Wishlist For Darkradiant

[Fidcal]

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).

I believe you but can't help wonder how you do a 'quick drag' of a target the width of this full stop. Maybe it's different on other systems?

[SneaksieDave]

@Fidcal: You can see the width of the splitter on my UI here:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=149747

[Fidcal]

Not sure if I'm looking at the right image but the one I see doesn't look like embedded but floating. Grabbing the edges of floaters is not so difficult as the divisions I mean. For instance, the line between entity inspector and the panel below where the input check boxes go etc.

[SneaksieDave]

Not sure if this will work but here's a direct link so there's no confusion:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?act=a...ost&id=2035

 

It's in the exact post linked, not the top of the thread. That is split mode, not embedded (though they're similar). With this mode, I keep the Inspectors window as floating and only open it when needed. Otherwise it's closed and out of the way, and the only thing on the screen is my adjustable 1-cam, 1-ortho split.

 

 

Edit: yup okay that image link worked.

[Fidcal]

Just did a test to see if I could pin down the precision needed. Using a mouse coordinate indicator I found it had to be within 6 pixels. But what was more interesting is that a SINGLE movement of my mouse moves 6 pixels on the desktop. This may be the reason. I'll check my settings but I think I have movement high so I can cover a wide screen with a single wrist action. This is fine for everything else, buttons etc. But on that dividing line there is only a single position where the mouse will operate it. Even using two hands on the mouse and being as delicate as possible I could not move the mouse within the drag area at all. The tiniest movement left or right and it was outside the zone. So to place the mouse on that zone is a very difficult operation. A quick drag is out of the question.

[greebo]

You should be able to move the mouse pixel-by-pixel if you want to, otherwise your mouse settings are definitely wrong. You're supposed to be able to do that, otherwise all precision work in Photoshop or even DarkRadiant is severely restricted.

 

There's the mouse pointer "acceleration" feature, which should cover the case where you want to move the mouse from one corner of the screen to the other. Slow movements should go with perfect pixel accuracy, fast movements cover large distances.

[Fidcal]

In paint programs you can zoom in so one pixel is enlarged to the size of 10 or 20.

 

I've taken another look at Windows settings and see a checkbox 'Enhance pointer precision' which is unchecked by default. I've checked it now and I think it does help a little but selecting a tiny gap can never be as fast and easy as clicking a button or dragging a scrollbar.

[greebo]

I've got some Logitech mouse and these ship with some sort of settings software (I think it's called SetPoint), where you have very decent control over the pointer behaviour. Don't know about yours, of course.

 

Well, one other workaround would be to allow for creating a second camera window and have that toggle-able by default, but this is much more coding work.

[Fidcal]

Yes, definitely an improvement. I can move 'within' the drag area about 4 minimal mouse movements compared to 1 before. It's a pity though that Windows doesn't provide a width setting for that like they do borders, scrollbars, etc.

[Fidcal]

Let's see how this goes. I'm still undecided as to whether to go with embedded or floating.

[Fidcal]

I'm now trying a new floating configuration where all child windows are off to one side of both camera and ortho so in theory it should not be so annoying when they reshuffle if I switch back and forth between programs.

[Komag]

cousins of Anne? (Hathaway)(very bad joke...)

[SneaksieDave]

@greebo: you know how we have the feature where you can lift a texture from a brush, and then shift-click a patch to "unfold" or lay the texture across the surface of the patch, without warping? Is it possible to implement the other direction: lift the texture from a patch, and unfold it across a brush face? The need for this became very evident when I was working on an area that alternates: patch - brush - patch - brush, etc. Each step from patch to brushface required work from the Texture Tool (which is great, but sometimes the orientation is very confusing, figuring out which way it's supposed to be mirrored or rotated), requiring several minutes per step compared to one second for brushface to patch.

 

I ask because I don't recall if maybe you once already said this wouldn't be feasible.

[greebo]

@greebo: you know how we have the feature where you can lift a texture from a brush, and then shift-click a patch to "unfold" or lay the texture across the surface of the patch, without warping? Is it possible to implement the other direction: lift the texture from a patch, and unfold it across a brush face? The need for this became very evident when I was working on an area that alternates: patch - brush - patch - brush, etc. Each step from patch to brushface required work from the Texture Tool (which is great, but sometimes the orientation is very confusing, figuring out which way it's supposed to be mirrored or rotated), requiring several minutes per step compared to one second for brushface to patch.

 

I ask because I don't recall if maybe you once already said this wouldn't be feasible.

It's much more difficult, because the texture on the patch can be distorted to say the least. There is no uniform scale and rotation on patches, generally, that's why it's hard to retrieve that information from the patch vertices. You'd have to make assumptions, which makes this stuff error-prone.

[SneaksieDave]

Ah, I think I comprende. Too bad on that.

[Fidcal]

The answer will be with the texture tool. It has huge potential. I believe it is planned for upgrading in many ways if time can be found in the future. Perhaps after release we may get new blood who would take on something like that.

[SneaksieDave]

Yeah, the texture tool is enormous -- a UV mapper built right into the editor. I was thinking on how to get around the above request, and came up with a couple of (hopefully small) things to help out:

 

1. allowing dragging of a brush face by dragging a vertex, instead of the central control point (link)

2. snapping a brush face vertex to grid, instead of the central control point (link)

 

If those can be done it'll go a long way toward not needing the patch->brush mapping, and away from even needing the surface inspector for fine adjustments at all!

[Flanders]

I understand that with a brush face selected in the texture tool it's not possible to drag vertices around because that wraps up the texture. But I'd really like some control of the vertices. What about making it possible to rescale the brush surface area in the texture editor. Just like resizing brush dimensions by selecting a point outside of it and drag away from the brush. That way it's only possible to scale the brush surface area in the texture tool in the x or y direction without distortion of the uv relations.

[greebo]

I think all three mentioned options are required basically, but all three of them are not trivial to implement. Maybe I can consider it when I start my next round of DarkRadiant coding, sometime this summer perhaps?

[SneaksieDave]

I hate to say it, but yes that would be very desirable too. No more pressing of the resize buttons, shifting the texture and having to guess at the resize... just drag! I'll track it so it's not lost.

 

Edit: done: http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=1710

[SneaksieDave]

I'm curious if people would be interested in this, and if it would be feasible/not too hard: filtered objects (or maybe just brushes?) as wireframe. How many times have you wanted to see your visportals in order to see where they are, where they're missing, get an overall feel for them, but you can't, because they're blocking your view? Basically, you want to see where they are, but you don't want them in your way.

 

What about, in addition to (1) regular unfiltered, and (2) regular filtered (as they exist now), checkboxes on the filter list of (3) "show this type as wireframe?" If we really wanted to get fancy, they could have different colors depending on type (visportals purple, func_statics orange, etc).

 

This would also allow for the 'filtered editing' being requested in another thread.

[Fidcal]

Excellent idea. I've often thought before that several things would be better transparent. Glass texture actually is transparent but only when selected - but it suggests it might be possible. But I would settle for wireframe - might even be better. Things like clip textures, esp. monster, and all the 'symbolic' ones such as path entities, player start. They can all be wireframe.

[jdude]

I don't know if this is something you guys would want to invest your time into, but I think it would be really cool to have a real-time sound preview. You could use the 3d view to preview the sounds of the map

[HappyCheeze]

I don't know if this is something you guys would want to invest your time into, but I think it would be really cool to have a real-time sound preview. You could use the 3d view to preview the sounds of the map

 

oooh now theres an idea.

[jdude]

I'd like to see a "check for errors" button. This button would just check for a info_playerstart and entities that have the same name. Countless times I've started without a playerstart or had multiple named entities.