Ptah Status

Introduction

Back when Bryce was compiling a project wide status report he told me that people were asking about Ptah and that it would be nice to hear some status on it and while the changes may be difficult to point a finger at a lot is changing under the hood. If your familiar at all with Ptah development you've probably heard that before. :-) I decided a few months ago that the project needed to be more focused. I created a battleplan for Ptah which included 5 alpha (or sub-alpha even) releases, and put the plan and a download section on the website. After 3 releases and some luke warm feedback, I'm beginning to think that Ptah is not what a lot of people are expecting.

Not a bad editor just misunderstood.

I'd like to clarify what I'm shooting for with Ptah, first by stating what it isn't:

It isn't grid based. While Ptah might through some stroke of pure luck open a .iso file, it's really not designed for editing them.
It's not 3D in the sense that some people may be thinking. Ptah is made mainly to design maps that conform to the very latest BLADE DTD. Terrain in Ptah will be flat unless elevated by height maps. Objects can be specified either as images (for isometric clients) or 3D meshes. Even for maps with a lot of 3D content Ptah's 'favored' editing window will be a top-down 2D view called Blueprint View. At the moment there's little or no support for 3D content anyway.
It won't connect to a server. In all honesty I hadn't even thought of editing a 'live' world until I started checking out Equator. For the most part I think Ptah will be for off-line world design.
Ptah's not easy. As intuitive as I've tried to make it, there are times when Ptah's 'features' are interpreted as 'bugs'. If your having trouble consult Ptah-Help.html. It's not exactly complete right now but it's better than nothing.
It's not finished. Of course if there's a feature that your looking for, tell me about it. ;-)

Even though I'd like to support Mason in it's early development, Ptah will probably be more useful later on. Once some of WF's technologies mature, and content becomes a real focus, I'd like for Ptah to be a tool that enables a lot of non-technical folks to contribute what's in their imaginations.

The Battle Plan

For a general indicator of where Ptah is try the Ptah Battle Plan. Of course the battle plan is a little on the skeletal side. You'll have to download and play with it for a while to get a fuller understanding. You can do that from the same page which is Ptah Battle Plan in case you forgot. I didn't do a screen shot for this status but this one, an early version of moraf.xml is fairly recent. I haven't had many people comment on the Linux version, and I highly recommend the static RPM. Note that Ptah development is currently stuck behind Phase III, because of difficulties we're having getting BLADE to support hierarchies. Expect some head-way on Phases IV and V in the interim.

Phase I - Geometry

Create bounding areas for particular land types by clicking on the map. - DONE
Select one or more polygons by clicking on them. - DONE
Select one or more polygons by drawing a box. - DONE
Translate selected polygons. - DONE
Edit specific points in the polygon by selecting and dragging them. - DONE
Deleting polygons. - DONE
Rotate polygons. - DONE
Scale polygons. - DONE
Cut, copy and paste selected polygons to another map or a different area of the same map. - DONE

Phase II - Textures

Adding media resources to a map by selecting an image file from the local machine. - DONE
Select a media resource to be a texture for a landscape polygon. - DONE
Select a media resource to be the default texture when a polygon is created. - DONE
Edit an existing media resource. - DONE

Phase III - Hierarchy

Be able to specify hierarchal relationships between polygons in code (no GUI needed). - This determines z-ordering while rendering the scene and also effects the translation of polygons. Parent polygons are rendered first and when they are translated their children are translate the same amount.
Use the GUI to specify a 'target' polygon that will be the parent of all polygons created afterwards.
Have a special window that shows the hierarchy for the whole map and allows you to edit it.

Phase IV - Objects

Place objects in the game world by clicking on the map.
Specify media resources for objects.
Translate objects.
Specify bounding volumes for objects. Important currently no support for this
Be able to place objects in the map hierarchy.

Phase V - Information

Be able to view and edit properties for polygons and objects.

Call it version 1.0

Note that by Version 1.0 I'm not really implying a complete application. Just one that touches on everything I think is needed for a first pass. If everything goes as planned users of Ptah version 1.0 should be able to cobble together a fairly complete environment for World Forge servers.

by Brent Bartels

Current Issue: February 2003, Recent Issues: January 2003, November 2002, October 2002