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kane

Deep/S and Wad/A

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A "Suggestion" about two superb Editors.
Comments requested, Pro n' Con.....

I have WadAuthor Editor, someday will get DeepSea Editor too. I want both, for different features, way of doing things. I already paid for WadAuthor, but would gladly pay again for a "major" new W/A upgrade. Ditto for DeepSea.

IMO (not to start flame war, just my opinion) we pay those 2 guys slave-wages to build us Editors. Maybe 40cents an hour (if even that much) when you consider how much time, sweat, effort these two professional Coders put into designing/building them and consider value of these Editors that let you make all kinds of fancy Doom maps. So it has to be a labor of love that makes Coders (who's time is money) do these time-consuming jobs for peanuts.

Why not encourage them, More? Then in return maybe we'll get more, and sooner.
I suggest this......

We should seriously consider "voluntarily-paying" for each new MAJOR Upgrade. It's not only fair, but we'll get big benefits from it. How so?
It would very likely encourage Jack n'Phileo to sweat even more, and crank out even better, more advanced Editors sooner.
For example....

(1) Maybe, like putting into W/A and D/S Editors a feature that lets you do "in-game" Editing, right IN game itself. I think Carmack says Doom3 editor will be able to do it (err, hopefully there'll be no Enemy around while you're editing).

(2) Or, an Editor feature that lets you actually SEE what you are building WHILE you are building it (without having to exit the editor, fire up game and go look to see what the fancy new Lights you just built look like, or the new Door looks like, or the new Room, etc.).
Imagine what a "Plus" it would be to be able to instantly-see if you eliminated a HOM, or if a Wall lines up OK, or if Bldg-texture looks messy, or if clipping is gone, etc.
(I think Serious Sam game has Editor with this "See It As You Build" feature).

Anyone have opinions?---Or better ideas?

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For example....

(1) Maybe, like putting into W/A and D/S Editors a feature that lets you do "in-game" Editing, right IN game itself. I think Carmack says Doom3 editor will be able to do it (err, hopefully there'll be no Enemy around while you're editing).

uhh, now how can that be possible? explain further.

(2) Or, an Editor feature that lets you actually SEE what you are building WHILE you are building it (without having to exit the editor, fire up game and go look to see what the fancy new Lights you just built look like, or the new Door looks like, or the new Room, etc.).
Imagine what a "Plus" it would be to be able to instantly-see if you eliminated a HOM, or if a Wall lines up OK, or if Bldg-texture looks messy, or if clipping is gone, etc.
(I think Serious Sam game has Editor with this "See It As You Build" feature).

that's easy. save the file and load it through the source port it's designed for. no need to close it all of the time.

Anyone have opinions?

yeah, they suck.

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"that's easy. save the file and load it through the source port it's designed for. no need to close it all of the time."

Yes, that's what we do now....
(1)Save your newly-edited file.
(2)Load it into your source port.
(3)Walk around, and look at what you did.

What I had in mind was a Feature that eliminates 1 and 2. (i.e. "while you're editing your map, you see what you're building even as you build it").
Maybe something like a "Live View" button in your editor. You click on it, and a window opens showing the new Door (or wall, window, etc.) you just built.
No need, to (1) save map (2)load port ---in order to see it.

Perhaps it can't be done, or would require a lot of coding. That's why I'm asked for Opinions here.

As for D3 allowing in-game editing, I saw it months ago in news item, no details, never saw it mentioned elsewhere.
Thanks for Reply.

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Hiya.

I don't think that it's possible for the DOOM engine to be 'manipulated' this way because of how a BSP tree works. I'm no programmer, but I believe DOOM (and clones) use a 'ray-trace' engine (not quite the same as a 3d ray-trace program). This, I *think*, someone correct me if I'm wrong/off on this, that when you build a level for DOOM it devides up the map into 'squares'. Each of these squares is basically a 'node' that has information about where stuff is (vertexes, things, etc.); each of these nodes is then organized into a tree thing that the game engine looks at when it asks how to draw and what to draw from the players POV. In short, the only way for the engine to know what to draw is to build the nodes first; hence, the unlikelyhood of doing what you purpose. (did any of that make sense, or was I just rambling?)

The reason it can/is done in editors like QuArK (for Quake, Hexen2, etc.) is that it is using 'sold geometry' to determine where a wall or item (model) is. As such, it can simply show the wall/model in OpenGL as there is no pre-calculations needed (IIRC).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

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I don't think that it's possible for the DOOM engine to be 'manipulated' this way because of how a BSP tree works.

The problem is only that DOOM levels tend to have non-convex polygons - a math problem for current 3D gen code.

The BSP tree really isn't needed, that just an optimization tool to limit overdraw. Same for the blockmap. An easy way to see this is by examining the alpha Doom levels.

There are precalculations in QUAKE - same reason as for DOOM, speed. That's what the utils steps are for: Bsp, Light, Vis. So the editors are quite clunky in displaying "brushes", especially noticable on slower machines (and the game runs just fine).

It is possible to do some of the things mentioned - but on a much smaller scale. One of things on the someday "to do" list:)

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Thanks for the reply, Pming, it's appreciated. I don't know enough about the coding, to comment.

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deep, thanks for the reply......

"It is possible to do some of the things mentioned - but on a much smaller scale. One of things on the someday "to do" list:)"

I sure hope you do and soon. Deepsea is slowly becoming the "Swiss Army Knife" of Editors. (Able to do everything!!!)

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