Given that the grid is god when it comes to creating usable Quake maps, this looks like an interesting approach. I wish I had a working Mac to try it out! 

But the vertex and clipping tools sound very, very cool! 

In this editor, the grid is projected onto each surface, so you're not working without a grid at all. The clipping tool even draws a virtual grid that represents the plane on which you can position the clipping points. I find that the projected grid actually works well in most situations. Of course, a mapper needs to relearn some techniques in order to use this editor, because some things are just different.

What's wrong with your Mac then? 

The version which I had uploaded before didn't render edges at all. Uploaded a fixed version already. 

is this a good toll to use if you're deciding to start out mapping, or would you say 'not really'?

i have never tried making maps, so i am completely in the dark, i admit. 

 

At least you'll get some documentation with it and it's fairly modern. Note that the documentation does not contain a general introduction into Quake mapping, so you'll still have to learn a lot. But I think you already have noticed that there is some helpful folk on this board. 

that this is still a beta. It's fairly stable, but there are crashes, esp. when editing vertices (still trying to get a good test case for that). That's why it autosaves your maps frequently. 

Does the editor have a feature to align objects to a surface? like a drop down function? So you can quickly add objects and then snap them to a floor/wall surface without having to guess or leave stuff floating?

The cryengine tools only had a 3d window and it was an awesome experience. Nowadays I rarely use the 2d grid when creating stuff. When I see people using 3 x 2d grid windows for their mapping I cringe and think old cad tools! This is certainly a good step forward in editing tools.

I don't suppose this tool would ever work with Q3? 

Would love to see some movies of this in action! :)

What's wrong with your Mac then?

It got old. And died. Boo! 

Since it's all 1 window and stuff - I wonder if this would work on the iPad. Because that would be killer. :) Working on Quake maps while on the train and what-not... 

Oh, and the measurement things you're displaying are fucking awesome! 

The editor aligns entities to the surface under the mouse if you drag an entity from the entity browser, yes. It doesn't do this for other objects (yet) because I'm still uncertain as to how I can do this properly. But it's on the feature list.

Regarding Quake 3, it depends. I am certainly going to keep it open for extensions to other games, but since I don't map for Quake 3 myself, I'd have to work closely with someone who is familiar with Quake 3. This will not happen in the near future though. I plan to do a complete rewrite of the internals in C++ in order to port it to other platforms once the current code is stable and has all necessary features. Once that's done, multi-game support is surely an option. 

Sorry about the Mac. So I take it you switched to Windows then? I guess that makes sense for a gamer / designer such as you.

In fact, an iPad version has surely crossed my mind. I have tried to keep memory requirements low for the editor, and once I start redoing it in C or C++, it will be even less hungry. The thing I still see as problematic is that you obscure the stuff you want to edit with your finger as soon as you start editing it. I am not sure how to solve this properly, but yeah, it would surely be interesting to port TrenchBroom to the iPad just to see how it turns out.

On the other hand, I am writing a PhD and I have a family, so this is not going to happen soon ;-) 

I have never been so jealous of Mac owners before (or jealous of Mac owners at all until now.) 

please please do not name the download TrenchBroom-latest.zip but use a version number of something. 

ewwwwwww.. I hope you don't :) 

call it Trenchcoat?