dmod looks like, without starting the editor. I think this is something most Windows users will not really understand, because they're not used to that being possible anyway. The point is that I want a file format which allows me to create statistics or do mass edits (like sprite replacer does) by using simple text manipulation tools. So I designed a format where this is possible, and a "builder" to turn that format into a dmod that can be played with freedink (and I suppose with dink.exe, but I don't have Windows and can't test that).
Now there was a new problem: this new format can obviously not be edited with dinkedit. I could edit it by hand (with a text editor), but that is not very good for many things. Can you imagine what I did to solve it? I suppose you can...
I wrote a gui to edit the map and sprite properties. This pretty much turned the project into a complete dmod editor. It's still full of bugs, but in general it works. I'll write a simple dmod to get rid of most of the bugs (which I'll encounter that way). Of course, you're all free to use the editor.
However, I like to get some form of "payment" for it, which very much suits the problem I have with uploading it to this site: I need an account to do that. So here's the deal: any of you puts enough pressure on redink1 to make him create my account and send me a new password, so I can use it, and I upload the editor.
Final detail about it: it's written in Python. I know some people dislike it, but in my experience Python code is much easier to write, and therefore more likely to get finished. And anyway, it's my editor, so I choose the language.
It does make it cross-platform, too; I wouldn't be too sure about my C++ code in Windows, and anyway I wouldn't know how to compile it for Windows (and I'm not interested in learning).
I'll start with some history. While thinking about writing a dmod, I read some threads on this forum about problems people were having with DinkC. I was shocked by the solutions. How can a language be so broken? Still, it is appearantly possible to write some impressive things in it.
Anyway, I thought it'd be nice to write a dmod. But now that I knew about this language, I really didn't want to use it. It's just asking for problems. Many of the quirks in it lead to bugs which are almost impossible to find. So what did I do?
As I wrote: I started writing a tool to fix this problem. That would be a DinkC preprocessor. I'm writing something that resembles normal C (no whitespace problems; for and while; no goto (I know C accepts it, but it shouldn't), real expression with operators that do what they seem to do (a *= b / 3 + 2)
Also, I don't like to memorize or look up numbers. So I use names where appropriate (for referencing sound, graphics, brains)
The next thing that stopped me from working on a dmod is that I wanted to "see" what the edited dmod looks like, without starting the editor. I think this is something most Windows users will not really understand, because they're not used to that being possible anyway. The point is that I want a file format which allows me to create statistics or do mass edits (like sprite replacer does) by using simple text manipulation tools. So I designed a format where this is possible, and a "builder" to turn that format into a dmod that can be played with freedink (and I suppose with dink.exe, but I don't have Windows and can't test that).
Now there was a new problem: this new format can obviously not be edited with dinkedit. I could edit it by hand (with a text editor), but that is not very good for many things. Can you imagine what I did to solve it? I suppose you can...
I wrote a gui to edit the map and sprite properties. This pretty much turned the project into a complete dmod editor. It's still full of bugs, but in general it works. I'll write a simple dmod to get rid of most of the bugs (which I'll encounter that way). Of course, you're all free to use the editor.
However, I like to get some form of "payment" for it, which very much suits the problem I have with uploading it to this site: I need an account to do that. So here's the deal: any of you puts enough pressure on redink1 to make him create my account and send me a new password, so I can use it, and I upload the editor.
Final detail about it: it's written in Python. I know some people dislike it, but in my experience Python code is much easier to write, and therefore more likely to get finished. And anyway, it's my editor, so I choose the language.
It does make it cross-platform, too; I wouldn't be too sure about my C++ code in Windows, and anyway I wouldn't know how to compile it for Windows (and I'm not interested in learning).
