Hey again,

I realized this section is probably the proper place to post this.

I figured it'd be really worth it for me to attempt making my own 3D level editor. The end result goal of mine is something very similar to the level editor in this youtube video. I know it's a big goal because that editor looks simply amazing. I'm not worried about the Windows Forms coding, since that's where my comfort area actually is. I'm not sure how I'll go about rendering the XNA scene in a window like this does, but I've heard people discuss it before and I recall them saying it's fairly simple to do.

Anyways, I really have just been trying to come up with a checklist of things I'm going to do in order, since I don't truly know where to start or how level editors should work. I've only really gotten so far as to render heightmaps on my own in my game, and draw a texture on it. So, taking what I know I figure my current list of things to do in order would be...

1. Allow a user to generate a generic terrain, using TriangleStrip, by either entering desired length x width, or by loading a pre-existing greyscale heightmap.
2. Come up with a solid terrain picking algorithm that support various types of pointer types (circle, square, ring-shaped, whatever)
3. Figure out how to let a user specify what texture to use at any given X,Y coordinate on the terrain grid and connect the terrain picking functionality with this functionality. This will be the basis of my level editor.
4. Add the ability for a user to raise or lower the terrain under the mouse cursor.
5. Come up with some way to save this information so that an XNA game can load it up and use it. Perhaps generate the heightmap, and then use XML for where textures should be applied? If this were the case, though, why not just load height data from the XML file also since either way every polygon would need to be told what texture to use.

I figure if I can get this far then I'll have a pretty nice level editor in the works.

Does anyone have any advice for me? Or tutorial links that might help me out with this? Or, maybe you can kind of fill in some the things I'm unclear about based on the mentioned listed items?

Thanks in advance

Hmm well I can give it a shot but Im by no means an expert.

Thank you for the great response. I'm going to go through those tutorials you linked, as well as the several books I've got, and am going to try to get something very simple working, today. I'll keep you posted.

Well, I promised I'd keep you posted. So, after a long day of staring at Visual Studio, I finally realized using the Game class is not going to help me much. I did a lot of blog, tutorial and MSDN reading and came up with a pretty cool and extremely simple basis for my level editor. I'm going to go with a simple MDI Parent/Child approach. Here's what I've got so far, which basically sets me up to start telling XNA how to render whatever I want through controls.

Screenshot of my editor after day 1

All it does right now, visually, is draw that moving rectangle. (it's moving around the scene.) It also supports resizing of the child window.

Always a good place to start : ) If you need any help on how to use controls wioth XNA Game etc here is another good link from this site (does similar thing to yours): Winforms Controls & XNA.

I had a very busy day today with school, and stuff. I was able to write a Heightmap and Terrain class, though.

Currently, the Heightmap class is responsible for providing the vertices and indices for the terrain. It also does Normal generation. The Terrain class is responsible for the actual rendering of the terrain. That's basically all I had time to write tonight, though. Here's my second screenshot.

Screenshot 2

I would put the vertices and indices on the terrain class, and keep the Heightmap class stricly as a container of the height map data. Even better create a BaseMap class which has the map data, and have the Height map class subclass that (it might not even need extra code), then you can subclass the BaseMap for things like HeightMap, WaterMap, NormalMap, AttributeMap etc. Then you could also consider making the BaseMap a generic class BaseMap<T> so you could have maps of different numeric types such as short, int, float etc.

Craig Martin:

I would put the vertices and indices on the terrain class, and keep the Heightmap class stricly as a container of the height map data. Even better create a BaseMap class which has the map data, and have the Height map class subclass that (it might not even need extra code), then you can subclass the BaseMap for things like HeightMap, WaterMap, NormalMap, AttributeMap etc. Then you could also consider making the BaseMap a generic class BaseMap<T> so you could have maps of different numeric types such as short, int, float etc.

The Terrain class does keep the vertices and indices. The Heightmap class just has some get properties that cough them up based on the heightmap. That was my basic idea, though. I wanted the Heightmap class to strictly contain heightmap data. If at all possible, I wanted my Terrain class to know nothing about "heightmaps", hehe.

As far as the BaseMap concept, I'm not quite that pro yet. By that I mean, I don't know how I'll be doing water, or anything. I've been looking into terrain splatting because that's how I want my editor to function - not textures blended based on terrain height. Once I kind of figure all of this out I'll know exactly how abstract I need to make certain classes of mine.

I'm basically learning as I go. Making some good progress, I think. hehe :-P

Hi Chyea Ballin,

I am the author of the World editor. If you have some questions ask me.
The project is still in progress but now it use WPF.

I wrote some articles about my work on this, two links to help you :

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/XnaInWPF.aspx?msg=3202154#xx3202154xx (you can see at the bottom of my article an old screen shot of the wpf editor)

i made a fast api to integate Xna above WPF and wpf above XNA. It can help you.

And my terrain algorithm uppon witch my engine is builded :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/directx/msdn.xna.billod.aspx (in french)
http://msmvps.com/blogs/valentin/archive/2008/09/30/smart-terrain-rendering-with-xna.aspx (in english)

I will post a new video with the wpf editor soon :)

You have a VERY basic map editor here, its made for total beginners - nothing fancy:

Valentin:

Hi Chyea Ballin,

I am the author of the World editor. If you have some questions ask me.
The project is still in progress but now it use WPF.

I wrote some articles about my work on this, two links to help you :

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/XnaInWPF.aspx?msg=3202154#xx3202154xx (you can see at the bottom of my article an old screen shot of the wpf editor)

i made a fast api to integate Xna above WPF and wpf above XNA. It can help you.

And my terrain algorithm uppon witch my engine is builded :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/directx/msdn.xna.billod.aspx (in french)
http://msmvps.com/blogs/valentin/archive/2008/09/30/smart-terrain-rendering-with-xna.aspx (in english)

I will post a new video with the wpf editor soon :)

Hi Black Reaper,

I change to WPF for many reasons.

WPF is more efficient to build complex interfaces (architecture, control communication, databinding)
With WPF you can make smart user control more easily than in Winform
The design with WPF is easier (with tools like Blend) and allows richer, more modern and simple interfaces for the users.

I am working on a new way to build world in 3D, it is more simple to create a new ergonomy. With WPF you design a screen or some controls, in Winform you arrange widgets together. This is not the same way of doing.
I were strong on Silverlight and Winform but totally noobs on WPF :) Now i know well WPF.

But :
Xna and WPF : the integration is not easy.
You can easily slow down your application
It costs a lot of memory
There is no help you can find when you have problems (there is not a lot of people using WPF and XNA...)

To finish, Frank Savage tells me that one day, there will be some Xna in Silverlight. So i will be able to put my editor online very fast :)

Sorry for my "french" english.

I don't really know anything about wpf and winforms because I'm not much of a tool developper. I want to do a really basic level editor ( place and scale object on a level). I'm an 2d artist so making nice ui is a always appealing. Would you recommend using wpf from your experience ? your sample seems fairly simple and not so hard to understand.

On parle Français alors ? :)


If you don't know WPF and Winform, i think it is better to try WPF first. The next version of the .Net Framework will help for the merge of Xna and WPF (there are a lot of blogs and forums that speak about it over the Internet).
Nice UI is appealing ? So try Microsoft Expression Blend to work on your UI. All designers that i know have a very good ownership on this application. In // you have to increase you skill on WPF by making some little applications in WPF.
Then Build the real application that you want for your level designer (2D level ?). But do not use Xna first. it will complexify you work too much.
The integration of Xna have  to be made when the basics of your UI application is done.

Witch kind of information are you looking for ? WPF ? Xna ? Level designers ?
If i have the skills i can try to help you.

Why online ? To help people, to make business in the future with a professional edition (i hope so), beacause the future of the Web is the 3D, and for my MVP skill

Amicalement

J'aimerais parler de ça en français mais j'imagine que ça va limiter les autres donc soyons polis ! :)

I've also been working on an attempt at this. I haven't focused on terrain as heavily yet though, just some simple texture splatting etc. etc.

Ok ça marche pour moi :)

They are two way of making UI for applications. Silverlight make cross browser, cross plateforme and cross device application. Whereas WPF is dedicated to the Windows World (even if run on a Browser with Xbap). Silverlight and WPF decribes their UI with Xaml (an Xml language). They do not work on pixel like Winform or Xna. Their rendering is vectorial. They are not directly concern by Xna. But they are more powerful to make UI. So married Xna and those technologies is a good way to make applications such as a level editor.

Take a look at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/
It's a good way to begin on Silverlight.
And for WPF http://msdn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/netframework/aa663326.aspx


My editor ? All the things needed to build worlds like Wow's :

Topography
Texturing
Objects
IA
Effects (fog area, blur, etc.)

All of this in a great editor (i fell in love with Warcraft 3 editor). With mine you make a world in few minutes, generate a file that can be loaded in a Xna game with only on instruction. The background API offer a lot of services to interract with the world.

Engine engine = new Engine (gameServices).
engine.World = contentManager.Load<World>("mygeneratedWorld");
//...
engine .Initialize()
//...
engine.Update();
//...
engine.Draw(gameTime);



Never learn something about Decal system. I am using a texturing technique close to the texture splatting (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2238.asp). I have a little trick that give me a way to render on screen up to 16 ground textures (16 textures brushes). I am using ARGB composant of each pixel of two texture to create that.
Each time a modification is made on the ground topography or texturing an asynchronous process is launched to save the world on file system. Each node visible on the ground have a pointer to its description in this file.

Yes very slow, it is the software that make this video. But in real it is fast. I did not make a real game for now. Just build some worlds and run it on Xbox or Windows.

Here is a screen shot of the wpf version http://msmvps.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/valentin.Arcane.Esquisse/6886.test.png

Great job Garrett, very impressive too.
Thx to you us that.
I did not work yet on the transformation to apply my 3D object (just translation).
If you have some tips can you share ? :)

I simply used Un's manipulator control. It was really easy to implement. However, he uses quaternion rotations, which makes it difficult to change rotations manually.

http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=189

No, never use the Un's manipulator Gambit Sunob, sorry

Do you still have the Un's manipulator source code from his ziggyware article ?

http://www.visionsofafar.com/manipulators.zip

Thank you so much for your help.

This tutorial is a great piece of code.