Metroid Prime: Development Tools/Plugins

A little birdie gave me these pictures quite awhile ago, and I'm just looking through them now. Any news on these? I'm assuming they used something commercial like Maya or 3DSMax for development instead of designing a whole 3D editor specifically for the game (could be wrong on that, but it makes sense to me).

 

I never really saw them. I assume this is some kind of map editor for metroid prime (3ds Max and Maya don't handle ingame stuff like where a gun spawns), and it looks pretty official, so I dont think this is a program made by a hobbier/hacker.

 

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It is a map editor for Metroid Prime, from what I can see. It might also be the entire developer package for all I know.

3DS-Max and Maya do utilize a plugin system that's very diverse. I'm assuming that's what they used.

And yes it is official; I've confirmed that.

 

I would rather code my own map editor than make a plugin for 3ds Max (assuming the SDK is not free), and it does not look like 3ds Max so it could be maya. EDIT: by seeing the metroid button in the menu bar I assume this a standalone map editor.

 

Where do you see the metroid in the menu bar? What menu bar?

P.S: It's Maya. I checked. Making plugins, also, is easy. :|

 

File - Edit - Util - View - Metroid

 

Wow, seeing development software like THIS is always fun. I've always been quite interested in the custom tools studios make for specific games and engines. (I'm really interested in the Mega Drive Sonic series and what tools they might've used, as some of these data formats in Sonic CD are pretty difficult to figure out...)

 

That's what I meant.
Btw: Waker, I never saw a plugin that was able to change the menu bar, so maybe they copied the layout of maya.

 

Or, being nintendo, they obtained a much better SDK for maya than that which individuals can get

 

Damn, Let's start a company :þ
But with making changes to the menu bar they would need the actual source of the program right?

 

Very interesting! Thx for sharing!

 

No not at all, just a better SDK.

 

I have seen hex editors that can do such things.

 

Cool, any names?

 

... Making plugins implies modification to the UI and overall additional functionality to the tool in use. :x

And yeah, I'm interested in seeing more of these shots or possibly a turn-up of the SDK in question. Has anybody else seen anything like this?

 

except for these pictures no.

 

Hex Workshop.

 

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I find it strangely interesting how they used the same font for the text in the viewport as they did in the early Prime builds (Shown here.)

Perhaps it IS custom-built.

 

Loads of things can modify menus.
Basic example; hack-it.

 

I hate to bump this, but I've found some really odd things as of late.

Metroid Prime runs on a very heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 2. You can certify this to yourself by looking at the text box next to Asset_CMDL_EditorModel. Notice the word "/cooked/" in there.

For those of you who have worked with the Unreal Engine, you'll know what this is, else, you might wanna read. Cooking is a term for compiling all of the maps, scripts, materials, etc. you've made into one usable executable, or "game". It was used primarily for consoles, although now support has come out for PC cooking, resulting in faster loading times.

They also used Unreal's level streaming feature. This is highly detailed in Unreal Engine 3, but was also present in 2. It's funny how Retro got a private license for this stuff yet never sought to bring it out.

I also can confirm some UnrealScript source files exist on disk, which I am attempting to extract. Will probably branch this off into a separate thread for loads of fun and wackiness.