Dear friends,

The 11 "Tool Contest" entries are now uploaded to Acknex Unlimited. Please download them all, test them all and then vote the best one.

I want to make sure that everything is OK, so the voting will start in about 2 days. If you have sent me a contest entry and you don't see it in this list, contact me at george at acknex dot net.

What tool should win the 1st prize? single choice
terrain Deformer by Widi Caviezel	3%, 2 Votes
Particle Effect Builder by Martin Coumont	7%, 5 Votes
LBGUI by Lukas Brozio	28%, 19 Votes
DialogED by Jonas Freiknecht	1%, 1 Votes
Light Frog by Hummel	22%, 15 Votes
GS Updater by Felix Queissner	1%, 1 Votes
FXED by David Ball	7%, 5 Votes
Act by Clyde Shaffer	4%, 3 Votes
Particle Generator by Ben Mahfoudh	22%, 15 Votes
Multiplayer Scoreboard by Alex Littler	0%, 0 Votes
3D Entity Panels by Alex Littler	1%, 1 Votes
Total Votes: 67 Voting on this poll ends: 08/12/10 11:00

Alright! I made sure to have a look at all of these. I hope everyone who votes downloads and tries them all because you never know which ones you like in there that may not have had much forum publicity leading up to the deadline. I'll say something about each of them:

Terrain Deformer: Nice idea, but it really lacks polish, and to be honest I just couldn't get it to work. I mean, it would compile and everything, but including an executable would be nice. And I couldn't get terrain to deform. Sorry -- I didn't spend a lot of time on it -- I see its usefulness, and perhaps it works better than I could figure out, but even if it did it wouldn't be my first choice.
EDIT: This was an A8 issue. See post below for Widi's A8 version, and below that for my thoughts having tried the working version.

Particle Effect Builder: Very fancy effect builder. Lots of nice options. Great polish, and nice tutorials.

LBGUI: My favourite at the moment. Absolutely ridiculously useful, very customizable. Love how they function like their Windows equivalents, but completely customizable appearance. That's exactly what people expect in games. It feels like it should be integrated into GS. The only downside is that Conitec might be making it redundant in the near future with an official GUI dll, but who knows when that will ever happen. Bonus points for including examples. Plus, that's a ridiculous amount of code in there!

DialogED: Great polish. Appears very useful, but the manual implies that it will only produce C-Script. Big negative points for me, I'm afraid, as C-Script is only supported for legacy reasons now.

Light Frog: Beautiful shaders. A nice-looking light-focused alternative to Shade-C for those who don't want to write their own shaders. I like to write my own shaders, but that has no bearing on my vote here, as I also want good shader work to get due attention: this is high up there on my list. Bonus points for beautiful exe examples.

GS Updater: Very cool tool! Good thinking. I hope a lot of people get good use of it, and I hope everyone tries it, because as far as I know I haven't seen this tool get any attention prior to this actual contest. It's a gem, and I hope it gets at least a few votes.

FXED: Solid tool. I might start using it as a .fx editor. I think I already said a lot about it in the Projects thread. This deserves some votes too, or a prize.

Act: An example would've been very helpful, as well as some documentation. From what I've seen in Projects, though, this is quite a useful tool. Unfortunately with no documentation or example I can't really say much about it.

Particle Generator: Poor English, for one thing, made it difficult to use. Sorry, I know it's hard if English isn't your first language, but it's still pretty confusing to use. Not as polished as the other particle editor. Doesn't seem to offer as many options.

Multiplayer Scoreboard & 3D Entity Panels: I'll talk about both of them together, since they're both from EvilSOB. Now, EvilSOB deserves something for his pro-active help and great contributions in this community. And these are two solid contributions. I just don't think either are the most useful entry in this contest. My favourite is 3D Entity Panels, since it's just plain clever. None of the buttons in the example worked for me, however. And the compass rotates the wrong way when the player rotates. Bonus points for including an example anyway.

Well done to everyone who entered, though. I see a lot of effort in all the tools.

Jibb

Terrain deformer: there is a problem with the new A8 version. I try to fix it...
Tested with all newer A7 versions without problems.

EDIT: There is a different between A7 and A8 by handling ent_getvertex:
A7 c.v.y --> gives the vertex in Entity coordinates
A8 c.v.y --> gives the vertex in World coordinates

EDIT2: I ask George if i can upload a new version that contains one version for the A7 and one for the A8. Will post later if it is possible...

EDIT3: workaround: here you can download one version for A7 and one for A8:

DEFORM TERRAIN A7
DEFORM TERRAIN A8

That's much more like it!

Revised review for Terrain Deformer: Seems to have all the bits and pieces you need to edit a terrain. Very useful to have code access so that terrains can be viewed with custom shaders and what-not. The mouse behaviour appears a little weird, sometimes jumping a lot further than expected when I make quick movements. Some nicer controls would make this tool more user-friendly. Perhaps if it behaved more like a traditional model editor, with the camera moving around a pivot-point, instead of having to move the camera around in a kind of fly-thru mode.

Jibb

Thank you Julz, thanks also for the movement hint.

Thanks Julz for the testing and descriptions.
Hope, that there will be more people who can take the time to check all entries.
The testing is time consuming as well, and a valuable task, because it gives the participants the deserved attention for their efforts!
I won't have time to test all, hope there are enough others to do so!

Well done !!!
It seems like the Review made by JulZ has some subliminal ( Hidden) aims


All the entries have been made with a little touch of love
and you have to test them to feel it,
So ... "Try it by yourself".

@BMM_SOFT: I guess you mean I'm biased much more to projects that look nice. I hope I haven't given anyone the impression that they can vote based on my words -- no one should vote if they haven't tried all the entries to see for themselves.

I just hope my feedback is constructive to the developers; Widi was quick to fix issues I was having, and I know other tools developers took a lot of community feedback into account as they continue to update their contributions.

Jibb

Hey JulzMighty, thanks for the compliments.
Sorry the map spin is backwards, rush-job on the demo...

But as for the buttons not working, WTF?!?
Did you have your speakers turned on? All they do in the demo
is 'animate' as real panel buttons, and play sounds when clicked or mouse-over...

If not, what version of A7? It was only tested by me on A7.86.0.

[EDIT] Thank for the below post Widi... I can breath easier now...

He use already the A8. I make the same miskake, don`t test my entry under A8. And in A8 my entry don`t work correct (see my post up).

With my version A7.86 your entry works, like it. Good work.

I probably should have mentioned that I'm using A8 in my original post -- I suspected it was because A8 still has some things to iron out, so I assumed it all works well under A7. I just tried it again, and can confirm that under A8 there are no sounds with the buttons either (I wasn't sure if I had sound on the first time I tested it).

Jibb

its general thing: if you want your demo to work correctly
supply a compiled exe.

There will be many others users encountering the same problems
(either cant run it, or it runs wrong)

Also (for the cinematic editor in specific)
Always supply a meaningful example / testcontent, and documentation.

---

(voted for the particle effect builder)

tested the stuff:
-LBGUI is the best ->vote

-particle generator is the most unnecessary tool since there is already easy particle for C-Skript particle effects which is of course a lot better
(you will not win irrespective how many friends you ask to vote for you)

have fun

LBGUI the best for me.

I really like most of the entries. I like the Particle Effect Builder, Hummel`s advanced lighting (looks unbelievable) and of course LBGUI for its usability the most. Act! is also very cool, but a little too buggy. FXED seems to be very professional, but I`m no shader coder. So my vote goes to: Particle Effect Builder (not the Particle Generator!). Because it`s the most useful tool for me and I waited for an advanced Lite-C particle tool for a long time.

Let's start

3d EntityPanels:
-Perhaps usefull but I was not able to click any buttons (commercial 7.86). The demo is not very nice presented. At least the sourcecode is well commented. I didn't test the header for another project, so I can't tell how easy it is to use it in my own projects.

act:
Nice idea, but in an earlier devenlopent status. I agree with some previous posts, that a better demo would have been great. But at least it is very usefull, with a lot of potential.

DialogEd:
Nice tool, clean interface with a professional look. But c-script is outdated (at least for my me)

FIXED:
I like this tool very much. Nice gui. If you get the concept of this editor, it is very helpfull for writing shaders.

gsupdater:
Nice usefull tool, nothing more to add. But I think it can't beat the bigger projects in this contest.

lbgui:
Great header. But I had to modify it a little, to made my round edge windows working. I love the radiobuttons in lbgui, because gstudio radiobuttons are crap like the build in checkboxes and the missing lists

lighfrog:
vote, because I needed dynamic light/shadows for my project and I am not able to write shader like that. Ok the reason for voting is a bit lame, but the demo runs perfect on my system. The performance is acceptable in my own project. And I love shader.

MultiplayerScoreboard:
Nice tool. Well written code comments. I must confess, I only started the demo and looked into the source code. I didn't test it with my own project. But I like editors and shaders, so I can't vote for this project, even it is well done.

ParticleGenerator:
The presentation is not good. So there is a direct competitor project in the same contest you must accept the comparison to the other editor. The Gui is not as clean as in the other editor. The 3d preview of the particles don't look as good as in the other particle Editor.
And sorry, c-script is outdated. The expoting system is buggy. (as the whole editor)

parted:
Really nice editor. The Gui solution is well done. I like the documentation gui. So easy particle is c-script, I like to have a Lite-C editor.
The export function has some nice features.
The 3d preview looks nice.

terrain editor:
I think the GED terrain editor is ... hm ... crap. So I like to see another try.
The problem with this editor is, that it is in an early state.
With a cleaner gui, a better 3d view and a painting option it would be a lot better. But it has potential, because of it's much better deforming options (not like GED).
A suggestion:
I don't like the highlightning of terrain vertics.
If you calculate the distance between two terrain points, you can use a decal as brush. Calculate the size factor between decal size and distance and scale the decal.
But this is only my personal taste. Perhapts other user like the vertex highlighning.

So finally vote for LightFrog

"lbgui:
Great header. But I had to modify it a little, to made my round edge windows working."
Hmm, right I should have thought about round window corners after I already thought about round button corners. So, if I'm going to release an update, I'm going to include a Condition function for windows.
However, good that you already got it working yourself.

OOps !!

I Voted for Particle Generator mistakenly , I wanted to vote for Particle Effect Builder

Excuse my stupid fault

Actually I don't Know how Particle Generator got all these votes , but in the end , the most eligibility tool will win

Great Work
i voted for Particle Generator
i used it and its really Great
its really good and useful and necessary for 3d Game Studio
i predict that Pratical Generator will win
thanks.........

So many new people voting... and all for particle thingy... no offensive...
For real guys, the 3d objects or the LBGUI or the FXED (the others are good, too, just quoted some) or much more needed... just my thoughts...



I liked Hummels Advanced lights most, because particle are unnecessary for me, cause there are much easier to code, as good shaders.
Hope he'll win

For the updater:

I would suggest to build an even more useful tool out of that:

make a "General Starter App".

Such that it sevrves as main starting point for 3dgs games.
including:

-a splashscreen
-a start button (starting the game.exe)
-some options to choose (like resolution, effect-level)
-some short infotext about the game
-and of course the automatic update option.

This can cover up the bad looking start-window of acknex
and make the gamelauch look more professional
and integrated.

@BMM_SOFT: Did you think no one would notice? Do you think Conitec (the final deciders) will let this slip by? Do you think it is even fair?

Jibb

I am sure they know who is not playing by the rules,

For me it was one of the LightFrog, LBGUI, Particle Effect Builder or FXED, but i voted for LBGUI.

All of the entries look like alot of hard work put in to them(except for one that does not deserve that much votes, you know what i am talking about.). Grats to everyone who could create a tool for the contest.

While I like most entries, my favourites are LBGUI, Light Frog and FXED.
I would love to vote for all of them actually but I unhappily have to decide for one of them...

LBGUI: very boring to create, but very usefull stuff which is hopefully also easy to use, even though I didn´t really look into its integration.

Light Frog: I am not sure if it is well designed, but it basicly is, what the gamestudio template shaders are still missing: a pretty complete deferred shading pipeline. If it is easy to customize, it is basicly perfect and the shadow depth maps are great. Only problem of the shadows is the lightbleeding of the VSM...

FXED: a very complete shader editor. Only thing I really miss, is a more fixed layout with tabs. Other things which would make it perfect (maybe something of it is already possible?), would be the possibility to extend the editors keywords and the export format, by for example just adding some textfiles to some folder or something like that and support for more than one technique. Another problem of the editor, which actually makes it unhappily kinda useless, is that it doesn´t really allow "follow up effects", as you most of the time don´t just have one shader, but a several shaders and a lot of other code around them, which then finally results in the wished effect.
Also, with a pure textfile I have the feeling to have a better overview above everything.
What I basicly just want for writing shaders, is a good texteditor with hightlighting and automatic keyword proposals.

Hm, while writing this I finally decided for light frog now. In my opinion light frog and LBGUI deserve to win this .

lol same bad english like in the sucking progy itself, how comes?

Btw 2 possible votes for future contests would be cool

Hey,

I don't have an idea about c-script or this competition.

But the "Particle Generator" dude is spamming other forums begging people to vote for him.
And he's using lame tricks claiming that people here are racists and want to put him out, which might work against non English speakers.

being a faithful programmer who believes in hard work and justice, I thought I should report this to you guys.

Cheers.

lol, any links to these forums?

yup
here's a poorly google translated link for the post, but it's pretty understandable.

and you can tell how he uses the "West vs Arabs" propaganda to get support!

Link

edit:
two more links:
1) where he got most of his supporters
2) another forum

he's so desperate to win!

this was an act of trollism but for a good cause

wtf?

While I can't comment on the quality of the entries right now, I can assure you all that the jury will choose the best entries - that's why it has a 51% voting power.

Who is the Jury btw? George and JCL?

I'm very appreciative of the heads-up, Uncler. While I think we all suspected it, it's good of you to come by and let us know.

And those links are very surprising! I've never seen racism against him, or the other Arabs on this forum. I didn't even know he was Arab.

Jibb

Yeah, really, thanks for the heads up Uncler. If there were to be any racism here i would be first to know do not worry.

@Uncler

Loc: Dubai, UAE

.. what about Egypt

------------------
and i think
vote is vote

I can confirm by the IPs of the newest users that many of them are from arabic countries.

MoOoDY: Vote isn't vote. Do you think it's fair if someone begs people outside this community to vote for him? Users have spent much time and energy to create useful tools and it's unfair to try to steal their reward. This is fraud.



I know it's always obvious if someone tries to cheat in the contest, but I still think there should be some prevention, like not allowing users with 0 posts to vote.

Am I the only one who thinks that the result for "Particle Generator" is potentially fake? I mean look at the post above. He votes for particle generator. It`s his first post. Everybody can vote one time per forum account. So who do you think could be the newbie-voter? If this is true: Please don`t do this. It`s just unfair and dishonest.

Edit: Uh, okay. Just read the posts before mine. Sorry

this is totally unfair, he is simply better than the rest!

Why is it when I open a model fith FXED, my model's skin is red? I have tried unloading and reloading the entities skin and still its just a solid red color.

@exile, that's the shader. The ambient shader just colors the entitiy in a single color. It's the default shader that is loaded.

You can simply erase the code from the vertex and pixel shader and you'll get the normal skin.

As for this voting business I agree it's not fair but unfortunately there isn't a rule against it.

Anyway the Jury vote will make a big impact on the end result.

Just do not worry, this has happened before, and jury take care of it. Jury knows what is going on.

Edit: Ich sollte echt das Thema besser lesen.

@Rondidon: ROFL, entweder solltest du an deinem Englisch arbeiten oder ein paar mehr Posts lesen. Hier wurde bereits breit diskutiert, dass der Ersteller in mehreren Foren die Leute "überzeugt" hat sich anzumelden und für ihn zu voten. Mit uns rassistischen westlichen als Argument, wie ja Jibbs erster Post ganz klar zeigt.

ja ich habs gerade auch gelesen. Sorry, das war mein Fehler. Hab das wohl irgendwie überblättert. Ok dann ist ja alles klar.. oh man Leute gibts.

back to English..

so arabs not allowed to be here ??
sorry I didn't know that



i'm with u .. but he can't make anybody to vote for him .
and i think the best solution for fair votes
is as u said "not allowing users with 0 posts to vote"
because every one can make new accounts and cheat

اتا عزاين راسي
---------
سلام
peace

Why do you have to be so picky? Nobody is trying to be racist here, but you try hard to get insulted. Nobody said Arabs not allowed here.(Where is our fellow Cowabanga ? )
Also religionally speaking it's not good to help each others cheat on such voting. What you are doing is wrong. Good thing you already saw that.

As far as I know, we finally managed to mobb him out

While I don´t likethose wrong voting, it happily isn´t a problem as in the end the votes aren´t more than a helpfull guidline for the jury. They usually stick close to it, but not necessarily of course.

Do you want to make me look racist on purpose?
Arabs are generally welcome. But Uncler said that mouhymusic (which seems to be his nickname in other forums) begged people in arabic forums to vote for him. If that's right, there should be many people from arabic countries who registered in the past few days. And there are.


But he can beg. And it worked.


You confuse me a little. First you say "vote is vote", which means you say the votes for Particle Generator are legitimate, now you share my opinion that cheating like this should be prevented. On which side are you?

Hahahaaaaaaaa...

DJBMaster just told me about this thread on MSN
While reading his posts on the Arab forums, I just LOL'd so hard at him.
He's saying people are racist.... while he's the racist one

Okay, even while I'm Arabian, I'm gonna say this directly:

MOST OF THE ARABS ON THE INTERNET ARE IDIOTS

Yes idiots, I know arabians who just added me so they say: "HaI i See you're a pruuu in gStudiO, so PLZZZZ help me, how to code with c-skrept? I'm using teh bset 7.05 Prufessionel version, and it rucks!!! now shtu teh fuck up and absorb all your time for meeeeeh"

AND NO, SLIE after talking to you on msn, here it goes: SLIN, YOU DIDN'T MOBB ME OUT >:D

@Quadraxas: I just don't have enough time like before, I've got a promotion in work and the penalty was I have to work in the morning and in the night. And animation takes time also

ok
it's just misunderstanding

so you are one of the MOST or the LEAST ?

i register to this forum just to reply at this quote
actually i dont know why you say that , but the generalization always wrong , you must feel shame for this statement .
and i ask from the admin here to remove this statement .

i will not back to this topic again , and i hope that the admin do my request .
Thanks .

he didnt offend someone directly..that´s free speach dude, so nobody is going to remove this comment I guess

@MoOoDY:
Use your brain The least, since I don't act like them.

@OMS: Ever heard of 'free speech' as Hummel said ?

Cowabanga, please don`t generalize most of your fellow countrymen as fools. Of course there are some young people who are using illegal software and ask professionals how to deal with it. Yes. But there`re also Germans, British, American people who act that way. That`s natural when you`re a beginner in coding or a teenager in the internet generally. I`m absolutly sure that the coder of this "Particle Generator" is a big excuse.
And to repeat it once more. I`m from Germany and yes: Peoples from all countries are welcome here in this forums. Arabs, Europeans, Americans, Africans, Asians, Muslims, Judes, Christians and Hindus included. Why shouldn`t they?

Toasting in an epic bread.

@Rondidon:
Hehe, yeah okay, but I'm just saying that there are lots of idiots, sure there's idiots everywhere, I'm not saying that we're idiots in the real-life, I'm talking about computer world.

@JustSid:
Die, please.

Sid would like to have a ham sandwich as last meal.

Haven't received my ham sandwich yet, whats the eta? I'm hungry

Racism seems to me to be a reflection of the insecurities of an individual.
This is then "set alight" in the individual by institutionalised racism.
Institutionalised racism is practiced by those individuals who later
"came together" in groups, clans or countries to better continue on that path.
There are many individuals who, although insecure, are nor racist, so i wonder
what else motivates someone to be racist?
I think many mistake dislike as racism and the two words seem to become
synonymous expecially when the dislike is directed towards a "differently percieved"
individual or nation.
Those who are lucky to not feel racism sometimes wonder if it is something
they will ever get to really understand.
//
Why are Guests allowed to vote anyway?
That should cut out much cheating i would think.

Dear Mr. Cowabanga,
My cousin told me about what is happening in this forum. Even though he asked me not to answer u but I have to...

Now Mr. Cowabanga said that Arabs are idiots because someone asked him about scripting in 3DGS... However I think this person is "Cowabanga" himself...

I ask everybody in this forum to visit Mr. Cowabanga's topics at the "maxforums.net" ....
1- in this topic : http://www.maxforums.net/showthread.php?t=112901
he asked about 3dgs books but however, he "could not find any in TORRENT Websites". Also, in other posts he claimed that he has the Pro edition while here in this forum he says that he uses the commercial Edition !!!!!!

2- In this topic : http://www.maxforums.net/showthread.php?t=116853
he asked " How can I write a code that makes my player move" and he was given the answer after begging for days as u can see....

as u can see he was the one who used to use 3DGS Hacked Edition (( and Maybe until now!! WHO KNOWS?? ))
Also, He is the one who asked the same question that made him say that Arabs are idiots....

I am sorry Mr. Cowabanga for showing ur bad side !!!
and If u are idiot then don't think that others are like u !!!
Plz don't forget ur past... We "ARABS" are ashamed of u...


(( I honestly apologize for turning the voting page to a "problematic" page but I had to since the admins did not say anything about what our beloved Cowabanga said...))

Oookay... Back to the topic.
I got to admit that I didnt really tested everything here, just reading their related post on the entries.
I choose LBGUI as my favorite since it happens that I need something like that right now, and 3DGS is lacking those . If I can choose the second best, it will be Act!.
The LightFrog is looking good on the screen shot but it run at 8 FPS on my old PC(256Mb Radeon 9600) with some effects missing.

dude now you are the BIG IDIOT

:: Finally justice has been done ::

Hehe, yeah I know, back in the days when I was using warez stuff, yeah I was using it years ago, but not anymore. I stopped using warez in all my computer. HA! What do you say about justice now? YES I HAD A LEGAL A7 VERSION, ASK CHRIS_OAT IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME! I'VE SOLD MY LICENSE TO HIM.

And I asked for the movemet script because I thought that Lite-C was COMPLETELY different than C-Script, but I've read the manual, and yeah, I can make something better than a movement script, and can you pelase tell me when did I asked this noobish question? Can you give me the date?

Now let's stop this flame war, and fellows Arab noobs, please shut up (SARCASTICALLY YOU *!@$^*%)

EDIT: @maxforums: Ah yes, Maxforums, I remember that shitty useless website... Wait, Arabs are ashamed of me, or YOU? And I didn't meant EVERY Arabian in the whole world, I'm talking about Arabs who do the stuff I said in my previous posts, you... *gasp*.

Muahahahaaa I'm searching on Google if someone published anything about this stupid flame-war on the arabian websites.

@Cowabanga. Sorry, but I have to ask: How old are you? Please stop this superficial flame war from your side, too. I can understand that some people feel hurted by your words and posts, especially now that we all know your background. Please come down.

@Other "Arabs": I think that most people in this forum know that all people from all nations are absolutly reputable. Please don`t flame about the people in the whole GameStudio forum anywhere else. Most people here are absolutly open and tolerant. "Noobs" are motivated beginners who want to learn fast to create cool programs and games. We all started like this. And now we`re the guys who help them doing their first steps. At least some of us. So please come down, too.

Is it too late to enter a tool into the contest for reading the 3DGS forums with flame wars filtered out? That'd be pretty useful.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet on that one.

This is a voting topic so come ppl's lets please keep it that way. If you want to flame each other PM each other .

Only half an hour left