Editors

[Guest Usanagi]

I'm trying editors. I don't want opinions on them; I want a list of advantages and disadvantages of the different editors. I know I'll probably wind up using a couple different ones; anyone know where I can find this sort of thing out?

[Lüt]

Uh, I can offer a little help:

WADED (v1.83ß)
Pros: Easiest editor to use, period.
Cons: Most bug ridden editor ever made, period.
Other: Is a DOS editor and has a very, very small limit on the maximum file size of your maps.

DEEP
Pros: Most powerful and useful editor.
Cons: Requires a college degree to figure out.
Other: It isn't actually that hard to learn if you have the time, but if you don't know your map structures and game engine inside out, it makes it nearly impossible to use.

That's about it. I use WadAuthor for cut+paste as Deep has a tendency to screw that up, however I haven't used it thoroughly enough to say anything else about it. I do know it has some odd quirk where sectors' attributes get swapped and the level gets screwed in the process. I think somebody else mentioned that before (Tarin?) Well, uh, I use WadEd for everything except cutting + pasting big maps together (WadAuthor) and doing final touch-ups (Deep). It's got a ton of bugs but you can work around them fairly easily. Even though half of my time goes to waste working around bugs, I can still complete maps 3 times faster with WadEd than any other editor. IT'S JUST SO SIMPLE!! But if you're easily frustrated, I'd take the time to learn Deep. I hear DCK is also easy to use but I haven't bothered trying, so I wouldn't know... hope that helps a little.

[ReX]

I know a little about WadAuthor, as it's the editor I've been using for a year and a half.

Pros:
You start out creating sectors -- no need to create lines, join vertices, assign sector and sidedef attributes, etc. In my opinion this saves some time, as most space in maps is typically occupied by sectors rather than linedefs. Moreover, if you have a need to create a linedef, WadAuthor allows it (albeit after you have created a sector first).

Copying/cutting & pasting is relatively easy. Simply select your sectors, things, etc. with your mouse, and copy/cut/paste away. (A word of caution when selecting irregular shaped sectors, or if there are nearby sectors that you do not want to copy -- make sure you have not accidentally included stray vertices in your selection, or WadAuthor will crash when you paste.)

Features automatic texture alignment (after you have selected your linedefs). This saves a lot of time and the hassle of figuring out the correct offsets.

Sector motifs. WadAuthor allow you to create sector motifs that you can use as defaults when creating maps. For example, if you want to create a base-style map, you can select textures, flats, and other attributes that reflect a base style and save it as a motif. Then, every time you want to create a sector, your default motif will be used.

Cons:
Very occasionally, Wadauthor will do weird things. In the first map that I ever created, I was building a complex star-shaped structure. WadAuthor created an invisible barrier nearby. It did not show up as a linedef either in the editor or in the map mode of DooM. I read that such lines are sometime created near complicated-shaped sectors, and are not unique to any given editor. (To rectify this problem, create a dummy sector in the vicinity of the invisible line. The barrier disappears.)

In the third map that I created, I was building a huge circular area with lava. In the middle was a circular island. When I first created the island (with nothing else on it), I could not stand on the floor of the island -- I sank to the level of the surrounding lava. However, once I created additional sectors (such as a parapet wall around the island) the problem went away. Again, it was probably due to the complex circular area (too many linedefs).

In a couple of maps that I have created, sector heights were magically transformed into those of adjacent sectors. Clearly an undesirable aspect of the editor. However, I discovered that this problem generally occurred after a copy/paste operation where the front and back orientation of linedefs got screwed up. This can be a huge pain, and I generally scrap that version of my map and go back to an earlier saved version.

Bottom Line: WadAuthor is an excellent editor, with a few idiosyncracies. If you're careful, you can avoid those problems.

[DeePsea]

Some clarification:

"invisible barrier" is a nodebuilding issue - not an editor thing per se. Just use a different nodebuilder and it will likely solve the problem.

"Sectors" can't exist without linedefs. Linedefs define an area, not a sector. What WadAuthor does is create a predefined series of Linedefs. So ALL maps consist 100 percent of Linedefs - these in turn connect to Sidedefs - and those in turn connect to Sectors. Sectors just define the top/bottom heights and floor/ceiling textures/attributes.

DeePsea can operate in WadAuthor mode by using the predefined tools:) Or you can "draw" lines and automatically splitting them. DCK has similar choices between "predefined tools" and drawing lines. So do some others - although the range of predefined stuff varies.

Advantages of predefined tools:
Easier to make an area - less chance for user error since all points are known.
Disadvantage of predefined tools:
Impossible to easily make irregular shapes - that is, if what you want to end up with is NOT a regular polygon of some type. Very tedious to work with since one has to "go back" and hassle with what was clearly not intended.

Advantage of "line" drawing tools":
Just draw what you want!
Disadvantage:
It's not always possible for an editor to correctly determine the correct "sector" references, so one has to understand the structure of a level. Only then can one correctly change the references.

Some considerations:
Various editors share and overlap features. Usually a different name is used for exactly the same thing. One has to be careful not to "look for" the name used in one editor to see if it exists in another. For example, "Motifs" in WadAuthor are TCF (Texture Configuration Files) in DeePsea, etc.

There are basically 3 distinct editor styles, from minutia detail to gross simplification with no control. Probably the main criteria for why people use some editor is that it's the one they -learned- since it takes time - so very few are well versed enough to make the objective observation you requested. Be careful of both misunderstanding and outdated information.

The best idea is to download DeePsea, WadAuthor, DMAPEdit,DCK and DETH/ZETH, compare how they operate and judge for yourself (just listing the most common ones - others exist, these have been updated for the newer ports in some way - but you can make do with the others via hex values or just not using some newer port features.

[blod]

ReX said:

All map errors you make reference to are because of internal nodebuilder of WadAuthor (it is bugged). So you can overpass the problem easily: in options turn off internal nodebuilding and use some external one like BSP2.3. I recommend to save your map in Wad Author without nodebuilding at all (it spares time a lot) but do it just before map testing.