Ugly.

Anyway, I totally scrapped that old thing and restarted.  And here’s a more up to date (but not even close to being done) screen shot:

A little better.

This new editor is going to be a replacement for all the tools in the previous version of Gorgon.  It will handle file management duties (File System Editor in v1.x), sprite editing (Sprite Editor in v1.x) and atlasing (Atlas tool in v1.x).  It will also add font editing.  The big thing about this editor is that it’s entirely plug-in based.  Meaning that the font editor, sprite editor, etc… are/will be DLLs that are loaded/unloaded as needed.  What this means for you:  You can write your own plug-in modules for it.  Want to build a map editor and integrate it with the rest of your content?  With the plug-in system in the editor, you can write your own map editor and host it right in the editor interface (if anything the minimized tedium of having to write UI code is worth it).  Want to write out your content data as encrypted data?  You can extend the file writing functionality to write out encrypted file data.

Unlike the sprite editor in the previous version, the files are no longer saved as loose files on your hard drive that require a separate utility (file system editor) to pack into a single compressed file.  This editor now outputs data as a packed file (of course, this can be modified with a plug-in) so you don’t have to come up with a strategy to update your content, allowing you to edit directly.  This is where it takes over from the file system editor and like the old file system editor this one is capable of importing files by either clicking on an Import menu item, or dragging and dropping directly from explorer.  And, obviously, there’ll be a way to extract the files to your harddrive should you wish to do so.

I have several plans for plug-in modules for the editor including a sprite editor, image editor (a very very very very simple editor, use photoshop or paint.net if you want high detail stuff), a font editor and a shader editor (maybe).

FYI, the window will look like that in Windows 7 as well (i.e. no aero glass).  I’ve modified it to look like the Zune window by including a new object in Gorgon.Common.Dll called ZuneForm.  Basically you inherit this form instead of a System.Windows.Forms.Form and then you get a Zune-looking window.

I’ve provided extensive info after the jump thingy.

In case you’re wondering (and you know that you are), I used the D3DX utility library to handle some horrible jobs in Gorgon.  Namely saving and loading textures and importing GDI+ (System.Drawing) bitmaps into textures.  But with the abomination that is Windows 8, and DirectX 11.1 (which, just to be clear, Gorgon is NOT using), D3DX has been left to rot.  Fine by me, one less dependency (and hopefully no more d3dx4312318793728.dll was not found errors).

So, how am I performing texture loading/saving?  Well, being the daft bastard that I am, I created a rather complicated (for me) imaging system to handle loading, saving and manipulation of image data.  The last part is underlined because Gorgon 1.x had very limited capability in that area.  It’s all based on the toolkit code in SharpDX by Alexandre Mutel and the DirectXTex library by Chuck Walbourn.  I seriously wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere if those guys hadn’t done as much work as they did.

That said, it was still no walk in the park.  The SharpDX toolkit code is fairly basic, and the DirectXTex library is in C++ (I now remember exactly why I don’t use that bastard of a language anymore).

With all that said, here’s what’s new with texture loading/saving:

• Image data is now manipulated through the GorgonImageData object.  This allows us direct access to the pixels of an image on any texture array (or depth slice if using volume textures) index and mip map level.  It breaks the indices and mips into parts that can be indexed like a collection and provides data streams to allow reading/writing of data into those buffers.  All requisite information is included, such as row pitch, slice pitch (= image width * height * bytes/pixel).  All in all, it makes accessing the data pretty easy.
  • Images can be loaded directly into the image data using FromFile/Stream methods.  This is pretty straightforward.  Image data can also be saved to a file/stream.
  • The image data object can perform conversion on several (but not all) formats.  Plus it’ll do resizing of images.
  • That’s the image data object… is that a texture?  No, it is not a texture.  It is the data that a texture can use however.  You may create textures by loading them directly from a file/stream, or into an image data object and then pass that image data object into the texture creation methods.  Or even create an empty texture and copy the data in later.  The two object types are related, but different.  One is for low level image manipulation, the other is for dumping that image data into your video card.
• Codecs… Gorgon now has several objects called codecs.  These are used to decode/encode image data from a file/stream.  Codec objects are passed to load/save methods whenever texture or image data objects are loaded/saved.  Currently Gorgon has support for:
  1. DDS – This was a bastard to write.
  2. TGA
  3. GIF – This was a bastard too
  4. PNG
  5. TIFF
  6. BMP
  7. WMP
• Codecs are objects.  Not enumeration types like the previous versions of Gorgon.  Why?  Because each codec has a set of properties which allow you to alter how images are decoded and encoded based on the codec you’re using.  This allows us to do transformation of image data as it’s brought in.
• Codecs are custom objects.  That is, you, yes you, can write your own by inheriting from GorgonImageCodec and you’ll be able to save/load your very own file format.  Because the world needs more file formats.

Currently GIF, PNG, BMP, WMP, and TIFF are using the Windows Imaging Component API to encode/decode the data for those file formats.  This requires that WIC be installed on your system if you plan on using those formats.  However, this shouldn’t be an issue because Windows 7 should have it installed already.  Also, because codecs can be created by users, you can always write your own PNG codec and not use my crappy version.

Anyway, that’s about as much as I care to babble on about this.

You want pictures though.  I have one.  And it is here.

Anyway, I actually took some time to test out a piece of functionality for the new version of Gorgon.  This new version of Gorgon will have a graphics API separate from the 2D renderer (the 2D renderer uses the graphics API however).  This is unlike the previous version where the renderer was pretty much all you had access to.  I had a user ask me a long time ago if it were possible to access the underlying renderer to render 3D along with the 2D.  At first, it did not, but I did hack in a way to access SlimDX directly through a plug-in and it was awful.

So, in this version I decided to give the developer access to the full graphics API under the renderer.  This allows the user to switch between 2D graphics and whatever they want.  And here’s the results of my intense labour pain:

Yep, it’s a clone of the old Amiga demo “Boing”.  As you can see, there are 2D elements (the text and the logo) along with the 3D elements (which were all done manually I might add, Gorgon does NOT have a 3D renderer so don’t get too excited).  I’ve decided to include the code as an example program for the new Gorgon.

Rejoice.

No more PIX! I can barely contain myself.

This is a big deal to me. I can’t begin to tell you how much I hated PIX (the graphics debugger from the Direct X SDK). When I could get it working, it was painful because I had to run it outside of Visual Studio and even then a lot of stuff failed in PIX and/or crashed PIX.  And don’t even bother trying to do graphics debugging with a 64 bit application in PIX…  Anyway, being able to debug my shaders and stuff in Visual Studio makes me a happy boy.

One other really neat thing I noticed (and it’s about time) is that I could open up the Visual Studio 2010 solution/project files and it didn’t try to convert them, meaning that I could make changes to the 2010 files in VS2012, and still open them in VS2010.   This means I only need to keep -1- copy of Visual Studio and it’ll work when updating the 1.x and 2.x versions and won’t screw up the files.   I am pleased.

So, yeah, I’m moving version 2.x to Visual Studio 2012/.NET 4.5.  Hopefully this won’t be a painful thing for people, and it shouldn’t be:  By the time Gorgon 2.x is released, we’ll probably be on to Visual Studio 2112/.NET Temple of Syrinx Edition (a little Rush joke) and it’ll be moot.  So, to reiterate: going forward you’ll require Visual Studio 2012 to compile/use Gorgon 2.x.

I know people might hem and haw over this… “But Tape, I can’t afford to remove my other kidney and sell it on the black market so I can afford the newest Visual Studio!  I already sold my first one because I needed to get Visual Studio 2008 (or 2010)”   And to you I say, fret not.  As with previous versions of Gorgon, this version works just fine with the Express edition of Visual Studio 2012 (I tested tonight), which is free… well, free as in you’ll have to give Microsoft your precious personal information to register it, which is a joke really… anyway, it won’t cost you money.  Just your soul.

And now, this part, because I can only assume someone’s going to ask about it:  Gorgon 1.x (i.e. the one that actually works and is available for you to use) will remain as a Visual Studio 2010 project  and I have no plans to migrate that version.  So, if you’re that hell bent on staying with Visual Studio 2010, then that’s the version of Gorgon you want.   Plus, it’s the only version that’s available right now… so… yeah, you don’t have much choice in the matter.

That is all.

You can go back to sleep now.

Text mode. Now you too can write state-of-the-art adventure games. N, E, LOOK, INV, instant death… good times.

Best. Customer. Service. Ever.

Dear God, what a mess this whole Metro/desktop thing is.  Someone over at Microsoft must have split personality disorder or something.  How in hell did they think that was a good idea??

Anyway, the OS does have some really nice improvements and it’s very responsive (except when it’s not… I get random freezes once in a while, apparently it’s something to do with my Intel SSD).  And more importantly, after installing VS2010, and the June 2010 DirectX SDK, the new (and presumably old since I haven’t tried it yet) Gorgon works fine.  What I knew, and was hoping I was wrong, is that they took out the D3DX library for the new DirectX, and as such things broke horribly under Gorgon because SharpDX uses the D3DX libraries to load/save textures.  After installing the June 2010 DXSDK, everything worked again, so there’s that.

I really really really don’t like this metro thing.  It’s just horrible with a mouse/keyboard and while I was ambivalent towards the Start Menu in previous versions, I really miss that I can’t group my applications (and I have a lot) under folders.  This made everything really horrible to organize, especially with how obsessive I am about organization on my machine.

That said, the desktop is real nice.  Love the new task manager, love the new copy/delete dialogs.   I even like the new look they put in (they got rid of Aero, or probably more likely, the glass effect).

Sadly, I now have to figure out how in hell I’m going to make Gorgon work without relying on D3DX (yes, I know, I could keep with developing for the June 2010 SDK, but at some point you know they’re going to drop that).  Apparently I can use WIC (Windows Imaging Component), but it looks pretty convoluted and I need something that’ll give me AnyCPU support.

All in all, the awfulness of Windows 8 outweighs its benefits in my opinion.  Someone really needs to kick Ballmer (I blame him wholeheartedly for this mess) out of that company and install someone with a fucking clue (i.e. we don’t all use/want a tablet, nor do we all want to develop for them).

Anyway, I am not dropping support for Windows 7/Vista from Gorgon.  So don’t ask about it.

That’s all for now.  Gorgon is still being worked on, a little, here and there.  It’ll be ready by 2213.

It’s not much to look at, but it was a major pain in the ass to get working, and does indeed work.  Basically you create 2 forms, and 2 swap chains and set both swap chains to full screen and then add some special code to handle cases where focus is lost/restored on the primary form.

Gorgon would normally handle focus loss to reset your full screen mode for you when focus is returned (this is due to a bug in WinForms and DXGI).  And that’s all well and good, but this code really doesn’t work well with multiple monitor situations.  So, there’s a flag to tell Gorgon to turn off the automatic mode reset on focus, and that will let you, the user, handle the transition when dealing with multiple monitors.  It’s not an ideal situation, but it works

It’s a bit complicated to set up, but there’ll be an example included with Gorgon on how to use dual monitor setups that’ll guide you through the process.

I’ve uploaded the Ball Demo to the site so people can have a look at it.  I’d appreciate any feedback (please post the feedback to the forums, thank you).

Please note the following before running it:

1. It’ll probably crash.  It’s in development after all.
2. You NEED Windows Vista Service Pack 2, or Windows 7 (Windows 8 -might- work, but don’t count on it).
3. It will run on Direct 3D 9 capable video devices.  However, it requires Direct X 11 be installed on the system (hence the OS requirements).

To run it, just run the BallDemo.exe and pray (oh, and ensure that the zip file isn’t ‘blocked’ by Windows, .NET assemblies hate that shit).  It defaults to windowed mode with a resolution of 1280×800 although you can modify the BallDemo.config file to change to a resolution you like.

Let me know what your performance is like.

The issue is with the March 2009 SP1 SlimDX end user runtime installer (Gorgon runs this when it installs).  Apparently it’s not working, and even though I’ve tried to download it from the SlimDX site it still refuses to run (for me) and claims that the installer is invalid.

If you’re having issues running Gorgon applications because it can’t find the v2.0.7.41 SlimDX assemblies:
“Could not load file or assembly ‘SlimDX, Version=2.0.7.41, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b1b0c32fd1ffe4f9′ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.”

Then install the SlimDX March 2009 SP1 Developer SDK from here and all should be well again.

However, there are two important changes:

1. The project/solution files for the library source code were converted to Visual Studio 2010.  This means that in order to compile the Gorgon library, you will need Visual Studio 2010.  The library still uses .NET 3.5 SP1, so Visual Studio 2008 will continue to work when using the library assembly.
2. Most important of all: There’s been a new library added called GSound (Gorgon Sound).  Written by ShadowDust702.  New forums have been added to reflect this new addition.

You can download Gorgon from here.