Hired Guns: Your memories (plus some fun fan-created stuff!)

[Lord Aga]

Ahhh sweet, familiar shapes and textures

[Cherno]

Good news, the new and improved DTS mapscreen is working flawlessly

[Predseda]

A demo please!

[Cherno]

I would really like to put out a demo, but I need some more stuff first :>

Namely, the interface is nonexistant at the moment, so that needs to be implemented along with maybe a few basic items like one gun and a health kit

So... maybe in 2016? Just kidding

[Cherno]

Tomorrow, I will start coding the editor in earnest. The aim is to be able to completely re-create the first level, Abandoned Depot, with the editor, save it, and then play it. There won't be any monsters and probably no weapons firing but the basic framework will be there. I have written down all variables the official HG Map Editor can edit, and no the frist step is to re-create this functionality. I can already use my editor to add and destroy walls, water, and forcefields, and change wall textures, but nothing else. Ahead of me is a lot of interface planning so the user can easily place pillars, assign triggers to switches, and change things like the map's skybox.

[Lord Aga]

Woohoo
I played that level a week ago with my friends A good way to start.

[Cherno]

Good news on the editing front. The Editor is about one third done I'd say, so far the interface for editing walls, water, and forcefields are complete, and different water heigths and animated tidal waves also work. Next tasks are finishing exit and barrier blocks, and starting the object editing interface. This is a major undertaking because of how switches work. Somewhere in between I also have to script the moveable blocks and make a model for them.

[Cherno]

After 5 days without internet I can finally psot another status report

The map editor is "almost done", I'm currently just working on some issues with the switches but other than that, I can create a complete level with all objects in it. I still have to figure out how to properly save a map, though.

[Predseda]

Looks very clever.

[Cherno]

Thanks

Corrected the problem with the switches, added touch triggers, and panels with a nice texture selection for them, like the texture selection for the normal wall blocks. The major thing to do is still to make load/save maps work properly, so far you can save and load the architecture (walls, water, forcefields, teleporters, exits), and load/save everything else seperately. I will have to keep them seperate, but make it so that only one button needs to be pressed for everything to happen.

[Cherno]

Phew! Spent the last 12 hours implementing a solid load/save map feature. It finally works as intended. Now I can finally start working on making the editor a little bit easier to use, change the button layouts and sizes, add popup help windows, and so on. Expect a first release of the map editor this weekend.

[Predseda]

Make 1:1 exact 1st level from the game to check everything works

[Cherno]

Good idea. I will do it. Before, I have to make some dummy objects for eggs, items, and monsters.

[Cherno]

Another very productive day! I managed to add a lot of user friendliness and additional features to the editor, and finally worked out the animated waves. Thanks to Predseda for suggesting that I recreate the first map, I did it and it helped me find some bugs which I managed to overcome. Now, there are only a few very small steps left on the immediate to-do list, and none of them are critical:

1. Automatically generating lights throughout the level based on certain wall textures.
2. Adding a puddle floor texture
3. A scrollbar for the save/load game menu.

As I said, I managed to completely re-create the Abandoned Depot map, it was a lot of fun seeing this map for the first time in full 3D. Well, there are no items are monsters, but everything else is there.

I guess I will start implementing a "test map" function that exits the editor and loads the map so the player can walk around in it like a real game.

[Predseda]

i am looking forward to the first demo!

[Lord Aga]

Whoa, Cherno is like a HG god

[Cherno]

You guys are too kind Without your help I would hot have been able to do bring it this far.

I already have the scrollbar and puddle texture, I may or may not implement the automatic lightgenerating feature. Otherwise, the editor is complete and I will write a small manual for it.

[Cherno]

Excuse the lack of updates in the past few days. I have encountered a crippling bug in the save / load game feature which is a third-party solution so I have to dig deep into the code and find out what's going wrong.

In essence, the editor and test map feature all work flawlessly and I can recreate whole maps without any problems. However, when I save a map and load it again, some switches lose their trigger targets (doors, elevators etc.) so that a map may become pointless to play on if you can't go up an elevator becasue the switch doesn't work. It is for this reason that I haven't released a demo version yet, I figured it is pointless to spend time on a map only to have it not save right in the end.

Thanks for all your effort Cherno It's amazing how far you have made it with the recreation of the game. The editor also looks interesting, in original one it was difficult to see what blocks are above current level and that could lead to some glitches.

In your last post you have said that you can recreate whole maps - does that means that your editor is compatible with original maps? I'm asking that because few years ago I was trying to create Hired Guns New Campaign - but at some point I lost motivation and only 1/3 of the maps are completed. If it would be possible to play your game with 4 players over Internet... then my motivation would come back very quickly and I would be interested in converting these maps and continuing my work on your editor

Good luck with your job, hope to see the next version of your game soon!

[Cherno]

Hello and thanks for your comment. No, my editor can't load original HG maps, it would probably be theoretically possible to write a converter, but I have no idea how the map file format works and either way my HG version has some features that the original didn't, such as multiple targets for switches, Forcefields that can exist under water, and more. The editor is so easy to use however, that it would be no problem converting existing maps by hand; I think it took me about half an hour to recreate the Abandoned Depot map (sans monsters and items).

Regarding checking which blocks are above whic, my editor has a Slice feature that lets you turn all blocks and objects above the current editing layer invisible.