Uh Oh! Me Lose Brain? Haha. Why For I Laugh?

Eight years on and people still clone the DEU editing method. Why?

Hmm, actually, I haven't tried Why, and now that you say that, I might do so since I've always been a DEU/DETH user, so adapting to Why (if it's worth it) shouldn't be too much trouble for me.

Now you know Why (well, sort of.)

Actually it's "Why I laugh?" not "Why For I Laugh?"

Just a heads up.

Remember this is still very much in development. Any comparisons to other editors is a little premature. :-)

It's comin along great Pate!

The DEU method is cloned because:

- people are used to them and want them

- coding them is simple

- they make it possible to manually adjust every single thing you want to do (Wadauthor haters have an issue with this IIRC)

- I have not been asked to do it some other way

Once I get the basic things working, I'll concentrate on prefabs and stuff, so you don't have to do everything the DEU way. (Did you know that Why has an embedded scripting language that allows you to make your own prefabs very easily? And that you can share them with the world? And that you get fame and restecp when making them? Now you know, so why aren't you coding already?)

Every post in this thread has the word "Why" in it. Except Rellik's. Get with the program Rellik! Click that edit button!

I'm sorry, but whether people are used it or not, the DEU method is simply crap.

Imagine a quake editor based on the same principles, instead of simply dragging out a primitive the user would be required to lay down each vertex in turn, then create each of the shapes edges, then finally group the edges into a single primitive, before setting all the surfaces. Somehow I can't see many people choosing that interface over gtkradiant (BTW, having a second editing pane to allow quick editing of sector heights ala gtkradiant would be very useful IMO).

WadAuthor may not be perfect, but it, like DCK at least realised that most of the time people do not need be concerned with the very basics of map elements. A doom map is basically a 2D line drawing and the ideal editing interface would reflect that, allowing the user to draw point to point line segments, curves and shapes such as rectangles, triangles etc, while the editor handles the tedium of setting up vertices, linedefs and sectors. Yes the user should still be able to edit things on the most basic level if necessary, but to require the user to deal with that detail all the time just seems totally backward.

Please understand, I do appreciate the work you put into why and I do not underestimate the difficulty involved in creating such a piece of software. But I just find it frustrating to think about how much better it could be if it weren't based around an editing approach that I feel is so fundamentally wrong.

What you are describing is exactly what prefabs do. (or what I think prefabs mean, there might be some difference in terms here)

A square prefab coded in Python already comes with the editor (it takes 50 lines of code or about 20 without the comments). Just enter width and height to create a new sector with all references correctly in place.

There will be stair prefabs, triangle prefabs and what-have-you prefabs eventually. These free you from much of the manual work needed with DEU (no more "connect the dots and guess which way the sidedefs go" game).

The reason the program is DEU-like is simple. I hate the microsofty way of hiding stuff from the users. Whenever I run into a "you're not supposed to know about this so I won't let you use it" feature in any program I use, I get irritated to no end. I want the freedom to shoot myself in the foot, dammit!

Well my idea of drawing shapes would be that you click on a rectangle icon (for example) in a toolbar, then bring down the mouse to the editing area, drag out a rectangle shape and the editor then creates a rectangular sector of the area you just selected, taking care of all the things such as placing verticies, overlapping lines, and whatnot automatically. Or you click on a point to point line toolbar button and draw out a series of arbitrary connected lines which are then turned into a sector by the editor. If all that can be implemented via prefabs then great.

As for hiding stuff from the user, I don't think thats really the issue. Neither wadauthor nor DCK prevent you from manipulating individual vertices if you want, they just don't require you do to do so when there's no need. Paint Sho Pro doesn't prevent you from manipulating individual pixels on an image if you want, but you don't draw complex images by setting each pixel individually.

And also, sometimes hiding details can be useful. Why is written in c/c++ and utilises the gimp toolkit, both of these hide some complexity from the programmer, but its a good thing not a bad one. It uses the zennode nodesbuilder, a way of hiding the complexities of the games internal 3d data from the level designer.

Epyo:

Why?

:p

What why? Oh, that Why. Heh. :)

Actually, AFAIK, it's "Wait... why me laugh?" Too bad I've got nothing better to do than nitpick.

Yes, that is what you'll be able to do in future versions. (although the actual method is slightly different)

Also, what you are talking about is not hiding features but dividing problems into smaller, manageable parts. That is a good thing. Dumbing down the part that your program is supposed to do is a bad thing.

WHY?!?!?!?!

'cuz

Hah! Pwned by Hyena.

It's "why i laugh". It's from The Simpsons.