yadex help

[hex11]

I have yadex 1.7.0 with the big all-in-one patch (mainly to get the 3D preview).

I'm confused about how the grid stuff works. I made a rectangle sector (using the Object->Rectangle menu) then copied it with the 'o' key three times and rotated/repositioned the clones around the center of the map, like in this screenshot (they surround the central square sectors):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mzxkdo

The grid values are set like this:

Lock grid step (Auto/Lock) : Auto
Snap to grid (Snap/Free)   : Snap
Grid step                  : 32

But, as you can see in the screenshot, the sectors don't quite line up exactly, which defeats my plan to join their ends together while preserving their uniform width. The resulting sector was going to be a "trench", with the floor heigh at -64 from the surrounding sector.

The grid step and map scale remained constant while I created, edited and positioned these four rectangles. The docs mention that changing those settings can affect the grid, but that shouldn't be the case here.

I guess I'm missing something fundamental about how the grid works...

Edit: fixed screenshot link

[andrewj]

Your screenshot link gives me a "403 forbidden" error.

The grid snapping doesn't apply to every kind of operation. Creating rectangles is one example, moving a bunch of selected linedefs is another, and (IIRC) it does not apply when using the scale/rotate function.

I often had to go into vertex mode and re-snap each vertex individually.

[hex11]

Sorry about the screenshot link (sendspace won't let me link directly to the file). It's fixed now...

Okay, the vertex re-snap works, but that's fairly tedious. Also after that, I tried to merge the sectors by moving one lifedef on top of another, but yadex doesn't merge them, and they just sit there, both linedefs occuping the same space. So then I had to go back to vertex mode, snap the linedef's vertices on top of the other sector's, and this time it prompted me to merge them.

But what I really wanted was for the "trench" to be one big sector, instead of four. So I then went and deleted one of the linedefs that connects two of the long rectangles, hoping that yadex would then merge those two sectors (since they now share some vertices). But no, it just removes that linedef, and everything else remains as-is (all other linedefs reference their original sector). So I guess now it's necessary to edit the sector references for each of the linedefs. All in all, pretty tedious...

Maybe I'm just going about this incorrectly and there's a better strategy. Maybe I should have just made one rectangle, and kept using the 'x' key to split linedefs and move the vertices in the right place, until the correct sector size/shape/position is achieved. Or maybe I could have created two really big squares (one slightly smaller than the other), and placed the smaller one inside the larger, in order to create the "trench". Or maybe something else entirely that I missed... It doesn't seem obvious to me which way is best to get stuff done in yadex.

[andrewj]

Yeah, yadex is based on DEU and they are very low-level kind of editors, forcing you to do a lot of things manually which other editors would automatically do for you.

The strategy of using 'x' to break up a long linedef (or shape) and then move the vertices around is one I used a lot.

Sectors can get painful, one feature I personally added (in that big patch) is very useful: select a sector (click on it) and somewhere inside it press Z (shift-z) and it will fix all the sector references in the lines facing that spot. When you have islands (an outward facing sector inside another sector) then you'll need to repeat it somewhere to the left of each island.

The worst thing, imho, is the lack of undo/redo, which for me means having to save the map very very often in case you make a big mistake. It also slows you down as you cannot try something, see how it looks in the 3D preview, and then easily undo it.

If I wanted to make maps again, I'd probably try and get DoomBuilder 1 working through wine -- or get my ambitious fork of Yadex into some kind of usable shape.

[hex11]

The Z thing sounds useful, but I'm confused about what the significance of the "left" of an island means. I guess it'll become apparent when I try it.

Yeah the lack of an "undo" was the first thing I noticed immediately after making an error. ;) I also found that DEU 5.3 beta 9 had added some undo functionality, but that release never went anywhere for some reason. And it seems like nobody's using DEU anymore these days, and only a tiny number are using Yadex.

And actually I'm not sure that Andre Majorel is seriously maintaining Yadex anymore, because v1.7.0 was released on 2003-12-28. Ever since then it looks like people have been making patches, spread out between the Yadex Patch Page, various mailing lists, and who knows where else. In fact, I believe one of the Freedoom mappers (wesleyjohnson maybe?) has some kind of critical patch that he can't map without, but wasn't able to submit it.

DoomBuilder's not even an option for me. Wine simply doesn't work at all on my OS. ;) Anyway, I think Yadex and DEU-style editors still have some merit, even if they're slower to learn.