NS2 Spark Engine: Does it have the Power? Options

[KevLar]

As you may have heard some of the hype recently about Natural Selection 2 releasing some pre-alpha tools to their Custom Level Editor dubbed the Spark Engine, we were curious enough to investigate it ourselves. Our recent Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interactive Design and Game Development member Rabbit got his review on and took a fresh look at this new engine. I really enjoyed his insights and suggested improvements which he mentions are occurring in the Spark Engine Toolset on a fairly regular basis.

Check out the NS2 Editor through Rabbits Review! <---CLICKY

Be sure to check out Rabbit's site and hire him valde velox!

[Rabbit]

Posted the link on the NS2 forums.

Link to NS2 Forum Post

[Rabbit]

Spark SDK 1.0 (Build 128)

• Added the Builder application to the SDK
• Added model and texture compilation tools to the SDK
• Added a field for specifying your email address in the crash reporter dialog
• Added new refinery pipe mods
• Added new refinery wall mods
• Added new refinery tram machine
• Added new refinery tram pads
• Added new mining track
• Fixed grid snapping when using adaptive grids
• Fixed flickering artifacts caused by rendering overlapping lines
• Fixed bug where creating a face with the Rectangle tool adjacent to another face would not always fill in the new face
• Fixed bug where creating a rectangle inside of a hole in another face would sometimes create incorrect geometry
• Fixed occasional crash when undoing a create rectangle operation

[Splunker]

been a shit load up updates every Friday. It seems they are incrementally adding props and the such.

[Rabbit]

I'll be sure to keep up with Friday's and their Twitter. I'm so used to Steam doing all the hard work for me. lol.

[KevLar]

you got some competition for creating tunnels Rabbit.

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2009...munity_showcase

[Rabbit]

Haven't seen an update till today( 1/4/2010):

Spark SDK 1.0 (Build 130) as of Dec 31 2009

• Added edge extrusion to the Extrude tool
• Added flip/mirror functionality to the Edit menu
• Added double-click functionality to select all elements connected to a face
• Added shift-drag duplication to the Move tool
• Added element selection filtering
• Added proper selection toggle using rectangle selection
• Added a list of bones in the the Viewer with the ability to highlight individual bones
• Added material cloning for selected faces (alt + left-click in Paint mode)
• Added support in COLLADA files for multiple nodes with the same name
• Added tech point model
• Changed asset filter to allow multiple keywords, as well as inclusion(+)/exclusion(-)
• Changed the Viewer to allow closer zooming on models
• Changed editor panning speed for improved middle-mouse dragging
• Unified auto-updating between all of the tools (updating one updates them all)
• Fixed bug where shadows would appear yellow on GeForce 5, 6 and 7 series cards
• Fixed lighting and shadowing artifacts caused by moving the camera
• Fixed bug where the movement/rotation gizmo wouldn't work at certain angles aligned with the camera
• Fixed bug where deleting a game from the Launch Pad would not deselect it from the other tools
• Fixed bug where the length of blended or layered sequences that contained 0 length animations would be computed incorrectly

Mostly bug fixes, Newer Models have to do with Tech Points. The first few bullets have to do with optimizing the creation process, mainly with a level's polygonal faces.

Other Newer Features ( Not Specific to this update ):
Unknown World's Has added a few other subprograms to the Spark SDK.

• LaunchPad: This is the Spark SDK's UI. Basically a "Launch Pad" into the other smaller programs. Similar to clicking on SourceSDK in your Steam Tools Tab.
• Can create/delete Game folders.
  
  1. Viewer: A model viewing program, pretty neat, VERY similar to Source's.
  2. Builder: the Builder application seems to be a level compiling program.
  3. Editor: The main level building program.
     
     • Create Face
     • Flip Selection
     • Extrusion
     • Selection Filtering: You can toggle on/off clicking the following: Vertices, Edges, Faces, Lights, Props, and Entities. <---Very useful!
  4. CompileModel.exe: Self-explanatory, however, initial OBJ* tests, where not successful.

The Selection Filtering is the feature I look forward to the most. Essentially, you can "Lock/Unlock" features of the engine. For instance you can "lock" down the faces of your level so you don't accidentally move them, click them, or delete them. I have found this to be amazing because the gimble, move, rotate, and scale tool, is small and precise and on most occasions I click on the face behind the object by accident. I'm sure this will come in a future update, but just about all of the tools on the Editor has editible Keyboard Shortcuts; however, as of this writing there aren't any options for these Filters.

This feature, "External Tools..." has caught my attention lately. I haven't exactly found it useful in any particular way except for what it could and probably will be used for. Basically you can browse for program files and add them to your Editor browser. For example, I added the Model Viewer exe to my editor, this way I have access to the libraries of models and can see their animations, texture maps, etc. with much more detail. However, in doing so, my new "Model Viewer" tool link does not seem to do anything, yet I have no errors. Future feature release perhaps.
Brainstorming uses for this feature:

1. adding Builder.
2. adding Model/Texture converters
3. optimize Triangulation of Level Geometry (sometimes it gets stupid)
4. adding Lua or a scripting mini editor
5. numerous .bat shortcuts for various and tedious things
6. Custom scripts: rounding all Level geometry numerals, create default level layouts, creating duct work, complete rooms, etc.

I don't think this feature has been talked about and/or stressed as being a main feature. Most of the tools in the SDK are standard things you need to make a level, stuff most of us have used or seen in the past. This feature of Spark seems, to me at least as of right now, a MAJOR part of Spark's future just simply because it seems so damn simple, easy, and modular. Why continue to make a level from scratch when you can code in a basic level in code once? Don't like how the Duplicate Face tool works? CHANGE IT! Need a new feature? ADD IT!


*OBJ: Most 3D modeling packages can read this file, I'd like to call it the default model extension as its very common. JPEGs are pictures, OBJs are models. Ex: camera.obj

[Rabbit]

Spark SDK 1.0 (Build 132)

• Added ability to cycle the move/rotate gizmo origin within selection bounds
• Added the mapping guidelines and Editor documentation to the Launch Pad
• Added an option to display the model's bounding box in the Viewer
• Added a "placeable" flag for entity descriptions to the editor_setup file which determines if the entity can be placed with the Create Entity tool
• Added a sound browser for selecting entity sound properties
• Added refinery_trim_25 material
• Added generic_bench_01_blue model
• Added generic_bench_01_grey model
• Added generic_bench_01_red model
• Added generic_table_01 model
• Improved the performance of distant shadow casting point lights
• Improved the performance when deleting many elements in the Editor
• Improved stability of the properties window for the Select tool
• Fixed bug where hitting Ctrl+Z after editing a field in the Select tool's window wouldn't undo it
• Changed links to open in the default browser in the Launch Pad
• Fixed bug where the registration key would not be remembered on some computers running Windows Vista
• Fixed crash when the a level contained a degenerate face with no edges
• Fixed bug where level textures were not rendered with mip-map blending

Spark SDK 1.0 (Build 131)

• Added displaying of Flash materials on models in the Editor
• Added vertex welding to the Select tool (Edit menu)
• Added a dialog box indicating which applications should be closed before installing a patch
• Added refinery_trim_24 material
• Added refinery_wall_16 materials
• Added generic_chair_01 models
• Added refinery_crane_01 model
• Added refinery_shippingcrate_huge_01 model
• Added refinery_shippingcrate_med_01 model
• Added refinery_wallmods_01_pillar_02 model
• Improved mesh and entity selection
• Improved the quality of shadows on all GeForce cards
• Fixed self-shadowing artifacts on GeForce 7 series cards and below
• Fixed bug where error dialog boxes would sometimes appear when running a build in the Builder
• Fixed bug where assigning multiple objects to a layer at the same time would create multiple undo steps
• Fixed bug where creating more than 32 layers wouldn't work properly

newer updates, haven't had a chance to weed through some of the new features
will update shortly!