Basic Saving/Loading

I've implemented very basic save/load functionality into the editor. It's more of a test for me to see:

1) If it is possible to save/load a scene without an exporter knowing what it is actually exporting. I've done this so it obviously works. There may be some special cases where certain pieces of data will be required but I can't foresee that happening right now. Possibly if I get into editing terrain or something, it *may* need to know how the terrain is there to export it properly but I don't think so.

2) Bigger scenes come together. It's rather annoying not being able to have larger scenes without having to touch code. I'll probably start putting together test areas in this to test out various things. So far, everything seems to save/load fine even though I at save/load time, I have no idea what I am exporting or importing. It's all taken care of through my EditorObject system. So I'll be able to implement a binary, XML, and a custom file format in the editor without knowing a single damn thing about what I'm exporting :) Importing into the game may be different but that's another story. It will be possible to export into a certain format that is read back in so it's up to the game to read in all the properties.


Currently I am also investigating diagram editors for use inside of the editor. I'd very much like to graphically lay out the scene so it's easy to spot things. This will also come in handy when I get around to a "scritable" piece that I've wanted to support for a while. It's much like Kismet (Unreal) or FlowGraph (CryTek) in that it is a visual way to use script objects. So you can chain together small building blocks together to form logic and perform things in the game. For an example, you could use this visual system to create a system where you have to align boulders on to various scales in order to solve a puzzle. All of this is possible to be driven through these types of systems (I don't support it yet but I will) which allows designers to create actual gameplay mechanics without having to touch code or bother a coder. It also allows for much faster prototyping and tweaking since it's all data driven as opposed to code driven.