Shepherd Workshop

Shepherd Workshop
My concept and goal for Shepherd is to work collaboratively with the developer's community to build a product that meets needs and is easy to use. So, I'm in the process of setting up a Shepherd development site to post working interface modules that you all can review and -*test*-('") as they are completed. This should also help with bug -*test*-('")ing. Visit the workshop at: http://lassie.gmacwill.com/shepherd

Walkable Grid Designer
Looks good, Very simple and elegant. Couple of things.... 1.) Put a "Are you sure you want to do this?" dialogue box after the clear grid canvas option so people don't accidentially erase it. 2.) Can you apply different phases to walk grids? That would be useful say if you had to remove an obstacle to walk past it and didn't want to create room variations. (I guess that's for a room editor.) 3.) Are you going to implement a way to add boxes? I use them a whole lot more then lines and points. 4.) Might be cool to change the opacity of the grid against the background picture so one could see it better. Anyway, that's my non-programmer 2 cents.

Well I havn't touched Lassie yet, but was able to work out what to do with this in seconds, so its obviously simple and intuitive. Possible Bug: I moved a few points around, then clicked 'L', and then 'c'. After that, I could create points but couldnt join them. However I reloaded the page and everything worked fine... could have been just me. So within Flash, would this be like another toolbar, like the standard Flash toolbar that allows you to add lines and drawings, etc... only this one allows you to add points to a scene with appropriate programming attached to them? Oh and being blissfully ignorant of the hours of programming involved... it would be cool if you could set what scale your character should be at each point, so your character would shrink/grow when moving from one point to another, to give the impression of 3D Space. Like Point A is set to 100%, but point B is set to 80%, and as the character moves between the two He gradually shrinks/grows to the correct percentage of his origianl size. Does that make any sense? Would it be possible, or a nice but low-priority feature? Anyway its great to see some signs of Shepherd emerging, your hard work is much appreciated!

Re: Walkable Grid Designer
Are you going to implement a way to add boxes? I use them a whole lot more then lines and points. Yes, this is JUST the point interface. I do have a box editor in the works which I'll probably post tomorrow. Also, these walkable controls are just a birthday suit skin of the control scheme within Shepherd. There is delete confirmation on (most) everything. Oh, as for having multiple grid "phases", yes... that's being implemented. That's the major reason I've been so careful about building in the save, kill, and reconstruct methodologies... the application will need to do so on the fly very frequently as you flip between grip phases.

it would be cool if you could set what scale your character should be at each point, so your character would shrink/grow when moving from one point to another, to give the impression of 3D Space. Agreed. I've considered that... However, the logistical maintenance would be horrific on that kind of grid. You'd have to eye-ball in scale settings for every grid point in the room. EVERY grid point. No, the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that the walkable grid should be limited to strictly motion. Scale within the room is it's own layer of control, and will be kept as such. Scale Matrixs will also be "phase" based so you can swap configurations in and out on the fly, and I haven't written off the (long term) possibility of allowing more than two adjustment points per matrix. Of course, the initial release will definitely NOT allow more than two.

Speed
I think John Green mentioned this once...but being able to assign walk speeds along with character size would be cool - so that the character moves slower when he's farther back in the room (completing the illusion of depth.) Not sure how hard that would be to implement though....

Re: Speed
being able to assign walk speeds along with character size would be cool - so that the character moves slower when he's farther back in the room A speed matrix control IS being implemented within Lassie Shepherd. You'll probably see an interface demo soon since it's a pretty simple interface (two drag-able points, wooo!)

A new build of the walkable area interface has been posted (along with it's source code -- yes, Shepherd is going to be open source). This one includes full grid point and box control. Note that the button scheme is very archaic... these controls will ultimately be streamlined within the designed interface of Shepherd. Here's I'm just adding a button for every little function. See it at: http://lassie.gmacwill.com/shepherd/walkarea.htm Notes on this interface: - Select multiple points by holding shift and selecting - Use the "s" button to dump grid data. Copy the data output with ctr+C - Paste data output back into the field and use the "L" button to restore a grid. Note that you will NOT have to copy and paste data in the final Shepherd build. It will all be managed behind the scenes.

Almst certainly a daft question... but what are the boxes for?

Boxes define safe area that the character is allowed to move freely within. Instead of restricting your character to a rigid grid, the boxes allow large areas of the screen to be deemed "walk safe". Walkable areas tent to be better when they use more open boxes than points. However, when you have narrow passages that the character is limited within (such as bridges, staircases, etc.), then drawing beams to define motion works better.

New interface posted at: http://lassie.gmacwill.com/shepherd/matrix.htm This is the control scheme for Light and Speed Matrixes. No color adjustment controls have been included, this is just for setting axis and coordinates. Mind you, while this stuff may not look super spiffy or trick, a lot of these implementations are most significant in their application design... which are modular so that they can drop into a larger application and plug into the larger data scheme of Shepherd.

More -*test*-('")ing-interface goodness. This time we're looking at a sweeping composite of all the Room Editor control modules built thus far. Once this gets tied into the Shepherd data-model, then I'd say we're starting to have a functional control interface! http://lassie.gmacwill.com/shepherd

Hi Greg, I'd love to take a look at the mentioned URL as well... unfortunately the page starts loading and the "popup" with the text "Getting Startup Data" remains and I can't click on anything... Any ideas? I already tried in Firefox 2 and IE7 with the same result in both browsers... :( thanks and best regards, Lars.

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