Art Pipeline?

#1 There is no way to directly translate a t2d scene file into a txscene at the moment. We are working on a version of TGB that will export .txscene files, but it isn't ready for general use yet. The .txscene file in the build was exported from that editor (after first being loaded from the .xml file, which was essentially built manually.)

#2 So at this point in time the best bet would be to modify the existing demo and get used to namespaces / classes used by torque X while we wait for that exporter?

Or is there some way to sneak in content? Can we mimic your xml file and just load our backgrounds as sprites from xml files? Any advice on starting places for those of us interested in working with our own content instead of just extending the tank demo?

[For reference I'm looking into migrating a version of Risk i wrote for T2D to Torque X, so simply using sprites as a background is something that while not idea wouldn't kill my game]

Just looking for a little bit of a pointer for where i should start from

Thanks for your help

#3 It definitely looks like the primary editor for TorqueX is going to be some version of TGB that writes to a .txscene file rather than a .t2d file. We can probably get away with manually modifying TankBuster's .txscene file, but with out an XML-DTD to work against, there's no way to know what the correct XML tags are.

#4 Doesn't the documentation in the doc folder include the XML Schema? I'm asking because I haven't looked yet, not because I think I saw it.

#5 A quick glance through the documentation would have me saying no it doesn't, but maybe i missed it..

So i was thinking, what about a quick little C# application to do expedite the .txscene file creation. If you look at the .txscene file in visual studio its pretty straight forward for what it does, however it doesn't hold any clues at what additional XML tags it supports. This is where another (temporary) application could come in very handy, just give it the basic C# tree view and give it the ability to create nodes of any type that TorqueX supports and let us play with it (or give it drag drop boxes where you can drop files into the "box" thats of the appropriate type) and have it do the structure for us.

i know this would not normally be considered for a GG product but in this case where the application is all ready windows only and C# a stupid little utility like that that was handed out but not "released or supported" could go along way.

If no one does this in the next few days i might just make it myself

[Any thoughts /questions/concerns?]

#6 @pauliver - do you mean an app that spits out the XML? All you need is the schema and you wouldn't need an app to do it for you. You just plug in the schema. GG has to have the schema somewhere. GG, can you share the wealth?

#7 @Jonathan i know nothing of XML i just have never really had a chance to use it (well except in GameBryo but in that case it was generated by the scene designer and loaded by the engine so i never had to touch it), so i was considering it as a file format. Are you saying that there are tools that will do what i want if you plug in some sort of definition file? (i mean once i know all the options sure i could recreate it by hand but im going to be dealing with a large number of sprites and frankly my spelling is horrible and i would rather be sure that i don't miss < > tags as I'm dyslexic and they both look the same).

#8 XML has schemas used which basically are "templates" of the resulting XML file. If you have the schema, you can plug it into any number of software programs (including writing your own with the xml namespace in C#) to manipulate/create xml files.

#9 Looks like John heard your request and is working on it, could you recommend one of these programs preferably free (why re-invent the wheel) ?

#10 XMLSpy is what I use for most everything XML related. BizTalk for doing transformations (pull out the checkbook)