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Astewart41

Re: 3D Editor (Follow-up from TWO MONTHS AGO)

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(Follow-up from "3D Editor" EXACTLY two months ago from today, 3/14/01)

It has been.... Two months exactly since one has replied to this post, and I'm not sure why I do so now, but I do believe that some of the points people have made here are pretty good. But still, remember something, Build is almost 100 % ERROR-PROOF when it comes to building (what the equivalent would be to nodes, sidedefs, and sectors).

I myself have been building Doom2 wads ever since it came out (Around '94), and when I got ahold of Duke3d / Build, I was stoked, automatic sidedefs, on-the-spot texture aligning, etc.. It's shit or get off the pot if someone is gonna do something like this because the use of Build was mainly for "on-the-spot" maintenance of a .Map file, because it was the easiest way. I also think that all the people who did WadEd, WadAuthor, DeepSea (especially), DoomCad, and even DOOMED did a very good job on their editors, but I think we're expecting a golden egg outta some of them, I mean, I know they're capable of doing it, but there's many restrictions that would come about doing such to create a "fully 3D interactive editor", not to mention:

SideDef editing: Build never allowed BELOW/ABOVE texture editing

LineDef editing: Build utilized SectorEffectors to create effects for everything, which would frequently crash without a LoTag defined.

Sector editing: Build was so very confusing with that aspect of setting LoTags for Sectors, 20 = Door 1 = Above surface water 2 = Underwater. Etc...

Not to mention: How would one switch between Menus? You'd also have to create Sectors in 2D mode to be able to accurately put them together, (Unless some genius can come along and create an editor that is Partial-isometric like THPS2's park editor to create sectors and LineDefs?)

...So I think people tried to "gold-plate" Build too much, like I said, it's probably easily possible to do something similar with Doom, but would it be everything like you expected?

I hope this message maybe helps to stimulate some ideas to improvise on what we have to make it better.. Not that we really need anything better, since all the editors I mentioned are really top-notch work.

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i think a 3d editor whould not be good for me, it just slow my editing down, but i 3d view window would just rock

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Guest fragg

I'm a little confused on exactly what you're post is talking about.
I'm not sure, but I think you are proposing that someone build a 3D-Editor. Am I right?

If building a 3D editor means I would be able to view (while still in the editor) what a certain piece of work (I just did) will actually look like in the game -- Man, that would be great.
I've heard that Serious Sam editor can do this. Anyone know for sure?

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Guest Fanatic

3D editors take longer to build stuff.

I'm a good level designer, and I've used DOOMCad (love it!), qED and even World Craft. The time I spent in qED is substancially more than what I have spent in DOOMCad for the same level.

It could be that I have 5+ years of DOOMCad under my belt, and only 3 years of qED, and I learned in 2D. I can visualize what I want to build in a 2D editor, and make exactly what I envision. In a 3D editor, it takes longer to do, for me at least.

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SaGa said:

i think a 3d editor whould not be good for me, it just slow my editing down, but i 3d view window would just rock

Where have you people been?!?! Both DMapEdit(my personal favorite and WAY under-rated) and DeepSea both have 3d preview modes!

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Guest MrHarmony

I've been thinking for a while about the easiest way to hack a 3D "tweaking editor". (Looking for GPLed source code to reuse, among other things. Seems like a better idea to rewrite most of the actual editor from scratch, though...)

Would be handy for interactively adjusting sector lighting, floor/ceiling heights, texture alignment etc, but I don't think the 3D editor can replace the top-down 2D mode entirely without being more annoying than efficient, at least not for Doom. It might be different with full 3D games, though.

How about hacking some source port? (As long as you don't start moving vertexes around, the standard engine could probably be used as is. Reject maps and some other stuff might have to be adjusted on the fly, though... Haven't looked into the details yet.)

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Guest MrHarmony

Yeah, I mean, coding a new editor is a great deal of work. We sure could use something based on a modern design, coded the "right" way from scratch, but OTOH, is there enough interest to actually get it done? (I'm thinking about a Free/Open Source project...) Is there even a significant potential user base?

Sure, people are still working on the source ports, and on the existing editors, but we're talking about a serious amount of hacking here, and, as a result of it's 2.5D centered design, it's not going to be of much use for anything but Doom and similar engines.

I'd sure like to design something and hack away, but I don't have all the time and motivation in the world. I also have too many other projects going on already. (Well, actually, they've been asleep the last few months because I had to work day and night... :-( ) Still, I might try to start something, unless I'm the only coder around who cares. If someone else wants to start something, I could help some. (Only Linux code, though; I don't do Windoze if I can help it. However, if I'm starting anything, I'm going to use Free and portable tools and libraries [GNU make, gcc, GTK+, SDL,...], so the code will still port very easy to Win32, MacOS, BeOS etc.)

First hack (perhaps?): WAD access library; read and write WADs pretty much like zip files. (I was thinking about inventing a standard for storing lumps as separate, normal files, but I'm not sure that's a good idea...)

Stage 2: Write/port a complete set of tools to edit all "simple" lump formats, using aforementioned library for WAD access.

Stage 3: Start working on 2D and 3D map editors. (Still using the WAD access lib, although obviously reading from multiple lumps at once. Spawn editors from stage 2 when appropriate, rather than re-implementing all sorts of stuff.)


So, is this going to be another project that'll never get off the ground, or is there serious interest? (Feel free to steal my ideas and start on your own - I'm really more interested in having a nice, Free WAD editor that runs on multiple operating systems, than I am in leading another project. Will only contribute to projects under the GPL or similar licence, though.)

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Lazer said:

Where have you people been?!?! Both DMapEdit(my personal favorite and WAY under-rated) and DeepSea both have 3d preview modes!

*LMAO*! Lazer! We were discussing FULLY 3D ON-THE-SPOT EDITING, not 3D preview mode! OTS EDITING = Build, ya know? It allows 3D editing from a view that shows all Sidedefs, all LineDefs fully edit..able (Heh). I think that Marc's opinion on it is pretty accurate too. With the amount of experience we both have (As well as many other Doom level authors), it becomes sorta a sixth sense as too what your level will look like just in 2D editing. Even though it does get sorta confusing with all the ZZZ"XX" (Level 30 Boss textures), but even those are sorta easy to get the hang of! (256X128 I believe? I haven't used a level with those textures for a while).

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As the GL ports also explain (see the GLBSP page), the difficult lies in not having convex polygons. First off, level geometry is typically not convex. Plus there are many "tricks" in DOOM that are also not legitimate CGI views (play the GL ports to see the prob in many levels).

Quake, etc have convex closed polygons. Each "brush" is a closed system that then intersects other "brushes" (in infinite space). Brushes have "thickness". The DOOM->Quake converter I made ran into these issues right away.

The bottom line is that people would not be able to create levels in the same way they do now. It's easy to make a Doom level that kills an "accurate" 3D preview - that is a preview that shows the level as one draws it.

All this presumes the use of standard libraries and not doing a total custom engine just to support the idiosyncrasies of DOOM.

The only feasible thing I might do someday is a textured 3D view AFTER the nodes are built.

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My last post made me sound like I'm drunk. The post's point is that, if you people got all your "3D editor" ideas from Build, there are many differences on what to do, and you'd do it. Like I said, editing Sidedefs for instance, what the equivalent would be for Duke3D, had no "Above / Lower" SideDef (equivalent remember), so they'd have to configure a menu for that as well. That was a correction on my part.

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Guest Hicks

I've been finding fully 3D editor for Doom for more than two years. I see that I'm not the only one who wants it. I found the converter of Doom's WAD to Build's MAP but not MAP->WAD. I know many, really many many people who would like to edit in 3D editor for Doom.

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deepteam said:

As the GL ports also explain (see the GLBSP page), the difficult lies in not having convex polygons. First off, level geometry is typically not convex. Plus there are many "tricks" in DOOM that are also not legitimate CGI views (play the GL ports to see the prob in many levels).

Quake, etc have convex closed polygons. Each "brush" is a closed system that then intersects other "brushes" (in infinite space). Brushes have "thickness". The DOOM->Quake converter I made ran into these issues right away.

The bottom line is that people would not be able to create levels in the same way they do now. It's easy to make a Doom level that kills an "accurate" 3D preview - that is a preview that shows the level as one draws it.

All this presumes the use of standard libraries and not doing a total custom engine just to support the idiosyncrasies of DOOM.

The only feasible thing I might do someday is a textured 3D view AFTER the nodes are built.

I swear to God, that would be pretty good. Will Deepteam ever come up with possibly maybe a 3D view texture aligning tool? I mean, something that could show where the texture is relative to other textures so one could align them in a "Build-like" fashion? (I.E being able to align the ZZWOLF10 textures without having to add the 72, and 56 X POS painstakingly in a 2D editor for SideDefs).

As for the suggestion about a 3D preview AFTER the nodes are built, I think the point of the whole 3D editor deal is for people to be able to spot their mistakes before having to actually play the game, and being able to fix it before it gets out on to the public. Who knows? Maybe it'll be done someday.


- Andy -

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Guest MrHarmony

Hmm... Considering the problems mentioned by deepteam above, a 3D preview seems rather pointless as a "debugging tool" - it's probably a better idea to disable monsters and just walk around, using the port(s) the WAD is meant for. Can't be more true to the final result than that! :-)

As to a 3D texture alignment tool; that's exactly what I was looking for. My first ideas were along the lines of hacking it into some source port. Probably the quickest way to get it working, although the rest of the user interface of the average Doom port isn't exactly well suited for a WAD editing tool... One could make the engine render into a "3D view box" inside a larger window, and use the rest of the window area for the editor GUI or something.

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Yes - A 3D texture aligning tool would be excellent, something that could show the offsets for the texture being aligned, maybe put it in a box like WinTex's, X-Y POS box (I.E Weapon-up frames, weapon-down frames, etc..) so you'd be able to tell when it was centered, or wherever its current position is, like for example, ZZWOlF10 textures, on one side of the door, it can be 0, on the other side, some people use 73 for X (I did, just to be on the safe side), and for the track in the middle side of the door (Where normally DOORSTOP or DOORTRAK textures would be used), putting in 56. BTW, that reminds me, how come in my Wolf-Style doors, on one side it's perfect (Only shows the black tracking), on the other side it shows the tracking, as well as part of the outer door texture?

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MrHarmony said:

What you said just actually sunk in, are you suggesting making something like a DeepSea .5 version? I think it'd be pretty cool!

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Guest MrHarmony

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "DeepSea .5 version", but... Well, the idea is basically to start a new project more or less from scratch, "designed the right way" and all that stuff. (There are too many editors with brain damaged code that goes all the way back to quick'n'dirty DOS hacks.) More importantly; it should be based on a modular design that makes it easy for hackers to join the project (without 2 months of reading up on the code!) and work on separate parts of the "toolkit" without too much sync problems. The main application would be more of a "tool launcher" or maybe "plugin host" than a monolithic program.

Now, the question still remains; do people care enough for Doom that there would be a point in starting such a project?

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Astewart41 said:

*LMAO*! Lazer! We were discussing FULLY 3D ON-THE-SPOT EDITING, not 3D preview mode! OTS EDITING = Build, ya know? It allows 3D editing from a view that shows all Sidedefs, all LineDefs fully edit..able (Heh). I think that Marc's opinion on it is pretty accurate too. With the amount of experience we both have (As well as many other Doom level authors), it becomes sorta a sixth sense as too what your level will look like just in 2D editing. Even though it does get sorta confusing with all the ZZZ"XX" (Level 30 Boss textures), but even those are sorta easy to get the hang of! (256X128 I believe? I haven't used a level with those textures for a while).

Oh, the post above the one I posted said a 3d viewer would be nice, and those editors have 3d viewers. I know you were talking about 3d editors and I think my message was a little to misleading from what I really meant, oops...

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