Visplane Explorer 0.92 Released

[andrewj]

(This is about the stand-alone program, not the Doom Builder plugin)

Visplane Explorer is a program to visualize possible visplane overflow (VPO) errors in DOOM maps.

I have just released version 0.92. The most important new feature is ability to open all the doors in a map, which causes more stuff to be rendered and hence higher visplane (etc) counts -- sometimes significantly higher. Another feature of note is the 'R' key to reload a map, without moving the current view -- useful if you are editing the file at the same time.

LINK: http://eureka-editor.sourceforge.net/?n=VisExp.Main

Changes since 0.85:

+ ability to reload the map (without moving position)
+ ability to 'Open Doors' in the map
+ implemented Seg splits display
+ implemented 'Save Image' command (File menu)

- added 'Go to Location' command (View menu)
- draw the 2D map _over_ the visplane (etc) rendering
- ability to toggle Heat mode, seg splits (etc) via keyboard
- can scroll the map using any mouse button

- detect when current file is modified, show a message
- support -file option to specify wad filename
- support -warp option, compatible with vanilla DOOM
- wrote a Unix man page

[BlueFeena]

Nice to see this updated! A few things:

• I think VisPlane Explorer 0.80 had the ability to toggle visplane / segs / openings / etc rendering on and off; this version doesn't seem to permit that. Turning off visplane rendering made the app significantly easier to run and I could leave the app on in the background while working on the level.
  
• Like VPE 0.80, the app does not enter fullscreen correctly in Windows; the lower most portion of the window is cost off and the application does not fill the screen.
  
• I noticed that there is an "accuracy difference" between VPE and the Doom Builder 2 plugin. VPE 0.80 and 0.92 both report overflows in places where the plugin does not, and the plugin seems to be the more correct of the two guesses. Might be worth taking a look at what the plugin is doing differently?
  
• I think the Eureka-esque background from previous versions made everything easier to see; YMMV.
  

Most of everything else was performance related; not too sure if its possible to avoid rebuilding the visplane guesses whenever the user does something.

[andrewj]

Thanks for the feedback.

1) an ability to Pause the visplane detection is a good idea -- noted

2) hmmm... was wondering if that was a bug in FLTK, then I remembered that there is a maximum window size of 1536x1152, which is usually enforced when resizing the window, but I guess forcing the window fullscreen makes it go bigger than this limit. Will fix this in next release.

3) in the past I tested the visplane counts against choco-renderlimits and found they were giving the same results. I cannot explain why the DB2 plugin would be different, I just now downloaded its source, and the code which actually counts visplanes (etc), namely VPO_LIB, is exactly the same as in VPE 0.80, plus it tests the same number of angles and height above the floor....

Actually could you please test the DB2 plugin with the "example.wad" which comes with this program, the following image shows an area near the bottom, I'd be interested to know how many visplanes it shows where the green object is.



4) the Eureka-esque background was never used with the heat display of visplanes (etc), only the plain map view (which was removed). They could be combined with a bit of work, something I'll consider.