Sledge (Hammer Alternative) Alpha Build

DiscoStu

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-13 06:21:35 UTC Post #318240

That definitely sounds like a sensible compromise.

I'm good with or without it, I've been mapping all these years without it just fine, so pretty much anything is an improvement.

Still just out of curiosity, I'm wondering:

1. Doesn't the renderer already perform real-time visibility calculations for all the brushes/entities in the 3D view?

2. Considering the above, is the following idea too crazy?

Suppose you can have two frame buffers, one of them with the brushes/entities and another one with just the 6 faces of a skybox. It sounds possible that as you render the final frame, you replace the sky textures in the first buffer with what's rendered in the second buffer. Or, in other words, layering the first buffer onto the second, with the sky textures being transparent. The final effect being the skybox being painted "into" the sky brushes and still having a void area.

The skybox itself is pretty simple, after all it doesn't require position calculations, just camera rotation and maybe field of view.

This is entirely theoretical and based on my extremely limited and outdated knowledge of graphics rendering, so I'm prepared to see this post bashed when I return

DiscoStu

Alberto309

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-13 09:53:52 UTC Post #318241

It seems more sensible to offer the void-replacing method as a toggle (maybe it can hide the sky brush group at the same time?) and let the user turn it on and off whenever they want.

THIS!

Like a "Hide Null Texture" option? But for SKY texture at the same time with the SKY-Void replacement of course. It would be really useful (imho).

What about detailed textures, PB? Could it be possible?

Alberto309weapon_spaghetti

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-14 09:57:50 UTC Post #318275

@Stu: That all sounds quite reasonable and I hadn't even thought of that method, however, it has a few issues when it comes to implementing that in Sledge:

When in the void area, the skybox bits will look like a chunk of sky floating in the void, which would look weird
It won't work in the older renderers, and I want to keep the rendering looking as similar as possible on all GPUs
Framebuffers weren't introduced until OpenGL 3.0, so I would need to create a new renderer for GL3
Framebuffers are hard and I suck at graphics programming >_>

@Alberto, detail textures: no, probably not. There aren't any plans to render animated or random tiling textures, either. These things require a lot of effort and the benefit is quite low.

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Rimrook

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-14 13:39:38 UTC Post #318276

Hey quick question: Are certain textures like AAATRIGGER and stuff going to be rendered translucent like in source, but for goldsource?

I just thought of a feature that you add the texture name to a list and it renders translucent. Say if I made a custom water texture, I could add its name to this list and then I can work with see-through water, or glass, or whatever textures.

The whole Hide Null thing reminded me of that.

RimrookSince 2003

DiscoStu

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-14 20:33:14 UTC Post #318279

- When in the void area, the skybox bits will look like a chunk of sky floating in the void, which would look weird

It is exactly what I imagined, because despite looking odd if the map is incomplete, you'd see skybox where skybox would show in-game. An option for it to look slightly less weird and make a little more sense would be drawing as wireframe the visible edges of the brush. The fun of this is that you (as a mapper) could put sky textures in places where there isn't necessarily void on the other side (there are maps where you see sky but there is more map behind it) and still see an approximation of what it would look like in-game.

Of course, your other reasons make your position solid enough.

Now I'm wondering, if you hadn't thought of what I said, what was your idea on how to replace the void with a skybox? I can't imagine it being much different.

DiscoStu

Tetsu0

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-19 11:55:11 UTC Post #318313

Bug Report:
When the select tool is active and you're navigating the 3D view by holding spacebar, left-clicking in the 3D view will change your active selection.

The Navigation part works perfectly! But i keep losing my active selections while panning around trying to select more stuff

Proposed solution: Disable selection changes while spacebar is pressed in the 3D view? Or however that works.

Keep up the awesome work though, PB. I'm loving sledge

Tetsu0Positive Chaos

Archie

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-19 14:13:39 UTC Post #318314

Good catch, that's an important one.

ArchieGoodbye Moonmen

Tetsu0

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-20 18:54:27 UTC Post #318316

I'm also getting a lot of Face errors with wedges.
No matter if i clip or VM a cube into a wedge, Sledge is reporting 2 Backwards faces and 3 concave faces on one brush. It doesn't seem like the autojoin or join button is doing anything.

Also

If you group a single brush with a group of other brushes, Sledge will throw an infinite amount of error windows

It's like solitaire only not as fun!
It's pretty repeatable:
To recreate, create three brushes. Group two, (ctrl+g) clear your selection, then select the group of 2 and the solitary brush and group again (ctrl G). You will get an error that you can dismiss, but if you try to select the nested group, the errors fly pretty quickly.
The only way out is to end the process tree from task manager.

Also Also

Texture Scaling does not work when applied to an entire brush with varying texture scales.
I.E. A cube has 5 faces with a texture scale of 1/1 (x/y) and 1 face with a texture scale of 2/2. If the whole cube is selected, and a texture scale is applied, nothing will happen.

Also Also Also

I have posted these in GitHub.

Tetsu0Positive Chaos

Archie

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-22 20:36:48 UTC Post #318364

can someone PLEASE make a program that moves all vertices to the nearest grid point.

Oli just posted this in the WIP thread. It'd be cool if there was a button that performed the same operation as ctrl+B does in Hammer, except instead of just to one object, it analyses all the selected brushwork in the map and snaps vertices to the nearest grid position on an individual vertex level. If you selected all brushes at once in Hammer and presed ctrl+B it'd simply align one edge of the whole to the grid and nudge the other brushes out of place which isn't useful at all.

ArchieGoodbye Moonmen

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 00:53:53 UTC Post #318366

How would something like that work when snapping the vertices to the grid will create non-planar vertices? Sledge shouldn't have the issue with off-grid vertices, unless it's opening a VMF that has been saved by Source Hammer.

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

DiscoStu

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 08:10:19 UTC Post #318371

Because... do off-grid vertices work fine in-game in Goldsource?

DiscoStu

xawari

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 09:56:46 UTC Post #318373

They do.

xawari

Captain Terror

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 17:53:49 UTC Post #318374

Yeah Ctrl+B itself is pretty pointless, at least i haven't found a use for it yet.. If you made some magical tool, that put every vertex of an object on the grid, and kept it close to it's original proportions, that would be legendary =P

If i have one vertex that needs to be particularly aligned, i simply VM the whole object or group, and force that one point to the grid, but most of the time that doesn't help much.

I've found lately working with crazy off-grid stuff, to instead hold down ALT key to temporarily disable the grid, and just try to get all the points i need to line up as close as possible.. (this method would not probably not work with GS too well, definitely not without HLFix)

Captain Terrorwhen a man loves a woman

Matt2468rv

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 19:04:39 UTC Post #318377

Is there an ETA for Source Engine support? I understand that you want it perfected for GoldSrc but IMO Source support should be at the top of the list, seeing as a huge amount of people will use Sledge if Source is supported. That would greatly increase its popularity and also create an opportunity for donations for further development.

Matt2468rv

AJ

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 21:38:17 UTC Post #318378

I think the idea (and Pebs can correct me if I'm wrong) is that Goldsource is an easier engine to establish the base set of functionality on than Source. Furthermore, at least at the moment, Goldsource is a more consistent and stable engine to develop for than Source is (I mean, look how many times Valve's own updates to Source have completely broken the SDK).

Considering Pebs is doing this by himself, reducing the variables involved in a project like this is crucial. No doubt he'll tackle the Source part of Sledge when Sledge itself is more stable, too.

Think of Goldsource as 'testing the waters'.

AJGlorious Overlord

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 23:42:07 UTC Post #318379

Sledge is still in Alpha, meaning that I still haven't worked out all the bugs. There's some issues with VM and some architectural problems that I need to fix first, plus some time-consuming stuff like automatic game detection, settings importers, and some other stuff. Once I've gotten those nailed down, then I can start on Source support. It's important to have a solid foundation to work upon. Source support will be added as soon as it can be.

(On a side note- I'm not accepting donations or any sort of payment for Sledge. Donating will not speed up development, unless I get enough money to quit my day job and work on Sledge full-time. Since this is extremely unlikely, I feel that accepting donations is quite unreasonable since I work on Sledge in my free time as a hobby.)

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Alberto309

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-23 23:48:02 UTC Post #318380

Agree with AJ.

Alberto309weapon_spaghetti

Instant Mix

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 18:25:48 UTC Post #318383

"How would something like that work when snapping the vertices to the grid will create non-planar vertices?"

Having trouble understanding what you mean PB, surely not snapping them to the grid would create non-planar faces.

This issue is plaguing me in hammer right now. By rotating objects, or flipping them, it's making the vertices go onto a microgrid, out of the normal grid. and this is creating weird artifacts everything and it's annoying as hell - especially when it was originally on grid.
It's merely a point of using a round function on every vertex. If it's stored as a plane or face in a VMF, surely some mathematical jiggery pokery could be used.

this sort of crap

it may not be an issue for GS or source to render, but using it as a reference for other objects , or simply surrounding the brush with other brushes , creates an issue

Instant MixTitle commitment issues

Matt2468rv

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 19:58:22 UTC Post #318385

Thanks for the explanations Penguinboy and AJ. This makes sense. I'm looking forward to your future versions!

Matt2468rv

Captain Terror

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 20:02:19 UTC Post #318387

YES it is annoying, but the tradeoff is you're aloud 10-times flexibility of objects you can create and brush budget using Hammer 4.

If you can't get used to it, your choices right now are to return to GS(not recommended), or learn to model. I HOPE this issue is addressed with Source 2 Hammer, but i'm not gonna hold my breath

Captain Terrorwhen a man loves a woman

Archie

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 20:11:36 UTC Post #318388

It's resolved with Sledge and I think you can hold your breath for that given the frequency of recent updates! I reckon timing will be perfect for me - finish The Core and make a loving return to Source using Sledge.

ArchieGoodbye Moonmen

Captain Terror

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 21:29:56 UTC Post #318389

Captain Terrorwhen a man loves a woman

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 22:19:59 UTC Post #318390

@Instant: I mean when off-grid vertices are unavoidable for brushes that are rotated at odd angles. It also depends on what you mean by "snap to grid" - should it snap to the current grid (e.g. 64x64), or only round to the nearest whole number (i.e. snap to 1x1 grid), or even smaller (round to 2 decimal places)? Either way it will cause issues with small geometry (where brush size is less than the grid size).

I could add something that could try to perform the vertex rounding on the selected objects, but if it creates an invalid brush, it doesn't round anything. I'll look into the options.

@CapT: Can I hold my breath too? Sounds fun. What are we waiting for again?

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Captain Terror

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-24 22:43:22 UTC Post #318391

<turning blue>

I think Archie's intimating that source support is around the corner, so i'm waiting patiently

Is it true you fixed or simply don't have the annoying vertex problem with Sledge VMF?

Captain Terrorwhen a man loves a woman

Crypt

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-25 02:32:08 UTC Post #318393

I don't know anything about GUI, but here's a question/request:

Would it be possible to have a setting where the 4 viewports are fullscreen and you can hold a key/mouse to the edge of the screen to bring up the dialogue boxes? Hotkeys seem to eliminate much of the toolboxes use.

Crypt120% sorry!

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-25 05:39:31 UTC Post #318394

You can hide the right toolbar by clicking the small arrow in the top corner, but the other toolbars can't be hidden at the moment. In the future I have plans for a more advanced layout customisation thing, but that's a while away.

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

COOBORKY?[kzna]

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 03:43:55 UTC Post #318407

i get the same problem as instant. my brushes are on grid, not rotated at all, and almost every single one has these little gaps. sometimes it even causes my maps to leak. i wanted to post about it but didnt get the time. in the end its only been a problem once in terms of leaks but it gets to my slight mapping OCD sometimes heh

COOBORKY?[kzna]

Tetsu0

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 12:15:17 UTC Post #318417

Penguinboy, when are updates released? I notice that a lot of changes have been made in GitHub but sledge doesn't detect new versions? Or do you wait until a significant amount has changed before releasing?
Just wondering.

I have yet to encounter the off-grid issue.
I rarely rotate brushes though. If anything i'll do a 90deg spin or a horizontal/vertical flip

Tetsu0Positive Chaos

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 12:19:29 UTC Post #318418

I wait for a significant amount of change before I put out a new release. I'm planning on making a new release in the next few days. I'll announce it here plus Sledge checks for updates when it is launched.

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Instant Mix

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 14:25:09 UTC Post #318419

"I could add something that could try to perform the vertex rounding on the selected objects, but if it creates an invalid brush, it doesn't round anything. I'll look into the options."
Something like that would be fantastic, but make it a user-selected option rather than something that happens automatically. Either that, or something similar to the "check for problems" window that comes up, and you can select the individual brushes and select fix.
If the vertexs snap to the nearest 1x1 grid, then it shouldn't create any invalid brushes. Someone must've been mapping terribly in order to create a situation in which it may create invalid brushes.

Instant MixTitle commitment issues

COOBORKY?[kzna]

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 18:57:08 UTC Post #318425

oh and speaking of vertexes, could it be possible to EITHER put the dialogue box that pops up when u select the vertex tool on the right side panel OR have a "snap to side bar" feature when you drag it over to the right? i almost never use any of the other features on it and it just gets in the way

COOBORKY?[kzna]

Tetsu0

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 19:28:43 UTC Post #318428

^^^^^
That

Tetsu0Positive Chaos

Jessie

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 21:16:56 UTC Post #318431

Why is it you're not allowed to make a concave brush? (Hammer in general.)

JessieTrans Rights <3

DiscoStu

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 21:43:45 UTC Post #318432

Because the engine doesn't give a shit about your subversive concave brushes.

DiscoStu

Captain Terror

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 22:04:26 UTC Post #318433

PB, you have an estimate when Sledge will be out of alpha? Maybe when it is we could have a Sledge-only mapping contest? (probably would have to be on the honor system, or is there a way you could verify what editor was used?)

Captain Terrorwhen a man loves a woman

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 22:44:54 UTC Post #318437

Alpha is just a label, removing that label won't magically make the application any more polished. Use it if you think it is good enough, and if you don't think it's good enough, tell me why it's not and I will fix it

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Tetsu0

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 23:42:24 UTC Post #318438

I think its superb. There are just some bugs with the basic tools.
I think once the major bugs in the general tools are sorted out, and once Sledge is pretty much functionally equivalent to Hammer, that could qualify as beta.

Tetsu0Positive Chaos

Captain Terror

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-26 23:50:27 UTC Post #318439

^^

To me, Alpha means "highly experimental and buggy", whereas Beta means everything should be working with minor issues.

Would anyone be interested in a Sledge-only contest or minicompo, or should we wait until it's further along?

Captain Terrorwhen a man loves a woman

Rimrook

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-27 00:24:49 UTC Post #318440

A Sledge compo or Sledge jam would help pick out any remaining problems. Probably better done a bit later when things are fixed and there is an extensive list of features to use.

Also, PB have ever considered adding on another person to help develop Sledge?

RimrookSince 2003

Alberto309

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-27 01:26:54 UTC Post #318442

Agree with Rim. On both things.

Alberto309weapon_spaghetti

AJ

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-27 02:00:48 UTC Post #318447

I think that's the whole point of hosting the project on Github. People can help out, if they want.

AJGlorious Overlord

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-27 02:59:13 UTC Post #318449

Indeed. A couple of people have helped out on various things, but you can't just "add on" people - it's something that someone has to want to do. It's a pretty big commitment and I don't really expect that anyone is willing to help in a large way. GitHub allows more people to make smaller additions, which is pretty cool.

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Rimrook

Posted 10 years ago2014-03-27 13:33:18 UTC Post #318454

I didn't know github worked that way. I thought it was more like dropbox. That's cool people have been chipping in.

RimrookSince 2003

MaxED

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-03 14:14:23 UTC Post #318583

Hi. I've made a small SVN patch, which adds/changes a couple of things to Sledge:

1. Location and size of Texture Browser window is now stored while the editor is running (so it doesn't show up maximized every time you open it).

2. 3D camera is positioned in a bit more intelligent way when using "Center 3D View on Selection" / "Center All Views on Selection" actions (e.g. they no longer stick the camera right into selected brush).

3. You can move 3D camera up and down using "Q" and "E" keys.

4. You can pan 2D views by holding Space key (previously done by holding Space+LMB)

5. You can enable 3D camera's "fly mode" by holding Space key (previously also done by holding Space+LMB)

MaxED

DiscoStu

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-03 20:57:50 UTC Post #318586

I like that. Wasn't (3) done with Home and End in Hammer?

DiscoStu

Instant Mix

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-03 22:38:40 UTC Post #318587

Here's another little nice idea. Apologies for the shite ms-paint drawing, photoshop has decided to corrupt itself.

Basically the texture browser would have a folder tree panel to the left hand side, which would allow you to manually select the contents of each wad. As well as the "root" folder, custom texture folders could be created that you can add individual textures to; so you could create yourself a "nature" folder that contained your own favorite grass / tree / rock textures, and "triggers" or "floors" or "weird computer shizznizz" and so on.
I doubt a new panel with a folder tree view would be that hard to put in as I believe it's one of the default window panel things.

Instant MixTitle commitment issues

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-04 03:12:57 UTC Post #318589

Can you use imgur/pastebin instead of mediafire/dropbox? My work blocks file storage websites

@MaxED: I'll take a look at these when I can, but it seems that some of them are changing expected Hammer behaviour (camera tool) so I'll need to test against VHE 3 and 4 to ensure consistency. If they change the behaviour they will need to be toggled on and off via a setting.

Some of these I have different plans for - for example, storing window positions (I want to get this saving for all windows so it's remembered across multiple sessions).

For number 5, free look mode is enabled by tapping the "Z" key - this is the same behaviour as Hammer 3 and 4.

@Instant: I can't see the picture, but there's already a folder tree there! For GS they're just grouped by WAD file, but for Source it will be a full-on folder tree since that's how Source materials are grouped. There's already a suggestion for "favourite textures", but I wasn't sure where to put it. I really like the idea of creating custom folders and putting them in there, I hadn't thought of that!

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

MaxED

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-04 09:18:30 UTC Post #318592

OK, here's the patch at pastebin

"Penguinboy" said:Some of these I have different plans for - for example, storing window positions (I want to get this saving for all windows so it's remembered across multiple sessions)

Crazy idea time: instead of doing (de)serialization manually, (de)serialize DocumentMemory._store using Json.NET when opening and closing a map.

"Penguinboy" said:For number 5, free look mode is enabled by tapping the "Z" key - this is the same behaviour as Hammer 3 and 4.

I know. I modified "Space+LMB+WASD" type of 3D camera movement to "Space+WASD", not this one.

MaxED

Penguinboy

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-04 10:12:31 UTC Post #318593

@MaxED: I've actually been doing just that! I'm not using Json.NET since I don't want to add an additional dependency, but I've rigged up a custom serialisation layer to store window coordinates for a custom viewport/window layout thing that I've been working on.

PenguinboyHaha, I died again!

Twizek

Posted 10 years ago2014-04-07 09:44:16 UTC Post #318596

Maybe its already reported but, when i load up my vmf file then textures are all messed up and need to select all brushes and select face/world on texture application tool..

pic:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57757632/pildid/texture_fail_startup.PNG

Twizek

Sledge (Hammer Alternative) Alpha Build Created 11 years ago2013-07-27 02:24:39 UTC by Penguinboy