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Katamori

Has the case of map making on Linux improved anything as of late 2016?

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This post from 2012 was very useful at making Doom Builder run on Linux...

...yet, it's barely enough. GZDoom Builder is not willing to run even with Wine, DB2 is problematic, and DB1 has buggy 3D mode - and it lacks the method of showing floor texture on map view, which is, be honest, quite essential nowadays.

I became a Linux user recently, and I already determined to stay one for as long as possible - and while SLADE has its built-in map editor, it has some terrible flaws that make mapping still inconvenient for me.

Is there anything else for Linux users? (Eureka and Yadex are even worse, so those are forgettable...I mean, couldn't even draw a sector in Eureka Editor)

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"I mean, couldn't even draw a sector in Eureka Editor"

Eh? Go into sector mode (by pressing "s"), put the cursor into some empty space, and then press the middle mouse button. A default sector is created.

Or in vertex mode (press "v") select an existing vertex (left mouse) and then move the cursor around in empty space pressing the space-bar everywhere you want a new vertex, with a final space-bar click on another existing vertex. New sector created joined to old one(s).

Have you RTFM? - the README.txt file that comes with it? I use Eureka all the time, v1.07 on Debian Linux.

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There are no editors more feature-rich than those you've named, and the DB-based ones are the most feature-rich of them. Non-DB editors have non-DB interface and controls, that's a given. If you can't get DB working, your only choice is to get used to the interface and controls (and lack of certain features) of other editors.

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Slade 3 is pretty slick and it works fine on Linux. It isn't as full-featured as GZDB, but hey if you give it enough love, maybe it'll become really cool. I've been playing around with it quite a lot as of late.

EDIT: crap, missed he bit about Slade3 in your post. I'm curious what flaws you had with it, as I didn't notice anything big

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Bad King John said:

"I mean, couldn't even draw a sector in Eureka Editor"

Eh? Go into sector mode (by pressing "s"), put the cursor into some empty space, and then press the middle mouse button. A default sector is created.

Or in vertex mode (press "v") select an existing vertex (left mouse) and then move the cursor around in empty space pressing the space-bar everywhere you want a new vertex, with a final space-bar click on another existing vertex. New sector created joined to old one(s).

Have you RTFM? - the README.txt file that comes with it? I use Eureka all the time, v1.07 on Debian Linux.


The former doesn't work for me. The latter does, but I missed to see it in the manual. The online support for it is just terrible.

But nonetheless, Eureka Editor is inconvenient: I don't have free look in 3D mode, and I also can't do automatic texture alignment.

InsanityBringer said:

I'm curious what flaws you had with it, as I didn't notice anything big


Maybe I just got used to Doom Builder, and thus, it irritates me that I do things like deselect through buttons. Also:

- sometimes, when I attach a new sector to the solid wall of another sector, it forgets deleting the middle texture - something I really don't want to do by hand.

- The way automatic texture alignment works is not my cup of tea, not even talking about the fact that vertical auto-alignment is nonexisting.

- I have no idea, why or how, but sometimes, during minor editing or moving, brightness levels are changed and screwed up without my intentions.

- After saving the map, the editor interface becomes unresponsive. I have to restart it to make it work.

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Doom Builder's popularity is admirable, but the programming language and the frameworks used to create it are not cross platform in the slightest.

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The programming language is not the problem.
The actual problems are:
1. The renderers must be rewritten from DirectX to OpenGL (in theory, this can be done relatively easily by switching from SlimDX to MonoGame).
2. The absence of a person, who has moderate experience with C#, OpenGL and Linux, and is interested in investing his free time in this.

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MaxED said:

The programming language is not the problem.
The actual problems are:
1. The renderers must be rewritten from DirectX to OpenGL (in theory, this can be done relatively easily by switching from SlimDX to MonoGame).
2. The absence of a person, who has moderate experience with C#, OpenGL and Linux, and is interested in investing his free time in this.


I'll concede on that; I just use it at work and love to hate on it.

That .NET is open now (iirc?) should ease a lot of that.

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Katamori said:

Eureka Editor is inconvenient: I don't have free look in 3D mode, and I also can't do automatic texture alignment.

I'm not sure what you mean by "free look in 3D mode", perhaps because I've never used Doom Builder, but you can certainly get a 3D look and walk-about in Eureka. Nor am I sure what you mean by "automatic texture alignment". In Eureka's 3D view you can align textures by selecting one and then :

c : clear offsets on highlighted sidedef
x : align X offset with wall to the left
y : align Y offset with wall to the left
z : align both X + Y offsets to the left

X : align X offset with wall to the right
Y : align Y offset with wall to the right
Z : align both X + Y offsets to the right

It only takes a few seconds going round a room doing this, and I'm not sure I'd want this to be totally automated as I prefer to keep some control. When I did Doom editing some years ago you had to work out texture alignments with pencil and paper!

I'm wondering what version of Eureka you have tried. As Scifista42 pointed out, you cannot expect (or condemn) an editor just because it does not have the same interface as one you used before; conversely I expect I'd have an interface learning curve to climb if I tried Doom Builder. Same goes for moving to Linux from Windows generally!

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MaxED said:

The programming language is not the problem.
The actual problems are:
1. The renderers must be rewritten from DirectX to OpenGL (in theory, this can be done relatively easily by switching from SlimDX to MonoGame).
2. The absence of a person, who has moderate experience with C#, OpenGL and Linux, and is interested in investing his free time in this.


If it's not a big deal - or at the very least, not incredibly hard for a single person -, then I can see the chance of doing it by myself.

I'm not experienced in these tools, but who knows, it might be useful to learn.

Bad King John said:

As Scifista42 pointed out, you cannot expect (or condemn) an editor just because it does not have the same interface as one you used before; conversely I expect I'd have an interface learning curve to climb if I tried Doom Builder. Same goes for moving to Linux from Windows generally!



Well, maybe it's the subconscious programmer mentality within myself, but I hate learning to do the same thing twice. I literally would rather make a Linux port of Doom Builder.

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Ages ago I experimented with an auto-alignment feature in Eureka. But at the time I couldn't get it to work very well, as it would often align stuff with the "wrong" linedef. I plan to revisit it, as even just doing X offsets on a chain of linedefs can be useful.

I have been working on Eureka recently, and hope to have another release in a month or two. Smooth navigation in the 3D view, as well as selecting walls or floors in the 3D view and setting textures on them (or Copy/Paste textures between them) has been implemented and will make texturing maps a lot easier.

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andrewj said:

Ages ago I experimented with an auto-alignment feature in Eureka. But at the time I couldn't get it to work very well, as it would often align stuff with the "wrong" linedef. I plan to revisit it, as even just doing X offsets on a chain of linedefs can be useful.

I have been working on Eureka recently, and hope to have another release in a month or two. Smooth navigation in the 3D view, as well as selecting walls or floors in the 3D view and setting textures on them (or Copy/Paste textures between them) has been implemented and will make texturing maps a lot easier.


That sounds super cool! Good luck with that.

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This is one of the reasons why I move from Ubuntu to Win8. Slade3 and Eureka is cool editors but last 2 years I find more useful GZDoom Builder because of controls and some useful features (sound propagation, built-in visplane explorer, real sky, and others). Still have linux on my second laptop.

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riderr3 said:

This is one of the reasons why I move from Ubuntu to Win8. Slade3 and Eureka is cool editors but last 2 years I find more useful GZDoom Builder because of controls and some useful features (sound propagation, built-in visplane explorer, real sky, and others). Still have linux on my second laptop.


Sadly, I have only one machine, and there's no way I'll ever return to Windows. I'm fed up with all their bullshit. :/

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riderr3 said:

some useful features (sound propagation, built-in visplane explorer, real sky, and others).

You inspired me, today I added a sound propagation mode to Eureka :)

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If you do not have a bad computer you can try running windows in VM. But how will map-editor programs work is a mystery. Tho imho worth trying.

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riderr3 said:

This is one of the reasons why I move from Ubuntu to Win8..... I find more useful GZDoom Builder because of controls and some useful features (sound propagation, built-in visplane explorer, real sky, and others).

It would take me much more than seeing the sky in an editor pre-view to make me use Windows.

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Bad King John said:

It would take me much more than seeing the sky in an editor pre-view to make me use Windows.


In this one, we quite agree. Even DB2 had no support for sky preview.

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