Wishlist For Darkradiant

[greebo]

The XY window layout is saved into the user.xml file in C:\Documents and bla... when you close DarkRadiant. If it's still there after restarting DarkRadiant, this could be a bug (although a strange one only affecting your system?). If it's reproducible, you could send me the file so that I can have a look at it.

[NeonsStyle]

If I could have my greatest wish for the editor, it'd be this:

 

To have an option within the camera, to toggle on, so I could see how an entity performed. By that I don't mean lights etc though that'd be nice. Mostly I mean for machines I build. I'd be great to have that so you could tune it so it all works properly. In the editor, you could quickly see if it worked, n change it within a few seconds, rather than having to do it the way we do it now. Probably not possible, but thats my wish. lol

By having it as a toggle rather than on all he time, removes load on the cpu. Another way would be the only entity that was turned on, would be those selected in the editor, so you'd get a quick idea of speeds etc.

 

Venus

[OrbWeaver]

That would be complex; it would basically require a complete Doom 3 script interpreter to run within the editor, to simulate all of the operations the machine was running. I guess basic animations might be possible (such as with a func_rotating or something) but full-scale machine simulation would be a bit unlikely IMO.

[New Horizon]

If I could have my greatest wish for the editor, it'd be this:

 

To have an option within the camera, to toggle on, so I could see how an entity performed. By that I don't mean lights etc though that'd be nice. Mostly I mean for machines I build. I'd be great to have that so you could tune it so it all works properly. In the editor, you could quickly see if it worked, n change it within a few seconds, rather than having to do it the way we do it now. Probably not possible, but thats my wish. lol

By having it as a toggle rather than on all he time, removes load on the cpu. Another way would be the only entity that was turned on, would be those selected in the editor, so you'd get a quick idea of speeds etc.

 

Venus

 

Hmmm, that gets into the world of animation I'm guessing. Not likely possible for this little old editor until Doom 3 goes open source.

[Crispy]

Not likely possible for this little old editor until Doom 3 goes open source.

And even then it would be a significant amount of work to integrate it into the existing codebase.

[NeonsStyle]

Yeh I didn't mean to show the whole machine. I meant to see how two parts of it interacted. For instance, if you were doing a piston/crankshaft of an engine. It would mean u could quickly make the two parts sync together. An animation would be fine... even if it was stick figures, just so u see they are correctly syncing.

 

If I could have another wish... then on patch verts, I'd like to be able to hit shift vert, and select all verts in that row or column. At the moment, I have to hold shift in cam and select each one individually. Not a problem for simple ones, but tedious on complex ones.

[Fidcal]

Would love a clone ranger test tool that one could run now and again to check for clones at the exact same coordinates. I posted once before about finding I think it was 117 clones of a table. No way I did that by keypresses! Now the last day or so I've had dreadful frame lag in a small inner room but I've been busy testing other stuff. Some times it ground to a halt. I did notice the candle was much brighter than I recall but thought it was because I had reduced the ambient in a test! When I came to check the candle it had about four clones! I have not touched that candle since I don't know when so how did it get clones? Maybe I sleep walk but I can't help wondering how many maps have clones that nobody knows about?

[Tels]

Would love a clone ranger test tool that one could run now and again to check for clones at the exact same coordinates. I posted once before about finding I think it was 117 clones of a table. No way I did that by keypresses! Now the last day or so I've had dreadful frame lag in a small inner room but I've been busy testing other stuff. Some times it ground to a halt. I did notice the candle was much brighter than I recall but thought it was because I had reduced the ambient in a test! When I came to check the candle it had about four clones! I have not touched that candle since I don't know when so how did it get clones? Maybe I sleep walk but I can't help wondering how many maps have clones that nobody knows about?

 

Yes it is way to easy to get clones, you just need to forgot to hit ESC (deselect).

 

I had like 3 clones of a simple room when I made my light test map...

 

Having a check that two things are at exactly the same coordinates would be worth gold.

[OrbWeaver]

The easiest solution to that problem is to offset the clone, like Doom 3 does, rather than leaving it in the same position with no visible indication anything has changed.

[greebo]

This should be optional of course. I'd hate to let my clones be offset.

[Fidcal]

I try to cultivate the habit of immediately dragging a clone to one side after creation but there are times when you want a cloned brush to line up with its original.....

[OrbWeaver]

It's pretty trivial to drag the brush back so long as the grid is active, though.

 

Making it optional is fine (I'm all for configuration) but I think it should be (1) enabled by default and (2) configured through an XML file only -- there is a usability issue with adding every little tweak to the preferences dialog.

[SneaksieDave]

I thought there already was an offset setting for duplicating, but maybe that's DoomEd or Blender.

 

Anyway, I'm not sure that would help me as a user. I'd have it off, not wanting my duplicates moved like greebo mentioned, so I'd get no protection from adding this feature. That origin and entity checker thingy sounded like a good idea (if it's not super complicated to do).

[sparhawk]

In Blender if you copy an object it is also at the exact same position as the original object. Only thing is that it's instantly selected and the source is deselected, so you can move it. If you forget to do this, though, you also have two objects in the same spot.

[OrbWeaver]

Only thing is that it's instantly selected and the source is deselected, so you can move it. If you forget to do this, though, you also have two objects in the same spot.

 

The important difference is that in Blender the move operation happens as soon as you move the mouse -- you have to explicitly hit ESC to cancel the move. In DarkRadiant you would have to click and drag to move the duplicate, even though it is already selected.

[Komag]

I would like "Save As..." to pre-populate the save name as the current name, instead of "unnamed", so that I can simply change the number instead of having to type the whole new name (such as I'm working on "komag_city25" and I want to save it now as "komag_city26", much easier to type "6" than type the whole thing)

[Gildoran]

I would like "Save As..." to pre-populate the save name as the current name, instead of "unnamed"

@OrbWeaver: I could fix this... The relevant code is in "libs\gtkutil\filechooser.cpp", line 67. The file dialog doesn't come with an optional parameter to set the default file. Do we have any preference for/against editing libraries? (Do we want to be able to swap them out with newer versions without losing our changes? Or would patches handle that?)

[Fidcal]

I would like "Save As..." to pre-populate the save name as the current name, instead of "unnamed", so that I can simply change the number instead of having to type the whole new name (such as I'm working on "komag_city25" and I want to save it now as "komag_city26", much easier to type "6" than type the whole thing)

Yes, me too. It can be deleted just easily as 'unnamed' if not needed.

 

I'd also like save-prevention prevented! I mean sometimes you try to save and it doesn't save at all because it thinks there has been no change so it does nothing - secretly. So you don't even know it hasn't saved. I find myself dragging out a brush and deleting it to force it to save. If I say, save, I want it to save. I see no reason for it to refuse. If I want to save the same thing ten times in a row that's my problem.

[Komag]

but why?

 

I really LOVE the little asterisk telling me whether there have been any changes. I have come to wish for it in other programs!

[greebo]

@OrbWeaver: I could fix this... The relevant code is in "libs\gtkutil\filechooser.cpp", line 67. The file dialog doesn't come with an optional parameter to set the default file. Do we have any preference for/against editing libraries? (Do we want to be able to swap them out with newer versions without losing our changes? Or would patches handle that?)

Whoah, Gildoran getting into DarkRadiant coding? Cool, I'd say.

 

The stuff in libs/ is all from GtkRadiant/DarkRadiant itself, so it's safe to change. The filechooser.cpp is mostly from GtkRadiant's times though.

[Crispy]

Having an asterisk to tell you whether you've saved is nice, but sometimes one wants to save anyway. On rare occasions, I've been editing a text document, renamed the underlying file (it's faster than copying the file on Windows, since you don't need to delete that stupid "Copy of" prefix), and then wanted to save the text file under the old name to keep it around.

[Nyarlathotep]

Regular saving probably should still work as it does now, but Save As needs to function as above (says the non-DarkRadiant user...). At least, that's how I parsed the problem.

[Fidcal]

The asterisk can remain. That has no connection with stopping a user from saving. Indeed, when that is there then you can save.

 

But DR does occasionally fail to recognize a change. I had this the other day and could make no sense of the results in-game. Yes I should have reported it but I was busy and forgot. I want to be absolutely confident that when I hit Ctrl+S then it will save. That's a command, not a request if it pleases you your majesty. I don't want smart software telling me 'No, I'm not going to let you save because I know better than you." And what purpose does it serve? Save a second or two? [end of rant]

 

Now, reminding me that I haven't saved when exiting the program is quite a different matter.

[greebo]

I tend to agree with Fidcal, hitting Save should just do its job if the user wishes to do so. There also might be some changes made to the map by an external program (D3, text editor) which the user wants to overwrite with the map in DarkRadiant's memory.

 

==> Bugtracker please.

[OrbWeaver]

I agree that the current implementation sucks, particularly since the Save command isn't actually disabled, it just silently does nothing.