BSP is pretty nice now that I've spent a few hours with it. I really like having multiple window set ups at my finger tips - I've set one up for editing, one for texturing, etc. Slick.

The one thing I don't like is that I don't see a way to hide/show brushes/entities without using groups. That will slow me down once a level gets to be a reasonable size. 

I made a floor that disappears with a trigger_counter>killtarget>floor.
It works fine, but the bodies and items keep hanging in mid air.

Oh, and the floor was a func_wall, I don't know if that's relevant.

Any suggestions ? 

That's the standard behavior when killtargeting funcs. If possible, turn it into a door that moves down quickly (and quietly), with a lip value that makes it move a few units inside the lower floor. 

Why can't it ever be easy ? ;) 

I had to make the door move to the side, I can't make it go down. It works fine, only now all the bodies are pressed up to the wall where the door was last.

I don't think I can win this one ... 

like Negke says, the corpses will follow wherever the door goes.

I'm guessing it can't go down because you've got stuff there?

If there's items then just move them up a floor, if it's monster you can try spawning them in after the floor falls away. 

Or prevent the monsters from walking onto the door, e.g. by placing 'soft' monsterjump triggers around it. 

So IS there a way to hide/show individual brushes/entities in BSP without using a temp group? There has to be, right? 

 

Thanks again, some good suggestions.
But I don't know, maybe I'm bitching too much.
It looks a little bit silly, but it doesn't interfere with gameplay so, I don't know, maybe I'll just keep it like it is now.


Yes, there is stuff underneath, I could try the spawning thing.
The monsters need to be on the door too, it's sort of a battle ground with several layers. 

"OR MOVE THE WORLD AROUND THE ROOM!"

Haha, that would be cool !
I don't know if the old engine could take that much travel at one time though !
Have you ever done something like that ?
If so, please tell me where. 

In a Q2 Lazarus map. In it you can make a mirror plane, but the mirror will only reflect entities (monsters etc) not brushwork. So behind / inside the mirror you have to make a mirror image of your level to create the illusion.

Copying an idea from one of the test maps I made it so the player could break the mirror, at which point the fake world (func_wall) was deleted and the real room behind filled with enemies.

I tried a The Cube type thing once as well.

Neither got further than failed mod / test map.

I think Negke had a speedmap with rising water? 

And moved the world, because id1 water can't move. 

OR MOVE THE WORLD AROUND THE PLAYER!

instead of teleporters..,
player not fixed, we can't do that yet. 

You can hide all entites - it's the icon below the Grid menu in the standard set up 'ent' with a line through it.

Next to that is the hide world button.

But, use Groups they will speed up your workflow once you get used to it.
For instance, here is a list of things that I would put in a Group:-

terrain lumps
lights
monsters
lava where there is a lot of different chunks of it
major building elements such as above ground/below ground; or dungeon/library

In fact I Group anything that I want to work on until it is finished and then move onto the next area and switch off the finished area.

I think the key to using Groups is that you can set them to hide what would otherwise be distracting brushwork in dense areas of the map.

Imagine working on this without Groups:
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7963/fmbnearlydone.jpg

Compared to:
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1206/fmbsameviewgroup.jpg

Entities off and just the Group I am working on.

Groups, they're brilliant! 

Oh, I'm on board with the group train, believe me. That was an immediate win for me.

I was just hoping for a quick, "I want to work on these 3 brushes for a second". In ToeTag I had a thing where I could select them and with a keypress hide everything else.

It's also nice to be able to say, "This brush is right in the way of what I want to see." There's no way of clicking it and just hiding it quickly from what I can tell.

I guess I'll have to get ninja with the groups and deal with it. :) 

I have to use this utility:

http://www.quaddicted.com/tools/setgamma11.zip

With a number higher than 1 to not go blind with the 3d window. 

That's something I don't like in BSP. It has the worst texture browser I've ever used. It's worse than Worldcraft's and that's saying something. :) 

What kind of things would you do to the browser to improve it? 

At the very least, display the textures in some sort of size relative way. Let a 128x128 wall be 4 times larger than a 32x32 floor piece. I really dislike how they all get crammed into the same size box.

That alone would make it more useful for me. 

QuArK refreshes the textures each time you enter the texture browser. So if you have a big wad you will have to wait many seconds and then scroll down to your texture. Idiotic. 

OK, haha, so it COULD be worse... 

Mike

BSP questions.

1) Is there a way to manipulate verts in the 3D view? Like, drag them?

2) Barring that, is there a way to select a specific vertex and then go drag it in the 2D viewports? It's tough to do terrain with triangular brushes sometimes with the way I perceive this editor working. 

sorry

you can select in 3D and then move in 2D. Very useful.

Heh - I never hide anything when mapping. Probably slows me down a lot. I just dont like the idea of having to be cautious about building into an area which already has brushes there because you couldnt see them.

You should see the 2D views from the side of my current map when zoomed out. White lines, black background, just like a big white blob.
I have to select things just to see where they are :O because when selected they show as red!

Im pretty sure that if I was working with a team of people that they would complain about it!