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Memfis

Do modern editors still lack something important?

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Simple question... Do you think that modern editors provide (almost) everything a mapper could ever need, or perhaps there are still some major improvements that can be done to make the process of mapping significantly easier and faster?

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The ability to paint directly on textures and flats in 3D mode, or something equivalent, like the ability to select a bunch of surfaces in the map and have their textures exported as a single continuous piece and opened in your image editor of choice. This would make a lot of things I want to do far, far easier and more enjoyable rather than agonizingly painful.

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esselfortium said:

The ability to paint directly on textures and flats in 3D mode, or something equivalent, like the ability to select a bunch of surfaces in the map and have their textures exported as a single continuous piece and opened in your image editor of choice. This would make a lot of things I want to do far, far easier and more enjoyable rather than agonizingly painful.

Reminds me of my "megatexturing" idea for a GZDB plugin where you could arbitrarily place / move individual patches on walls in 3D mode and it would automatically generate new texture definitions on the fly.

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Hm, maybe? I'm not sure if being able to place patches in 3D would help much for what I'm wanting to do. What I'd like is to be able to draw seamlessly across surfaces to create unique destruction, blend between textures and cover up seams, etc.

It's of course already possible to create single-use fitted textures for those purposes with the existing tools, but doing more than a little bit of it comes at a major cost to workflow, time, and sanity. As I've been finding out with a certain map that certain people keep telling me to finish... :p

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esselfortium said:

The ability to paint directly on textures and flats in 3D mode, or something equivalent, like the ability to select a bunch of surfaces in the map and have their textures exported as a single continuous piece and opened in your image editor of choice. This would make a lot of things I want to do far, far easier and more enjoyable rather than agonizingly painful.


man that would be so awesome, also if you could paint over untextured surfaces

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Wouldn't that require a source port that supports such a thing? I imagine GZDoom would be a decent candidate since it technically converts the flats and walls into polygons but I'm not sure if anyone would consider it worth the effort.

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MetroidJunkie said:

Wouldn't that require a source port that supports such a thing? I imagine GZDoom would be a decent candidate since it technically converts the flats and walls into polygons but I'm not sure if anyone would consider it worth the effort.

I'm not sure what you mean -- textures are supported by all source ports :P This wouldn't affect the game engine at all; it would just be seeing a bunch of textures, some of which were created inside the map editor.

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So you didn't mean painting them onto the surface independent of sector lines? Or did you mean that you paint it and then the editor creates the sector with the texture you drew? Because I'm sure the Doom engine only allows one floor/ceiling texture per sector and only one wall texture per line unless you modified a source port. It certainly wouldn't work on walls since it can't just create points in 3D space due to Doom being 2.5-D based.

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I do mean independently of sector lines -- the point is being able to draw seamlessly across surfaces. The map editor would then create individual textures from it. For flats, yes, you'd either need to use a port supporting large floor textures or split up your sectors into smaller chunks.

MetroidJunkie said:

It certainly wouldn't work on walls since it can't just create points in 3D space due to Doom being 2.5-D based.

I think we're talking past each other here, because I'm not describing anything that can't already be done manually. I'm currently doing it for a vanilla-compatible map, it's just a pain to do without dedicated tools for it.

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Now I sort of get what you're saying, you're proposing a built in image editor that you paint onto the wall and it simply creates one big texture that it applies to the whole line.

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In wad author you can select a line and manually type in its length and it will stretch the line out to be that length. I don't think gzdoombuilder can do that.

When you copy and paste a sector or groups of sectors, you can't just mirror the image. You can scale it in such a way where the coordinates reverse but simply mirroring an exact copy is really hard to do unless you have a very basic set of shapes that you can eye out. Copying and pasting in general is often causes problems that take longer to fix than it does to draw a duplicate from scratch.

Wad author also has a stair building command so you can simply select a rectangle sector, pick the cardinal direction you'd like the stairs to move up in, how many steps you need, and wadauthor will automatically chop the sector up into individual steps. I found a way you can mess with it to create light gradients instead of steps that was super cool. I think someone showed me a plugin that could quickly build stairs like this but i think the ability to select a sector and slice it up into smaller sectors with a single input would be far more useful. Likewise, selecting a line and splitting it with a selected number of vertices.

You mentioned once a plugin that could time the length of time you spent working on a file so you'd have an accurate estimate of the amount of time you spent working on the map for the text file, or to prove you actually made a speedmap in the amount of time you said. I'd still like to see this idea come to fruition.

When Romero released that unreleased doom 2 stuff including the editor that was used for the game, there was talk about how there was a sort of tool where you could click on a part of a map and it will test the game starting from the point you clicked on. In theory it doesn't sound too far off from just moving your player start there or going into visual mode, but it seemed really handy for other reasons and id like to see that happen.

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A way to view the wireframe from the player's perspective (horizontal) to create 3d floors much more easily, as it is in half life's map editors

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Pretty much what everyone else is saying about texture painting. To expand on that:

- Adjustable brush size / transparency option.
- Soft edge brushes or pencil style.
- Added dream feature of rudimentary lighten / darken brush for a 'best as we're going to get' expansion on GZDoom's limited lighting options.

That would really open up a lot of doors for making usable terrain.

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40oz said:

When you copy and paste a sector or groups of sectors, you can't just mirror the image. You can scale it in such a way where the coordinates reverse but simply mirroring an exact copy is really hard to do unless you have a very basic set of shapes that you can eye out.


???

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40oz said:

When you copy and paste a sector or groups of sectors, you can't just mirror the image.


It is just a mouse click away :)

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40oz said:

In wad author you can select a line and manually type in its length and it will stretch the line out to be that length. I don't think gzdoombuilder can do that.



GZDB tells you length and angle of a linedef as you draw it,



or shows the length of attached linedefs when you move a linedef



40oz said:

Wad author also has a stair building command so you can simply select a rectangle sector, pick the cardinal direction you'd like the stairs to move up in, how many steps you need, and wadauthor will automatically chop the sector up into individual steps. I found a way you can mess with it to create light gradients instead of steps that was super cool. I think someone showed me a plugin that could quickly build stairs like this but i think the ability to select a sector and slice it up into smaller sectors with a single input would be far more useful.


For DB2, Stair Building is a separate plugin.
For GZDB, Stair Building now is an integral part.

Either way, they are far more versatile than WadAuthor's simple stair building command

Light gradients is also an integral part of GZDB.

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Correct me if this already exists, but: Automatic management of dummy sectors, with a possibility to adjust them manually, but still independently on the real map's geometry.

Normally, you must tag a sector, then make a dummy sector somewhere outside the map, select one of its linedefs and give it proper tag and linedef action you want.

With this management tool, you would just select a sector (or multiple sectors) and select a linedef action to be applied to them from a dummy sector. I'm talking about the kind of static (non-triggered) line actions, like a 3D floor or conveyor belt line special. You would have a possibility to influence the dummy sector's properties, or let the editor do it automatically. The editor will always automatically take care about the dummy sector's position, with special care if the position matters (like when making slopes). The editor would let you switch between normal mapping mode, in which you edit the map and don't see dummy sectors at all, and dummy sector editing mode, in which you can edit their shapes and properties and instruct the editor how to place them so that their effect works as desired. Under majority of circumstances, you wouldn't have to enter the dummy sector editing mode at all. Each individual dummy sector could be managed through its target sector when you clicked it. Also, there would be specialized features to quickly create fake 3D bridges, sky transfers for the entire map, slopes to joined dummy sectors, etc.

The drawback is that the editor must be able to recognize dummy sectors from accessible map geometry, which should be doable, though.

However, maybe this tool wouldn't be as convenient to use as I thought.

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Ribbiks said:


What the? I've never seen that on my configurations. What key is that? Shift + bracket key? (the same ones for adjusting grid size?)

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The texture idea would be awesome, but it would also eat up memory like popcorn and blow up file size by creating redundant/lookalike textures (unless the "painter" was super-smart and generated decals as transparent textures on-the-fly, in order to save on space). In other words, it would take some serious work/finetuning to make it work efficiently and not as a memory and disk space hog.

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40oz said:

What the? I've never seen that on my configurations. What key is that? Shift + bracket key? (the same ones for adjusting grid size?)


Then you must be using a really ancient version of Doombuilder2.
Anyways, the default is no key assignment for Flipping.

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Also, there are clickable "flip selection" icons in the middle of the top panel. You can see them on Kappes Buur's screenshot too. They enable whenever you're in "edit selection" mode (press E after selecting something).

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40oz said:

When Romero released that unreleased doom 2 stuff including the editor that was used for the game, there was talk about how there was a sort of tool where you could click on a part of a map and it will test the game starting from the point you clicked on.

You can do it in GZDB:
In 2D mode, move the cursor to the point, where you want to appear ingame and press Ctrl-F9.
In Visual mode, just press Ctrl-F9. Ingame, you will start at the camera position.

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Has anybody tried a multi-monitor setup with GZDoom Builder, where one monitor is used for the map,
another for preview and a third for gameplay?

Is that even possible right now?

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Total pipe dream but I'd love a multi-user mode. It would be fun to collaborate on a map simultaneously in real time.

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skillsaw said:

Total pipe dream but I'd love a multi-user mode. It would be fun to collaborate on a map simultaneously in real time.

There could be one main mapper (project leader) and ask another one for prefabs. For example, an impressive hell-themed and detailed hallway. Or a key room with an ambush. Or a switch-based puzzle room with marble pillars or a throne decoration etc.

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Support for linked-portals in 3D mode of editors that have 3D mode would be super cool, if possible.

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skillsaw said:

Total pipe dream but I'd love a multi-user mode. It would be fun to collaborate on a map simultaneously in real time.


Yeah that sounds really fun! A mega map made by who knows how many users at the same time would be interesting I guess :s

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I was talking to Jmickle666666666 the other day and he talked about an idea for a plugin that would automatically generate control sectors in maps.

Like for example, if you selected a sector that raised to the next higher floor, the interface would let you key in the exact height you want the floor to move to, and it would automatically give you a sector to paste somewhere in your map. It could further be optimized for sky transfers and the sound source of a moving floor or door or something.

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