hey oliver, what do you think about non-static windows ? It seems you creating the same layout like IceX2.
in our Leveleditor weve styled the whole window panel things very small and the option to move all panels to let the user chose how he wants to set the windows.

yes, a flexible gui is necessary.
it was my main conclusion this week in connection with my editor, as my new notebook screen max resolution is 1366x768, so my old windowed mode solutions are not okay for me and probably for some users too...

Basicly the GUI is mostly following this rule: all windows where you need to see the level are static (deforming, painting, entity manipulation,...), all other windows (model loading, texture loading,...) are non-static windows and fully moveable.

First part of entity manipulating is finished.

- is possible to move, rotate and scale in X,Y,Z,XY,YZ and XZ direction
- moving and rotating is possible in absolute or relative direction
- entities can be rotated around there origin, around there center or around the selection center (if multiple entities are selected)
- you can select (and deselect) multiple entities via mouse selection box or by clicking with holding CTRL

Worked the whole day on the terrain shader. Now it is possible to add to each detailmap a normalmap. At the moment you can have up to 12 detailmaps + normalmaps + specularmaps (not integrated in shader yet).

Looks good, what about performance? Oliver, please provide a set of high quality textures with your editor. I'm currently working with the UDK which is awesome because of all the fantastic assets that are shipped with the editor.

The framerate on my laptop (with a crappy 2 years old ATI card) in an empty level is ~380 fps. If the terrain is visible it drops down to ~140 fps. And it's still in development. I think there's some space for framerate improvement (but I think it's really fast yet).

I can't promise to provide a bunch of HQ assets, but I think that's a good idea. This would be even better if they come along with a small demo level like the Forest Level in CryEditor3.

Today I wanna show a short video of the finished terrain specular mapping shader.

For EACH of the 12 texture layers you can adjust

• normalmap strength
• specularity strength
• sharpness of specular highlights
• texture scale

There's only specular mapping available yet, but I plan to add also a bump mapping shader. Then you can choose in the editor between specular mapping or bump mapping (or nothing) for each texture layer.

The terrain shader will be a little slower in the editor than in the final level/game, because there are some image processing routines in the pixel shader for tweaking the normal maps and specular maps at runtime.

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_72p4mcdec[/video]

cool, it's quite effective and makes city design much simpler, with different pavements, and for simulating wet surfaces in rainy weather.

With the following link you can download the first Alpha Version of the editor:
http://www.stonehill-games.de/downloads/IceX3.v0.1a.rar

It's a very early version with the basic features. A manual is in the root folder.

Here are some basic tips for this alpha version:

• models and textures which you want to use in the levels must be placed in the "ASSETS" folder.
• in the ASSETS folder, there are already some models and textures which can be used in the editor for testing.
• Specular Maps for entities must be saved in the alpha channel of the Normal Map (see example models in the ASSETS folder).
• The editor uses its own LOD system. LOD files must be name with a "_lod" at the end of the filename (see example models in the ASSETS folder). Every entity can have its own lodrange.
• Levels can save with Key K and loaded with Key L. No filenames are supported yet. The level is saved in "My Documents\IceX3" folder as "map.icex3".
• Level export is not implemented yet.
• If you want a German version of the editor, go to "data" folder, delete the file "gui.txt" and rename "gui_DE.txt" to "gui.txt".
• For statistic and improvement purpose, the editor records some user information (language, country, Windows Version, etc..) and sends it to the Stonehill-Games server.