Ok, I was lazy and didn't bother to read previous comments.
Only the last question remains: Is there any way to find which keys a specific entity has? Or should I check other editors for reference?

Thanks and keep on with the work :) 

Right now, this information is not displayed in TB. I plan to greatly improve entity editing support, but it will take a while. For now, you can open the Quake.fgd file and look at it. 

It also brings about a decent productivity boost.

Firstly, the answer to the question of whether or not to translate an object created by using the standard duplicate operation is quite obvious. You should always move it away from the original object. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand why people want it to remain in place for faster re-positioning, but I don't think this is the answer - the danger of leaving objects on top of each other is too high. Yes, if you're paying attention you're fine, but there's always a chance that you'll hit duplicate accidentally (or repeatedly), or that you'll get distracted for a while and forget you've cloned the object when you return. You are then left with unwanted brushes which you will not be aware of - as far as I can tell, brushes in TrenchBroom don't z-fight if they are placed on top of each other either (even if they have different textures applied). This makes it impossible to know there's a problem if you're not looking for it.

Mr Fribbles, I don't want to hear problems, I want to hear solutions!

OK, here's the answer (or a suggestion, at any rate): an additional set of commands (and corresponding shortcuts) to duplicate and offset the selected object(s) in one go. I would suggest the hotkey set listed below (opinion alert, I'd also remap some of the current ones!)

LEFTARROW: move object left
RIGHTARROW: move object right
UPARROW: move object forward
DOWNARROW: move object back

CTRL+LEFTARROW: rotate object left
CTRL+RIGHTARROW: rotate object right
CTRL+UPARROW: move object up
CTRL+DOWNARROW: move object down

CTRL+SHIFT+LEFTARROW: duplicate object and move the clone left
CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHTARROW: duplicate object and move the clone right
CTRL+SHIFT+UPARROW: duplicate object and move the clone up
CTRL+SHIFT+DOWNARROW: duplicate object and move the clone down

Naturally you'd offset the object by the current grid amount (if snap to grid is on). If grid snap was off, pick your poison (a sensible default distance, or perhaps something clever such as offsetting the object by its width in the chosen direction!) 

Maybe the entire concept is not so good. Maybe it would be better to always duplicate objects just by dragging them, e.g. Ctrl+Drag will create a clone and move that.

OTOH, I wanted to use Ctrl+Drag to select multiple objects in a future version. But that could still be achieved if the drag starts with an unselected object. If it starts with a selected object, the selected objects would be cloned. 

I could add keyboard shortcuts as well, of course. 

(Because I done fucked up!)

LEFTARROW: move object left
RIGHTARROW: move object right
UPARROW: move object forward
DOWNARROW: move object back

CTRL+LEFTARROW: rotate object left
CTRL+RIGHTARROW: rotate object right
CTRL+UPARROW: move object up
CTRL+DOWNARROW: move object down

SHIFT+LEFTARROW: duplicate object and move the clone left
SHIFT+RIGHTARROW: duplicate object and move the clone right
SHIFT+UPARROW: duplicate object and move the clone forward
SHIFT+DOWNARROW: duplicate object and move the clone back

CTRL+SHIFT+LEFTARROW: duplicate object and rotate clone left
CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHTTARROW: duplicate object and rotate clone right
CTRL+SHIFT+UPARROW: duplicate object and move the clone up
CTRL+SHIFT+DOWNARROW: duplicate object and move the clone down

Combine these with well chosen grid settings and you will be an unstoppable Quake editing beast of righteous fury. 

have "duplicate offset" in the options menu

That way, (most i think?) people can set this as (0,0,0), whilst others who prefer it to be offset can give it a different value. 

Maybe the entire concept is not so good. Maybe it would be better to always duplicate objects just by dragging them, e.g. Ctrl+Drag will create a clone and move that.

OTOH, I wanted to use Ctrl+Drag to select multiple objects in a future version. But that could still be achieved if the drag starts with an unselected object. If it starts with a selected object, the selected objects would be cloned.


this sounds like an even better idea. 

Well I read the 'free for beer' part, and thought 'Well, I can't buy him a beer directly - where do I donate?!'. And I actually went looking for the Paypal donate button. But there was none. So....

If I thought of it, others must have (surely :)

Maybe there'll be a few beers in it for you if you give us the means to buy you one!

You see I tried the editor, and I was so impressed and excited that it's a live project, I thought it WAS worth a beer. 

Fribbles, I think your proposal will interfere with other actions which are done using the arrow keys. Also I don't like the clone + rotate options because it can create the same problem as duplicate in place if the brush is symmetric. Also I'm not sure how often it's necessary to clone + rotate in place. And it's not much more work to clone-drag, then rotate. 

Is always welcome, and if any of you guys is ever in Berlin (or I am near your place), you can buy me as many beers as you like (and I can drink). 

I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to thank you for making this, porting it over and continuing to support it!

This editor is full of win. I'm waiting till I have more time to fully dive into it (ok, full disclosure, I also really need the free fly mode before I can really get into it - I'm just too accustomed to it because of Radiant and my editor at work).

There's a lot to like here though! Quite frankly I'm amazed at how slick and easy to use this is. Top shelf! 

Yeah, the last commands are just fruity bonus ones (although I do use the dupe + moveup/down a fair bit at work in our editor). I understand that some of what I proposed differs from or conflicts with the current paradigm.

Another limitation/difference you will note is that I favour moving the objects up/down using CTRL+UP/DOWNARROW which conflicts with the rotation commands in TrenchBroom. My reasoning is that moving up and down is a much more common activity than rotating up/down.

Of course, if the actions are there and can be remapped by the user, everybody wins. 

Thanks, I'm happy to hear that you like it. Flythrough mode will happen in 1.1, due in a couple of weeks.

And you will be able to customize the keyboard in 1.1, too, so there's no point in discussing the current selection of keyboard shortcuts ;-). 

I'll keep my stupid suggestions to myself then. (Oh yeah you wish!) Here's a few more random thoughts and what have you.

Copy/paste transform
Useful for quickly repositioning objects or replacing stuff. "I want that thing over here." As you expect by now I offer key combo suggestions!

CTRL+SHIFT+C = copy transform of currently selected object
CTRL+SHIFT+V = paste selected object to saved transform

Gizmos and widgets
Stick to your guns and find the right solution for TrenchBroom. Let's be real and admit that certain things (such as small movement manipulators and fully mouse driven camera controls tee hee) can waste time and reduce productivity.

Mouse wheel to resize stuff
Just a suggestion. Get rid of the mouse wheel to zoom the view, and make it resize the brush according to the currently selected face. For example, select a face and mouse wheel up/down would effectively move that face positive/negative along its normal or the closest axis, whatever. Wheeeee! (The current method is fine, just for fun and freestyling.)

Texture flip request
Please make the flip operations work for the currently selected face (that is, change the scale to -1 (or negative<current value>) horizontally or vertically, whichever was chosen. Toggle it back to positive if it was already negative. Do this and you may genuinely never need to use the texture dialogue to enter manual offsets which would elicit a loud and hearty FUCK YES from everyone who ever used a level editor. 

Ok, two more things and then I'll shut up for the night.

Selecting objects
Area select would be welcome of course, but please additionally consider paint select (both for brushes and faces) ala GtkR because it's just so fucking good.

Toggle brush outlines
Apologies if this has been mentioned (or can already be changed), but is there a way to toggle the white brush outlines? It's useful and I'd prefer to have it on most of the time, but sometimes I'd like to be able to turn it off to get a better idea of how things will look in game (or to see how well certain faces/textures sit with each other at the very edge, without the visual distraction). 

In terms of the duplicate argument I guess this is one time where I wouldn't be too opposed to a checkbox in the preferences:

[ ] Offset duplicates?

Then it either offsets based on your grid settings or it doesn't.

There seem to be strong opinions on each side of that one. 

You guys have to try the texture editing in Quark some day, because it rocks.

I also really miss the tree view of brushes and entities from it. It makes organising a map, selectively hiding or disabling parts, copy'n'pasting, mass changing things so easy. 

To appease rebb's brilliance and my idiocy it turns out I wasn't using his compiling tools at all, which is why it wasn't compiling func_groups properly. Sorry Rebb! 

Duplication:

Maybe make the duplicated content selected and "moving" when moving the mouse. Leftclick places where it is shown, rightclick places it in the original location.

Or paste it in place if the mouse cursor was on the selection. Otherwise place it at the mouse cursor. 

Copy/paste transform
Can you explain this a bit more? I don't quite understand what you mean.

Mouse wheel resize
I like the current control scheme and I think that the current way of resizing brushes is better (allows you to also change back faces).

Texture flip
That sounds useful - will implement this.

Selecting objects
If by paint select you mean "select everything touched by the mouse while holding Ctrl", then that's already on my todo list.

Toggle brush outlines
You can already do this in the view tab (Toggle "Render Edges"). 

You can switch these off, click "view" on the right and deselect "render edges" 

Fribbles

There's a checkbox on the "View" tab for the brush outlines. 

I think if I get rid of the Duplicate command altogether and just let people use Ctrl+Drag to duplicate, that would elegantly resolve this discussion. 

Oh lawd...