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.