My thoughts so far, and dreams of the future.

[jeicrash]

I have to say this is probably one of the coolest editors since...well since a long time ago.
After looking at dozens of free game creation tools I finally settled on platinum arts sandbox for the 3d look and simple editing features. My second option was using the Dink smallwood engine which lacks many of the features we want to use. (3d mostly and simple to build objects)

So far I am pretty happy, and we have begun work on our first game (no name, no eta as of yet).
Looking through some of the other games created I have seen a lot of really usefull stuff (Spells, moving lights, inventory) its all there it seams. And i'm sure as development continues it will grow to include even more items.

The future?

Since sandbox, blender, and gimp play so nice together it would be awsome to combine them some how. With blenders particle system and physics engine, gimps photo editing abilities, and sandbox's easy to use editor it would make for a game design platform that could rival most paid applications. I know its a ton of work, and probably nothing we will see, but it would be real neat to make models right inside the game. Think "Spore"

More practical ideas:

I have seen a lot of NPC requests, and I have also seen some games "Master chef ogro" that use npc styles fairly well. Would it be possible to implement brains like dink smallwood does? Then only a brain number needs set for each npc to make them work.

Smash-able items (maybe already doable) again using dink as a reference, Barrels, ducks, trees, can all be destroyed / smashed.

Time based or event based mapmodel switching. This is more from the farm games, click and area of grass and have it turn to dirt, Plant seeds and a few minutes later have a plant.

A place on the website for downloadable content, maps, models, scripts, etc.

Easier point and click interface, buttons around the outside of the game durring edit mode so people can click on tools instead of remembering keys to press. I think this would be a big step towards getting more people into sandbox, especially kids.

Blend tool is a big complicated at this point, maybe the option to click "Create blended texture" then you choose two textures from the texture gui and a new blended texture is created. (Less scripting)

Lots more ideas, but I don't want to get too carried away in case most or all of this is already available or in the works.

Thanks for the great project, keep it up.
Eventually I plan on making some models available, doors seam to be a biggie, Here are some last minute questions.

1. Do the map sizes correspond to a real size. E.g. map 10 = 20000 pixels x 20000 pixels?
2. Do speeds for float and move relate to real speed ? movespeed = 200 (Means 200 pixels per minute / second)
3. Can models have animations on them? A real fire model with its own flame made from particles in blender?

Thanks.

Jei

[Hirato]

Since sandbox, blender, and gimp play so nice together it would be awsome to combine them some how. With blenders particle system and physics engine, gimps photo editing abilities, and sandbox's easy to use editor it would make for a game design platform that could rival most paid applications. I know its a ton of work, and probably nothing we will see, but it would be real neat to make models right inside the game. Think "Spore"

we're not doing this
firstly, i'm too inexperienced and secondly we absolutely detest additional dependencies

as for your questions, the units refer to glUnits, which incidentally is also the sizo of the smallest cube (1x1x1)
so a size 10 map's size is 2^10 (1024 * 1024 * 1024)

secondly, models support animations. mapmodels require this be done in the "mapmodel" animation slot (eg md5anim "mapmodel" mapmodel.md5anim). as for the rest of the query, we'd suggest using the built in fire particles, rather than exporting an animated model from blender. Unless you require the fire dissapear or some such.

[jeicrash]

Yeah adding all those together would be a headache and i'm not even a programmer.\

Thanks for the info on map sizes, this will help us greatly in making textures.

On the map model part, can I have a tree and after a spell is cast change it to a stump? If an example exists that would be great.

Thanks again.