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How to edit a .ccb file?

veganpete
Registered User
Quote
2021-02-08 11:28:17

I'm using the visual editor to make my entire game because I can't code yet and the scene graph editor seems to be able to accomplish everything I want to do so far. I'm continually astounded by the capability and simplicity of Coppercube.

My game is coming along nicely but progress feels fairly slow/inhibited because of the way the scene graph editor works (having to click recursively through hundreds of nested events/nodes and not being able to edit/copy/paste the individual actions).

I have the patience to do it (1 year+ making the game so far -, working on it several hours every day) but is there a workaround which will allow me to edit the ccb file directly in a text editor or such?

I'd be willing to pay for a solution.

I feel that if I could edit the node behaviours as plain text somehow (instead of only using the scene graph editor), I'd be able to make the game much quicker and much better quality.

Thanks.


csp-games
Guest
Quote
2021-02-08 18:53:55

Doesn't look very promesing. I had a look at a ccb file with notepad. Kind of binary, probably even encrypted. The only plain text is the scripts I added. And a peculiar path appears:
c:\development\irrtech\flace\editorpackage\textures\grass.jpg :) may be on Niko's machine.

In the editor you can clone a nodes behaviour I think.


veganpete
Registered User
Quote
2021-02-09 12:49:54

Here's a typical example of what I'm facing....

🔎︎


In this case, it took me over 2 minutes just to click through the nested actions to get to the one I wanted to edit. I have 30 enemies which all need the same alteration - that's an hour of clicking before I can even start to add the actions to each node. The I have to click "OK" on hundreds of action boxes before I can test to see if the new changes have worked successfully. LOL.

On top of that, I have to remember where each action is, relating to each node.

There are times when I spend up to an hour just looking for a particular event I want to edit - but can't remember where to find it.

I also have a type of dyslexia which makes it even more fun .

The main (unbearable) issue is that (for example) if I've added 50 actions to a node and I want to edit just one, I sometimes need to delete all 50 actions and create them all again. (eg if I want to add an "IF" to the first action, I have to delete everything to be able to add the "IF" at the start). Now imagine I have to do that with all 30 enemies: heartbreaking. LOL.

Most of the time, I edit one enemy and then clone it (once I know it's working properly) but if I clone the behaviour of a node, it clones the entire thing, I can't clone just individual actions and paste them. SO it means that when I update certain element, it takes an absolute age to clone everything and assign the actions by refferencing all the new nodes again.

No biggie really (especially considering Coppercube is free), just could be a lot easier and quicker to work with my my game if I had the option to see it all laid out - without blindly having to continually click into the actions to see what all the actions are doing.

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love coppercube!


csp-games
Guest
Quote
2021-02-09 16:46:54

OMG, that looks truely excessive - a game by its own. See, that's exactly why you should use Javascript, esp. because as far as I see you can do everything by code that is possible in the editor. That would then be: edit the script in notepad, hit ctrl-s, then focus CC and click run. Done. You could copy/paste as you wish, iterate trough 30 enemies by a FOR loop and also locate things simply by scrolling trough the script in notepad, or notepad++ etc.

I completely understand the issue, as I found it quite clicky to open and edit just one behaviour, including the embeded JS editor. You can use that to set individual variables per node, but then process them all in one script as a behaviour or action extension. It may take you less time to learn the howto's than to actually finish this game the way you try. That screen looks terrifying :)


veganpete
Registered User
Quote
2021-02-10 08:52:18

Thanks for the advice. Agreed, scripting would definitely be a better overall option (my game would probably be finished now) but in my case I simply can't get my head around how to use JS yet (beyond simple one or two-lines of instructions).

As backward as it may seem, I feel confident in progressing with the visual editor/scene-graph editor - even though it's going to be much slower to create games and probably much less efficient to run them.

Everything I'm doing is sequential (logical) - instead of being in parallel; I have "dyscalculia" - so I guess maybe that's how my brain prefers to work.

If I could make a couple of small changes to the visual editor, it would become a breeze to use it exclusively while I'm still trying to learn how to script.


j9907
Guest
Quote
2021-02-10 12:22:35

IIRC games are most efficient when you use the built-in behaviors and actions since those are C++ based, whereas anything written in JS is going to be slower since I think its being interpreted.

Now, I'd definitely suggest doing the simple stuff (setting variables, in particular) in JS since having separate "Set a variable" actions for each one of them is beyond unintuitive, and if your game levels are going to function differently depending on the day / month of the year (mine are - seasonal stuff will show up then) or you want multiple versions of a level, then yeah..


DouweDabbe
Guest
Quote
2021-02-15 05:35:25

People should upload their actions and behaviors to Niko for inclusion in the plugins webpage.


DouweDabbe
Guest
Quote
2021-02-24 02:49:48

Is it possible to convers a coppercube 6 file back into coppercube version 5 or 4 ?

benefit being that Coppercube 5
= works on windows XP and
= can target older android devices


csp-games
Guest
Quote
2021-02-25 20:59:25

DouweDabbe, I did send Niko 2 script, one fps script and one underwater swimming fps script, but he didn't seem to be interested.

The other question, version converting, I don't know, but try to just load it. Maybe remove features that aren't supported in the earlier version.

And to JJ9907:
It may be true that Javascript on the windows/Mac/Android targets is interpreted and therefor relatively slow. But be assured that in the browser this runs directly as Javascript, still interpreted, but by the browser, which is nowadays highly optimized, some of which is by code fragments precompiled to native code, reaching even higher speed than C++. Besides, you can run WASM from within javascript in the browser, that's Assembler. The power of assembler lies in the art of handling an entire algorithm inside of CPU registers, without to access Ram. By doing so, speed is about ten times higher than with ordinary code.


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