Slade 3 Feedback / Questions [Map Building]

First off, Slade 3 is a very cool editing program and seems to be very similar and just as good as GZ Doom Builder 2. So, I have gained some knowledge to work with Slade, although some of the tutorials are using (GZ)DB 2.

Either way, Mac compatibility was the deal breaker for me. Now I don’t have to be dependent on a virtual machine to run GZDB 2, since I can’t afford to allocate 20 GB of space on my MacBook Air just to run Windows for a single program.

Now, on to the small issues I’ve come across so far.

1) I’d like to reconfigure the hotkey for Redo, where is this located in the preferences? CMD + SHIFT + Z is standard for most other editing programs on Mac, but here it is CMD + Y which is a bit awkward (at least to me). I’d rather not get used to this, if possible.

2) For now, I’d also like to turn off the automatic selection. Meaning, for instance when I select a line and then another line/sector/thing, the previous will unselect. And rather have a hotkey for multi-selection like SHIFT + Click (once again, which is another example of ”Mac-standard” for similar behavior). Countless times I’ve messed things up because of this, lol.

3) Speaking of SHIFT + Click, currently this hotkey selects a whole sector (or something like that) which btw is a great feature. But this is also one of those inputs I’m unable to locate in the preferences, am I missing something?

4) What is the most intuitive way to select a room including ALL things in one go? For instance, if I want a certain area of the map to be located at another place? As it is now, I first have to move the sector and THEN all monster and items etc with the additional fine-tuning to get it right as it was before.

5) Do Slade have a ”paste special” function like Doom Builder?

I guess that's all I have in mind, for now..

As a final note, I hope this program is still being developed. Thumbs up!

1. Currently the undo/redo shortcuts aren't configurable, I can probably change this though.

2. I guess I could add an option for this somewhere.

3. Do you mean in 3d mode? Currently all left/right click shortcuts are not configurable.

4. Currently there isn't any way to do this all in one go as the editing modes are separate.

5. What does this do in DB? Does it just copy+paste the line special (and args for hexen/udmf)?

Thank you!

1. Great!

2. That would be very handy indeed. But although it could be turned off, the feature itself is still important of course. Meaning, it needs it could be assigned to a hotkey instead. For instance, in Finder-browser "Non-Consecutive" file selections is CMD + Click.

3. Yes, I believe this "Select all correlated lines which are un-assigned" feature is only for the 3D mode afaik. When I think of it, SHIFT + Click do makes sense somewhat, since this is the command for selecting multiple files in the Finder browser which kind of the same.

4. I understand.

5. Not sure how current version is, but this is the options from a video uploaded in 2009:
http://sv.tinypic.com/r/33mlphd/9

I'm not sure if I'd consider all those features the most needed right now, but could perhaps be useful sometimes.

Let me instead ask this: What is the most intuitive way to copy and paste a door? Sometimes when I try there are missing textures, and/or properties. I’m new to this though, so I’m pretty sure I’m just doing it wrong.


I have some further questions:


6. Removing lines/sectors/things with CMD + X doesn’t work although ”Cut” with this hotkey shows in preferences. Backspace seems to work though, but I find CMD + X more efficient.

7. Is there any way to make the opened tabs in menus to remain open, once opened?

8. Why isn’t the Textures in tabbed content, like it is with Things? So, right now it’s a bit overwhelming to deal with, especially for a beginner.

9. Speaking of texture browsing, the filter does help a bit but it seems only to display textures from the first letter. For instance when I want to display all doors upon browsing, one would guess by simply entering ”door” would display not only ”door1” but also ”bigdoor1”, but the latter doesn’t show.

10. Rotate sector doesn’t work for me, unless I use the bottom menu by selecting the angle in question, click PREVIEW and then the green sign. (Yes, all of that lol).

11. Deleting a sector = red lines. What does that mean? I’m also apparently not able to remove these.

Btw, not sure if this Github page is active or not, but I posted a bug there: https://github.com/sirjuddington/SLADE/issues/620

If someone would come across similar problems in the future I'll try to update as I'm getting answers from other sources.

UPDATE --- 2016-12-18:
5. Copy & paste door by selecting all the related lines, and then copy & paste related sector. That's a bit tedious, so I'm still open for other suggestions.
8: Not a big problem anymore, thanks to solution to number 9.
9: Filter all textures containing a word with (*), "*door".
11. Apparently I just misunderstood what sector means.
7. Is not that extremely important, so..
5, 6 & 10 are the remaining questions for now.

UPDATE --- 2016-12-18:
10. I gave it another shot and after som fiddle I finally got it to work. :) I apparently missed the small orange squares in each corner, which displays once CMD is pressed. IMO not very obvious and a bit sketchy (the orange color is the same as selection etc), but once you know it's all fine.
5 & 6 remains.