#4 - Proper texturing support in RTG Editor

One month passed already from the last post, so here are news from RTG development.

Just for context: game is done gameplay-wise, story-wise, puzzle-wise. It's playable from intro to ending credits. However, look of the game is not reaching engine potential, there's a lot what can be enhanced visually. But I was missing proper editor to spice up graphics (my old editor in which I made the whole game had severe limitations). That's why, even when I had all levels already playable, I started arduous journey of creating new editor, just to have better tool for enhancing visuals of the game.

To not break game puzzles and game logic, editor is quite flexible, so when running in context of existing RTG levels, it does not allow to edit gameplay sensitive parts. Example: you can add decorative non-collidable geometries, retexture existing walls, tweak light colours or intensities or even add new lights, but you can't delete important geometries, or resize them, you can't edit elements important for puzzle logic like switches, elevators, etc.. This is to secure that it will be possible to enhance visual part of the game, but it will not be possible to break levels gameplay.

Because there's lot of work behind new editor, I want it to be more than just internal tool for editing visuals of existing RTG levels. That's why I'm making new editor more ergonomic and I will want to release it publicly. Moreover, I plan to new editor be usable to create whole new levels (without fore-mentioned limitations) or even new games. So my new editor efforts will have wider scope than just visual enhancements of current game.

Now, back to news. RTG Editor reached its internal version v012. Since the last post, editor received orthographic projection, resizing of objects by dragging their faces/edges in both perspective and orthographic views, I added proper texturing support, I added tooltips to have contextual help on properties which are not self-explaining. Editor is nearing the point when I will consider it "feature rich enough" to start actual visual enhancements of RTG levels. My upcoming efforts will be more about optimizations of my software ray-tracer (visual enhancements will have its performance cost) and then finally will come actual levels enhancements.

Just to give you some perspective, I'm attaching 2 videos from last 2 editor internal versions. In one video is presented new orthographic projection window, in another is showcase of new texturing support, where I added backwalls to one of levels in under 2 minutes (texture is placeholder, will not be used in final version).