Real Time Tag Editor

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Originally Posted by Limited

The application would need to keep tabs on every single value, to check if it has changed. What you could do is when a text box is changed, add that value into a store. When all changes have been made export out a file which can be loaded and will load corresponding values. It would be easier to send a file to each member using a website, or msn/aim/xfire or something, than to code in networking capabilities.

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Either way you'd still have to code in a new feature. For both you'd just be creating a transactional database of change events. The way these events are synchronized to other possible clients is no matter as it would (or rather, should) be a completely different system. It really wouldn't be all that complex to implement assuming you're doing it (the real time editing) as a team and thus connect to one another explicitly rather than hooking the game to get the clients which you need to sync with.

You could easily use a tunneling system to virtualize a LAN setup and ease connecting to one another without worrying about real-world IPs, etc.

TBQH, having to upload to a site or send-file would be more troublesome, at least on the end user. Even if the uploads are automated, the clients would still have to download those files. Even if you automate that, you'd have to figure out a way of notifying those cllients (has to be networked some how, even if it's on the site...and you don't want to be constantly polling a file on a webtsite do you?) and after that's all said and done it'd end up being more complex than a simple network client connections which send small amounts of info (or entire databases if they're joining mid-game editing). Not all (if any) of those IM clients have interfaces to automate send-file operations either. On top of that, you'd be limiting the end-user to a specific IM client that you only choose to support when ALL end-users will have a network connection if they're wanting to do networked real-time editing.

How about we give some thought into these kinds of things before shutting them down

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Originally Posted by Limited

The application would need to keep tabs on every single value, to check if it has changed. What you could do is when a text box is changed, add that value into a store. When all changes have been made export out a file which can be loaded and will load corresponding values. It would be easier to send a file to each member using a website, or msn/aim/xfire or something, than to code in networking capabilities.

Who says this cant add tags into memory eh? :P (Keep open mind).

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Thats a good point, I like the file export idea, I would be easy make a button that could download the file from a customizable url and import the changes. Then for the host it would be a matter of getting the clients the their url and updating the change file as needed. You could also make a button that exports the changes to a specified folder which could easily be made public with HFS, apache or something. Your right a setup like that or even aim/xfire is much easier than implementing it into the program, but I am getting ahead of myself here. I'm up for any release now, just the time saving power of using it alone will be amazing.

I'm also taking into consideration Shadows programming skills, Korn.

Would this app be able to edit encounters (like moving positions, etc) and scenarios on the fly? Just not bipeds/weapons/etc?

release

Maybe the release will be open? That would be cool then I'd give a whirl at making it syncable.

didn't have time to read the thread, but it looks like an amazing app. definitely release!

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Originally Posted by Limited

I'm also taking into consideration Shadows programming skills, Korn.

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Normally I would probably take offense, but I honestly don't know anything about networking. Not saying I can't learn and read up on it in my free time though. Also, love child, what?

As for the saving file idea, it could serve a dual purpose. You could send the file to a friend in a server and have the changes apply to their side, and you can also use it to basically save your current 'session'. So if you are in the middle of editing some tags and have to leave, you could save all of the changes you have done to a file, which can then be loaded at a later time and all of the previous changes will be applied.

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Originally Posted by higuy

Would this app be able to edit encounters (like moving positions, etc) and scenarios on the fly? Just not bipeds/weapons/etc?

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You can edit almost any value in the tags, whether the engine will handle the change or not, I don't know. If it didn't work the first time you edit something, then I would choose the 'restart game' option and it will probably accept the changes. When you choose 'new game' it will completely reload all of the tag data in the map file, but when you choose 'restart game' all of the tag data is kept the same.

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Originally Posted by staticchanger

Maybe the release will be open? That would be cool then I'd give a whirl at making it syncable.

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No, it will be closed source.

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Originally Posted by Ifafudafi

This would make particles effects so much simpler

E: Oh, and could you have an option to order the tags by their folder directories rather than their tag prefix? It's not urgent but I've gotten so used to navigating folders it'd take a while to readjust

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I had a feeling you would be one of the people who liked it. I have code to load the tags by folder in the treeview already, I just haven't added an option in the gui to choose between the two of them yet.

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Originally Posted by Dwood

I'm not sure if I saw this in the video, but are you planning on allowing people to Import tags from their directories or can we only edit tags that are in the initial map?

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No, you can only edit the tags that are in the map file initially.

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Originally Posted by FireScythe

Thats good then :), though it would be worth providing a way to override the stock definitions since there is unused space in some tags that could be used in future by OS.

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I'll think about it, but Korn has told me in the past that he doesn't like the idea of editing stock definitions, since some of the fields (or rather padding) could actually be used by the engine only at runtime.

The problem with editing things like firing position is that you'd basically have to find some way to get Halo to tell the user visually where the firing positions are, how one draws their own models, if at all, would probably be a good question, should people want to edit objects that they can't normally see...

Sweet dude, I'm glad there will be folder view, this is going to be the best app ever. Definatly try adding an import/export changes feature, even if it just has basic functions I think it would definatly come in handy. Also like I said before, simply making an option to load/save changes to a directory quickly paired with some clever batchfiles/programs would give us a way of semiauto updating changes. (Think HFS and wget)