Worldcraft has visgroups.
Ogier has something even better - hierarchies.

But I'm still trying to learn to use it really.

It's a bit unconfigurable (view window order!) and badly documented (since it's mainly a company internal tool) but seems pretty snappy. There are a huge number of direct keyboard shortcuts for everything.

If the Starbreeze guys could get the company to publish a newer version online... ;) 

but in Worldcraft you have four projections: xy, zy and xz and 3D or whatever. When I have looked at shots of other editors I am always put off straight away by the fact that most seem to have 2 projections on the screen at any one time - 3D and one other. Like Radiant or Doom-ed or whatever. Surely this means you have to press a button each time you want to see the map from a different angle. Which is surely gonna slow you down somewhat.

Also does Radiant have a fully functional texture lock tool which you can do ANYTHING with? Yes or no? Is it as good as WC3.3 / Hammer's?

I am honestly curious.

I mean you must have to spend a bit of time with an editor before you could say you know it well enough to pass judgement... 

Different engines point in different directions with the mangle key on info_intermissions BTW, namely JoeQuake/FitzQuake...

(just seeing as we were discussing this the other week....) 

most modern editors have the WC four view style. Radiant has it. 

...it was the purpose built ID editor for Quake2 right? Which version is best for Quake1 mapping, wheres the best place to look?

;-P 

I'm not a fan of the 4 view layout (as evidenced by ToeTags layout). You only ever need 1 2D view at a time and 90% of the time you'll be using top-down anyway. There, I said it. 

I often get annoyed because the four views are too small, but for creating brushes it useful to see a top and a side view at the same time. I guess in other view modes you have a "toggle view" button or something.

Im sure I could get used to other ways, I cant pass judgement till ive tried them! 

traditional four view in GTKRadiant 1.2.11 with the texture theme set to black and green is the way I do it.

I just set the game to Quake 3 Arena, and try to lock my texture handling to Quake acceptable degree handling (I know, the last map was rough, but I was under the lash of time).

I hate 1.5; is the ability to load texture sets really a deprecated feature? I've looked through the literature that came with 1.5 and I've spent many hours working with it and have found nothing to contradict that impression. 

4 views wastes 2 views worth of space. 1 big 'grid view' is all you need to work in, with assistance from the z-checker view and the 3d view. And when you do need a side view , ctrl-tab quickly switches between them once you get used to it. 

4 views wastes 2 views worth of space. 1 big 'grid view' is all you need to work in, with assistance from the z-checker view and the 3d view. And when you do need a side view , ctrl-tab quickly switches between them once you get used to it.

is pretty much the layout I use in Blender and Wings3d, and it works great. I'm more reluctant to do so in Radiant because the view point is not so easy to manipulate the entire scene as it is in a proper 3d ap. 

whenever I use Max or Maya, it's always just a single 3d window, sometimes switched to side views for measurement. 

there are a few disadvantages of course, but here is a shortlist of the reasons I still use Worldcraft over other editors:

*the ability to modify the properties of many entities at once. This also works with faces in texturing mode and you needn't change all the properties to be the same. You can just alter, angle, name, brightness, scale or whatever you like and it will only change those things.
*visgroups. Far more useful than some seem to think. Shits all over regions in radiant but requires a little overhead to set them up. Especially useful if you still use 1.6a :)
*fairly decent texture browser and multiwad support. Find/replace also works nicely and the search is great.
*native Quake support (up to 1.6a, you need simple conversion tools for the valve versions I think, but maybe bengt's latest compilers handle the maps natively - not sure).
*vertex edit mulitple brushes at once and select any number of vertices or edges to manipulate at once.
*rmf files store camera settings (you can create lots of cameras around your level and switch between them whilst editing instead of having to fly around) visgroups and brush groups (like func_groups, but you can group anything, including entities and it's stored in a hierachy).

The valve versions of wc from 3.3 onwards benefit from accelerated 3d, improved mouse controls and near perfect texture locking that works with rotations as well as moves. Not sure if it works on flipped brushes. The texture editing window also has a few new features like fit to face etc.

The only features I miss in WC that radiant has are the 3 point clipper (WC has only a 2 point clipper) and the filters. You can show/hide visgroups in worldcraft, but it's really nice having the ability to hide clips, triggers, lights etc. at the click of a button without needing to set up groups. Oh, and the single window view in radiant is quite nice - I can't look at four views at the same time :) 

ToeTag does most of that stuff as well. It does, I tell you! 

working?

That is the best feature of Worldcraft. In 1.6a it was buggy, but in the 3.3 version it never fails! I almost feel as though I am cheating by using it.

One thing though, supposedly if you set a faces angle to -1 the texture will be a mirror of the original. I could never get this working in WC, but instead would create a brush then spin it round 180 degrees, and the face on the other side would be a mirror.

I cant get my head round the idea of a three-point clipper. How the hell does that work?!?! 

No, my texture locking is somewhat lame. It works well enough but it's not fantastic or anything.

A 3 point clipper is, IMO, something that you rarely need. Imagine a triangle in the 3D viewport that will do what your 2D clipper is doing. 

One thing though, supposedly if you set a faces angle to -1 the texture will be a mirror of the original. I could never get this working in WC, but instead would create a brush then spin it round 180 degrees, and the face on the other side would be a mirror.

To mirror a texture on a face, give it a negative scale. Most of the time this will just mean -1 scale, you can flip it vertically or horizontally, or both...

If you're using a scale other than 1, same deal, just make it negative (e.g. -0.5, -2, whatever). 

I'd love to try it (ToeTag) to be honest. When is the windows port coming? ;) 

 

Ok, so I haven't used the editor, but I still have some feedback, Willem.

I started looking at the docs and I noticed that the camera controls for the 3D view in ToeTag are limited to mouse wheel and mouse drag shenanigans. This is functional of course, but I have to say it's a hell of a lot nicer to just fly around the map like you can in Radiant (and even Hammmer now!)

If you're not aware, this is implemented just like spectator mode in most of the FPS games that you can map for in these editors. That is, keys to move forward/back and strafe, while the mouse just looks around freely. This is simple and intuitive, and just plain makes sense.

Radiant: arrow keys = move, mouse = look around, RMB in 3D viewport to toggle free fly mode on/off.

Hammer: WASD = move, mouse = look around, Z button toggles free fly mode. 

"When is the windows port coming? ;)"

Flying pork and all that. :) 

Fribbles

A spectator cam might be a useful thing to add.

ToeTag's camera controls might sound weird but they mirror every other 3D application available on the Mac so they aren't really all that strange to Mac people. 

ToeTag's controls don't sound that weird at all (well, I don't know where the option button and all that are, but I assume you've chosen sensible keys! :)

They do sound like common controls for 3D apps or world-building tools... that's the problem really. Of course, if you're happy with it, that's the main thing.

I tell you what though, I get really fucked off with Maya at work because of its shitty camera controls. So often I've wished for (proper, sensible, obvious) camera controls like GtkRadiant's in Maya...

Using the mouse and keys to look around is kind of OK if you're working on one object or a limited area, but it's so much better using freefly/spec camera when you want to get around fast or just get a better sense of the space you're creating by looking at it from many angles. 

Of course, this is all irrelevant since I'm not using the editor and I have no means of doing so. Although buying a whole new system just to edit Quake maps doesn't sound nearly as ridiculous as it should... hmmm... :)

In all seriousness though, consider the spec/freefly mode. Try it in Hammer and GtkRadiant if you are able to. It's just so natural and obvious that once you've used it, you wish every 3D app worked that way.

Both Radiant and Hammer still allow you to select brushes and faces while in that free fly mode as well, so it can be used while editing some things and not just for navigating. For instance, the free fly mode combined with the texturing shortcuts in Radiant make it easy to fly around a room and texture heaps of different surfaces quickly. 

Is it possible to have it spawn in at a certain point, so it doesn't block the player before it's supposed to appear? 

or, er, spawn delay?

(I've never used a Vermis, but doesnt Quoth allow you spawn enemies in?)

Or failing that can you teleport the Vermis in the old fashioned way?

(I'd imagine this isnt helpfull as you would surely know what you are doing, and ive missed something...?)