Initial Inspector UI

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May 9th, 2009

We decided that it was high time for Overgrowth to get an inspector palette. The inspector will let you get extra info and edit all types of objects in the map editor. If you click on an object, this will be how you change its material, reorder the decals on it, toggle its visibility, or whatever else turns out to be useful.

What's more exciting to me though, is that this will provide a standardized way to modify scriptable hotspots. For instance, remember when we were placing race start, checkpoint, and finish line hotspots? With the inspector, you will be able to click on a hot spot and change whatever parameters the modder decides to expose to you. That is, a checkpoint hotspot would let you change how much extra time it gives you. Modders will be able to expose any kind of variable they want and choose the appropriate UI to change it. If your script uses colors, you can bind that to the color picker, or if you need one line of text, you can tell it to show an editfield.

So let me introduce it, so far. Thanks to our decision to use web technologies for our UI (WebKit embedded via Awesomium) this sleek inspector represents about a day of work.

Overgrowth Inspector

All the controls function exactly as you would expect, all the way down to being able to tab between them. I especially like how the muli-line text area can be resized by dragging the little corner on the bottom right. What happens when you click the color picker? This pops up next to it:

Overgrowth Color Picker

All of these controls (the checkboxes, radio buttons, etc.) were just off the top of my head. What UI elements would you guys like to see added here?