From the looks of the source, the STTexture stuff is actually used in drawing the checkboxes and stuff on the particle panel. So if we can get that part working then the panel will have its widgets too. Anyone with any ideas?
We need the input of a developer or someone that used this tool in the past; also the nodes not working in the left window is strange. One more thing - is it just me but there is no main window containing all the subwindows in the scene editor? Is it how it’s supposed to be?
Well Harry, you got me curious and I stayed up and got nearly everything working on the particle panel. Its pretty cool.
I have created a new patch, it should be applied against a fresh cvs version.
So for anyone joining in, you need to make sphere.bam avialable to the sceneeditor, which for some reason is expecting it to be Up one folder from where it is found. And you also need to apply the following patch to the sceneeditor folder.
There are some strange menu problems with the “File” menu item. (anyone know how to fix this? This may be a problem with the version of TCL we are using?)
There also doesn’t seem to be an OrientedParticleFactory included in the Panda CVS, atleast I can’t find it. (Anyone, anyone?)[/url]
That’ s fabulous jaren - too bad when I try to apply this patch I get a series of errors. Could be my Panda3D installation, again? I will try in my other home PC when I’ll be back later today!
a quick look in the patch file shows that .pyc files are included. You must only make a patch for .py
Sorry guys! I was tired!
Unfortunately I’m at work now and my laptop is at home. I’ll make a new patch when I get home unless someone has cleaned this one up by then.
(Just realized that its worse than just the binary file problem. I created the patch against the non-CVS release.
If I remember right all I changed were the seParticles.py and seParticlePanel.py so if someone has time they can look throught he patch3 file and look only at the diff for ParticlePanel and Particles and apply those changes by hand and create a new diff.)[/url]
Not a problem, jaren! Thank you!
I finally got this patch ready. I’ve been gone all day and finally had a second. Sorry for causing people greef. This patch TRULY applies to a clean CVS checkout of SceneEditor. (If in the future you’d like me to make incremental patches let me know.) This patch should get almost everything in the particle panels working. The File menu on the panel is messed up in a way that seems unrelated to import bugs. And the OrientedParticleFactory also seems to be missing so don’t choose that one.
enjoy.
What should we do next? Harry does this tool seem useful to you after your expirimentation and watching the films? Or is there something better? Or should we concentrate our efforts and start something better?
whoops, almost forgot the patch. 
Here it is.
Jaren, thanks! I had a series of unexpected things to do today and couldn’t check this patch. I will answer your question in detail as soon as I have experimented a bit with it.
About the patch: it works perfectly, but on windows systems you need to open it with word pad and save it again. This is because of the different way new line characters are handled in windows and unix I suppose.
Compared to other level editors, the Scene Editor is obviously more limited in features, but that’s because Panda3D must serve a lot of different purposes. For example, a Scene Editor for a specific game engine like the one used in Morrowind includes all you need to program NPC interaction, create quests, and so on. Anyhow, this step - the hook to the actual game logic - should be obviously left to developers using Panda. For example, a developer creating a RPG must integrate the scene editor with a working NPC scripting system. The good thing about the scene editor is that it can be edited to become the perfect editor for all needs. In other words, first of all, it must do what it does as cleanly as possible, so that programmers can expand this base according to their game’s needs.
I think the work you have done in fixing this will prove invaluable for a lot of developers; open source is often the solution for small teams to create games, and whatever tool they find to help them in the process can prove to be invaluable.
Great job! It works fine now, with the exception of one things: try loading a complex model, for example a model of an environment; when you try to access or click on the single nodes, the mouse seems to not be working. The nodes open for a split second, then close again.
This said, to answer your question, the scene editor is a good basis to build a decent level editor for most type of games. The more complex your game is, the more you need to customize the scene editor. And this is how it is supposed to be.
The community members using the scene editor could contribute publishing custom modification to the code not immediately related to their game logic or structure, but that simply make the basic interface of the scene editor more user friendly. For example, we could add a more intuitive color chooser for the particle effects, a better windowing system (for example, would a container window be that bad?), and so on.
Some may argue that a C++ scene editor would be more efficient, but I think we can do a lot starting from what we already have.
thx for taking time to get this working its a great benefit to community 
…got it patched and it runs but I thought prudent to paste errors I see in console here in windows anyway:
:collide(warning): Using deprecated set_collide_geom(). Replace this with an ap
propriate call to set_from_collide_mask(), e.g. set_from_collide_mask(GeomNode::
get_default_collide_mask()).
D:\Programs\panda3d\SceneEditor\seGrid.py:97: DeprecationWarning: integer argume
nt expected, got float
for i in range(-numLines,numLines + 1):
----SideWindow is Initialized!!
:util(warning): Adjusting global clock’s real time by -1.29716 seconds.
I have not worked much with it yet, but its running anyway;))
cheers
neighborlee()
ok what about this sphere.bam file…its NOT in cvs checkout from last night and only in the actual stable panda3d-1.2.3 release so I have no idea where im supposed to have things guys…
the editor at least RUNS now so many thanks for that , and it looks to be a grreat asset in conjuction with the video lectures )…sweet stuff.
I however do get the same initial error harry was getting when I try to start particle FX menu…it fails with exact same er ror he had in #1 and wondering how I fix it
thx
neighborlee()