What is missing from Rad/GTK/D3Rad/Q4Rad, for you...?

[obsidian]

Well, the Doom3 and Quake4 editors then, both based off of Radiant, both have realtime lighting AND shadow previews. Regardless, it's possible so you should be able to do it. I mean, you're going to have to add it anyway for your custom engine, so might as well do it for GtkRadiant.

[o'dium]

Well, D3/Q4Rad use the built in rendering engine, thats why they work that way. Its not so simple to just "add it" to the editor. Plus, we are going with Radiant over GTK simply because GTK is REALLY messy Jesus, we nearly died when we saw the junk inside it...

EDIT: Also its already coded for our engine, lol Has been for ages, complete with shadow maps so the shadows are soft, not hard. Just fixing up real time ambient occlusion and rim lighting now...

[^misantropia^]

Plus, we are going with Radiant over GTK simply because GTK is REALLY messy Jesus, we nearly died when we saw the junk inside it...

O'dium has a point here. GTKRadiant's source really is quite crappy, a textbook example of enthusiastic but not overly competent people tackling a project too large and complex for their skill set.

[o'dium]

I think Berserk said something like 300meg worth of source files or something stupid, with loads of bloated stuff tacked on and it wouldn't even build for the first day of messing

Would be awesome if somebody really cleaned it up.

As for me, GTK has never really been... Amazing. Dont shout at me, I've just always liked Rad over GTK, simply because of the way it works, looks etc.

[Kat]

Well, the Doom3 and Quake4 editors then, both based off of Radiant, both have realtime lighting AND shadow previews. Regardless, it's possible so you should be able to do it. I mean, you're going to have to add it anyway for your custom engine, so might as well do it for GtkRadiant.

That's what I couldn't figure out... GTK has been wanting for this sort of capability for a long time and this really seems odd as it appears to me to be a lot of tailored effort that will be of no use outside of overdose for the sake of possibly overambitious expectations regarding just how many people/popular it will be to mod for

Anyway, it sounds like you've already got you tree well underway, just seems such a waste of resources really.

[o'dium]

If anybody could tell me "how" to get real time lighting AND shadows working, in either rad or GTK that is NOT D3Rad, Q4Rad or Dark Editor, please do, it will save us head aches.

[Silicone_Milk]

Well... I don't know much about rendering for next-gen type of games but if the lighting isn't altered between the editor and ingame (like lightmaps that get compiled) I would just hook directly to the Overdose light rendering functions and call them up from inside Radiant to calculate the realtime lighting and shadows.

Else you could hack together a quick-e-renderer that projects shadow volumes from light entities origins since the geometry's there and, although the light wont look exactly like it would ingame you'd at least have an idea of what it will turn out to look like.

[jal_]

I always hated the way radiants have the selection clicks. Clicking shouldn't create a brush but select whatever you click and deselect whatever you have selected. Something as simple as that would improve radiants inmensely for me. A little better texture placement tools would be nice too, but the most important is the selection clicking to work like any other program in the world

[Fjoggs]

So how would you create a brush then? Shift+click?

Can't see how it would make you faster.

[o'dium]

Yeah, its kinda like saying "Mouse 1 shouldn't fire, but should jump". I mean yeah if its easier for you great, but that seems like it would go against what a lot of people would seem normal, and do nothing but annoy you

[Scourge]

I always hated the way radiants have the selection clicks. Clicking shouldn't create a brush but select whatever you click and deselect whatever you have selected. Something as simple as that would improve radiants inmensely for me. A little better texture placement tools would be nice too, but the most important is the selection clicking to work like any other program in the world

I've always liked the way just clicking on the screen creates a brush. Quick and dirty. It's especially helpful to me if I already have a decent idea of what I'm going for atm. Personal preference which goes back to the customizable bind cfg.

[urgrund777]

What I found missing was the idea of instancing... not low level stream or vertex instancing, but a highlevel editor instancing.

For example lights... already mention above, but make it so you only need to select one of the instances to cascade values of all other instances. In games like D3/Q4 where you can have tech levels with hundreds of little pilot lights in in hallways, the ability to instance lights would be excellent! For some projects, we light inside of 3dsMax which supports this... it's a life saver!

Also, instancing 'groups' of brushes. This may be a little complex, considering you'd want custom rotations on some. ...but say you've made a hallway, well you might use it 30 times in a decent sized level. Pain in the ass if all of a sudden you need it 32units wider! So, being able to instance that as well would be excellent... and again, when we're constructing the bulk of a level in 3dsMax, we instance large construction pieces, such as hallways.

[a13n]

Good point, urgrund777.
I''ve been really reluctant to use radiant since I realized what you just mentioned above.

[o'dium]

You can already do that urgrund777. At least I can. If I select all the lights I want, I can change anything to do with that light, scale, colour, material etc, and see them ALL update in real time to the changes...?

As for brushes, its a bit more difficult because brushes are... Well brushes. Maybe if you makea simple caulk hull with mesh models using inline for the actual detail you could then stretch them easier, I dunno...?

[Kaz]

It'd be like if you have light1 as a collection of brushes, and you have 4 other instances of it around. Instead of selecting ALL of them you just change one and the others are updated automatically because they're Instances not Copies.

[o'dium]

I see... but that means grouping them together, and then selecing the one. Group naming/selections and hide/show options are already available.

[g0th-]

I don't think groups are supported for entities

[Fjoggs]

They're not, seeing how groups are considered entites in the editor.

[seremtan]

I always admired Radiant's simple elegance and hated the Unreal editor's rather complicated bloat.

unrealed has its deficiencies but bloat isn't one of them. its major drawback is unfriendliness toward brush editing

also, for rad, a proper model browser, assuming someone hasn't already mentioned that

[seremtan]

They're not, seeing how groups are considered entites in the editor.

then this is another thing that needs improving. hammer can group entities, so there's no reason why rad shouldn't too

[obsidian]

Grouping entities would probably require modifying how the .map format works, which is another can of worms. I suppose an extra file could be used to keep track of such things, but that would hardly be elegant.

[fKd]

the advantage of unreal ed is not having to fuck around with chalking. sure saves a lot of time. i have to admit.. i like the subtractive method of building

[a13n]

the advantage of unreal ed is not having to fuck around with chalking. sure saves a lot of time. i have to admit.. i like the subtractive method of building

So do you actually do the same in radiant by placing one gigantic giant brush at first?

[fKd]

no

[Kat]

Grouping entities would probably require modifying how the .map format works, which is another can of worms.....

True... feature requests have to be made mindful of the way the underlying tech works, something which is often overlooked in the 'enthusiasm' at finding someone willing to do some work on the editor