The idea for this project was simple, build a game editor (GGE Live Editor) for an existing engine written in C++ GGE. GGE is short for GamePipe Game Engine, and is USC’s Game Engine. It uses Ogre3D as a renderer, but relies on many other libraries as well.
In order to do so we embedded the C++ application into a C# control and communicate both applications using sockets. Since we just had around 12 weeks to develop, test and publish the editor, we decided that this was the technique more suitable for our requirements. The approach worked really well and we had the first prototype working in just one week, it is quite straightforward to implement and the results are impressive.
This is the list of basic features implemented in the editor:
- Create, edit, and delete entities, scene nodes, lights…
- Viewer: static meshes, animated meshes, particle systems
- Edit and save scenes with different screens
- Different cameras (top, side, front, perspective)
- Grids, picking, maya controls…
- Scene manager and properties editor.
- Edit and execute the game inside the editor with different controls (edit or game controls)
- And much more!
More information here.
