Support opening and switching multiple maps with tabs

[MirceaKitsune]

I'd like to suggest a feature that's common in most map editors such as Tiled: The ability to have multiple maps open at once as tabs. Just like browser tabs, you have a bar with several maps and can click on them to select which one you want to work on, all maps are loaded in memory at once so the transition should be seamless. This would especially help with campaigns as you jump between maps, copy-pasting groups between multiple FM's you're working on, etc.

Only downside I see is persisting too many open maps, in which case DarkRadiant may be slow when it starts up and use more resources, but since DR loads all assets in memory once I don't foresee this being slower than just opening one huge map that loads a ton of models and textures. I imagine standardizing undo / redo / autosave / other systems to recognize the map that's currently selected and be unique to it may be a little tricky but hopefully it's doable.

[datiswous]

Edit: unrelated post. I moved it here.

Edited December 5, 2024 by datiswous

[MirceaKitsune]

Different thing, though a better way to find and focus on entities would be good too. The annoyance I'm hoping tabs would solve is that it's hard to edit multiple maps at once, you can only open one at a time which needs to load and you lose your undo history and selection and more, this would make working on some things in parallel easier.

[datiswous]

What's the benefit over having multiple instances of DR active?

I guess copy pasting stuff between maps if that's possible would be handy. Currently you have to have everything opened in the same map and then export to map or prefab.

Edit: Actually you can already copy paste stuff from different opened windows of DR. Although not with shaders. For that you could open the surface inspector and copy the url.

Edited December 5, 2024 by datiswous

[MirceaKitsune]

No worries, figured there might have been some confusion. And that's interesting: Does it also work on Linux / KDE Plasma / Wayland? I usually open a map, copy from it, open the other map, paste to it... it is however slower and not as clear, plus you face the loading times of each map when you open it. The other problem is when I have multiple DarkRadiant instances open, not only are they slower but one of them used to freeze and stop responding so its process had to be killed.

[STRUNK]

Maybe you can run multiple VM's that each run one instance of DR and TDM for one map?

[datiswous]

On 12/5/2024 at 5:37 PM, MirceaKitsune said:

plus you face the loading times of each map when you open it

You always face the loading times of maps, even if DR would support multiple windows in tabs.

I think it's a good idea overall btw.

[MirceaKitsune]

6 hours ago, datiswous said:

You always face the loading times of maps, even if DR would support multiple windows in tabs.

I think it's a good idea overall btw.

With the functionality I'm hoping for, tabbed maps would be opened when DR starts and stored in memory so clicking between them shouldn't imply any noticeable slowness. It's like tabs in web browsers like Chrome or Firefox: If a tab is there the website is already loaded, clicking to switch between two open pages doesn't reload them each time.

At very worst all assets in use should be loaded and retained in memory just once. Thus clicking on a different tab doesn't cause DR to load or unload anything; Any asset used by any map in any tab remains loaded till the last map to reference that asset is closed.