What I think the next XWE needs

[Jimmy]

Hi there. Again.

I've been thinking about what the next XWE needs:

- An internal script compiler with compatibility with skulltag.
- A mus/midi editor.
- A font editor.
- A better graphic editor, because I can't for the life of me get the current one to work well. :(
- A "test level" prompt like in Doom Builder.
- A script/lump editor like Doom Builder has (ie. certain coloured ACS terms, a Ctrl+Space thingy, and all that other stuff)

All these functions I think should be in the next eXtendable Wad Editor. So what do you think guys? (and by "guys" I mean Csabo)

[Graf Zahl]

I think XWE should add the capability to save Zips. Doomsday and GZDoom have been supporting Zips for quite some time and the next version of ZDoom will as well - and there is no tool out there which can edit graphics offsets inside Zips so far.

As for your suggestions:

You are aware that if done this would be a lot of work, right? Besides, XWE is supposed to be a WAD management tool, not a general purpose editor for all things related to Doom.

[Jimmy]

Graf Zahl said:

XWE is supposed to be a WAD management tool, not a general purpose editor for all things related to Doom.

That's what I thought my suggestions covered - WAD management.

[wildweasel]

- An internal script compiler with compatibility with skulltag.

Internal? Why not just include ACC with the program and have it configured to use it out of the box?

- A mus/midi editor.

If you want to edit music, you would be better off finding a dedicated sequencer program.

- A font editor.

If what you're talking about is the ability to make ZDoom-compatible font lumps (CONFONT, etc) from within XWE, that sounds reasonable - but if you want to edit the actual font graphics, that's too much to ask.

- A better graphic editor, because I can't for the life of me get the current one to work well. :(

XWE's graphics editor is currently only good for remapping colors and adjusting alignments. Anything else would be better left to dedicated programs like Paint Shop Pro or Graphicsgale.

- A "test level" prompt like in Doom Builder.

Could be handy, but for these occasions I just keep a copy of ZDL open, and when I'm ready to test, I just tab over to it and click Launch.

- A script/lump editor like Doom Builder has (ie. certain coloured ACS terms, a Ctrl+Space thingy, and all that other stuff)

XWE's text editor already has syntax highlighting (except you need to download the Codemax library first). As for the ctrl+space trick, why not just keep the ZDoom Wiki on hand? I find it helps me a lot better than just having a list box that shows commands in it.

[Csabo]

- An internal script compiler with compatibility with skulltag.
A script compiler is just an external tool from XWE's point of view. When you compile a script for the first time, it'll ask you for the location (or find it for you), and you're set.

- A mus/midi editor.
It was planned (hence the viewer), but there just wasn't enough interest, and I think it would be very rarely used. It's on my long term todo list anyway.

- A font editor.
What do you mean specifically?

- A better graphic editor, because I can't for the life of me get the current one to work well. :(
What's wrong with the current one? WildWeasel, there is a build in graphic editor, which is a simple pixel based editor. It's good enough for touchups (better than Paint, anyway). The scrolling is sucky, but it has zooming, etc. It just never got polished because of the lack of feedback.

- A "test level" prompt like in Doom Builder.
That's in, press R to Run (test) the map.

- A script/lump editor like Doom Builder has (ie. certain coloured ACS terms, a Ctrl+Space thingy, and all that other stuff)
That's in too, including the Ctrl+Space thing, but never got polished because no feedback.

[TheDarkArchon]

Apart from the lack of scrolling, the image editor is fine: It's keyboard based interface it perfect for fine pixel work due to it's percision.

[Chopkinsca]

Csabo said:

- A script/lump editor like Doom Builder has (ie. certain coloured ACS terms, a Ctrl+Space thingy, and all that other stuff)
That's in too, including the Ctrl+Space thing, but never got polished because no feedback.

I never tried this out before, as anything I happen to not know, I look up on the wiki anyway. I'm not sure which parts of the functionality are XWE and are codemax (I only knew enough about it to install it).

For one, when you bring up the list, the only way to get rid of the list is to select one of the fill-ins and press enter. Being able to double click a word to insert it and click anywhere else to close the box. If you leave the box open and go to a different script file, the box remains open.

The box lacks a scrollbar for if there are more entires than can fit in the box.

When selecting a fill-in which has parameters, maybe the template parameters could be inserted as well. At least in the list it shows the parameters, so it isn't too bad for if you don't know what the parameters are.

The list of words is a bit out of date, but that's to be expected. Maybe if I have time and am bored I could see about going through and adding newer things. Unless someone else does it before me.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

[leileilol]

How about a 32-bit built-in midi2mus implementation so I don't have to start up DOSbox every time I need to convert to mus?

(Note WinXP64 can not run 16-bit apps)

[megamanx3]

well i use XWE for a long time,i have only 2 or 3 problems whit it.

1: every time,that i opened a MUS Lump,he requires Mus2midi,why XWE dont have Mus2midi(if somebody knows were i get one please tell me.

2: Some textures that i put with Xwe,in zdaemon get many problems,and i cant undestand how o fix some things with the texture1 lump.

3:well i can,t test the wad that i have select,csabo every time that i put XWE to run a map of a wad that i created or a Pwad that i want to edit,Zdoom only runs "Doom 2"

well i think that xwe is more better,then any editor(Doomcad,Wintex)
i just think that,XWE only needs to have some cool tools,like qmus2mid or mus2mid.a better way to edit textures,and a way to test "My maps" that all.

[Csabo]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm starting to implement some the stuff.

I improved the autocomplete feature (Ctrl+Space). The list goes away when loses focus, it's displayed at the correct position for codemax and regular textbox, double-click also works (not just enter). What's nice about this feature is that it works for any text lump, like Dehacked or whatever a source port could have.

I'll add scrolling and probably a few more improvements to the graphics editor when I have time.

Re-doing Mus2Midi? Sure, it would be a bit better, but this is something we already have a solution for (even though inconvenient/slow whatever). I think I should put the development time into fixing problems that are not yet solved.

megamanx3, here is the mus2midi util: http://ca.geocities.com/xwe@rogers.com/mus2midi.zip I'm not sure what you mean by your 2nd point, can you clarify?

[wildweasel]

I guess he wants to know why XWE doesn't come with mus2midi out of the box.

[megamanx3]

do you Remenber the topic "Textures" i made that topic a long time ago, that texture that you have see "DOOMed" only gets that kind Of bug,on Zdaemon,on Skulltag and zdoom,that texture show up fine,and i cant undestand how fix that texture in the texture1 lump,ohh Csabo Thanks for the link.

[Chopkinsca]

A couple of minor things I thought I'd post here instead of a new topic.

-Is there a way to limit the number of backups that are created? I know you can choose to have only one backup, but what about limiting it to x number of backups?

-drag and drop for lazy people. In some cases, I thought about being able to select a bunch of images and just drag and drop them into a spot in XWE. Unless it is trivial to add, it doesn't need to be done. Just something that would have been convenient now and then.

And a couple of minor bugs:
-If you select an image, and load another image, it will ask if you want to save changes when you select another entry.

-If you make a change to an entry, then click on the entry list in a space where you can drag/select multiple entries (blank space between coloumns) the save changes dialog will appear except when it closes, the mouse will be in drag/select mode.

That is all.

[Csabo]

New beta is up.

Answers to the above:

- Could be done, I'll add to the todo list.
- Added, good idea!
- Can't reproduct this one. Can you try again and see if there's another factor?
- I noticed this sometimes, but I couldn't pinpoint it, kudos for nailing it. This happens because the listbox fires a "selectitem" event (while the mouse is still down), then comes the dialog box. So the mouse is never up. I tried to fix it by sending a WM_LBUTTONUP to the listbox (and a few other ugly hacks) but couldn't fix it... If you click the name of the entry though (not the whitespace after it), it doesn't seem to happen.

megamanx3, I remember the topic, but couldn't understand what was the problem back then either. Could you try to write down what's the exact problem, like chopinsca did in the above post? Those are very concise points, easy to track down. If I hear "zdaemon get many problems" etc, I'm not sure what to look for.

I don't think we should package the external tools into XWE. They are already downloadable, not everyone will use all of them, if they are unmaintained then they will just take up space in every release, and if they are maintained, then I have to keep track of them and always get the latest.

Anyone interested in testing the image editor, I added scrolling: CTRL + cursor keys will move the image around. It's a start, at least we can mess with large images.

[megamanx3]

well csabo if have haven't finished my inglish course wet.i will try to tell you tomorow because i am at a lan house now.oh i foget to ask something,Qmus2midi or mus2mid? which of the two is better?

[Chopkinsca]

Csabo said:

- Can't reproduct this one. Can you try again and see if there's another factor?

I'll see if I notice anything about when it does and doestn't happen.

With library scripts, is there any way to compile the text.acs file so it goes to the compiled file between the A_ tags? Right now I have to compile it outside xwe and import it. Not a big deal, but would make things easier especially when making and testing small changes to a library script.

Anyway, I updated the acs keyword list. A few of the things are so new that I don't know the parameters, so I didn't add them. There may be a few other things missing, but at least it's better than the outdated list. I'm not sure if the order meant anything, as some of it was done alphabetically, and some of it wasn't.

Text file



I might try doing decorate later on, as I use that more often than scripts since I do most scripts in doombuilder.

[Jimmy]

What about fonts? Agent Spork did it in Ultimate Simplicity, how in hell do you edit the font characters?

[Csabo]

Hey, big thanks for that chopinska :-) I pasted it into XWE.INI, it'll be in the next release (meanwhile anyone can do that for themselves).

Jimmy91, you can import (or copy/paste) image lumps named STCFN### where ### is the ascii code of the letter (e.g. STCFN065 is for "A"). For editing those, XWE's little graphics editor is actually quite good. You can pick a color, and draw with number keys 1-8, where 1 puts down the current color and 2-8 are the consecutive colors, neat for gradients.

[myk]

Csabo said:
Re-doing Mus2Midi? Sure, it would be a bit better, but this is something we already have a solution for (even though inconvenient/slow whatever). I think I should put the development time into fixing problems that are not yet solved.

The play MIDI feature has never worked for me; once I specify the Mus2midi executable and try to play a MUS lump it says:

Media Player could not play the converted MIDI file.

Make sure you're using MUS2MIDI version 1.0,
the older versions do not convert MIDIs properly.

I've tried various variants of Mus2midi and it's always the same. It gives me that error message, and I don't think its even creating a MIDI file. Also, that message about other versions not converting MIDIs properly is misleading because that depends. On my system "version 1.0" is a mess, producing slow MIDIs, and others like Mmus2mid and Qmus2mid do a good job.

It would be cool if MusPlay could be integrated into XWE, though it should be optional, as I don't think it plays on newer Windows OSs.

And can't XWE be told to use another MIDI player other than the Windows specific one. I generally use TiMidity++ to play MIDIs.

Another feature that would be great: An "append" function like the one in DeuSF and DeuTex. It sould check for F_ markers and correct them to FF_START and F_END, and should complete the Sprites directory in the PWAD from DOOM or DOOM II.

[Jimmy]

Csabo said:

Jimmy91, you can import (or copy/paste) image lumps named STCFN### where ### is the ascii code of the letter (e.g. STCFN065 is for "A"). For editing those, XWE's little graphics editor is actually quite good. You can pick a color, and draw with number keys 1-8, where 1 puts down the current color and 2-8 are the consecutive colors, neat for gradients.

Whoopsie. I meant for BigFont.

[Chopkinsca]

I updated a few more of the data lists. I did most of the ones for ZDoom, someone else will have to do any non-zdoom specific ones. The decorate section in particular was greatly out of date. It was around 78 lines (with a few spaces) and now is 444 lines (again, with a few spaces). The file is here. I zipped up the individual sections instead of putting them all in one text file. I tried to get most of the things that would fit in the list as well.

[Csabo]

chopinska, continued thanks :-) I'll update XWE.INI.

Jimm91, for that you need Randy's imagetool, an example bigfont and instructions are inside.

[Jimmy]

Csabo said:

Jimmy91, for that you need Randy's imagetool, an example bigfont and instructions are inside.

Thanks a bunch Csabo, that should help me.