[ODE] ODE GUI Editor #2...

[Amund Børsand]

William Denniss <lists at omegadelta.net> skreiv:

> great, nothing wrong with some healthy competition.

> I like the fact that 4Link can load .3ds files were as ezphysics is
> limited to it's own format (which appears to be a serialized ogre
> file?).  However XML is much easier to code an importer for.  Do you
> have any plans for an Xml/text based exporter?

I have lots of plans. :D But they all take time to implement... and I
have little spare time these days. Right now 4link uses a binary format
which just stores the object names and file names, and loads objects
from the original .3ds files when you load a .4ip ("4link-in-progress")
file, my thoughts being that if the mesh is half finished, the sim would
automatically reload it the next time, and I don't have support for
materials and multiple textures from the 3ds yet, which would be lost
when saving. The plan is a compressed file format that keeps everything
in one file, maybe zipped/compressed somehow, ready to distribute on the
net when you've created something that needs to be shared. I've also
thought of supporting Racer's formats directly, as they have so many
nice textured meshes, with lots of useful physics data like engine
torque curves, gear ratios, tyre data etc.

But XML? Hmm... I don't know. Do I really need it? The only advantage I
see is that if you have a corrupt file you could fix it with a text
editor. But as long as there is GUI for all functions you'd never need
to edit the text, and then it'll only take more disk space. ?

-- 
Amund Børsand <amund £ offroad . no>