3d Camera changes

[jdude]

I had two ideas for the 3d camera views.

 

idea 1) Optimization idea:

I was watching my brother mess around with Halflife 2's Hammer editor; I noticed they have a really interesting optimization process to prevent slowdown. When the camera is a specific distance from an entity it doesn't render it in wireframe, instead it turns it into a box, (like playerstart looks like). This would probably really help rendering times especially for large maps with lots of models in them. Even with S.L. I know it would help.

 

Example: Say you are editing S.L. and you are modifying only the street area. The renderer would render all the models in the church as solid color boxes rather than their true wire frame models. Result would be less giant slow downs when moving the camera around. Perhaps if possible, in the background after the initial loading of the map the program can secretly load the textures and wireframe models of objects that need to be rendered, and it wouldn't do this when the program is minimized as to prevent the program from slowing other things down.

 

idea 2) Color code path entities:

I'd much prefer to see different colors for the path nodes. For example, a path node wait should be a different color than a path node turn and a different color than a path node move ect ect.

[SneaksieDave]

A version of the first one at least is tracked: http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=61

[greebo]

idea 1) Optimization idea:

I was watching my brother mess around with Halflife 2's Hammer editor; I noticed they have a really interesting optimization process to prevent slowdown. When the camera is a specific distance from an entity it doesn't render it in wireframe, instead it turns it into a box, (like playerstart looks like). This would probably really help rendering times especially for large maps with lots of models in them. Even with S.L. I know it would help.

Yes, this sounds similar to the tracker entry SneaksieDave mentioned. I guess this is feasible, but beware that the "cubic clip" feature already takes care of distant objects in DarkRadiant by default, so the "always render models as wire-frames or boxes" solution might be the more effective one.

 

idea 2) Color code path entities:

I'd much prefer to see different colors for the path nodes. For example, a path node wait should be a different color than a path node turn and a different color than a path node move ect ect.

The entity colours for the path nodes can be customised in the def files (but beware that this change affects everybody).

 

DarkRadiant just parses the "editor_color" spawnarg and uses that as colour (inheritance is considered).