RealmForge 0.6.2 review

RealmForge project is a cross-platform 3D game engine for .NET. RealmForge is a .NET 3D game engine predecessor to Visual3D.NET (w

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Dan Moorehead

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RealmForge project is a cross-platform 3D game engine for .NET.

RealmForge is a .NET 3D game engine predecessor to Visual3D.NET (www.visual3d.net), which is a framework and toolset for the visual design and development of 3D games, simulations, and interactive environments using C#, .NET 2.0, visual scripting, and the XNA Framework.

What's New in This Release:
Access InGame Editor
Press F11 with any application to toggle the InGame Editor on and off for editing games at runtime

Controllerbased Input
Intuitive componentbased input handling and behaviors that are easily extended
Support for Editor/DevTool Plugins

Devtools have been factored out of WorkspaceManager and are organized as simple and extendible or plugins

Input focus fix
Input isn't handled when working with the devtools
Clicking on the render window will remove focus from devtools, enabling input again

DragDrop Scene Creation
Drag templates from the Scene Object Templates window onto the Scene window
Reorganize the scene graph in the scene window and the templates in the Scene Object Templates window
Click on nodes in the Scene window to select them

Property Editing:
Select nodes by clicking on them in the render window or Scene window and edit their properties in the Properties window (Property Inspector)
Select components (such as the rendering engine or application) from the Components menu in the InGame Editor to edit their properties
The properties are grouped and have descriptions and any custom properties added will show up as well
New properties and ways of editing properties (especially collections) will be added in the future as well as fixes for properties like Orientation angles, Absolute Position, Direction, etc that may not work properly at the moment.

About Box:
The Help > About RealmForge GDK menu item now shows the About Box properly with information about the project and its developers.

Event Editing:
Click on the "View > Event Scripting Designer" menu item to work with the designer to visually script events
Selecting a target from the dropdown list and an event from the list right below it
Drag scripts from the Tree of all scripts or from the list of named delegates
Add any method in the entire framework or from plugins that has a void SimpleMethod() or void Script(object owner, object args) signature by specifying the fully qualified (include namespace) class name and members (fields and properties) that need to be traversed to get to it from a static member of that class
You can leave the class name empty an will default to the RealmForge.RF, the singleton aggregator.

Saving your game:
The File > Save menu item now actually works and will save the current scene (for applications that load the scene from a master module, doesn't work for the Sample Browser tech demos yet). This feature is buggy and verbose, however since it is finally supported it won't be long before the editor will be fully usable for game development!