Journal #6651

Posted 14 years ago2010-07-17 05:27:26 UTC
Penguinboy PenguinboyHaha, I died again!
Time for another episode of Penguinboy's dead projects! (Aka the side project showcase)

Today we say goodbye to a project that I worked quite a bit on for about a year. Yes, this is the 'big project' I've mentioned previously. Some of you knew about it before, many didn't. But it's dead.

Gotta say I was rather sad to see this one go. Ah well.

Project: Thor
Goal: Hammer clone.

Yes, it's a clone of Valve's Hammer Editor. Working for both Source and Goldsource, Thor was to be a perfect clone of Hammer (interface and functionality). Combining all the extra features of version 4 and the stability of a modern programming language, Thor would probably have made a few Goldsource mappers happy.

Anyway, a screenshot or two:
This one's kinda outdated, but shows a basic layout:
User posted image
This is how the 3D view looked, with textures and entities:
User posted image
What these screenshots might not make apparent is how far along this was. It was loading RMFs (above maps are one of Grim's vault maps, and Adam Foster's Someplace Else), showing them in 3D, had brush and texture editing, and compiling as well. Here's a video that should show it a bit better:
Video link

Project status: DEAD. Sorry guys, this thing is completely dead. Why? For starters, it's very badly coded. Also, it was crashing constantly - I couldn't nail down the cause, but I think it was one of the underlying libraries, something that I couldn't change without basically rewriting it. Finally, when I upgraded to Windows 7, it broke completely and by that time, I didn't want to put in the effort to look into that. Thor is dead, and it's not coming back. Don't cry for Thor, it's gone to a better place.

That said, I do actually have a bunch of semi-decent code left over from it. I may do something with them in the future. I have RMF/MAP/VMF parsers, FGD editors, texture application algorithms, and quite a bit of 3D programming knowledge. Any suggestions on what I should do with all this stuff?

One day, perhaps I will clean up any of the half-decent code and release it under an open license. It's all coded in .NET, if you were wondering.

9 Comments

Commented 14 years ago2010-07-17 07:09:06 UTC Comment #50074
No way. How the fuck did you programmed that!

It's so unfair.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-17 09:09:46 UTC Comment #50080
He probably did not programmed on a platform dependent language like you do :P.
Anyway, are you going to release the source code?

Also, an idea would be to make a rmf. or map. exporter from a source map, for exporting "world" geometry.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-17 10:12:14 UTC Comment #50075
Sad to see this go, you made a lot of progress on it.

I noticed you never mentioned it had plugin (and therefor Twister) support in there, but that was a nice feature. The collapsable interface was neat, too.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-17 11:02:23 UTC Comment #50077
Can you make a completely 3-d version of hammer?
Idk how hard that would be, But after using the UDK and Spark editors for quite some time, it just seems like OOOLLLLDDDD technology relying strictly on the 2-d views to build 3-d worlds.

Essentially, have a scale, rotate, and move widget attached to any selected object, or vertex point in VM mode..

Not sure how well clipping would work, but this is ONE THING i always wanted to see in hammer.

If you hit 'x' in 3-d view you can stretch and move entities, but it's just not enough.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-17 11:13:08 UTC Comment #50076
"He probably did not programmed on a platform dependent language like you do :P."

He did it in C#, which might as well be visual basic in another wrapper. <3
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-17 11:15:59 UTC Comment #50081
I started on a Hammer clone about a year ago, but didn't have nearly enough experience with UI and 3D programming and I did it in JavaScript which has a terrible class system so it failed pretty quickly.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-19 04:07:25 UTC Comment #50078
Next episode: TWHL4.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-19 14:46:07 UTC Comment #50082
It's heartbreaking.
Commented 14 years ago2010-07-19 20:07:13 UTC Comment #50079
omg how cool! I would basically KILL for a non-steam hammer 4 editor, and it would be ultra-convenient to be able to use it for GS as well.

Oh well maybe Thor shall be resurrected someday?

)

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