Thumbnails

Another little snippet from the commit log:

• Revision 24087 Committed by dave: - Changed the angle for the body part's thumbnails
• Revision 24088 Committed by ben_sanders: - Resaved the parasol thumbnail
• Revision 24081 Committed by ben_sanders: - Updated thumbnail on the beachfront set, and added boulevard set

This is the kind of thing that you don't normally think too hard about when you're starting out building something like Moviestorm. You know how your character & mod shop and prop choosers are going to work: you have a bunch of different things to choose from,, and little pictures of them which you click on to select them. Not exactly rocket science.

Then you come to implement it, and it all looks a bit meh. In some cases, you can't actually find the thing you want. Turns out that the angle from which you view a 3D item is far more important than you might think. If you don't get a good thumbnail image, what you see is confusing and messy: in extreme cases, it's like one of those quizzes, where you have to identify a common household object from an unusual angle.

In our original version of the prop chooser some time ago, we had an automated thumbnail tool which took a snapshot of each item from a standard angle and distance with a standard lighting, and then cropped it to fit. When we re-did it, we replaced many of the automated thumbnails with hand-made ones. This involved employing an intern for a month or so doing nothing else, as it's a time-consuming and tedious job. However, the results were worth it.

Body parts are generally a lot easier to standardise, so we're sticking with automated thumbnails for the new mod shop and character shop designs. However, we're still experimenting with what the best angle is. It makes more difference than you realise.

If you want something doing ... give it to Rhys

Software engineering is a weird thing. Even though the code language and libraries are usually well-established, on anything but the smallest of projects you'll find the need to write your own custom components, which you'll then use to construct something useful. Sometimes, you see, before you can get to work on the thing you really want to do, you have to spend some time making the tools that you'll then use to make the thing you really want to make. If you see what I mean. It's as if an archaeologist were required to make his own brush and trowel before he could start excavating, or a fisherman had to build her own rod. So software engineers would have us believe, anyway.

The Moviestorm Modders Workshop is a good example of this. Although it's enabled many of our users to create some fantastic addons for Moviestorm, the primary reason it exists in the first place is because we needed a tool to assemble all our art assets into something that Moviestorm could actually understand. The Modders Workshop is the tool that we use internally to build all of our Content Packs.

We recently managed to drag Dave away from working on his exciting new asset management system for Moviestorm 1.1.7, in order to produce this:



No, not the shed. The little pop-up window in front of it. It's a small addition to the Modders Workshop, but one which makes our life a lot easier. The thumbnails that appear in the Set Workshop Object Browser for each set object are automatically generated when the object is saved in the Modders Workshop. Dave's new tool enables us to pick the rotation, angle and zoom of the object in these thumbnails. That means that we create much better, more logical thumbnails for each object.

Of course, that means we'll have to go through our entire back catalogue of tables, chairs, doors, rugs, mugs, cars, trees ... everything. Every single asset needs a new thumbnail. It's going to be a tedious and time-consuming job. It's not a job I want, I don't mind admitting. What we need is a lackey of some kind. If only there was someone in the office to whom we could give all the boring and mind-numbing jobs that nobody else wants to do .... wait a minute!

Hooray! Rhys is back!

Yes, undeterred by his experience as my personal slave for a week of work experience last May, Rhys has returned for a whole month of work in the QA department. Maintaining the proud tradition we've established for all our interns, he's got the boring job. Today is his last day with us, but you'll be seeing the fruits of his labour in a future release of Moviestorm.