ALE Editor Alpha 4.2 Release
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After a (very long) wait, we (Skotty and me) finally managed to release the first alpha version of the ALE Editor:
It is still in a very early stage, but feel free to play with it and report bugs. You can see some of the not yet finished stuff in the about window.
A Linux build will follow (already running, needs rpm build).
We appreciate any feedback!
Edit: There was a texture filtering issue which forced me to reupload it.
Edit 2: A usage hint: You have to select all the texture files you can find. They will be added to an internal list and be searched for the texture name. If the particle system does not find it you will get a colored quad. The textures are searched each time you start/restart an effect.
Edit 3: Alpha 2 consist of mostly GUI fixes from Skotty and some small GUI fixes from me.
Edit 4: Alpha 3 are again GUI fixes from Skotty, as I try to finish the OpenGL renderer for FL (I only helped a bit with the scrolling performance fixes).
Changelog Alpha 3 (major work by Skotty):
- Improved performance of Node Properties window scrolling and updating.
- Unify library windows of Emitters, Appearances, Fields and Miscellaneous into one tree overview (Node Library).
- Add filters to every list (Node Library, Effects, Node Linking, Node Transforms).
- Add context menus to Node Library, Effects, Node Linking, Node Transforms.
- Add icons for every context menu entry.
- Add Drag and Drop of Nodes from Library to Node Linking area.
- Add multi selection being possible for Drag and Drop and context menu operations.
- Fixed Time Key slider being clamped between 0 and 1.
- Fixed Time Key slider being resetted on changing effect.
- Fixed possible duplicated Node name generation.
- Fixed docking Node Property windows into Node Properties docking area instead as neighbour of it.
Edit 4 (Alpha 4):
See posts https://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?post_id=66288#forumpost66288 and https://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?post_id=66292#forumpost66292 below from Skotty for changelog and download. -
Is there a way to zoom out?
Most of the effects I tried to load are significantly bigger than the preview screen and therefore it is hard to see how they actually look.
The zoom control only seems to allow positive numbers but i actually have the feeling that it doesnt change anything.edit:
ah… nvm found itthat certainly takes a bit longer to test
thanks for your hard work on it -
what did you do OP? I have the same problem…
np, got it. mousewheel only. the arrows on the Zoom dialogue box do nothing
edit2: manual input on the zoom does nothing either.
certainly looks good so far
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Yeah, Skotty forgot the events.
You can find the controls in the help menu.
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Alpha 2 is released, see first post
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Sure, I can implement this easily. Will make this toggleable so that you can switch it off if not wanted.
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Alpha 3 is out (see first post).
@Alucard: We will try to add your suggestion to alpha 3.1. -
Hey guys, I got the itch to mess with freelancer again and currently messing with this tool. I don’t know if this a bug or not. In the node block and root when I make a custom ale, nothing appears. I can start a custom ale, Node library, Effect. But after that I can’t seem to go any farther. Am I missing something?
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Nevermind, I got it. Different question, how do I make a file like the sparks1anim_0_0? I know how to make txm, but not how it reads the sprites inside. How does it read the texture? Left to right and then down and continue correct? How can I make it bigger to read say 30 sprites instead of 15?
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The user interface is far from user-friendly currently. The first focus was to get it just work somehow. But it isn’t intuitive and there is no tutorials or help either currently on how to use it. That may cause some confusion.
On the usage of animated sprites I also sadly do not know myself, I never tried it and as well would have to experiment with it first now.
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I found it fairly simple to work once I got something to actually work. I can write up a user tutorial, if need be. There are somethings that don’t work as you have mentioned. But I am learning quite a bit of what it can do and it can do quite a lot.
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As for sprite textures, here’s what I know using utf 2.1:
sparks1anim_0=
Texture count 1 (uses 1 256x256 texture)
Frame Count 16 (16 individual frames of the texture, dividing the 256x256 texture into 16 individual, guessing on this, 32x32 squares)
FPS 15 (how many frames of the texture per second)
Frame rects (how it reads the texture, ie left to right then down to next row and repeat. This data is the one I’m trying to edit.)
I believe it controls size and where to move from and to. But I don’t have a way to edit it.
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ALE Editor version Alpha 4 is out now! Find it in the attachement of this post.
New feature:
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Render ordering. ALE effects render particles in a defined order. This can be important when one particle is supposed to hide another. Now you can see and set up this order in the editor, too.
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Also for being orderly you can now close gaps in the automatically generated IDs for effect nodes.
Bugfixes:
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Previously the editor saved the data twice into UTF files. Now it correctly saves it only once. This had no negative side effect except for bigger file size.
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Preserving render order: Previously the ALE Editor changed render order unasked (see feature above). Now it is kept as in the original.
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FLBeamAppearance was missing in the context menu to create it.
Additionally there is now also a Linux executable for those who fancy it. Requires qt5pas lib to be installed.
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Another release. I fixed wrong node IDs and empty UTF nodes. Both leading to game crashes on their own. Thanks to Treewyrm and Serenawyr for pointing it out.
Deleted the previous download because it’s breaking game files.
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No. Just bugfixes mostly.
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ALE Editor Version 4.2
Features:
- Right click on any Appearance or Emitter Node to get a “Scaling” tool to scale them up or down.
- Right click on any Effect to get a completely generated [VisEffect]-entry for the ALE.ini files for the given effect. The Texture-Files are automatically assigned when you also imported them via the general “Select Textures” option.
Improvement:
- “Default Value” input of some animations disappears now as soon as some Time-Value pairs were added. The game uses those additional entries instead of the simple ones.´
Correction:
- Change second and third value labels of some animations to their correct labels of “in tangent” and “out tangent” for interpolations.
Bugfix:
- Correct changing anything to the “Transforms” of a Node required a complete effect reload.
