Keep in mind this is just one opinion, but a few months ago I seriously was playing with WebGL. But it would be a ton of time and effort to maintain a WebGL version since Javascript and C derivative languages share little in common.

And then there are the major security issues of WebGL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL , there are sadly several which the statement "The reports provided example exploits capable of cross-domain image theft, graphics memory theft, and client-side denial of service." touches on), which I think may terminally prevent it from being seriously adopted ... and as a result as far as I know only Chrome and FireFox will support it "out-of-the-box". Safari has it disabled, although it is used for advertising within apps on iPhones and such. Internet Explorer will not support it.

I don't think WebGL can ever take off since it is easily possible to make a harmful web page with it if one choose too.

I like the idea of WebGL, but as security issues are a major concern on the internet, I think WebGL has no future.

/One opinion 

That sucks I guess. But surely those security issues will get patched? What alternative is there for 3d on the web? What about performance? MS probably won't support webGL because it's not webDirectX.

It is entirely possible to make an app that runs in the browser but is loaded from client side files. However, I suppose if it's easy enough to make a portable native app, then you might as well just stick with that, since it will give better performance. 

Can access OpenGL directly, and are portable. If I were to make a browser-based editor, I'd check out Java applets. But I'm not ;-) 

 

haven't tried it yet (windows lol), but does the prefab stuff work like instancing?

e.g. change the prefab and this ripples through to all your instances of that prefab already in the scene... 

!!(!) instancing would be insanely awesome. even more so if it worked for anything.

ie: in 3ds max, when you copy any object, you can make a copy or an instance without having to make something specifically as an instance. 

i'm always doing shit like having a million copypasta'd light fixtures then somewhere down the line i decide that I wanna change the design slightly, and having to track down and change every single one again is just about the worst thing ever. 

Proper, Max-style instancing would make this the one and only true editor. Seriously. 

Like many awesome features, QuArK has cloning. And since it also has groups (think folders), it is really super duper awesome. 

Quark is, unfortunately, an abomination. :) I've tried to use it several times and give up within 5 minutes. The interface is absolutely atrocious. 

Very 90's retro UI, could never get my head around it enough to build anything. 

Weird, I would say it is much more standard and intuitive than any of the Radiant editors for example. Or any other Quake editor I ever saw. 

If you say so. My brain recoils at the mere sight of the Quark interface. 

And mine vomits tarbaby sauce if I see a Radiant. 

Yeah, you're different, I get it. Most other people feel the opposite way. Quark is bizarre, at best. 

Yeah, it's weird. I would like to see some generic Windows user sat infront of Radiant or QuArK and see which one they are able to use immediately. 

Quark is not quite the worst Quake editor ever made - that award has to go to the commercial product "DeathMatch Maker". Features:

1) the grid is decimal. I'm not joking. You simply cannot make geometry to the power-of-2 grid, only units of 10, 20 etc.
2) No graphical texture browser, just a list of texture names. 

Interesting side note ... I gave a talk on level design at a local business and afterwards, one of the guys who came up to ask me questions was the writer of DeathMatch Maker. He seemed totally normal too... 

Big part of why Trenchboom looks interesting to me is because it has the modern styled 'all in one 3d window' approach as opposed to multiple fiddly panes 90's set up. 

I'll really have to try it out and see. I like 2D viewports but that might just be because I'm so used to them. But I use them in UnrealEd, 3D Studio Max, etc. So ... I feel they must be useful. :)

Would like to play with it though since it's not just REMOVING the 2D viewports but rather it was designed to not need them. 

That's a very interesting idea that I hadn't thought of yet. I don't see why this wouldn't work. I guess the greatest problem is that it has to survive map save / load cycles and it'll be hard to stuff the additional information of what was instanced from what into the map file.

I'll keep it in mind. 

You could create a second file that goes with the original map file that includes the extra instances. Personally I would prefer if you could use a standard prefab format like ASE for example. Only downside to a prefab format is the compiler would need to understand them as well. 

sleepwalkr:

it's worth mentioning that aguirre's qbsp compilers (really, the only qbsp compilers worth using) support the -group switch which turns anything in a func_group into normal brushes at compile time, so you could maybe use func_groups and attach additional info with comments 

There's the bsp2 compilers, based off AguirRe's but supporting the extended formats.

Maybe additional data could even be incorporated inside for things like instancing. 

Ideally, and this might be pipe dreaming, but if you could do what valve does with their func_instance entities ... that would be fucking AMAZING.

Basically, you build your instance in it's own MAP file at the world origin. Then in your real map you add a func_instance entity and tell it which filename to reference. It draws it in the world in a different color and you can duplicate it as many times as you want to.

To edit the instance, you just double click it and it opens up that file in Hammer. Save your changes, flip back to your level, and all of the instances have been updated.

At compile time, Hammer copies in one copy of that file for each instance in the map. Done! Then the tools don't have to change and everything is clean.