Epic GTA2 Map Editor (0.6.6602) Beta

[Cuban-Pete]

Hey, it works. Thanks. It looks pretty cool all those things visually. Great work!

Only one tiny little problem, the guns/power-ups turn like mad man. They spin freaking fast. I can even hear my video card (HD4870) spin up its fans faster (which it normally only does with heavy games like modern warfare 2). In zone editor mode the objects turn/spin less fast (but still faster as in the game).

[T.M.]

Yeah they arent synced with time at all, seems like you dont have v-sync on. Press V to put it on, but its not supported on all cards... Whats your FPS when they spin too fast?

I'll make them synced with time in next release.

[Sektor]

Very cool. For screenshots, it needs an option to display the objects larger so you can still see them when zoomed out and an option to pause the animation (although I noticed it pauses if you go to the menu).

It's funny how flat they look in 3D mode but that's fine, they look great in top down. You have done a great job at parsing the scripts, it handles the different amounts of white space and coordinates padded with zeroes fine.

COLLECT_23 Instant bomb isn't displayed yet. It looks like a blue letter I in the style file.

I copied bil.mis to industrial-2p.mis so I could see Industrial objects. It displays the Playstation objects and the PC objects (they aren't all in the same location). It's the only .mis file that has #ifdef PSX lines.

[Cuban-Pete]

Yeah they arent synced with time at all, seems like you dont have v-sync on. Press V to put it on, but its not supported on all cards... Whats your FPS when they spin too fast?

I'll make them synced with time in next release.

I have around 620/820 FPS in 3D (with those objects off it's around 720/1020). In zone editor I have around 105/175. I tried putting on v-sync in Ati menu, but it does not look like it has any effect (also after pressing V in the editor).

(I tried this on Tiny Zaibatsu Town from Gustavob)

[T.M.]

Very cool. For screenshots, it needs an option to display the objects larger so you can still see them when zoomed out and an option to pause the animation (although I noticed it pauses if you go to the menu).

yeah doing that next, although it will not use the map object icons, but the weapon icons at top right corner in game.

COLLECT_23 Instant bomb isn't displayed yet. It looks like a blue letter I in the style file.

Oh? i always wondered what the heck was that in the dafes death valley ´

I copied bil.mis to industrial-2p.mis so I could see Industrial objects. It displays the Playstation objects and the PC objects (they aren't all in the same location). It's the only .mis file that has #ifdef PSX lines.

hmm, nice, i totally forgot there are such precompiler stuff. I will strip all PSX lines out.

I have around 620/820 FPS in 3D (with those objects off it's around 720/1020). In zone editor I have around 105/175. I tried putting on v-sync in Ati menu, but it does not look like it has any effect (also after pressing V in the editor).

(I tried this on Tiny Zaibatsu Town from Gustavob)

What GFX card you had? O_o such cards with such speeds should support v-sync... well im going to make framerate limiter anyways.

[Cuban-Pete]

I got an already old one, the Ati HD4870.

[Lantyz]

- Cars, generators and objects are now visible in the editor with animations, shadows and tanks/jeeps/firetruck/tvvan turrets! Also car trailers are visible; even the MINI_CAR is supported!

Very nice! Even spawn points where several cars appear on the same coordinates are shown correctly (only the first car in the script is shown, instead of all cars on top of each other). The only sprites I miss are the CHARs. Minor issue with the car trailers: cars that are put on a trailer with PUT_CAR_ON_TRAILER appear on their spawn point instead of on the trailer. Don't know if this can be fixed easily.
Pick-up animation speed is fine here, but my outdated system my have something to do with that. Will tile animations also be supported in a future release?

and everything looks exactly like in GTA2! (99% match)

Yes, I'm impressed with how much it actually looks like GTA2 ingame. Kinda makes you want to play GTA2 with a Chinatown Wars view. : -P

Added setting to disable camera tilting when rotating (options -> camera settings -> tilt camera on turns).

Great! Now we have SimCopter and Streets of SimCity! : -P

Oh? i always wondered what the heck was that in the dafes death valley

Apart from the instant vehicle bomb, there are eight unused weapon and pick-up slots which will produce a big colored letter. The won't be used often, but theoretically they could be used as objects to pick up in capture the flag-like game modes. If it isn't any problem, you might as well add them to the editor.

COLLECT_11: Yellow L
COLLECT_12: Yellow M
COLLECT_13: Yellow N
COLLECT_14: Yellow O
COLLECT_24: Blue J
COLLECT_25: Blue K
COLLECT_26: Blue L
COLLECT_27: Blue M

[T.M.]

Very nice! Even spawn points where several cars appear on the same coordinates are shown correctly (only the first car in the script is shown, instead of all cars on top of each other).

Actually it puts them all on the map not caring are they on same coorinates (how would i know which car to show...)

The only sprites I miss are the CHARs.

How would i render CHAR's? are they just ped sprites? Note that it stops reading the script at WHILE or WHILE_EXEC.

Minor issue with the car trailers: cars that are put on a trailer with PUT_CAR_ON_TRAILER appear on their spawn point instead of on the trailer. Don't know if this can be fixed easily.

Sure it can be fixed added to todo list.

Will tile animations also be supported in a future release?

Yes, they actually were supported at the first alpha versions, but i removed support since i made faster rendering and it is completely static, so i cant modify map at all. I will think if i could do some fast solution for this... but im afraid the water animation will make it really slow since theres lots of water tiles in every map.

Apart from the instant vehicle bomb, there are eight unused weapon and pick-up slots which will produce a big colored letter. The won't be used often, but theoretically they could be used as objects to pick up in capture the flag-like game modes. If it isn't any problem, you might as well add them to the editor.

COLLECT_11: Yellow L
COLLECT_12: Yellow M
COLLECT_13: Yellow N
COLLECT_14: Yellow O
COLLECT_24: Blue J
COLLECT_25: Blue K
COLLECT_26: Blue L
COLLECT_27: Blue M

Thanks! im gonna add them, but can you tell me which sprite icon i should use? big or small? i found out there are big and small letters...

[Gustavob]

This is what COLLECT_11-14/24-27 shows in game:

From left to right: COLLECT_11,12,13,14,24,25,26,27

gta2 2010-03-04 13-20-31-90.png (249.97 KiB) Viewed 27976 times

EDIT: if you have no weapons, when you "pick the letter up", it will show it on the top-right corner for a brief moment, like this:

L

gta2 2010-03-04 13-47-51-78.png (288.05 KiB) Viewed 27975 times

The blue ones are only pickable on car, they are like car "weapons", if you add ammo to the end of the command you can actually see it staying on screen like a weapon with ammo showing up. Game crashes if you "shoot" the "car weapons"/blue letters with a cop on screen. If you "shoot" with the yellow letters and theres a cop on screen, youll get a wanted level and the cop will try to bust you. COLLECT_41 displays an red N, COLLECT_42-44 are O, P and Q (they are like powerups like the fast reload and armour).

How would i render CHAR's? are they just ped sprites? Note that it stops reading the script at WHILE or WHILE_EXEC.

Yes, they are only sprites. You can show them only with remap 0 at the moment (like with cars) or check if its a cop remap, gang remap or normal ped remap, then you use the stopped character image from sty file that is used for each of them (yellow one for cop remaps, dark grey/black one for gang remap and red/green one for normal peds. Check http://en.wikigta.org/wiki/Code_lists_% ... ter_remaps)

[T.M.]

Thanks, i added all those 12 collectibles, also i fixed oil to be visible (i used wrong code to detect it because ANIMATING_OIL made less sense to me for some reason ) and the moving_collect codes will work now too, although it seems like nobody actually uses those

[BenMillard]

Tried the new version briefly. The animation is annoying but the effect is awesome. The screenie for Army Base shows the feature working beautifully!

Textures for Golden Lap seem to working fine now. But the hundreds of tyres which line parts of the track are missing. I take it your .mis parsing doesn't process LAUNCH_MISSION(another-script.mis) commands?

Minimap JPEGs in the Path to Editor/data/ folder seem to be working now, as well. Some of them were partially or entirely black for me in earlier versions.

(EDIT) Using F5 to limit draw distance increase FPS from about 14 to about 22 on a simple map (my Macau Race experiment) when looking horizontally. Feels a lot smoother that way, too.

Macau Race minimap generated automatically during startup works great!

Macau Race 2010-01-17.jpg (11.29 KiB) Viewed 27938 times

NumPad 4 no longer seems to turn off player start positions. Display > Player start positions works, although the tick is always present. (Think you mentioned the ticks in menus are a known issue already?)

(EDIT2) Oh, flew around Illspirit's "unnamed map" (his first GTA3 one was called Illando so I'd just call it that) and took a screenshot:

Shot from a rooftop in Illando.

Shows a mountain, a church, a compass painted on a roundabout and various ste.sty building types. Keen eyes may even see Elvis. ("I told you he was alive!")

[T.M.]

The animation is annoying but the effect is awesome.

How exactly it is more annoying than in GTA2? Too fast? next version makes them always same speed no matter on FPS.

Textures for Golden Lap seem to working fine now. But the hundreds of tyres which line parts of the track are missing. I take it your .mis parsing doesn't process LAUNCH_MISSION(another-script.mis) commands?

Oh there is such a command? How does that function work? does it replace previous mis file or just add new stuff?

Minimap JPEGs in the Path to Editor/data/ folder seem to be working now, as well. Some of them were partially or entirely black for me in earlier versions.

would be nice to know exactly which version you had black images.

NumPad 4 no longer seems to turn off player start positions. Display > Player start positions works, although the tick is always present. (Think you mentioned the ticks in menus are a known issue already?)

Yeah, i made them in separate settings since those player start positions are quite ugly and annoying if you want to take screenshot with objects visible. I think i will render the ped sprites under those white player positions, so when you turn that player positions off, you would see normal ped sprites instead. They are big and white so you can easily see where they are.

[BenMillard]

Making them flat and stationary, like the cars, would let us see where they are. When we want to. Without being distracted by them all the time.

The animation is annoying but the effect is awesome.

How exactly it is more annoying than in GTA2?

In GTA2 it is not annoying as you are playing a game. The movement helps you see there's a weapon you can pick up and shoot people with. They stand out from the movement of peds, cops, gang members, cars and so on.

It stops them looking like some icon painted on the floor, lets you see some help is nearby. Very important when you're fighting baddies and getting low on ammo or health!

In a map editor they are annoying because you aren't playing a game. You aren't desperately trying to find some health whilst FBI agents are running after you with a shower of hot lead.

Instead, you might be adding some overhead cables. Or correcting some road markings at a road junction. Or improving some building details.

You rarely need to see the weapons when editing a map. Indeeed, we've managed for 10 years with never seeing them at all while editing the map. If we do want to see them, it won't be part of some high-octane saved-at-the-last-moment Hollywood action sequence. It will be checking whether that new fence makes it impossible to reach the Flamethrower. Or something like that.

Having them animate all the time when you don't need them is super annoying. It just distracts from what you will want to do.

Also, it means you have to time your screenshot just right or you catch them edge-on and can't see what is there.

[T.M.]

Why dont you just say "add button to hide objects that animate" ?

Added to my todo list

[BenMillard]

Why dont you just say "add button to hide objects that animate" ?

That isn't the request. They should never animate within the editor. Adding controls so users can turn off useless features complicates the user interface for no good reason.

It also means the default experience will have an annoying distraction. The default experience should be simple and uncluttered.

[Sektor]

They don't need to animate in an editor but I think that's more for future plans to make a replacement game engine or something cool like that.

[T.M.]

i added button to pause animations. i wanted the editor look exactly like it looks in game, so thats why i added animations.

oh and sektor is correct too

[T.M.]

GTA2 in 3d!


Cross your eyes to see the effect

[Cuban-Pete]

Haha, very cool.

[T.M.]

more depth:


Edit: made better pic