Game World Editor

A game editor, WFFC edit, which is heavily based on Blizzards WOW editor, was extended to include a Unity style properties window (involving a bit of UI/UX design) as well as general improvements to code and code quality. This project was performed for a university coursework. Coded using C++ with the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Library while interfacing with an SQLite (SQL) database.

Running

Unfortunately, due to the way the provided project was set up, generating a standalone executable is not supported. To get this project running you must use Visual Studio with VC141 (2017) to run (2019 won't work). The project can be easily downloaded as zip here

Application Architecture

The application is backed by an SQLite database where all of the information regarding the chunks and objects in the game is stored (each object has over 40 columns). The terrain data is represented by the ChunkObject class, and the game object data by the SceneObject class. Their rendering classes are represented by the DisplayChunk and DisplayObject, respectively.

The MFCFrame.h file (CMyFrame class) houses the main window and its logic. The MFCRenderFrame.h file (CChildRender class) contains the renderer logic. The MFCMain has the callbacks for logic from the CMyFrame window. The ObjectPropertiesDialog class houses the code for the properties window (main user facing focus of the app).

MFC, by design, uses a simple object orientated inheritance hierarchy. The ObjectPropertiesDialog inherit from CDialog and CFloatEdit inhertis from CEdit

Changes to Editor

The source application can be found here.

• Addition of a Unity style object properties window.
  • Identifying features and frequently used features such as name and transform are exemplified by being placed at top.
  • Support for changing size and scaling.
  • CFloatEdit which is specifically for editing floats.
  • CMFCPropertyGridCtrl contains all properties, which are grouped into similar categories which have descriptions and titles.
    • Appropriate special edit controls are used, such as ones for changing colour (which include a preview).
    • Validation of texture/model paths.
    • COleVariant (equivalent of std::variant) is used to support native input validation for edit controls.
• Supporting hiding objects and displaying them as wire frame.
• Moving camera functionality to a dedicated Camera class and expanding the cameras functionality.
  • Adding mouse look (with consideration for frame/delta time).
  • Adding more comprehensive keyboard controls, such as going up/down and speeding up movement.
• Addition of a custom event system using interfaces (IEventDispatcher and IEventReceiver) to notify ObjectPropertiesDialog when CFloatEdit is updated.
• Changes to collections which store the scene graph and object list to use O(1) data structure (std::unordered_map aka a dictionary) and be indexed via the object's database ID (versus load order).
• Placeholder rendering if the path cannot be found.
• Moving selection logic to own class.
• Resolving type mismatch warnings by adding appropriate casts.
• Only updating the changed object in the scene graph to reduce computational costs (and improve UX).
• Save query now uses UPDATE instead of dropping all SceneObjects and inserting them again.
• Save icon is a save icon, not a smiley face.

Read the Report

The report covers the specifics of the implementation, potential improvements, and has a UML diagram (among other things). It can be found here.