Quest development tool

[Flyboy]

Over the last couple of days, I have been communicating with Christian about the need for a quest development tool. With his permission, I have decided to take up the project of a GUI development environment. This will enable quest makers to visually lay out a quest without ever needing to touch a text editor. After the completed quest has been exported to a text file, it will then be able to be compiled as usual.

At Christian's suggestion, I started this thread for the community discussion and suggestions for the project. Please chip in with any suggestions, questions, or comments. The project will be written in the Java language.

I already have quite a workload with school, etc. but I will work on it as life permits.
 

[Flyboy]

Now I'm trying to think of a good name for the project. The two that I've thought of so far are: VisualQuest, and QuestGen. What do you guys think?
 

[GLI]

[Flyboy]

That could work, although I don't think that it quite describes the project like VisualQuest does. The goal for the project is to end up with a tool that works equally well with simple and advanced quests, and is completely visual, aka no hand coding needed.
 

[GLI]

[Noxn]

VGT - Visual Guest Tool
VGM - Visual Guest Maker
SPTMGFAS - Some Program That Makes Guests For Ascii Sector
Guine1000 (Not Quine)
 

[Matt_S]

Privateer: Ascii Quester.
_________________
"So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat."
- Richard Feynman
 

[Flyboy]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'll keep those in mind...
 

[Cthulhu]

Cool, I'm guessing it will be available for mac and linux as well right?
Will the source be available for download as well?
 

[Javadict]

[Flyboy]

[Flyboy]

Coding officially started last night. Here's a screenshot:



True, a plain window isn't all that exciting, but hey, all projects start somewhere, right?
 

[Christian Knudsen]

I like the minimalism of your approach.
 

[Flyboy]

That's just the beginning.... my end goal is to try to win the World's Worst Minimalist Award.
 

[Lancer]

Do you have the skills to pull this together and just need a little time, or are you learning to program as you go?
 

[Flyboy]

A little of both. I know enough Java to do basic stuff. In this case, the logic/math isn't hard, but this project does involve a lot of intermediate level file I/O, plus GUI programming. I know almost nothing about GUI programming, but the only way to learn to program is to program.
 

[VincentFirePony]

It would be so totally cool to have a quest development tool, I used to love another OLD roguelike called ZZT, where you create entire games using the ZZTOOP language. The one published quest I wrote and the two I was working on (should work on them some more now that college is out for winter break) is as close as I've gottem to actual programming, aside from trying to learn Ruby.
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There are only a few good things in life: AS, AS, beer and Hostile Takeover! A<0>V
 

[Flyboy]

What's Ruby? I've heard the name, but I know nothing about it.

Update: I've decided on the name: Visual Quest Generator. Thanks for the inspirational name ideas, guys! I've been doing a TON of planning on the internal data structure, and I'm hoping to get coding soon.
 

[VincentFirePony]

Ruby was created by a Japanese programmer called "Matz" his last name Matsumoto I believe. Ruby is deceptively easy in appearance and is object oriented in nature. The main website is www.ruby-lang.org. I haven't messed around with it in a good while tho.
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There are only a few good things in life: AS, AS, beer and Hostile Takeover! A<0>V
 

[Flyboy]

Update: Tonight I started on programming the data structures. There's still a long way to go, but I think I have a workable plan.
 

[VincentFirePony]

Keep up the good work flyboy! Look forward to using the visual quest generator... XD
_________________
There are only a few good things in life: AS, AS, beer and Hostile Takeover! A<0>V
 

[Flyboy]

Thanks!
 

[Flyboy]

Update:

I haven't had much time to work on things lately, but I have been playing with the GUI parts of it. Most of my work time is still going into studying the stuff that I need to know to do this project (mostly GUI stuff). I also have a pretty concrete plan for the actual data manipulation, plus I worked out an icon design that I like in GIMP. Here it is:

I think I should probably make the "V" a little bit bigger to make it more visible in the corner of the window. Needless to say, I used the "standard" AS icon colors.
 

[Flyboy]

Well, time for an update! After a fair amount of downtime, I've finally dug in again. I have a basic idea of about what the GUI will look like, and how the editing tools will work. I've done work on both the GUI and data structures.
 

[VincentFirePony]

Woo woo!!! Keep up the good work! Still working on Java, had to put it down for my finals. One final left and then I can work on it again.
_________________
There are only a few good things in life: AS, AS, beer and Hostile Takeover! A<0>V