DarkRadiant 2.14.0 pre-release test

[greebo]

Here's the DR 2.14.0pre2 build for every interested mapper to test.

This release focused on DarkRadiant's texturing abilities, the Texture Tool and some of the Surface Inspector algorithms have been completely rewritten. A new model importer UI has been added with the ability to convert FBX models into a format compatible to the game (it can also convert LWO, ASE and OBJ models). The EntityInspector can now deal with more than one selected entities, showing the shared key values in the list.

Copy/Paste Textures across angled faces:

Texture Tool Rotate Tool (use "R" hotkey to switch)

Surface Inspector Harmonise Scale / Linked Scaling

Surface Inspector Normalise

EntityInspector Multi-Selection Support

For more things that have changed or fixed, see the list below.

Download Windows Portable x64: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-wqcqnlz8KOYpts-ap8x313yVaiQm87l/view?usp=sharing
Download Windows Installer x64: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-pSE-517B7Y-T3-VonNv4zLzUMgr-fXt/view?usp=sharing

Linux folks need to compile this stuff from source, instructions for various distributions are on the wiki.

If you happen to run into a crash, please record a crashdump: How to record a crashdump

Changes since 2.13.0 can be seen on the Bugtracker changelog, here's the summary:

#5746: Feature: Texture Tool Improvements
#5776: Feature: Texture Tool: Add Manipulation Panel to shift/scale/rotate selection
#5613: Feature: Show shared keyvalues when multiple entities are selected
#5738: Feature: Texture Browser Filter: match multiple words (using 'AND' logic)
#5728: Feature: Skin Chooser shows materials of the model
#5774: Feature: Surface Inspector: Add buttons to harmonise Horizontal and Vertical scale values
#5771: Feature: Improved pasting textures to angled faces sharing an edge
#5753: Feature: XY view zoom is centered at cursor
#5748: Feature: Texture Tool: Constrain operations to axes by holding down Shift
#5128: Feature: Texture Tools: rotate function
#5731: Feature: Texture Tool: UI contrast
#5721: Feature: Model Conversion UI
#5722: Feature: Add FBX model importer
#5712: Feature: add IQM format support into lib/picomodel
#5705: Improvement: "Replace Selection with exported Model" preserves spawnargs
#5659: Improvement: automatically reload exported models
#5745: Improvement: Search function: don't start searching while still typing
#5791: Improvement: MediaBrowser toolbar: clear filter text when texture is selected through MMB or Texture Browser
#5788: Improvement: Merge "Create player start" and "Move player start" options
#5785: Improvement: Patch Texture Rotation should take aspect ratio into account
#5733: Improvement: Texture Tool: use aspect ratio of material
#5740: Improvement: Step-rotating textures through the Surface Inspector should be using the center as pivot
#5775: Improvement: Surface Inspector: Option to change horizontal and vertical scale values proportionally
#5633: Improvement: Apply textures to surfaces using "normalized" scaling.
#5547: Improvement: Normalise button brings texture coordinates closer to 0,0
#2272: Improvement: Prevent Texture Tool "face jump" on rescaling textures
#5735: Improvement: Move modifier hints out of the status bar
#5767: Improvement: Flip Texture: Prevent huge face UV coordinate translations
#5752: Improvement: Double click on list elements should auto-close dialogs
#5749: Improvement: Texture Tool: Select items by clicking the UV space they cover
#5750: Improvement: Texture Tool: Grid lines are getting too dense when zooming out a lot
#5732: Improvement: Texture Tool: intercept keystrokes for grid resizing & snap to grid
#5734: Tweak: Surface Inspector vertical shift / vertical scale arrows
#5706: Tweak: Surface Inspector's minimum width is too large
#5741: Improvement: Model Exporter: warn if Output Format and extension in File Path don't match
#5711: Improvement: Change Quake3 map exporter to write "legacy" brush syntax
#5710: Fixed: Q3 Legacy BrushDef parser sometime produce some wrong texture rotation
#5687: Fixed: "Replace Selection with exported Model" assigns result to Default layer
#5408: Fixed: All scene graphs connect to the same undo system, causing interference
#5790: Fixed: Remove Floating Layout
#5783: Fixed: EntityInspector allows to set an entity's name to an empty value
#5723: Fixed: modelDefs folder starts expanded after changing selection
#5736: Fixed: Particle Editor: wireframe does not render
#4584: Fixed: Drag-select while in texture tool window gets stuck.
#5770: Fixed: Some brushes change shape or disappear when rotated or duplicated
#5747: Fixed: Texture Tool: drag operation doesn't capture the mouse
#5754: Fixed: Ctrl-S does not work when focus is on inputs
#5729: Fixed: Autosave filename unhelpfully overwrites 'save copy as' filename
#5725: Fixed: Merge Maps: can't hide changed entities/primitives
#5708: Fixed: Merge Maps: can't center orthoview/camera on changed entities
#5709: Fixed: Merge Maps UI remains if DR is closed while a merge is in progress
#5707: Fixed: Merge Maps: "Details" text doesn't use full width of window
#5704: Fixed: Brushes colour schemes not saving
#5702: Fixed: Fit Texture fields do not allow values below 1.0
#5713: Fixed: PatchDefExporter: do not write trailing white space after shader name
#5717: Fixed: LWO2 Model Exporter doesn't write vertex colours
#5588: Coding: Separate UI-related and core module interface headers
#5780: Coding: Remove IDialogManager references from Map module
#5778: Coding: Solution / Build Dependencies Update

Changes since 2.14.0pre1

#5810: Fixed: Objective components not correctly renumbered after removing a component
#5801: Fixed: Applying a skin to a model entity no longer works under 2.14pre1
#5813: Fixed: Spawnarg types and tooltips not reliably inherited in entityDefs
#5814: Feature: Spawnarg type icon not shown for inherited properties
#5808: Fixed: Crash when saving map or prefab without a file extension
#5807: Fixed: Texture Tool crashes when creating a new brush
#5797: Fixed: "Texture tool" grid cannot decrease under 1
#5799: Fixed: Texture Tool: dragged vertices snap to grid even though it's switched off
#5800: Fixed: Sound chooser not pre-selecting the inherited value of snd_* keys of an entity
#5794: Fixed: User Guide (Local) doesn't work
#5792: XY View zooming behaviour improved (if not fixed)
Refresh icons for axis flip buttons
Separate SurfaceInspector scale rows from other property rows
Restore GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR texture filtering

Thanks for testing, as always!

[New Horizon]

Wow!  Impressive update, as always!

[IZaRTaX]

What a very big update, thank you for your hard work

[Goldwell]

Excellent work Greebo, thank you!

[greebo]

Thanks guys

I forgot to mention another feature, which was quite some work: the Entity Inspector can now deal with multiple selected entities. It will show the shared values of the selection, or "differing values" if the entities don't share the same value. Spawnargs that don't exist on all the selected entities are not displayed.

[Deep]

Thank you so much greebo! 3 cheers for your hard work!

[kingsal]

Ohh yes! This is like an early Christmas present. Thanks @greebo!

[Deep]

ok I am having issues with scrolling in the xy panes. doesn't seem to be a way to control the incremental zoom on the mmb . Zooming and movement in cam view is perfect. Where do I adjust the zoom increment from 10,000 down to where it should be for the xy views?

- it is wildly powerful right now, and I ultimately lose where the entire grid is... anyone else having this happen? Always leery for this reason when it comes to "updates". BUT it could also be a setting I'm unaware of.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Deep

[greebo]

Yes, this has been reported before on the tracker. At first, I was sure it was coming from the mouse wheel delta that is being sent by the operating system - so I removed that part and now it looks like it's the same code that has been active before. Still people are seeing this over-sensitive zooming behaviour, there must be differences between systems.

Can you briefly check how the zooming behaves when you hold down shift? I assume it is over-sensitive too?

I'll have to prepare a special build with more extensive logging to understand what your OS is sending to your DarkRadiant session.

[greebo]

I've added some logging in a special build, which is currently compiled at: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/actions/runs/1406515381 You'll need a Github account to see it, I think.

It will write the scroll events to the darkradiant.log file in c:\users\<user>\appdata\roaming\DarkRadiant

@DeepWhen the build's done, please download the portable package and do some scrolling tests. Try to do a single scroll step, and pause a bit between the steps, so I can distinguish them by the timestamps in the log file. Then please send me the log, or post it here.

[LDAsh]

Sadly, I'm getting an error on startup with this latest version.

Error
ModuleRegistry: Module doesn't exist: ScriptingSystem

And then DR crashes.  I tried after deleting the "AppData\Roaming\DarkRadiant" to start fresh and that didn't make a difference.  2.13.0 worked fine.

 

[greebo]

1 hour ago, LDAsh said:

Sadly, I'm getting an error on startup with this latest version.

That's probably because you're on Windows 7. When upgrading to Python 3.10 I missed that it doesn't support Win7 anymore, so I had to downgrade the Python libraries to 3.7.9. It is fixed in the most recent snapshot build on Github:

https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/actions/runs/1406580396

[LDAsh]

Great, that works fine now.  Thanks for still supporting Win7.  A shame about Python falling off already but eh, times they are a changin'.  Anyway, I've played with the build for about an hour, mostly with the texturing stuff and I can't say I've found any issues yet.  Great work!  Your efforts are really appreciated.

[OrbWeaver]

I have some UI suggestions for the new Surface Inspector, which I will discuss here rather than changing unilaterally myself since you've obviously done a lot of work on this and might have more changes planned.

• We're going to need to #ifdef the pixel-based widget minimum sizes, since unfortunately these result in crushed/unreadable widgets on Linux with certain GTK themes. In general we can't use fixed pixel sizes on GTK because the combination of user-selectable themes and variable DPI (mine is 110%) make the relationship between widgets and pixels unpredictable.
• The new icons look good. I suggest removing the light blue ellipse in between the arrows in the horizontal and vertical scale buttons, since from a distance this makes the arrows slightly harder to read (it just looks like blur).
• I don't recommend using the exact same icons for buttons which do different things (vert shift buttons and h/v scale assignment buttons), since this is potentially confusing. They should be distinguished in some way, even if it's just a different colour and a square at the base of the arrow or something.
• The large vertical gap between H and V scale (to fit the buttons in) makes things a little odd: H and V scale are actually the most "tightly bound" parameters because of the new transfer buttons, but the layout makes them look like they are in completely different sections! However, I can't immediately think of a easy way to improve this — the buttons need to go somewhere, and placing them off to one side isn't obviously ideal either (and would widen the dialog further).

[Epifire]

Fantastic work Greebo! When you mentioned you were revamping the texture editor in DR, I had no idea it was going to be this in depth. This is nearing modeling app levels of accessibility and I know we've got a lot of mappers who are still purely working in the editor, vs making & importing meshes. Being able to skew UVs like that in a handy UI, is gonna be a godsend for people. 

[greebo]

5 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

I have some UI suggestions for the new Surface Inspector, which I will discuss here rather than changing unilaterally myself since you've obviously done a lot of work on this and might have more changes planned.

No more changes that I have immediately planned. I'm not clinging to any of the work I've done, so if you feel like improving them, please go ahead!

I'm totally aware that doing stuff in pixels is somewhat 1998 in terms of UI design, but I can't think of any other way to restrict the sizes. Same for the spin buttons, which look different on every system. I can see why some of the larger projects don't bother with cross-UI frameworks and just do their entire UI on their own in openGL, like Blender or Lightwave. Overall I'm fine with #ifdefs, let's hope we don't need dozens of them.

Didn't spend much time on the buttons, just wanted to get something going. I can upload the small photoshop file I've used to create the arrows, if needed. I'm pretty sure the grey background is in a separate layer. It'd be nice if the whole icon set of DarkRadiant underwent a full revamp, revisiting every icon, such that style, colours, contrast are consistent, keeping dark and light UI mode in mind. At the moment it has a bit of a Frankenstein touch.

[Deep]

So greebo... you said: When the build's done, please download the portable package and do some scrolling tests."

my question is am I unzipping this portable package in the Dark Radiant folder (that contains 2.13)? unzipping it to a stick? - I'm sorry , Please forgive me .... don't get it

i want to upload the data log to you

 

[greebo]

You can extract it to a new folder.

(No need to overwrite your existing installation, the test version shouldn't interfere with 2.13.)

[OrbWeaver]

18 hours ago, greebo said:

I'm totally aware that doing stuff in pixels is somewhat 1998 in terms of UI design, but I can't think of any other way to restrict the sizes. Same for the spin buttons, which look different on every system. I can see why some of the larger projects don't bother with cross-UI frameworks and just do their entire UI on their own in openGL, like Blender or Lightwave. Overall I'm fine with #ifdefs, let's hope we don't need dozens of them.

This is what I have so far; it looks good on Linux, but obviously I haven't confirmed that the #ifdefs work correctly on Windows. If you have time, perhaps check if it is still looking good on Windows and does not expand the dialog and attract complaints? I'd be interested in how the pixel sizes interact with Windows' own DPI scaling functionality too — if you set your scale factor to 200%, does Windows/wxWidgets take this into account automatically or do you get cut off widgets there too?

Spoiler

diff --git a/radiant/ui/surfaceinspector/SurfaceInspector.cpp b/radiant/ui/surfaceinspector/SurfaceInspector.cpp
index 3a8f7ab91..1431f2dcb 100644
--- a/radiant/ui/surfaceinspector/SurfaceInspector.cpp
+++ b/radiant/ui/surfaceinspector/SurfaceInspector.cpp
@@ -86,6 +86,20 @@ namespace
     const std::string RKEY_WINDOW_STATE = RKEY_ROOT + "window";
 
     const double MAX_FLOAT_RESOLUTION = 1.0E-5;
+
+    // Widget minimum sizes. Different values needed on Linux (which has various
+    // GTK styles) vs Windows.
+#if defined(_WIN32)
+    const int SPINBOX_WIDTH_CHARS = 7;
+
+    // Only Windows can use fixed pixel sizes for widgets; on Linux, the
+    // availability of GTK themes + configurable DPI (e.g. via gnome-tweak-tool)
+    // make it impossible to predict how many pixels are needed to show a
+    // widget.
+    #define ALLOW_FIXED_PIXEL_SIZES
+#else
+    const int SPINBOX_WIDTH_CHARS = 16;
+#endif
 }
 
 void SurfaceInspector::ManipulatorRow::setValue(double v)
@@ -247,7 +261,7 @@ wxSpinCtrlDouble* SurfaceInspector::makeFitSpinBox(Axis axis)
     wxSpinCtrlDouble* box = new wxSpinCtrlDouble(this, wxID_ANY);
 
     // Set visual parameters
-    box->SetMinSize(wxSize(box->GetCharWidth() * 7, -1));
+    box->SetMinSize(wxSize(box->GetCharWidth() * SPINBOX_WIDTH_CHARS, -1));
     box->SetRange(0.0, 1000.0);
     box->SetIncrement(1.0);
     box->SetValue(1.0);
@@ -292,8 +306,10 @@ wxBoxSizer* SurfaceInspector::createFitTextureRow()
           "other axis automatically to preserve texture aspect ratio")
     );
 
+#if defined(ALLOW_FIXED_PIXEL_SIZES)
     _fitTexture.preserveAspectButton->SetMinSize(wxSize(30, -1));
     _fitTexture.fitButton->SetMinSize(wxSize(30, -1));
+#endif
 
     // Add widgets to the sizer
     auto* widthTimesHeight = new wxBoxSizer(wxHORIZONTAL);
@@ -414,10 +430,12 @@ void SurfaceInspector::populateWindow()
 	_alignTexture.left = new wxButton(this, wxID_ANY, _(LABEL_ALIGN_LEFT));
 	_alignTexture.right = new wxButton(this, wxID_ANY, _(LABEL_ALIGN_RIGHT));
 
+#if defined(ALLOW_FIXED_PIXEL_SIZES)
     _alignTexture.top->SetMinSize(wxSize(20, -1));
     _alignTexture.bottom->SetMinSize(wxSize(20, -1));
     _alignTexture.left->SetMinSize(wxSize(20, -1));
     _alignTexture.right->SetMinSize(wxSize(20, -1));
+#endif
 
 	auto* alignTextureBox = new wxGridSizer(1, 4, 0, 6);
 
@@ -501,7 +519,9 @@ SurfaceInspector::ManipulatorRow SurfaceInspector::createManipulatorRow(
 
 	// Create the entry field
 	manipRow.value = new wxTextCtrl(parent, wxID_ANY, "", wxDefaultPosition, wxDefaultSize, wxTE_PROCESS_ENTER);
+#if defined(ALLOW_FIXED_PIXEL_SIZES)
 	manipRow.value->SetMinSize(wxSize(50, -1));
+#endif
 	manipRow.value->Bind(wxEVT_TEXT_ENTER, &SurfaceInspector::onValueEntryActivate, this);
 
     // Create the nudge buttons
@@ -517,7 +537,9 @@ SurfaceInspector::ManipulatorRow SurfaceInspector::createManipulatorRow(
 
 	// Create the entry field
 	manipRow.stepEntry = new wxTextCtrl(parent, wxID_ANY, "");
+#if defined(ALLOW_FIXED_PIXEL_SIZES)
     manipRow.stepEntry->SetMinSize(wxSize(30, -1));
+#endif
 
 	// Arrange all items in a row
     hbox->Add(manipRow.value, 1, wxALIGN_CENTER_VERTICAL);

 

 

18 hours ago, greebo said:

Didn't spend much time on the buttons, just wanted to get something going. I can upload the small photoshop file I've used to create the arrows, if needed. I'm pretty sure the grey background is in a separate layer.

Don't worry about it, I can trace that in about 2 minutes in Inkscape.

18 hours ago, greebo said:

It'd be nice if the whole icon set of DarkRadiant underwent a full revamp, revisiting every icon, such that style, colours, contrast are consistent, keeping dark and light UI mode in mind. At the moment it has a bit of a Frankenstein touch.

I agree. I've been gradually refreshing them where I can — although I don't claim to be the most talented artist, some of the existing icons are barely legible on a large screen with their small details and 1-pixel lines. Colour is still a challenge, since we don't have any way to switch between icons sets for light and dark mode, so I've generally been hacking it by using colours around 50% brightness which hopefully show up on most themes (but of course this isn't guaranteed).

[greebo]

7 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

I'd be interested in how the pixel sizes interact with Windows' own DPI scaling functionality too — if you set your scale factor to 200%, does Windows/wxWidgets take this into account automatically or do you get cut off widgets there too?

I think DR is considered a "legacy" app in Windows, wxWidgets is not using any of the newer UI frameworks. When increasing the zoom level, everything gets scaled up, so you get slightly blurry controls and icons. This is what the Surface Inspector looks like with 175% zoom level, you can see the text in the window panel is scaled, whereas the title is handled by Windows itself.

[greebo]

8 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

This is what I have so far; it looks good on Linux, but obviously I haven't confirmed that the #ifdefs work correctly on Windows. If you have time, perhaps check if it is still looking good on Windows and does not expand the dialog and attract complaints?

Checked out, looking the same as before for me => commited to master.

[Deep]

greebo here is the darkradiant log file you requested for scrolling.

note: While I was doing this it behaved properly as it should. ( I am using 2.13 not the super zoomy verion 2.14###

darkradiant.log

Edited November 3, 2021 by Deep

[Deep]

Did you want me to to upload a log from the super zoomie version 2.14###? i can if you want

 

[greebo]

That's fine, thanks. So you can confirm that the 2.14 test version is not zooming correctly, i.e. the zoom is not focusing on the mouse cursor as it is supposed to?

[Deep]

well that was hard to tell as the zoom increments were massive in 2.14