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My Feedback And Suggestions On Darkradiant


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Okay, here's what I've come up with so far. Let me start by saying that I haven't read all of everyone else's suggestions, as there are quite a few. So, forgive me if any of these are redundant or have been discussed. Any guidance is of course welcome where I may have simply not found the feature. I am mostly new to DarkRadiant, so it's entirely possible I just don't know how to do the action in question.

 

Texture Assignment

What exactly are the texture application methods in DR? The only thing I can figure out by trial and error of every extension key + mouse buttons is to select a brush or face and then click a texture in the browser. How do you duplicate textures from another brush? This vital action is badly missed.

 

D3Ed's methods (or at least the few that I'm aware of):

1. Select a brush or face. MMB a second brush face. The clicked face texture is applied to the selected.

2. Select a brush or face. Shift-MMB a second brush face. The selected texture is applied to the clicked face. Scaling of clicked face is preserved. (very useful!)

3. Same as 2., but scaling is not preserved, if the user presses Shift-Ctrl-MMB. Also very useful. Without this 'cloning' of textures between surfaces, alignment would be a nightmare (making me almost sure I've probably just missed the method - it has to exist).

 

3D Viewport Movement Controls

It seems like DR's method is the following:

 

-RMB to enter and exit mouselook mode with a toggle (cringe)

-Mousewheel to zoom in/out (double cringe - good for zooming, not moving through a scene)

-A,Z to change tilt

-C,D to move up/down

-In mouselook mode, arrow keys to move around smoothly (good, but bad location on keyboard)

-I can't find any strafe key other than the arrows.

 

D3Ed's method seems a bit odd at first, but becomes very quick to use:

 

-Hold down RMB and drag to move forward, back, and turn

-A,Z to tilt, or ctrl-shift RMB

-Ctrl-drag RMB to strafe

 

Much simpler and more powerful, IMO. And, the user never need move their left hand from the home row position.

 

Translate Mode (W)

Possibly my most pressed key in D3Ed. I'm glad it exists in DR. However, it acts a bit different. In D3Ed, you press W, and then anywhere you click and drag, you affect the selected entities (for translation). In DR, the user must either click the brush itself, or one of the directional arrows extending out of the brush(es). This requirement pretty much eliminates the convenience and use of the feature at all, because if the user could simply click the brush, they don't really even need a translate lock key. The whole advantage (in D3Ed) to having this locked mode is that you don't have to pinpoint your brush(es) and drag them - you can drag anywhere in, out, or around them, and they'll still move, completely intact.

 

ESC to close dialogs

If a dialog like the surface inspector is open and has focus in D3Ed, hitting ESC will close it. Not so in DR. Just a user-friendliness thing.

 

Preserved keys between entity selections

In D3Ed, you can select an entity, click a key pair, and then that key pair will be remembered/stored in the entity inspector. Then, if you select a second entity, focus to the key pair, and hit enter, you've just used a shortcut to assign that keypair to the new entity - very useful. This doesn't currently seem possible in DR.

 

Show property comments

Maybe I'm missing it, but is there a way to view property comments in DR? For example,

 

"frob_distance" "Specifies the distance when the frob highlight..."

 

This is shown in the "Usage" section of the entity inspector in D3Ed.

 

Shortcut for clip points

In D3Ed, ctrl-RMB is a handy shortcut for placing clip points. In DR, it appears you must be in brush clip mode to place clip points.

 

Unfriendly color assignment for some items(?)

Maybe it's customizable, I'm not sure. I tend to make my workspace as dark as possible so I'm not staring at a glaring bright field for hours. Thus, I go straight for a black background and dark grid in isometric view (misc->colors->themes->black and green). However, some items are color coded with black text for a reason I haven't figured out yet. For instance, atdm:moveable_plank_short. This makes seeing this item when not selected almost impossible (black on black). Is this customizable? Can colors be flipped (XOR'ed or whatever?) in these types of cases so they will always show? Why black for those items, when most are teal or green or some other light color?

 

Selection tools!

Vital importance. Are there DR equivalents to D3Ed's select complete tall, touching, partial tall, and inside? There appears to be a shift-click rubberband, which might be complete tall, I think, so that's good. And there might be a ctrl-click rubberband, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Shift-ctrl-click rubberband does something I'm not understanding - maybe it's selecting faces? Anyway, I haven't found arguably the most important one - Select Inside.

 

Regions?

I'm no regioning expert, only minimal experience with it, but I think Region->set X,Y is failing to do anything. Beyond that, I wonder - will the region be seletively built and saved ready for launch in Doom? In D3Ed, you can build just the region to greatly ease and speed working on small sections of large maps. Vital when it starts getting really big.

 

Compilation

Is there a way to compile in DR? I only see a Build menu with empty command lines. Do we even have BSP tools, or are they built into Doom? I really hope we don't have to do it from a D3 console - it takes *much* longer.

 

Render mode

Although we've talked about this and it's probably beyond the scope, I'll include just for completeness, the troubling fact that GTK's renderer currently won't go into lit preview mode (I've still never seen it to this day) for older cards, like my old GeForce Ti4600, even though they support Doom3 just fine. This will no doubt turn a lot of Thief fans away (by necessity, myself included) from using DR over D3Ed. I wrote an email to the lead dev(?) months ago - no reply.

 

That's all I've got for now; more as I see 'em. :)

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Texture Assignment

What exactly are the texture application methods in DR? The only thing I can figure out by trial and error of every extension key + mouse buttons is to select a brush or face and then click a texture in the browser. How do you duplicate textures from another brush? This vital action is badly missed.

You can highlight the face of the brush you want to copy the texture from. Select "Copy Brush Face" from the menu and then you can apply the copied texture by Ctrl-Shift-MMB to any brush face you point your mouse to. I assigned a shortcut to the "Copy Brush Face" command as I find selecting it from the menu as cumbersome.

 

Unfriendly color assignment for some items(?)

Maybe it's customizable, I'm not sure. I tend to make my workspace as dark as possible so I'm not staring at a glaring bright field for hours. Thus, I go straight for a black background and dark grid in isometric view (misc->colors->themes->black and green). However, some items are color coded with black text for a reason I haven't figured out yet. For instance, atdm:moveable_plank_short. This makes seeing this item when not selected almost impossible (black on black). Is this customizable? Can colors be flipped (XOR'ed or whatever?) in these types of cases so they will always show? Why black for those items, when most are teal or green or some other light color?

I'm working on that, you should be able to customise and save your own colourset in the future.

 

Selection tools!

Vital importance. Are there DR equivalents to D3Ed's select complete tall, touching, partial tall, and inside? There appears to be a shift-click rubberband, which might be complete tall, I think, so that's good. And there might be a ctrl-click rubberband, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Shift-ctrl-click rubberband does something I'm not understanding - maybe it's selecting faces? Anyway, I haven't found arguably the most important one - Select Inside.

Two of the four D3ED features have already been cross-ported from GTKRadiant: "Select inside" and "Select touching". This will be available in the next release.

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3D Viewport Movement Controls

It seems like DR's method is the following:

 

-RMB to enter and exit mouselook mode with a toggle (cringe)

-Mousewheel to zoom in/out (double cringe - good for zooming, not moving through a scene)

-A,Z to change tilt

-C,D to move up/down

-In mouselook mode, arrow keys to move around smoothly (good, but bad location on keyboard)

-I can't find any strafe key other than the arrows.

 

There are some motion improvements in the latest SVN - when you are in right-click Mouselook mode, you can hold down Ctrl and move the mouse to strafe sideways and up/down, and Ctrl+Shift to strafe forwards/back/left/right.

 

Preserved keys between entity selections

In D3Ed, you can select an entity, click a key pair, and then that key pair will be remembered/stored in the entity inspector. Then, if you select a second entity, focus to the key pair, and hit enter, you've just used a shortcut to assign that keypair to the new entity - very useful. This doesn't currently seem possible in DR.

Show property comments

Maybe I'm missing it, but is there a way to view property comments in DR? For example,

 

"frob_distance" "Specifies the distance when the frob highlight..."

 

This is shown in the "Usage" section of the entity inspector in D3Ed.

 

The entity inspector is going to be redesigned/simplified for 0.7.0, so hopefully it will be possible to add these features.

Regions?

I'm no regioning expert, only minimal experience with it, but I think Region->set X,Y is failing to do anything. Beyond that, I wonder - will the region be seletively built and saved ready for launch in Doom? In D3Ed, you can build just the region to greatly ease and speed working on small sections of large maps. Vital when it starts getting really big.

Compilation

Is there a way to compile in DR? I only see a Build menu with empty command lines. Do we even have BSP tools, or are they built into Doom? I really hope we don't have to do it from a D3 console - it takes *much* longer.

 

We have no interface with the building code, since this is locked up in Doom 3 itself. It should be possible to select and hide/show regions in the editor, but they will (probably) not be reflected in the compiled map (the reason for "probably" is that it is possible that by saving appropriate region data in some way, the Doom 3 map BSP command might take it into account during compilation).

 

Render modeAlthough we've talked about this and it's probably beyond the scope, I'll include just for completeness, the troubling fact that GTK's renderer currently won't go into lit preview mode (I've still never seen it to this day) for older cards, like my old GeForce Ti4600, even though they support Doom3 just fine. This will no doubt turn a lot of Thief fans away (by necessity, myself included) from using DR over D3Ed. I wrote an email to the lead dev(?) months ago - no reply.

 

Yeah, as we discussed it may be possible to get to this when we rewrite the renderer, although by that time the proportion of people with non-DX9 cards is likely to be even smaller.

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I assigned a shortcut to the "Copy Brush Face" command as I find selecting it from the menu as cumbersome.

How is shortcut assignment done (unless, you mean in the next build release, in which case nevermind)? The D3Ed method is really easy; it's literally just select and then click-click-click-click, assign-assign-assign-assign. Any chance of that getting in? I don't mean to try to turn DR into D3Ed, but the latter has a lot of tried and true shortcuts for doing things I'm sure the id guys put in purely because of how good they were.

 

Also, it doesn't seem to copy the alignment. Using the menu items (to be sure I'm doing the right action), I get the texture transferred, but not the scaling. Optimally, there'd be a way to transfer scaling/rotation/alignment and a way not to transfer that.

 

Two of the four D3ED features have already been cross-ported from GTKRadiant: "Select inside" and "Select touching". This will be available in the next release.

Ah, sounds like they're on their way then. It looks like shift-click rubberband is in fact select complete tall, which has pretty limited use (if you want to select items in a room but not the room, tough luck; you'll get the floor and ceiling selected too. Well, if they're all coming over, that's perfect.

 

There are some motion improvements in the latest SVN - when you are in right-click Mouselook mode, you can hold down Ctrl and move the mouse to strafe sideways and up/down, and Ctrl+Shift to strafe forwards/back/left/right.

That sounds cool, then. Any possibility of the mousemode toggle being a preference? So that we can make it a toggle or a held button? Any specific reason not to adopt the same method as D3Ed, so that authors can move effortlessly between the two editors? Especially as it seems like there will inevitably always be some things DR is stronger at, and some at which D3Ed is stronger, so authors will likely have to jump between the two whether they want to or not. (That sounds whiney, but it's not meant that way; obviously DR is most flexible and customizable and TDM-specific, and it'd be great to be able to embrace use of it exclusively, but it's sounding like there might be some important things it won't be able to do.)

 

We have no interface with the building code, since this is locked up in Doom 3 itself. It should be possible to select and hide/show regions in the editor

Yep, I was trying this last night. It seems like the func is there, perhaps just a bit buggy. So users build at a D3 console?

 

but they will (probably) not be reflected in the compiled map (the reason for "probably" is that it is possible that by saving appropriate region data in some way, the Doom 3 map BSP command might take it into account during compilation).

Hm. Okay, well just as a vote of confidence for a hopeful future, this is a very useful feature for any map larger than a few minutes to compile.

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Turns out there is a save region function in the file menu... could that be twisted around to allow for compiling selective regions? I imagine most of it is inherently done - the user creates a region and then saves it, opens Doom3 and compiles the region instead of the map. The only thing DR should have to do is intelligently create a closing box around the region to seal it up! That's potentially the largest missing feature I can think of from DR, cleared up, if it can be done/works.

 

Also, did I make any sense with my Translation key (W) functionality description above?

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Turns out there is a save region function in the file menu... could that be twisted around to allow for compiling selective regions? I imagine most of it is inherently done - the user creates a region and then saves it, opens Doom3 and compiles the region instead of the map. The only thing DR should have to do is intelligently create a closing box around the region to seal it up! That's potentially the largest missing feature I can think of from DR, cleared up, if it can be done/works.

 

It may be possible to add the enclosing box, I guess it would also be necessary to put an info_player_start in a sensible position.

 

Also, did I make any sense with my Translation key (W) functionality description above?

 

Yes, it looks like the Translation tool is based on the equivalent in 3D applications, rather than the traditional Radiant interface. I agree that there is not much point in the tool if it provides no more functionality than just dragging on the brush itself.

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Well, I've FINALLY gotten doom 3 setup correctly under Linux, and my latest build of DR is working PERFECTLY now. :) Guys, I can't express how great this is turning out. Keep up the excellent work. DarkRadiant is really going to help make Dark Mod one of the top mod releases. :) Can't wait for the rest of the team to try out the new stuff.

 

Only one really weird thing in the latest build. All the models have weird lines sticking out all over them. They look like pinhead from the Hellraiser movies. I think something must have gotten fiddled with in the latest build to display some weird setting.

 

Here is a screen shot of what I mean.

post-3-1161915537_thumb.jpg

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Interesting... they look a bit like normal vectors. No idea what they actually are though. :)

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Only one really weird thing in the latest build. All the models have weird lines sticking out all over them. They look like pinhead from the Hellraiser movies. I think something must have gotten fiddled with in the latest build to display some weird setting.

Oh, I've always had these needles (face normals, I assume) since I first compiled DR in July and I thought they were there on purpose, so I didn't mind. They are missing in the DR 0.6.0 Release Package, so I assumed there must be some kind of switch to turn these on or off. Orbweaver can tell us more about this, I hope.

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There are some motion improvements in the latest SVN - when you are in right-click Mouselook mode, you can hold down Ctrl and move the mouse to strafe sideways and up/down, and Ctrl+Shift to strafe forwards/back/left/right.

I often use Shift+Ctrl+LMB in mouselook mode to select faces. You can guess that I was pretty surprised when I suddenly zoomed off into space like starship enterprise... :D

 

I would either suggest using different keybindings (like Alt, for example) or making the strafe ability an option that users can turn on or off.

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I often use Shift+Ctrl+LMB in mouselook mode to select faces. You can guess that I was pretty surprised when I suddenly zoomed off into space like starship enterprise... :D

 

I would either suggest using different keybindings (like Alt, for example) or making the strafe ability an option that users can turn on or off.

 

Actually I would rather ditch the mouselook mode altogether (since modal interfaces are often confusing), and use the system employed in T3Ed - rightclick-drag to pan and tilt the camera, leftclick-drag to pan and move back/forward, and bothclick-drag to strafe left/right, up/down. This allows almost every possible motion you can think of, without having to use any keyboard modifiers or enter and leave a separate mode.

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I would rather ditch the mouselook mode altogether (since modal interfaces are often confusing), and use the system employed in T3Ed - rightclick-drag to pan and tilt the camera, leftclick-drag to pan and move back/forward, and bothclick-drag to strafe left/right, up/down. This allows almost every possible motion you can think of, without having to use any keyboard modifiers or enter and leave a separate mode.

 

I think that would be quite alright if you could do that. :) I found that method quite easy to use in T3Ed and it would be familiar to any community members who have started using T3.

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The big problem there being completely different approach from D3Ed. Making the previously mentioned (and inevitable) hopping back and forth between DR and D3Ed a major headache.

 

Suggestion: choice of different modes available to users as a Preference.

 

1. "As close to D3Ed or at least as user friendly as possible" (modified default method)

2. T3Ed style

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The big problem there being completely different approach from D3Ed. Making the previously mentioned (and inevitable) hopping back and forth between DR and D3Ed a major headache.

 

Hopping between the two editors is not part of the long-term strategy however. It is obviously necessary now, and will be for a while, but theoretically DarkRadiant should become "a better Doom 3 editor" which doesn't require moving back into D3Ed for anything.

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Hopping between the two editors is not part of the long-term strategy however. It is obviously necessary now, and will be for a while, but theoretically DarkRadiant should become "a better Doom 3 editor" which doesn't require moving back into D3Ed for anything.

 

Indeed, the goal is to be a full replacement for D3Ed (crossing fingers). When the Doom 3 source code is released, it should even be possible to port the ability to compile maps within Dark Radiant.

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-_- Or not. I just thought it would be sensible and easy enough to include familiar options for keybindings since it is going to happen.

 

Material animation, render particles, render sound, edit particle and sound (I know, launched from D3 - it's still native to D3 though, and a separate program from DR), compiling and launch, lack of render mode for sub-GF5 generation cards (like mine), and more - all things that may never make it to DR. If they do, great! I'm all for that happening; goodbye to D3Ed crashes. But in the meantime - a possibly long meantime - people (myself for one) will be switching back and forth, so I thought an easy solution would be to make two sets of optional control for 6 degrees of movement and pitch. How hard would keybinds be? If it's easy enough, why not?

 

Otherwise, I guess I'll just memorize more controls.

 

(Regardless, T3Ed's hold-scrape-reposition, hold-scrape-reposition method isn't exactly ideal...)

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Personally I abhor D3Ed's controls. Maybe I'm just not used to them, but they feel horribly horribly clunky to me. T3Ed's controls are much nicer. I'm not sure what you mean about "hold-scrape-reposition".

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Material animation, render particles, render sound, edit particle and sound (I know, launched from D3 - it's still native to D3 though, and a separate program from DR), compiling and launch, lack of render mode for sub-GF5 generation cards (like mine), and more

 

Particles and sound should definitely go in, compiling is dependent on the D3 code being open-source but should hopefully make it eventually (and for now you can do this by running D3 in the background and typing "testmap mapname" rather than "map mapname), the lighting for older cards should be possible once the renderer is redesigned.

 

so I thought an easy solution would be to make two sets of optional control for 6 degrees of movement and pitch. How hard would keybinds be? If it's easy enough, why not?

 

Two sets of hardcoded controls would be ugly from a design standpoint. I haven't looked into this area yet, but it might be possible to make this configurable through the XML files allowing any control system users wanted.

 

Actually a totally-customisable control system would be a good step forward, I HATE the Radiant controls (having to use Shift-click to select objects, Esc to deselect etc - your hand has to move all over the keyboard to accomplish even the simplest tasks).

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By the T3Ed control system, I meant the fact that to move around in the 3D port, you hold down a mouse button, and then drag in a direction. Once you've gone as far as your mouse will allow, you keep holding down the button, lift it, shift it, then drag again, etc. It's not bad, but I like a smooth scroll, like in the game itself.

 

Ironically in that way, DR is probably best. Enter mouselook mode (which incidentally, I'm actually starting to get used to :rolleyes:) and then the arrow keys are great. However - they're where the arrow keys are. Originally I was just asking basically not to have to move the left hand from the home row. I've never been crazy about D3Ed's RMB to slide forward or back, make no mistake. But the up/down/side movement is great.

 

Basically, it's sounding like each one of them is lacking in one way or another. I honestly don't know what to suggest at this point. D3Ed for the up/down/side movement via extended key. T3Ed for forward/backward movement(?) DR for looking around, but not just in mouselook mode. :wacko:

 

Should we discuss this in a dedicated thread?

 

(and for now you can do this by running D3 in the background and typing "testmap mapname" rather than "map mapname), the lighting for older cards should be possible once the renderer is redesigned.

Great, didn't know you were going to take that on. As for the testmap or dmap, my only gripe with that is that for some reason it takes forever and a day to do in D3 directly. I compile in D3Ed in say, 20 seconds, it'll take over a minute in D3. It shouldn't be just the text printing, because it does the same thing in the editor... no idea why the difference. I assume everyone else gets that too?

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I agree with sneaksie, although I have'nt tried out the controls of T3ED (since I never bothered with it). I really like the ctrl+RMouse+drag to strafe and go up and down in d3ed, and the RMouse+drag is quite annoying at time because if you press RMouse in not center of that screen it races off to one direction or another, so yeah a better solution, such as the arrow keys, is probably better.

 

Great, didn't know you were going to take that on. As for the testmap or dmap, my only gripe with that is that for some reason it takes forever and a day to do in D3 directly. I compile in D3Ed in say, 20 seconds, it'll take over a minute in D3. It shouldn't be just the text printing, because it does the same thing in the editor... no idea why the difference. I assume everyone else gets that too?

 

Wierd, I get them about the same really. Though if you ahve a billion little brushes (not in entities, just brushes) and it has to do a collision thingy fir them then it takes a millenium.

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