DeleD Community Edition

[jwatte]

What I like about DeleD is that it's pretty solid (few crashes), and it has a good workflow. I think that any new features should focus on filling out these main traits. (As opposed to, say, character modeling and animation).

I honestly think that a release that just fixes the bugs that exist would be a wonderful thing -- no new features necessarily needed. The two bugs that get in the way are:
- The CSG missing polys bug: having to go and check every surface after a CSG operation drastically cramps my style.
- X exporter generating smoothed normals for everything (although I have a work-around for this).

One step up from that would be to add better access to functionality that is already there (or mostly there), but may be hard to get at. Here goes things like:
- Exporting the light mapping UV coordinate set as part of the mesh (as well as the lightmap filename, say as an effect parameter).
- Custom viewports. Especially the ability to have a swivelable ortho camera, and the ability to rotate the camera around a selected item, instead of FPS-style. This would make it easier to select and edit specifically the things that you're interested in, within a complex map.
- Non-rendering geometry. For example, trigger zones. This can almost be done today by just mapping a special texture to certain geometry, but a formalization of this workflow would be super (say, "select by material" or a list by material in the scene browser).

That, already, would make for a fine "major release".

Now, if we're talking large feature upgrades, I have a small list of what would really help for levels (in addition to what's above):

- A command to fix T-joints (typically, by tesselating the triangle of the longer edge). (This could conceivably be a plug-in, but it's better someone else spends time on that :-)
- A hierarchy of objects, where objects can be attached to parent objects, and swivel around an object-specific pivot. Export this pivot as part of the mesh hierarchy. This would be awesome for things like doors.
- Non-geometry nodes: nodes that show up in the mesh as frames, but that don't have geometry. They may have annotations; say, a list of user-inputted strings. This is great for placing things like particle effects, trigger zones, etc. If non-geometry nodes could be tied to parametric shapes, like blocks and spheres, and export the parametric parameters, that'd be swell, too. This can sort-of be faked with special textures, but again, explicit support would be helpful.
- Support for specifying FX files, and editing FX parameters, in the material editor.
- Selection sets (could probably be done right now with groups).

After that, I'm sure there's zillions of cool things that could be done, but from my point of view, these items would bring the highest leverage to the DeleD experience. I was tempted to add requests like "radiosity in the lightmapper" or "per light-set light maps," but I can do without those (or plug the geometry into a third party light mapper). DeleD is much more important for editing, than it is for lightmapping (and many engines don't even use lightmaps anymore).

OK, end soapbox.

[Sindwiller]

Hi jwatte!

[Mr.Fletcher]

[Paul-Jan]

Hi Jon,

First of all, thanks a lot for this large list of constructive requests (prioritized and all), it is very very much appreciated!

Most of them are pretty clear, but I am going to ask you to do a bit of elaborating on the next one:

- Exporting the light mapping UV coordinate set as part of the mesh (as well as the lightmap filename, say as an effect parameter).

You are talking about the .X exporter here, right? Are you saying there is a standard way of storing a second set of UV coordinates inside a .X file? Or at least a way that makes loading it correctly into Direct3D trivial? We have looked into this for quite a while, but couldn't find any information on it, nor could we find any third party applications supporting loading such a .X file. If you could give us the technical specs on how to achieve this (by e-mail or through the forums), it would be marvellous!

[jwatte]

[jwatte]

Ow, two more feature requests that I'd put in the middle group:

- Two-sided materials. Really useful for transparent surfaces (and, especially, "special" material objects).

- A "split plane" similar to the one in the Source editor. You can kind-of fake it right now with a large enough cube that you rotate, and then click "split", but a better UI for that operation would help.

[jwatte]

[hpesoj]

[jwatte]