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TrenchBroom - A Modern Quake Editor For Mac OS X
Hi everyone,

after two years of work, I am releasing the first beta of my Quake editor for Mac OS X, TrenchBroom. It is the result of an experiment where I tried to find out how Quake editing would be like if you could do it directly in the engine - that is, in 3D only. Consequently, TrenchBroom has only one big 3D view and an inspector (which you can hide anytime).

Go to kristianduske.com/trenchbroom for a screenshot and downloads.

Some highlights:
- renders even large maps smoothly
- support brush and alias models in the 3D view
- create new entities by drag and drop
- create, move, rotate, and resize brushes with the mouse
- clip brushes using the smart 3 point clipping tool
- create new vertices by splitting edges and faces or merge two neighboring vertices
- move vertices, edge and faces without creating invalid geometry
- texture lock that also works for rotations
- prefabs
- brush groups
- builtin compilation tools (TxQBSP, MH's light version, Willem's vis version)
- autosave, since this is a beta and all

Thanks to Bengt Jardrup, MH and Willem for their compilers and to Gom Jabbar and Vigil and other #tf guys for feedback.

Okay, that's it for now. I hope there are some people who will find some use for this. I'd certainly appreciate it if you reported any bugs, problems or feedbacks to me either here or via email to kristian.duske@gmail.com.
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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! 
I Don't Have A Mac 
But the vertex and clipping tools sound very, very cool! 
Willem 
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? 
Okay, Boo Boo #1 
The version which I had uploaded before didn't render edges at all. Uploaded a fixed version already. 
I've Got My Mac 
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. 
Er, Toll? I Meant "tool". 
 
Yeah, I Would Say It Is 
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. 
Note However 
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. 
Good Direction 
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! 
Sock 
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. 
Willem 
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. 
C++ 
ewwwwwww.. I hope you don't :) 
Can I 
call it Trenchcoat? 
Ozkan 
I would greatly prefer doing it in C, but I think that polymorphism could make adding support for other games easier. 
Spirit 
So you can see when it gets updated? 
 
can't use this on 10.5.8? (intel) 
Necros 
No, it's 10.6 only for now as it uses some features that are available only in 10.6. I'll put 10.5 support on the to-do list. 
 
well, don't do it on my account only if it's a lot of trouble.

my mac isn't really good enough that i'd want to use it as a primary mapping device (it's a 4 year old laptop).
but i was mostly intrigued with the 3d only mapping.

i have a tendancy to maximize the 3d viewport in sikkpin's QE3 a lot these days when working on complex organic stuff so i was interested in seeing that mapping style done 'properly'. 
Necros 
I'll look into it anyway ;-) 
First Time I Wish I Owned A Mac 
Looks good SleepwalkR. 
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