Proof of concept: editor modding

[cyanic]

I was poking around at the editor, and came upon something interesting. Knowing that the editor is made with Qt, and having previously messed around with Qt, I dumped out the contents of the Qt resource bundles. What was interesting is the vast amount of QML source code contained, which appears to encompass somewhere between 60-90% of the editor's logic and all of its layouts. Since I like messing with engine-level stuff, I decided to see if I can mod the editor itself. Resources can be compiled with rcc, and I made a tool to reinject the compiled resource bundle. This is what I came up with:

Video demo:

Having the ability to modify the editor itself opens up a wide variety of possibilities. It will be possible to fix editor bugs directly, and possibly add plugin-specific editing right into the interface. Qt apparently can load arbitrary QML as well, so with some plumbing, it should be possible to have a plugin manager for the editor itself. (I haven't really considered how that could be implemented, but it'll probably be tricky.)

 

[Shaz]

Looks fascinating! Of course you'll have issues when new versions of MV are released and you have to re-integrate your changes.

What are the legalities of this? Is this reverse engineering / decompiling? Does it breach the EULA?

 

[cyanic]

Currently the EULA for MV seems to be missing, but the last version I read didn't seem to mention anything against reverse engineering. It's kind of like editing the engine JS files directly, but a lot more involved. I'd imagine some problems distributing the changes because I'm not sure if it's possible to alias things, and if distributed as a diff bits of the original code will show up.

 

[WhiteW]

I hope this becomes a thing, this looks awesome.

 

[jayray]

no more 999 map cap?

 

[Tsukihime]

I'm interested. "For private use" of course.

 

[palatkorn]

It is something that should be added. Looks not confused and organized, should add this

 

[Puffer]

WE NEED THIS!! This is just straight up incredible, it will add so much more flexibility into the engine