As I said before, I was working on a simpler and more effective way to save and load maps in my 3D engine and my 3D map editor. I came up with the following concept:

A cube has 6 sides, and 8 points defining those sides:

The filetype will save all these 8 points (to make different shapes with 6 faces possible) allong with the texture for each side. More about the textures, texture size etc. will follow later.

The coordinates of one face of the cube is allways loaded clockwise, in the following order: bottom, top, back, front, left, right. These faces have coordinate points assigned to them:

Bottom: 5, 6, 7, 8
Top: 1, 2, 3, 4
Back: 1, 2, 6, 5
Front: 4, 3, 8, 7
Left: 4, 1, 5, 8
Right: 3, 2, 6, 7

Should you have any questions, you can allways e-mail me. A lot more will be cleared when the next release comes.

With the temperature going down, I could program normally again without having to worry about my processor frying . I was thinking about creating a simple 3D map editor like Hammer for some time now. Reason: The DGM 3D engine has no tools what-so-ever for an outsider to make something in or with it. I don’t think much people have any idea how I save and load maps in my engine.

Therefor, I started working on this simple map editor. Nothing to fancy, but enough to make a map like the demo app’s map (you can download the demo app from dgm3dengine.com).

The problem I had to solve to program a map editor like this, might be a little different then you would expect. I had to figure out a way to draw the gridlines and the brushes (cubes) on it in all the views in a fast way. It turned out easier then I expected. The function “Line” of a picturebox is fast enough to do the job. Combined with For loops for the grid and a few calculations for the snapping, moving, zooming and gridsize changes, this test version is a succes. It’s fast enough to edit a map in, and it’s easy enough for me to program in it. And guess what? Pure VB, no API calls, no directx (well not yet, untill the 3D view comes in )

I made just one view for this test version. The top view. I never programmed something like this before. That’s why I started small with a test. I wasn’t even sure if it would work. But it did. Combined with the DGM 3D Engine class, I can easily implant a 3D view in. The code is allready there, ready for use . More about this project later. When? Well… when I made the other views.

One more thing… I am working on a faster, smaller and more efficient map file format for the 3D engine and it’s upcomming editor. When it’s done, I will post the filespecs here.