seems ok on both my OS systems - see YT links





maybe run in admin if not already doing so and ensure all the files are there on your system that are in the FPS file.

Apologies BOTR ...

Both you and 3com are correct I wasn't running as Admin ....
Cant believe I didn't try that first considering I'm usually the one advising it
Sorry to have put you to so much trouble ....

no problem at all synchromesh-it was better I double check just in case something not quite right somewhere.

Running 3.5 on windows 7x64 and have no problems.

Continuing with FPSC level import/export which is now coming on well. Eye candy to come soon.

Here is a small glimpse on the FPSC level import, it's very early days yet so there is still a lot to do but progress is being made each day, time allowing.

Looking good . Can't wait for you to get the textures in and the punch for segments . I will definitely purchase this .

Lookin' good on that level BOTR. Would be great if you also had a 3ds export/

Same here.

FPSC Level Import, a great addition to the software. The Sky's the Limit

many thanks for your comments guys, I will also be looking into the possibility of 3ds export today, also am writing the texture system as I type this (well ok not exactly as I type this but you know what I mean ha)

Here is a quick vid, showing textured FPSC level. loads more to come!!

Excellent . Hope you get the wall punch going soon . I have some punches (purchased) for blast holes I can't wait to try out . Don't forget you have to be able to 'punch' thru floors and ceilings too .. The hole punches came from 'buttercutter'. Had them for quite a while .....

@Lance-yes I have the butter cutter software too, I will ensure this also works for ceiling and floors

just keeps getting better
hope you can complete main program soon for purchase.

I've decided to sell the product for £10 or equiv. $15, anyone who purchases the software will get free lifetime upgrades. Purchase will probably be via Paypal, but may consider the Store. Of course this will happen once the final product is in place with FPSC Level (which is pretty much there now-video shortly) plus the puncher feature which I really want to be solid and easy to use (point/click/punch).
At the moment I'm saving out FPSC levels under my entitybank/user/fpsclevel directory. Would users want to select their own dir (which I'm guessing most user would) or just let the app create/save the level in same dirs as I have with a filename selector?

Here is a demo video showing progress on the tool and exporting FPSC levels into GG and being able to run around the level. Again, it will be fully automated, so please ignore the GG importer part.

Hope you enjoy!

' let the app create/save the level in same dirs as I have with a filename selector' . Sounds good to me , or just save to a folder to the desktop .

I am sold . The price is very reasonable considering the work you put into it . I like it a lot .............

Lance

that is a fair price to pay for this software with all the work you put in awaiting purchase when ready

Looks good to me. where do I send the money. Yeah!!!

Here is another vid showing FPSC prefabs -> GG + anim doors with the help of the tool

Quiet I'm watching TV

Good demo ......

Pretty awesome tool

Some segments floors and walls would have four or five variations which were auto randomised in the engine to prevent too much texture repetition. Some segment parts would use a separate texture so not sure how you are handling that with prefab or entire level export.
It looks like only diffuse is used as multiple textures which means no shader can be applied in GG to single 'welded' entity. So I may see it being more useful to convert all parts and use grid snap to piece these together in GG if the normal and spec were copied over as well. I am a little confused as to how importing an entire level as .dbo which is welded would work with shaders and multiple texture, the door is obvioulsy a separate entity from the wall and doorframe on import so perhaps a clue as to how import an entire level with all entity's and textures required anddifferent shader effects applied could be found in the FPSC source and how it handles the universe.dbo. Using the same folder as entity to store textures is required in GG.I think it was something of a mistake for TGC to remove the texture and shader fields from the entity property panels in GG which made it real simple to change in the editor, now you have to close out GG and change in the fpe which becomes time consuming.

All in all it is a great tool with some real potential, but if importing old FPSC assets they don't have the greatest texture quality and shader is definitely required to make 'em even half decent looking in GG. I am also wondering if the mesh is actually welded as this would create real problems with lightmapping (GG will refuse to lightmap an entity with more than 10000 faces and they need to broken into smaller parts) it might be an idea to allow full levels to be exported in parts for this reason.

Many of the segment fps files contained offset info which might explain your doors coming in at the wrong height if the offset is different from the pivot height for a dynamic entity. If you check the offsets in the door fpe you might see if there are any being exported by your app since collision is calculated from the object mesh on import, if some of those older assets didn't have the pivot at 0,0,0, (which would explain some being correct and an offset on others) then they might cause problems on import to GG.
It might also be important to remember that most if not all all animated entity's in FPSC used bones which require the character shader to run. I think this shader may be broken in the most recent version (illumination is certainly busted) so you might want to keep an eye on that.

Brilliant work and will be a great asset for some users If anyone were thinking of purchasing this I would go for the free update version and forget any idea of purchasing the cheaper one (you might want to drop that...really) since anything could and most likely will change things in future rendering some versions totally obsolete and your position tenable with users who pay for free upgrades and those you have to provide fixes for when things go wrong....just friendly advice. Make it a fixed price with free upgrades, at least for the Beta duration of GG, and I will most certainly purchase it

This will be great, as I have a completed game in FPSC Regular with 4 Levels that I spent many hours on, now I will be able to Import those Levels into GG.

Question: If I try to Import the Levels with Dynamic Entities, will the software just ignore these files and continue working ok.

Looking at the latest Video it did seem a Tad complicated to get to the final result, could this operation be made a little easier ?.

@Rolfy: many thanks for your comments. there is definitely still a lot of work that I have to do especially with regards to looking into the multiple textures/shaders etc. At some point these will need to be handled as well as lighting. I must admit the FPSC source code is a beast to go through to see how things were done and some of it a bit confusing at first glance, but wanted to at least get the bare knuckles in and then improve on later.
Still tons to do and getting things to work on all Windows platforms is a task and a half For the door, I checked both the door FPE and segment FPS and it's all so strange as no matter what I did with offsets (Y), some were correct in GG and coming in at the right height and some weren't.... so will need to revisit that too. What I don;t want to end up doing is creating a tool that is as large/larger than FSPC creator I had also realised that maybe the option of having the level in separate parts would be good/more flexible. Luckily the single meshes all get saved to a temporary area prior to retexturing them all. So this is something I will definitely be fixing/improving on. Unfortunately all these things take a bit of time.

@ozziedave: thanks for you comments/question-GG seems to ignore any dynamic entities. You can ignore the video in regard to how I imported the level, as I previously mentioned, everything will be automated, so the tool will generate the FPE/BMP file, no GG importer will be required. The user will be able to just click on the level entity and place onto the terrain. For some reason I get to a point where I probably get too excited and think "I know let's create another video" and realising I still have tons to do ha

Loads of improvements and code to add especially at some point the punching system, now that will be fun, can't wait to punch through floors, ceilings, walls just by pointing and click and see the results. What fun!!
I will refrain from making another video until everything is fully automated and any bugs squashed. I need to also put in a much better camera system.

Thanks again for all your comments, I will take these on board and implement these into the tool code.

Great Price ...Buyer ready

I did ask earlier I think ..... would this work in FPS Creator X10 ?

@Synchromesh-thanks for your comment. Sorry if I missed your question regarding FPSX10. I'd have to fire my copy of X10 up and test out if it runs on Win7/Win10. Maybe that is something I will test out today. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Thanks BOTR ...

I was only wondering as it did have some different segments ..
Don't go to much trouble though it was only a thought and nothing I cant try out when you release it

BTW....Not sure how your going to sell it but if you want a page on GG Files ( which is being updated ) I can do that with your own PayPal link..

I just installed X10 on my Win7 OS and added a quick internal code tweak and segments are ok, but for the levels, I would need to do some further directory configuring (this is fairly straight forward -- he says ) as all the build related files that the tool uses are in C:\Users\<user>\Documents\FPSC X10 Files directory.
Will have a play around with that as I'm curious now ha.
I think once the tool is at a stage where it's sellable, I will put in a request for it to go on the GG Files board if that's ok.

The price is great. I will be buying this! I like your video updates BOTR. Your posts are the only reason i check in on these boards. I mean that.

@seppgirty-many thanks for your comments, very much appreciated. I think I will also (as was suggested on this board) allow the user to change textures for a segment/part. It would be good to get the tool to a stage where it's more than just a seg rebuilder but also a kind of seg editor. Load of features to come in the future. I think everyone is waiting in anticipation for the GG update release hopefully next week, can't wait for that.

This morning will be adding code to copy over the Normal and Specular texture maps (as highlighted by Rolfy-thanks again). Also, trying to fix some camera issues and other texture issues where some objects coming out black, but this is a simple fix.
Got some FPSC X10 segments in GG, but levels will need more work on as they look ok in tool preview window but not in GG. So lots of things to do before creating the punch system (while my wife is away for the night).

Ok realised that most or all of the of textures i.e. Diffuse/Normal/Specular texture maps don't exist in FPSC folders apart from the _D2 textures, I guess these are generated within FPSC source code itself and probably why I never included them in the first place, so have to fathom how these are generated, what joy but challenging It's all to do with the internal FPSC D.I.N.S system.....mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

If I look in the texturebank I can see _N and _S for all segments, the _D is usually the one to use with shader maps. The _D2 is for use without shaders and has a baked AO. Some segment textures use _I for lighting effects also so you might want to include those particularly the sci-fi segments make use of these

I don't now why you would be missing the maps but they are definitely in there.

FPSC doesn't generate any spec or normal maps itself that I ever heard of, GG does if they are missing but they are merely placeholder flat images and won't produce any bumps with shader.

In the attached image you can see the folder does contain maps, you can also see the extra textures which are variations of the same and randomly sorted by the engine I mentioned before (I don't really expect you to work that one out). They are named with _a_ _b_ etc.

Thanks for your last 2 posts Rolfy-this will help, I think some are missing on mine for some segments but present for others, I'll take another look. The most frustrating thing I've had to handle is the .TGA or other suffix present in FPS file but the physical .TGA are actually .DDS files.

FPSC converts .tga to .dds by default, if you load these segments into the editor it will create the dds for you, are you using the full version or a demo?

If the path specifies tga and none present FPSC will look for a dds.

I'm using the full version of FPSC (I think I must be blind, I found most of the _D/_N/_S textures), at the moment the tool looks for whatever is in the FPS file e.g. .TGA and if it can't find it it searches for a texture filename with the same name as the spec and loads it in i.e. _D2.DDS (in most cases the tga files aren't there as you say they get converted and saved out as .dds. This week I will be redoing the texturing system (for Segments) as I wasn't 100% happy with it and also some segments come out black in the tool preview window but actually come out ok in GG so I have been playing around with shaders etc. So this week will be mainly texture stuff as I really want to get that right and at the moment it's not, the basics work but it's not flexible enough. I will probably have to rethink the logic to handle it all correctly. Lots of stuff to fix and rework this week, time allowing but it will be worth it.

Pretty sure you will get there Look forward to you finishing it up and will definitely purchase.
If you get to a point where you can save out a small level with entity's segments and associated textures I will dance a jig.
It seems to me you are close to enabling a method of construction which will match the intended construction kit for GG. Would it be feasible to use what you have learned so far to export prefab structures from GG? Not sure at this point if GG isn't creating a similar universe.dbo for standalone so maybe worth looking at

@Rolfy-thanks again for your comments. I'm sure there will be a point when I will be able to save out entity segments and associated textures, I getting to understand most of the FPSC source code and how it is putting stuff together and building, it's pretty complex but I am learning so much as a programmer and about 3d object/textures/cameras (oh those dreaded cameras ha) and all sorts of stuff. I've also been messign with shaders and recompiling some old FPSC ones etc, that is really interesting but most things seem to be clicking into place. I could look into the exporting of prefab structures from GG, just need to figure out a few things.

[update-I will need to code around the problem of blank textured=,texturen=,textured= in the FPS files as code relies on them being present in the spec file-but I'm sure I will get there]

ok so the DNS texture files are now copied over to the segment area (not in textures dir). It's quite tricky as some files exist but not necessary have the .tga extension as described in the FPS files so, so I've defaulted to .DDS as Rolfy pointed out and I forgot that these files are saved out as .DDS files in the FPSC engine. Will get there eventually.
Just leaves copying over the relevant effect .FX files that the segment uses. Also looking into the shader side, some don't work in GG but at least the files will be there and you can do what you want with them.

[update-tool now copies over DINS textures + all effects files , some of these may or may not work in GG, playing around with shaders ]

here are a couple of screenshots using DNS textures using same segment with entity shader set to highest.

There are differences in basic entity shaders between FPSC and GG where GG requires a far darker spec map.
Good news is that most shaders written for FPSC will work just fine in GG
I should download the demo for your tool and can manually copy over textures and shaders, would love to see what a little tweaking can produce in the test level setup along with manipulating some of the effect maps.

so the tool now works well with FPSC X10 (segments only), so I'll be adding an option to allow user select the FPSC version should they want to.
Here is the alien ceiling segment from X10 using Bump.fx shader and the basic DNS system. The one on the right uses the circuit ceiling segment from X10 and has had the ambient light sliders adjusted as the segment comes out so bright using the bump.fx shader. I am now more fascinated with shaders as must admit I'm no expert with them.

GG v1.1 and FPSC level import (Metro Theatre). I really love this level ,so rich in colour/texture. Credit goes to Bond1 If I remember rightly.

looks good, but why is it so slow and choppy? just wondering.

just my video recording software, is smooth in GG

cool

BOTR, You are a Wizard, the level looks great, I use a Video Capture called Action! , I can recommend it, there is a free version to
download, but on the other hand I did read that you are praying for a new Computer !!!!!.

thanks Ozziedave---I do need a modern PC with a much faster graphics card and thanks for the tip re: !Action, I'll download that later, it may be that I'm not using my current capture software correctly somewhere ha