Tuesday Enlightenment

Helped By An Angel

I got an email almost immediately after posting yesterdays blog from the fine fellow who wrote the FPS Creator classic GUI, with a good clue as to where I should look to find out where the map editor exe connects it's window as a child to the parent GUI application. 

As I suspected, it was not in the GUI code at all, but a special feature of the DBP engine controlled by external files!  Arg!  DBPro has so many features now I forgot it had them (and I wrote some of them too).

The Real Hunt Begins

Today has been a long one, and grilled my brain good (the world is swimming right now), but I managed to get a lot of tasks fired off.  On Wednesday I will be making an appointment with the core of DBP itself to find out where this new 'child window feature' sits and make it work for me instead of against me. With that one conquered I will be able to toggle the map editor between GUI friendly child window and completely separate standalone full screen window.

From there, I can get the controls up to speed and start thinking about real time light mapping in the editor. I will start with using the code from my P001 prototype, and then if need be, enter the DarkLights module source code and add a little more treat magic.

Signing Off

I am keeping this blog short as I want to click 'Publish' before I fall off my chair. Maybe a relatively early night will help for the rest of the week. One bit of interesting news is that I might (just might) be doing a quick presentation at the GDC Expo. Exciting times!  I will also be bringing with me some GDC discounts crammed into my satchel as I walk around so if you catch me, you will get a very generous discount if you want to try out AGK during the event. There is also a good chance I will be in the Develop magazine which features a line up of game development tools, of which AGK may feature.

While at the event I hope to make a few contacts to help push Reloaded into the market further as well, maybe meet up with some GPU guys, some Publisher and Distributors and hopefully some TGC community members who are there as well. It is always great to have a chin wag with community goers.