 |
Open-Source Unreal Map Editor In The Works
9:19 AM | Ben Boffey | Comment on this story
The subject of map and level editors has long been a sore point for Mac gamers since the early days of the platform; often Mac gamers have been left out of the creative loop simply because game tools are built with technologies which make them difficult or even impossible to translate from one platform to another.
One the most often requested of these 'missing' tools has been UnrealEd, the tool used to create games based on the Unreal/Unreal Tournament engine. Andrew "Quetzal" Plucker, webmaster of the Mac Unreal Tournament website [osX] today brought us news of an interview with Paul Snively, lead developer of a new open-source project known as Seppuku. The aim of this project is to create a truly cross-platform map and mod editor for all Unreal engine-based games.
Quetzal: Just for clarification: Seppuku is meant to be a cross-platform editor that can be used to create maps and mods for a wide variety of UT engine games including UT, Deus Ex, Rune, etc. Correct? Paul Snively: Yes, that's correct. The hope is that variation among the various Unreal-tech-based titles will be comparatively minor. I'd expect to start with UT itself as a base due to the public availability of the UT version 432 headers, and support the other titles with plug-ins that basically tell Seppuku what features the title adds/changes/removes from UT. Of course, this support will be contingent upon either receiving file format information from the developers of the title, or from reverse-engineering. We'd vastly prefer the former. :-) The project is in very early development and in Paul's own words is 'suicidally ambitious' hence the name, Seppuku; the ritualistic samurai method of suicide, also known as hari-kiri. The project needs help to evolve and reach the stage where a usable tool could be released:"Pretty clearly, I'd like to have at least one more senior C++ guy who's ruthlessly committed to writing very modern, very clean, very portable ANSI C++. I'd also like to have someone start thinking about defining the feature-set of UnrealEd etc. thoroughly, crafting a functional spec for us to target. And I need someone to create widgets for MacOS and Windows.Finally, we need help with promotion, getting the word out, and the like, but there's also a risk there of promoting vaporware. It's a tricky balance to maintain. If you want to know more, or feel that you could help, read through the full interview at [osX], there are also forums following the project's development at Mac Deus Ex.
 [osX] website
Project Seppuku forums @ Mac Deus Ex
Recent Mac Games News Wednesday, August 15, 2001
Tuesday, August 14, 2001
Monday, August 13, 2001
Friday, August 10, 2001
Thursday, August 9, 2001
|
Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.
|
|
