Wishlist For Darkradiant

[jdude]

I wish i may i wish i might have the ability I speak of tonight:

 

Ability to change the peripheral perspective on the 3d view. When it is stretched it feels as if it's zoomed in.

[Baal]

When working with patches I always wanted some visual clue about its orientation (columns and rows). I have thought about adding this myself.

Maybe drawing the line strip of the first column/row of control vertices in different colours is enough. Any suggestions?

[greebo]

Hm, I also thought about optionally rendering the row/col numbers for the selected patches, but I guess the colouring would work too. You'd need a second renderpass additionally to the standard white grid.

 

Feel free to play around with that, if you have a suitable patch available, I'm happy to review it and to submit it to SVN.

[Mr Mike]

Is there a media browser for sounds in DR or one on the to do list?

[HappyCheeze]

Is there a media browser for sounds in DR or one on the to do list?

 

That should already be in there. When you go to the sound shader there should be a browse button where you can select sounds?

[Mr Mike]

Right there is, but I have to maximise the entity inspector to see it in 'floating' mode in the latest build...

 

Edit: scrap that. For what ever reason a new DR install had the button for the browser hidden off page. A switch of pallet modes fixed the problem.

[HappyCheeze]

Would it be possible to implement a personal notes option? Like a notepad that you can toggle on and off like a layer. These could go on the 2d grid. You can write notes to yourself like "Fix this lighting here", "Needs to be retextured". And for the 3d camera, you can draw arrows pointing to things.

 

I think it would be cool to have in case you don't work on a map for a while and come back. Or if someone else is looking at your map you can point them at the things of interest or a problem.

 

 

PS.I am really loving how DR is turning out. I don't want to use any other editor now

I'm sad that it can't be used to make hl2 maps, because I really want to start making l4d maps, and I want to use DR, not hammer

[Fidcal]

@HappyCheeze: One thing I tried a while ago was to place a nodraw brush entity at certain points and give spawnargs like COMMENT1 Remember to adjust this later. I recall I used three brushes in a 3-dimensional asterisk shape so it looked like an asterisk in all 3 ortho views. There is also an editor entity whose name I forget at the moment. This is ignored in-game but shows in the edity. It shows as black though so is invisible on a black background. I found no problem with nodraw. You could also make a custom texture def based on nodraw coloured distinctly and can make a custom filter to show/hide it. Try the Region texture if you don't use that for regions. I think it's under the edit folder or similar name.

[HappyCheeze]

Hmm, I'll have to mess around with some of that and see what I can do.

[jdude]

Idea:

 

Terrain editor for patches:

After playing with the farcry2 editor I can see the potential of a simple tool like this for DR. In the 3d view a small circle which you designate the radius of could be used to 'grab' vertecies on a patch. Any vertecies within the diameter of the circle would be selected and the user simply raises or lowers the mouse while holding down the button to essentially raise and lower the terrain. The futher away the vertecy from the center of the circle the smaller the height coefficient. So in the middle, it would be 1, far off it would be .2 for example. A smoothing tool could also be used where when you hold it down, it calculates the average height of the vertecies and slowly moves each vertecy towards the average. This would be far easier than adjusting each vertecy one at a time. :]

[Flanders]

Terrain editor for patches:

After playing with the farcry2 editor I can see the potential of a simple tool like this for DR. In the 3d view a small circle which you designate the radius of could be used to 'grab' vertecies on a patch. Any vertecies within the diameter of the circle would be selected and the user simply raises or lowers the mouse while holding down the button to essentially raise and lower the terrain. The futher away the vertecy from the center of the circle the smaller the height coefficient. So in the middle, it would be 1, far off it would be .2 for example. A smoothing tool could also be used where when you hold it down, it calculates the average height of the vertecies and slowly moves each vertecy towards the average. This would be far easier than adjusting each vertecy one at a time. :]

And a vertex paint tool with that! Or maybe that's too greedy of me too ask for .

[jdude]

And a vertex paint tool with that! Or maybe that's too greedy of me too ask for .

 

Well the D3 engine doesn't support vertex painting, however it is possible to export a brush to 3dstudio max, paint it, then import it back in with pretty much the same results. Perhaps if we got some sort of tool which converted a brush to a 3dsm file allowing you to paint it all within the program, thus it would seamlessly be integrated in with the game!

[Flanders]

Well the D3 engine doesn't support vertex painting, however it is possible to export a brush to 3dstudio max, paint it, then import it back in with pretty much the same results. Perhaps if we got some sort of tool which converted a brush to a 3dsm file allowing you to paint it all within the program, thus it would seamlessly be integrated in with the game!

I'm sure D3 does support vertex painting/texture blending. Or do you mean it doesn't support it for brushes only for models?

IIRC you have to make a material file with two materials, one with Vertexcolor and one with InverseVertexcolor. Thing is you have to export, vertex paint it in a modelling program and import it again, which can be a hassle. If you can do this all in DR that would be so cool.

[greebo]

Vertex blending is only available for models (=entities), I believe.

[jdude]

Something I'd love -

Ability to adjust opacity of:

Visportals, and pathnodes in 3d view.

[Fidcal]

game setting arguments for desktop shortcut would be useful. Now I'm switching between projects I have to load, set, exit, relaunch. Maybe already can? But I can't find any info on this.

[greebo]

I implemented that in source already, expect it in the next snapshot.

[Fidcal]

That's great. Thanks greebo.

[Fidcal]

I'd forgotten that some of the windows can be embedded so just tried a few layouts but I think why I don't get along with that method (compared with floating) is:

 

Firstly it is not easy to zoom in full screen on camera or ortho. I have to find an invisible vertical line, about 1 pixel wide (on a 1680 x 1050 screen), between windows and drag - and then find another invisible pixel line and drag horizontal. When I've done I have to repeat that backwards. Compare that with double click title bar. Perhaps the narrow pixel line is a Windows setting? I do have window borders set minimal but don't want to sacrifice monitor space to borders. A central drag large sweet spot would help here. Just drag it in any direction to resize all three embedded (that's how Dromed works except its 'sweet spot' was too small)

 

The other difficulty for me with embedded is I can't leave the other floating windows open as they are always on top. The shortcut key is an option here but doesn't compete well with just clicking the always-open window you want. You don't even need to 'hide' it after - you just click on whatever window you want next and it obscures those you don't want. This is fine for me except for the problem of switching to other programs and back when ALL open windows come to the top obscuring the main camera and ortho. This process reverses alternately. It does not sound seriously but add the focus difficulty problem (sometimes need to click several windows to force focus on the one you want) and it is a nightmare if you need to keep referring to other programs. This is now so bad I'm actually considering embedded and shortcuts to keep opening/closing single windows as needed.

 

If it is impossible for DR to store the current window layering and restore it on return to the program then I wonder if an alternate solution would be:

 

Embedded layout. I would go for camera/single ortho/entity/media panels but would ideally just camera/ortho.

Large sweet spot drag button between these embedded windows to instantly drag/resize all embedded windows.

Alternatively, full screen buttons for camera and ortho for instant max size and back.

Buttons on right of top button bar which call up other windows such as surface inspector etc.

Ideally, clicking on ortho or camera would automatically hide those windows.

 

 

[EDIT] No, that window border setting has no effect on the line between embedded windows. I think they date back to Win95 or earlier when screen res was typically 640 x 480 or even 320 x 200 so that line was possibly easier to grab. Now its like trying to grab a hair while wearing boxing gloves. Perhaps tolerable to do once when first setting up a program but not to frequently every day.

[Fidcal]

A problem with embedded is if you drag the camera large then back again the default setting for entity inspector is unreadable (see picture below on the left.) So each time one has to drag down the panel (see picture below on the right.) This makes it unrealistic to enlarge camera view regularly. It requires, search for fine vertical line and drag it right. Search for horizontal and drag down. Then to restore, reverse both those. Then search for fine line on entity inspector and drag it down.

 

[greebo]

Firstly it is not easy to zoom in full screen on camera or ortho. I have to find an invisible vertical line, about 1 pixel wide (on a 1680 x 1050 screen), between windows and drag - and then find another invisible pixel line and drag horizontal. When I've done I have to repeat that backwards. Compare that with double click title bar. Perhaps the narrow pixel line is a Windows setting? I do have window borders set minimal but don't want to sacrifice monitor space to borders. A central drag large sweet spot would help here. Just drag it in any direction to resize all three embedded (that's how Dromed works except its 'sweet spot' was too small)

 

The other difficulty for me with embedded is I can't leave the other floating windows open as they are always on top. The shortcut key is an option here but doesn't compete well with just clicking the always-open window you want. You don't even need to 'hide' it after - you just click on whatever window you want next and it obscures those you don't want. This is fine for me except for the problem of switching to other programs and back when ALL open windows come to the top obscuring the main camera and ortho. This process reverses alternately. It does not sound seriously but add the focus difficulty problem (sometimes need to click several windows to force focus on the one you want) and it is a nightmare if you need to keep referring to other programs. This is now so bad I'm actually considering embedded and shortcuts to keep opening/closing single windows as needed.

Well, you don't have to use Embedded, if you don't want to, don't get me wrong. If you don't like it, don't use it.

 

If it is impossible for DR to store the current window layering and restore it on return to the program then I wonder if an alternate solution would be:

The window on-top and overlapping issue is not one I can solve, as it's handled by the Window Manager (i.e. Windows XP or Vista). Perhaps it would be possible to track all the time which window is overlapping which one, but this is likely to fail and a pain to implement - won't go down that road.

 

There is also no sweet spot drag in GTK as far as I know. The border between the windows is draggable just fine for me (see below), but I can see the problem with the Entity Inspector.

 

What you could try is to switch to Splitpane (or any other layout you are not using regularly), resize the windows so that the camera is maximised. Then switch back to Embedded. Then assign a keyboard shortcut to "ToggleLayoutSplitpane" and "ToggleLayoutEmbedded" which should allow you to switch rapidly between layouts, one with a camera maximised.

 

Ideally, clicking on ortho or camera would automatically hide those windows.

I could code such an option, but I figure some users might hate that, so it must be strictly optional. It's not as easy as it sounds though.

 

[EDIT] No, that window border setting has no effect on the line between embedded windows. I think they date back to Win95 or earlier when screen res was typically 640 x 480 or even 320 x 200 so that line was possibly easier to grab. Now its like trying to grab a hair while wearing boxing gloves. Perhaps tolerable to do once when first setting up a program but not to frequently every day.

This is how my DarkRadiant embedded view looks like:

[Fidcal]

Well, you don't have to use Embedded, if you don't want to, don't get me wrong. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Well, I'm only trying it because of the problems with floating windows.

 

What you could try is to switch to Splitpane (or any other layout you are not using regularly), resize the windows so that the camera is maximised. Then switch back to Embedded. Then assign a keyboard shortcut to "ToggleLayoutSplitpane" and "ToggleLayoutEmbedded" which should allow you to switch rapidly between layouts, one with a camera maximised.

This sounds promising but just did a quick try via the menu only. First time I noticed it did not carry over my camera position to the new layout which kind of defeats the object. I think it went back to 0,0,0. Is that fixable? When I went back the camera crashed again, no menus working etc. No wait, the camera is working now, buttons OK, but all menus locked. Correct myself again. Menus From File to Entity won't work but Brush to Help do! Stranger yet. Patch to Help work. Brush menu only works if I first drop down one of the working menus then Brush.

[SneaksieDave]

Then assign a keyboard shortcut to "ToggleLayoutSplitpane" and "ToggleLayoutEmbedded" which should allow you to switch rapidly between layouts, one with a camera maximised.

Interesting. Tried this out and it's definitely an option; I'll see if I prefer that or just a quick drag of the splitview (what I currently do and have no probs with).

 

In trying it out, I found a few probs:

 

1. Hitting the same toggle twice in a row gets you stuck between interface modes. For example I bound F1 to splitview and F2 to floating. If I hit F1 twice, no amount of hitting F1 or F2 thereafter gets me either mode. I have to go to the View menu to get back to normal.

 

2. Camera positions don't appear to be preserved between the modes. With my settings above again, if I get my map to where I'm looking down a hallway or such, both my iso and my cam, and then I hit F2 to go to floating, the cam view is out in the void, nowhere near where the other cam view was left. If I try a second time to set both cams, they still won't agree after a mode shift. If these could stay in sync it would be very handy.

 

Edit: Aha, it's resetting the cam position to 0,0,0 on each switch instead of preserving position.

 

3. On switch to floating mode, the entity inspector always shows up on top, even if I explicitly closed it last time. Thus, it obscures the full screen cam until I close it again (the point of the mode switch).

[greebo]

Yes, cam position is reset to the origin as soon as a new camwnd is constructed.

 

Report these on the tracker and they might get looked into. Although I won't be fixing them before 0.9.11 I think, I want to move away from DarkRadiant for the next time.

[SneaksieDave]

Okay done.