Crowbar - an open-source editor

NoodleCollie

Stoat fiend
aa
Jul 30, 2009
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How do you even get to that logic viewer? I've never seen that before in my life.

I'm thinking the best way to addeess the multi-monitor situation is certainly to have each document in its own window, and I think the easiest way to deal with the toolbars is to have each window have its own local set which is hidden when the window loses focus, and which can be hidden manually with a hotkey to give more space for the rendering views.
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
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Nov 2, 2007
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It is merely a registry setting, because while the feature is in Hammer it has no UI access.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Hammer\Splitter has four DrawType keys, one for each viewport. A value of A (10 dec) is logical view.
 

stegarootbeer

L2: Junior Member
Jan 15, 2012
78
100
How do you even get to that logic viewer? I've never seen that before in my life.

I'm thinking the best way to addeess the multi-monitor situation is certainly to have each document in its own window, and I think the easiest way to deal with the toolbars is to have each window have its own local set which is hidden when the window loses focus, and which can be hidden manually with a hotkey to give more space for the rendering views.

Please no. Tabs are your friend. Make it so the tabs can be pulled out into a new window and please please please make the toolbars dock. I hate window toolbars with a passion.
 

NoodleCollie

Stoat fiend
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Jul 30, 2009
383
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I've had a look through Qt and it does have a QDockableWidget but this can only be docked to the top/bottom/left/right - basically around the central area in which the main content would be. Unfortunately it's not as versatile as the VS/SFM layouts where you can dock tabs to any screen areas you like. Qt does also have tabs but they appear to be the traditional static type where clicking a tab changes between sub-windows.

EDIT: OK, these are the only two ways I can see a multi-monitor setup working right now. Number 1 is that there are the general floating toolbars that are the main "application" (a la GIMP) and the map documents float around in their own individual windows. Number 2 is that there are many individual main windows (a la Word or other applications we know) which can be re-arranged on the screen by hand.

 
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Fish 2.0

L6: Sharp Member
Nov 22, 2012
324
262
both of those options sound terrible and redundant for your majority of users with single screens, at least make it an option :??????
 

NoodleCollie

Stoat fiend
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Jul 30, 2009
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I don't think number 2 sounds bad for either. If you've got multiple monitors you can move windows over, and if not you just flick through them on the taskbar like you would any other application.
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
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Nov 2, 2007
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One thing that come to mind with all of this, is how often do you actually use multiple documents at the same time (in a way that necessitates or would be improved by having them both visible), as opposed to just wanting cross-monitor screenspace for the single map you are working on?
 

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
I suppose it could be useful to have multiple documents open for editing when working with instances, but I duno.
 

Fish 2.0

L6: Sharp Member
Nov 22, 2012
324
262
you just flick through them on the taskbar like you would any other application.

That's the point - I don't want or see the need to have to flick through windows.

Sure it works but you also have to think about the usability of a program and in Hammer you literally have to jump everywhere in a minute to do something. It's like microsoft word, except to edit the word document you have 4 different windows and more windows on top of that... it's bulky and annoying as hell or organize.

Just because it works doesn't mean it's the right solution. Something you could look into is how blender manages its windows ;

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Man I'm referencing to Blender a fair bit, but I think it's a fairly good example of solutions to problems. Maybe if you think it's possible download blender and have a look at how the UI works, it might be an option.
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
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Personally I think blenders UI is garbage, but that just my opinion.

Hammer can already be used on multi-monitors, It's a bit of a hackjob but it works. So why not just take that (which is fine) and make is smoother/better/easier to setup and use.
There's the feature for using independent window configurations in hammer, which allows you to do this:
Dualscreenhammer2.jpg


I have never heard of anyone having 2 vmf's open side by side before. I don't think anyone works like that (not many at least). I use ctrl+tab to jump between files.

I'm using a single monitor at the moment, and when I map, or 3d model I spend most of my time in the 3d/perspective viewport. When mapping I only leave it because hammer doesn't let you do everything in that view, you're forced to move into the grid views for a lot of things.

If I had it my way I'd make the 3d view much better for actually building, and not just for viewing. Make it fullscreen.
Hide the grid views by default, but add ways to toggle them back into view, one by one. Like this:
Default view.
Hit hotkey for top view.
Hit hotkey for side with top already open.
Hit hotkey for front with top and side already open.
 

NoodleCollie

Stoat fiend
aa
Jul 30, 2009
383
335
I personally thought the tab structure of Visual Studio was good, where you could pull a tab out or dock it into other tabs. I'm looking at subclassing the QSplitter (allows a space to be split into resizeable horizontal/vertical sections) to make a recursive splitter, where a splitter can be split into two and each of these two sub-splitters can be split into two more (in the opposite split orientation), etc. Then you could pop windows out of the splitter and have them float as sub-windows, and merge them by dragging them back onto a splitter.
 

diddutz

L1: Registered
Dec 12, 2012
6
0
I don't want to interrupt your UI conversation, but i have a simple question and an idea for a feature.

Question: Is this going to use the exact same syntax in it's files that hammer uses? While reading through this thread i think i saw some suggestions that were adding stuff to the map that would need to be saved somewhere (not that this is a bad thing). So i'm just curious if this is going to have a new file syntax that exports into vmf when compiling or at will (sharing with people not using Crowbar). Or if this is going to have a vmf alongside an other file that holds extra information (e.g. opening pl_pushcart.vmf in crowbar first time crates a pl_pushcart.vmf.crowbar). Or if this is just sticking to simple plain .vmf
It might be a bit early for this question but i am curious if anyone thought about this yet.

Suggestion: This would be a lot of work but does anyone else wants to have a vector-map instead of just height-maps when using displacements? So you can create overhangs in terrain with just one displacement, rendering sew useless.

Also last summer i learned C and am now advancing to C++ and OpenGL since half a year. I don't really know how much C# differs from C/C++ and have never used Qt but i will definitely look into it and i would be happy to participate and/or help you guys out.
 

NoodleCollie

Stoat fiend
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Jul 30, 2009
383
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What I was thinking of was having a map document plugin which contains all the objects etc. that can be put into a map, and have other plugins translate these objects into the needed formats, ie. the rendering plugins converts to vertices/planes/whatever, a VMF exporter converts to VMF KV syntax, other exporters convert to their own syntax, etc. etc.

Vectormapping sounds like a good idea but I'm sure it's something that could be coded in a plugin if we get a solid core plugin system up and running.
 
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Jan 8, 2011
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I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet, but something which can search for off-grid vertices would be very helpful.