Update News: Interface and Actor Editor (Patreon)

Hey all!

Mostly just got some more interface updates this week!

The primary new addition is the actor editor (shown in the video), which is essentially PFM's equivalent of the animation set editor in SFM. There are no animation sets in PFM, instead there are actors and actor components, but in practice that doesn't change all that much when working with the interface.

All you need to know is that similar to animation sets, everything that is added to a scene (cameras, lights, models) is represented as an actor with components. For example, to create a camera you would simply add a new actor to the scene and attach a camera component to that actor (or a light component, model component, etc.). An actor can have any number of components and these components can be configured via the actor editor.

The reason for this system is that it's very flexible and extremely useful for modding purposes. If someone wanted to add new functionality for PFM actors, they could just write a new component, register it with PFM and publish it on the workshop. If you're familiar with Unity, you may know this kind of system as an entity-component-system. Here's a few examples of how it could be used:

• Someone could create a generic Zombie AI-component, which you could then add to the actors in your scene to create a zombie horde without having to animate them all individually.
• You could attach a 3D GUI component to an actor with a helmet to project a custom interface onto the helmet as a HUD.
• Attach a vehicle-component to an actor to create realistic driving motion without having to animate it yourself.
• etc.

I'm almost done with re-creating all the different GUI element types of SFM, it's mostly just a matter of putting it all together now. I wanted to release another preview version today as well, but there's a few other new interface elements I haven't fully integrated yet and I'd like to get that done first, that should be done by Monday at the latest! :)