| Map Editor |
Cobra Gunship Editor v0.8 beta has been released! This version has full support for scenario editing, allowing you to create winnable/losable missions! See below for details.
Due to some other pressing work, beta 8 will be available on Friday, April 10 instead of today, April 5. For all of you drooling for the next release, sorry to draw this out longer, but I promise you'll like it!
As many of you probably noticed, the production schedule for the editor has slipped somewhat, due to intense competition for my limited time. Please check the production schedule for an update. Version 1.0 will be released soon!
We are pleased to announce that our editor can now be run on the Apple Macintosh platform (PowerPC and 68k), thanks to Apple's release of the MRJ v2.0 which now supports the Java 1.1x features required by the editor and includes a very nifty just-in-time compiler to speed things up.
Platform Support
The Cobra Gunship Map Editor v0.x beta has been verified to run under Netscape 4.04 on the Windows, UNIX, and Macintosh platforms. In theory, it should run under any Java 1.1-compliant virtual machine. There are still many quirks with Netscape's version(s) of the VM, so please let us know if you encounter successes or failures running the editor on these or other platforms. We've tried our best to circumvent all the major Netscape bugs, but we're bound to have missed a few.
Production Schedule
The version 0.9 beta of the editor will incorporate comments I've received from users, bug fixes, speed optimizations, and documentation. Expect version 0.9 to be almost completely usable. Version 0.9 will be released around May 1, with the official Version 1.0 editor following shortly afterward.
Current Version: 0.8 Beta!
Changes since v0.7 beta:What it currently does:
The editor lets you build external missions that can be loaded from the mission screen's External Map button on registered versions of the game. You can choose map size, background, terrain, scenery, buildings and opponents. It also lets you create mission "scenarios", which decide when and how players can win or lose a mission.
Known bugs/issues:
These known issues will be updated as bug reports come in and disappear as they are fixed:
Please send me comments or suggestions about the editor so we know what to improve for future releases! As mentioned above, your comments will have a large impact on the final beta release. Though I don't always have time to respond to every piece of feedback, I read everything you send me, and I will try to help you resolve any problems you might have getting the editor to work.
Technical Details
There are currently three ways to use this editor:
CLASSPATH, and run java
cgedit.cgeditor. If you need to download the JRE for Win32 or
Solaris, grab it from Sun's JRE
page, or visit Sun's Java
Homepage. Versions exist for other platforms, and Sun's page may
lead you there, but make sure that whichever one you use supports the
Java 1.1 language/API specification. As predicted (and at long last),
Apple now has a version of their Java Virtual Machine supporting Java
1.1. Mac users (both the PowerPC and 68k varieties) will want
to download
Apple's MRJ Java Environment v2.0appletviewer tool from Sun's JDK
or JRE (or from any other Java 1.1-compliant implementation for your
platform). This should work, though you may have to play with the
settings on your appletviewer to get it to let you read and write
files on your local drive.
Mac users should be able to run this applet version under Netscape if MRJ 2.0 is installed on your machine.