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AppGameKit Classic Chat / AGK World builder - testers

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Santman
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Posted: 4th Mar 2019 21:38
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Hi all.

So I've made a few "quality of life" improvements for the world builder as of late, and done a fair bit of work on the interface.

I have a couple people willing to test it, but I'm looking for 3 others. It's still going to have some bugs, but what I'm hoping is for some feedback on what works well, and what it would benefit from.

To be clear, what you will get is:
Access to the editor
Some very limited assets (not all mine) to test with it
A very early version, with lots of bugs and issue to be worked on - that's what I want help identifying....what will make it better

What you won't get (yet):
Any code to allow you to use creations outside the editor

This is really a test of the ability to create the landscape and object placement for now. Currently. Obj and .x objects are supported, with animation in the .x format. I'll share it as a link to a One drive so that updates can be put in there.

Anyone interested, shout here or message. Hope to have it out this weekend coming.

Latest video showing some of the features.

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blink0k
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 05:30
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Count me in!
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Santman
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 07:20
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Awesome, thank you blink0k. I'll PM you later today.
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MADATCHA
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 07:41
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Yes plz santman
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MADATCHA
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 08:56
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Sign me up
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Santman
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 11:10
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Hey.

Not sure what's gone wrong, but this thread says there are 5 posts, but I only see 3.

Madacha, it says you posted but isn't showing anything.....would love for you to test the builder, just message me.
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fubarpk
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 15:26
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@Santman I think that happens when they are new and waiting for a mod to approve their post

I love where you have gone with this program but don't think I would give it a fair testing process which I think it deserves hence why I haven't
requested to be a tester and leaving it for a more deserving tester
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Santman
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 17:53
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Ah, that could be it then, now you've said it I kind of recall it happened to me when I joined.

Thank you for the compliment, and absolutely no worries at all. Hopefully from this weekend I can start to get some feedback on how it performs on other people's systems and start addressing the biggest issues with it, then I'll decide where I go with it based on that.
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MADATCHA
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 17:59
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Need 3 messages approved am willing to put some good testing feed back
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JosephB
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 18:22
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I would love to test your world builder, so if you still need someone, please add me as a tester.

Thanks.
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Santman
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Posted: 5th Mar 2019 21:21
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Hey MADACHA, JosephB.

Excellent, thanks both - that's me got 5 people.

So this weekend coming I'll send a OneDrive link with some basic instructions, then you can message me directly or use this thread for any feedback or comments.
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haliop_New
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Posted: 6th Mar 2019 05:33
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Would love to try it out if you want thatsy email:
nadav.rosenberg787@gmail.com
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MADATCHA
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Posted: 6th Mar 2019 07:17
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Awesome can't wait latest video looks good some hard work gone in there hope i can help u in achieving greatness
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Santman
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Posted: 6th Mar 2019 09:08
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Hi Haliop.

I have my 5 testers......but one more never hurt. Lol. I'll drop you the same message this weekend.
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Santman
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Posted: 9th Mar 2019 17:04
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Hi all.

There may be a delay in the test - I altered the editor to allow multiple maps to be saved or laoded, and used the RAW command to allow customs paths....but this seems to be causing a random crash on loading a landscape if you already loaded one before.
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Santman
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Posted: 10th Mar 2019 20:30
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So it's been a long weekend of "fix problem A, create problem B" but here's a little sneak peek of the landscape painting now fully active with multiple path types, and a small range of paint brushes.

So here we can choose any combination of four base textures for the ground, and a second four textures which can be drawn as stock grass and paths. You can either draw paths, or use this feature to add 3 more textures to the landscape (the first is always drawn with grass). One little thing to sort and I'll have the test uploaded.

Later I'll add another 4 possible textures to the landscape, so you can paint and mix up to 8 textures, with the 3 additional path textures. That should be enough for anyone!

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fubarpk
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Posted: 11th Mar 2019 00:04
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Looks Great
fubar
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Santman
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Posted: 11th Mar 2019 01:19
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Thanks. It's getting there, slowly but surely.
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blink0k
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Posted: 11th Mar 2019 01:22
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Looking very nice. When you "paint" on the surface do you create new textures for each tile or do you use evil math?
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Santman
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Posted: 11th Mar 2019 08:13
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Your technically not painting a texture, your painting to an invisible mask, then all the work is done via a shader. So each chunk of the world only needs one mask. You can't get away from maths though.......
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blink0k
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Posted: 11th Mar 2019 08:16
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So is there one big texture for each chunk or does that shader handle the tiling
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Santman
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Posted: 11th Mar 2019 09:05
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A mix of both.......there's one big mask that controls the textures, the shader then does all the actual screen drawing and tiling. It's actually fairly simple in practice, there's just one texture assigned to each channel in the mask. The tricky part is squeezing everything into the 8 texture slots, there's A lot of altas texturing going on.
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Santman
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Posted: 16th Mar 2019 14:36
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So its set to go......coming at about 80 meg zipped up with some sample media.

Is this ok......would people rather the sample media was seperate (this is largely from google anyway)
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JosephB
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Posted: 16th Mar 2019 16:07
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Including the media works for me as it should save time in just testing the app.
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Santman
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Posted: 16th Mar 2019 19:50
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Alright guys, that's the link shared through PM here, the file should be available now.

When you download it you can extract the ZIP anywhere, then just run the .exe

I'll put up some tutorial start up tips shortly, and some know issues.

Enjoy....happy breaking!
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Santman
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Posted: 16th Mar 2019 20:34 Edited at: 16th Mar 2019 21:48
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Here's a quick start guide, to getting a basic editable landscape.






Play around with the tools, and shout with any questions.

Some know issues:
Editing off the bottom of the bottom chunk gives an error (this is new, not sure when it came in but will fix soon)
You can only load one world per load - for some reason the "new" function to clear everything causes the program to exit without warning, so it's disabled. For now you'll just have to close and start again to load a new world
Any objects you want to use should be put in the "models" folder, with the diffuse texture names as follows: house1.obj, house1_dif.jpg (can be jpg or png)
On first load, all models will be loaded up and saved to the AppGameKit appdata folder as memblocks, so next load should be much faster. Currently only .x and .obj models are supported. Animation is allowed
Editing should work across chuunk joints, but smoothing will not currently - the fix seams function will stich chunck back together

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puzzler2018
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Posted: 16th Mar 2019 22:06
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Awesome Awesome Awesome work Santman - Im well chuffed and very impressed..
Tier 1 Developer
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Golelorn
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 00:15 Edited at: 17th Mar 2019 00:17
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A few bugs to report. Also, if I could suggest getting some mouse-over tool tips in ? I had a helluva time figuring out what did what. Still unsure about a few icons. Also, how about allowing an import of a heightmap?

I will post screenshots of the errors.

Ignore the bad FPS, I haven't set your program to use my gfx card. Its such a hassle lol

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Santman
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 00:36
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Thanks Golelorn, those ate useful.

That first error I think is the bug when you edit beyond the bottom of the chunks.....it's new since I made editing across chunks seamless and into came across it today myself, I usually start in the middle. Think I know that issue though.

Tooltips are on the to do list, though might bump them up now.

In that last shot, were you deleting objects?
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Golelorn
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 13:11 Edited at: 17th Mar 2019 13:13
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No, I was still trying to figure out the icons. I went from the OBJ tab to the tree tab. I do think I had deleted a house or 3 that I had accidentally placed in the ocean.

edit: Also wanted to mention that the camera still rotates if the mouse is over the ribbon or over the tool menus.
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Santman
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 13:30 Edited at: 17th Mar 2019 13:32
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Thanks for the heads up Golelorn.

UPDATE:

Fixed the out of bounds issues, now the map should edit and not crash no matter how far out of bounds you go (screen 1)
Fixed the text objects sometimes overlapping (screen 2)
Fixed the object editing bug (screen 3)
Added tooltips to basic functions

I can add a heighmap function - will look at that at some point. New version uplaoded, and for those who downloaded already there is a seperate UPDATE 17-03-19 folder with the amended bytecode file (that's all that changed).

IF YOU'VE DOWNLOADED ALREADY I'D STRINGLY SUGGEST UPDATING WITH THE REPLACED BYCODE FILE IN THE UPDATE FOLDER - DRAG THIS OVER THE BYTECODE FILE IN YOUR INSTALL LOCATION'S MEDIA FOLDER.

EDIT: just seen that about movement, will sort later but hopefully that's less vital than the crashes killing it!
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Santman
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 13:32
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Thanks Puzzler....getting there slowly.
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JosephB
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 15:27
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This is wonderful. Some items follow that occurred during the initial test as follows:

When I was in Game Mode, I was not able to steer the character--could go forwards and backwards and sideways, but not turn around. I tried both the left and right mouse buttons as well as the shift key and a couple of others, but could not turn around. Also, when exiting the Game Mode, the bird sounds continued to play during all other Modes.

When I first painted a chunk with the base layer, the tops of the waves could still be seen through the painted chunk. I raised the chunk, but the raising is very fast and the chunk disappeared, later to be found high in the sky, so I was able to lower it. Not sure how the chunk raising and lowering is handled but maybe a slight step change would be beneficial, so the chunk doesn't "disappear" suddenly.

While adding some trees in Tree Mode, I got a bit confused by the Placement Mode and Edit Mode as the tree placement starts in placement mode according to the tab and then the tab titles seem to get reversed. While the tab stated edit mode it was actually in placement mode as I could place trees. I also exited the mode and then went back in again to test the tab titles again, I did not place a tree, but selected Edit Mode. This created an error: Failed to get position for object 303 - object does not exists in main.agc at line 1609. There were several tress that I placed earlier when I first tested the Tree Mode and in each instance during the first test the Edit Mode always selected object 303, no matter which tree I selected to edit.

I will continue to test and thank you for the chance to do so.
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Santman
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 15:37 Edited at: 18th Mar 2019 14:57
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Hi Joseph.

Thank you so much for testing it - coincidence has it, I;ve just finished working on the controls, and now keyboard controls are fully functional. I;ve also added teh option to choose between 3rd person or 1st person modes, so you can test the world in either.

Are you using the version updated with tooltips? You can use + and - on teh keyboard to change the rate at which the land alters, so it may be that the value here was high which caused the chunk to raise so much - I'll look into it to make sure though. Still some interface work to do.

In terms of trees, I'm thinking about removing this mode as the default AppGameKit shadow shader doesn't account for vertex shader changes unless it's an animated mesh, so the leaves move but the shadows don't. In my world I'm now going for a cartoon look, so my trees no longer move, and any animation I do will be actaul animation to account for the shadows. I'm unsure.

EDIT: I should point out, control pads should be fully supported for both movement and looking.
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Golelorn
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 18:48
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How does placing a character work? I tried to place one on my chunk, and she dropped into the ocean and sank. I couldn't get back out of the ocean when I exited game mode.

Smoothing seems to be very strong.
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Santman
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 18:51
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Placing a character.....when running game mode? It should place the character where the camera is but higher, them let it drop down to the ground. Did it fall through the ground, or start below it?

When you say you could get back put the ocean after exiting game mode....what do you mean? Editing is free movement with the mouse, there's no restrictions.
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Golelorn
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 18:55
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I must of had the camera over the ocean. When I exited the game mode, I was where the character was. Under the ocean. No matter what I did I couldn't move back out. Maybe user error. Still getting used to the controls.
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Santman
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Posted: 17th Mar 2019 21:55
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I can fix it to make sure the character can't go below water level for testing, and make sure the camera stays above.

I had editing boundaries at one point, marking where you could change, but i found it distracting
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JosephB
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Posted: 18th Mar 2019 17:37
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Santman,

Tested a bit more today. I have only been using the 17/3/19 update. For the first test today, the app would not raise the land when I first entered the chunk area. I was able to load the four textures, but I could never locate the raised land. There were no error messages, just no land showed, so I exited and tried again. On the second attempt, the land showed perfectly. I manually created and painted some mountains and all worked well. I then tried the auto mountain and it created some nice mountains which I painted. It seemed that some shadows were not correct, some I tried the correct normal tab while holding shift for the entire chunk. That seemed to do something, but when I right clicked on an area of the auto generated mountain while in paint mode, I received the following error: Failed to get mesh size max X for object 1999 - object does not exist in main.agc at line 4570. I had not loaded any objects yet, only tested the mountains and painting.
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Santman
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Posted: 18th Mar 2019 17:47
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Hi JosephB.

I thank you for your perceveirance, i know crashes are frustrating.

I'm not sure what's happened the first attempt, but it sounds along the lines of the issue Golelorn had with not being able to move up. I think I'll have to make the editing border active, maybe with a toggle. I've never had the landscape fail to raise, the only thing I can think of is that you had moved slightly outside a chunk. For the mass raise and lower tools, you have to be "over" the chunk, but I can change that to raise for lower the one you point at if that's easier maybe?

The mountain issue I'll try to recreate - the landscape chunks are models 1000-1063, so it's gotten confused somehow but the two are disconnected functions, so one shouldn't impact the other. It may be sometjing to do with the function to stop editing mountains, but will have a look.
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Rick Nasher
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Posted: 18th Mar 2019 19:00
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Looking impressive Santman.
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Santman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 15:05
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Thanks Rik.

JosephB, I found the error message, it's fixed now - resetting the normals works before the painting code, and set the editing position within the world incorrectly. The paint code now checks this itself and that's fixed that. And actually I've imporved it as now painting is seamless across chunks.

I can't replicate the chunck not being visible - the only thing I can think is you were underneath it? The raising and lower works in teh same steps as the editing, but only raises it one level per press - it doesn't work by holding the button down. On a flat landscape, if you go under it then it would invisible as backfaces are culled for performance.
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Golelorn
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 17:16 Edited at: 19th Mar 2019 17:17
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Hey Santman,

Do you know what I need to do to fix this error when saving it?





Also, may I suggest adding a texture/option for slopes to be automatically painted?

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Santman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 17:58
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Hi Golelorn.

That's odd, its suggesting you don't have permission to access your own my docs. Are you running a sandbox environment or anything? I'd run the .exe as an admin, see if that works. I purposefully set it to save to my docs to avoid permission issues.

Unless, perhaps it gives that error if the folder pathway doesn't already exist? Perhaps try manually creating that folder structure - it uses raw commands so it could be finding the first file is failing because the folder path is invalid? That's probably it actually now I think about it. It scand the files first to see if the world already exists, to promote if you want to overwrite it or not, so is probably trying to read a folder path that's never been created.
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Santman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 18:03
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Re auto texting slopes, I added that in a different shade version, so eventually I will add a couple of shader options and the ability to specify a custom shader. The issue lies with texture slots......would you want to paint over the auto texture too? I could, for example, auto paint any slope within a set angle range or height and use the existing painting system, that way you could auto generate a landscape, then just tweak the bits you didn't like.

That sound like the kind of thing?

Also, I planned to double up to 8 printable textures.... is 4 enough, or would 8 be better? That would offer 8 ground textures, grass, and 3 path textures per chunk. Any more and speed takes a MASSIVE hit
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Santman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 20:03
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Just wanted to take the time to say a huge thank you to those patient enough to test, and keep testing, the program. The bugs that are coming up are total show stoppers, but by nature aren't things I would come across.

Once this is done, I'm going to finish reworking the interface for all tools, then will supply all the shaders and source code to load the saved worlds, so you can start tweaking and - for those who want- trying out your worlds in actual programs.

The leader is simple for now and does no optimisation, however I do have a lot of plans in that space. But hopefully once its stable it will give you a chance to test it in a real world (see what I did) environment, and maybe as a level editor.

Once again, thank you for giving up your time to test it.
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blink0k
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 20:35
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I got that same failed to find .../Worlds message. I think it's because the worlds folder doesn't exist
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Santman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 20:37
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Can you try creating the path and seeing if it goes away? I'm not able to test anything tonight, got a different deadline to meet!
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blink0k
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I created the directory and it still fails. I even ran the app as admin and it fails.
I know they were depreciating the old find files/folders stuff. Could be that
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Santman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2019 21:02 Edited at: 19th Mar 2019 21:04
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Ah, I snuck off for a very quick look, found the issue.

Basically the file path needs to exist, but so does a folder. So once you make the path "AGK World Builder/Worlds/" in My Documents - just create a new folder called anything inside the Worlds folder and it should work. It doesn't like there not being any folders. Quick and easy fix, will be in the next one.

EDIT: I.e. create the path "Documents/AGK World Builder/Worlds/this folder/"
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