[suggestion] Further improvements on Layers

[Skaruts]

I've been meaning to suggest this for months, but the previous improvements have already made Layers so nice to work with that I just got lazy about this.  

But there's a few things I think could still be improved. And personally, I would prioritize the first one below, if I had to pick one.

I haven't been following DR's development, so I don't know if any of this is already done and ready for the next release. But in case it's not, here goes.

 

1- it would be nice to be able to right-click a layer in the Layers panel, and have all the options to add to layer and move to layer and remove from layer, right there. This would make it much easier and quicker to manage layers. And, I personally keep adding prefixes to layer names, so that they're sorted in the list below, so I can find them easier, because the list gets big and confusing. This improvement would remove the need to do that. It would even remove the need for using this list, I think.

 

2- It would also be nice to add a new layer directly as child of another layer, just by right-clicking the intended parent layer. Currently, you have to click the New button at the bottom, and then manually drag the layer to its intended parent.

Or when clicking New, the new layer could be created as child of the selected one.

 

3- I've suggested this one before, but I don't know if it's doable or not. It's harder to explain and I think the benefits aren't very obvious. It would be nice to override the visibility of objects that are contained in multiple layers, by toggling one of those layers on/off. So the layer you toggle, overrides their visibility. So regardless of whether its objects are visible or not, hiding this layer, would hide all of its objects, and vice versa.

This can be useful when you have certain objects in their respective layers, but then you'd like to have also have a way to toggle all of them on/off at a single click. And with this improvement you could add them to a separate layer, and then just use that layer to override their visibility whenever you needed. For example, to get the ceilings of a whole bunch of rooms out of the way all at once, so you could have a clear view of the rooms while you put in furniture or path nodes or something.

Currently, objects are always visible if any of the layers that contain them is visible, so this kind of thing can't be done. (And to be honest, because of that, currently it seems to me that there's no point having objects in multiple layers.)

This is also useful for grouping things for easy group-selections. Arguably, you can also use selection sets for that, but the way you create and delete them makes them more suitable for quick and dirty one-time grouping, rather than something a little more indefinite. The two approaches have different levels of control, which makes them appropriate for different use cases.

Edited February 21 by Skaruts

[datiswous]

58 minutes ago, Skaruts said:

Currently, objects are always visible if any of the layers that contain them is visible, so this kind of thing can't be done. (And to be honest, because of that, currently it seems to me that there's no point having objects in multiple layers.)

Yeah this is something I wondered too. What is the point of having things in multiple layers?

 

1 hour ago, Skaruts said:

It would be nice to override the visibility of objects that are contained in multiple layers, by toggling one of those layers on/off.

Instead maybe add a filtertype for layers, so you can filter everything that is part of that layer.

[Skaruts]

1 minute ago, datiswous said:

Instead maybe add a filtertype for layers, so you can filter everything that is part of that layer.

It's arguably quite a bit more work than just creating a layer and adding stuff to it. And then you'd have to also add it to a hotkey, to make it practical. Filters are good for things you want to keep as groups forever, not really for temporary or map-specific groups.

One other problem with filters is that you can only have so many hotkeys. Any filters that aren't attached to hotkeys aren't practical to turn on/off, because you need to access the menu. 

 

(Ideally, filters and layers would be unified under the same system, because they are actually the very same thing. I went into this in more detail here. I'm not expecting that to be done in DR, though. It might be a lot of work. But I could be wrong.)

[datiswous]

8 minutes ago, Skaruts said:

t's arguably quite a bit more work than just creating a layer and adding stuff to it. And then you'd have to also add it to a hotkey, to make it practical. Filters are good for things you want to keep as groups forever, not really for temporary or map-specific groups.

I think that's just your specific assumption. You can use filters for very map specific things. It's not difficult or a lot of work to make them.

4 minutes ago, Skaruts said:

One other problem with filters is that you can only have so many hotkeys. Any filters that aren't attached to hotkeys aren't practical to turn on/off, because you need to access the menu. 

So you're saying you use hotkeys for layers? I never use hotkeys for filters. Accessing them in the menu is just 2 clicks.

[Skaruts]

I use hotkeys for filters, yes. If I had to access the menus every time I wanted to hide/unhide things I'd go insane. I wouldn't toggle them on/off nearly as much as I do, and my workflow would be slower and more limited.

As an example, I very often toggle visportals on/off for adjustments, or func_statics for inspecting world geometry. 

And sometimes I have to turn off all filters so that I'm 100% sure I'm copying or moving geometry properly, without leaving behind hidden clips, triggers, visportals, nodraws, etc. 

And then I have to re-hide all the things I like to keep hidden. I don't know about your workflow, but 99% of the time, I keep collisions, shadows, sky, visportals, triggers, nodraws, and also caulks, all hidden and out of my way. With hotkeys I just press alt and a bunch of keys in succession, and it takes me seconds. With menus it would take a while.

There's no way I could ever not use hotkeys. I'd go completely nuts.  

 

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

I think that's just your specific assumption. You can use filters for very map specific things. It's not difficult or a lot of work to make them.

No, I'm saying they require more work than just simply creating a layer and putting stuff in it. And if you don't put a hotkey on it, it's also more work to use.

I'm not saying you can't use them for that. I'm saying they're not the right tool for it.

 

EDIT: Keep in mind that the example above is just one example. There's all sorts of things you might want to use that functionality I suggested for. And again, layers are map-specific. If you setup filters for layers (is that even really possible?), then your filters menu will grow, and become polluted with junk that only works on certain maps. And the more you do it, the worse it gets. 

Back when I could used that in Hammer, I always had quite a few layers per map that controlled visibility of specific groups of objects. When you can just go wild with it, you go wild with it.

Edited February 19 by Skaruts