Favourite map editor(s)?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

What editor do you personally use most? And why?

Right now I'm using Doom Builder X thanks to its lightweight, shortcuts and the Lua editor.

Edited January 21, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[Tango]

no wadauthor? what are masochists like @joepallai supposed to vote for???

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Right now, I use GZDoom Builder for mapping, and Slade 3 for all of the behind-the-scenes stuff (mapinfo, decorate, etc.). I do intend to switch over to Ultimate Doom Builder eventually, but I wanted to finish Mapwich before I did that. And change is scary.

 

I feel extremely uneducated though. I've never even heard of DEU, DeePsea, Eureka (though Pegleg had just recently mentioned this in discord), and WadAuthor.

Edited January 20, 2020 by RonnieJamesDiner

[reflex17]

While I started with DEU, DCK is the editor I've used the most. I use GZDoombuilder/UDB now.

 

@RonnieJamesDiner DEU (or Doom Editing Utility) was the first publicly available wad editor as far as I'm aware. It was technically very stable but by today's standards very painstaking to make maps with. You had to place every vertex and then join them with lines and then define it as a sector, there was no freeform line making and automatic sector generation. All the early ones were like that, DCK (Doom Construction Kit) was the first one I saw that had something close to what we have now with freeform tools and the ability to draw rectangle sectors and other shapes predefined.

Edited January 20, 2020 by reflex17

[Ribbiks]

1 hour ago, Tango said:

no wadauthor? what are masochists like @joepallai supposed to vote for???

 

Lets add Hellmaker while we're at it, just for @Steve D :p

 

To answer the poll: DBX is basically my dream editor, snappy as heck on old systems, none of that zdoom bullshit cluttering the UI. dbx-lua scripting has single-handedly retained my interest in this game for the past year or so, it's really the only reason I'm still here.

[cambreaKer]

wadauthor, obviously..

[Spectre01]

Thanks to this thread I learned Ultimate Doom Builder is a thing! Otherwise I use GZDB for mapping and Slade3 for managing resources and adding music/textures etc.

[Misty]

I use ultimate doom builder as upgrade from gzdoom builder. I started gzdoom builder and never understood how doom builder 2 works until year ago. 

[leodoom85]

UDB+Slade is the combo for me now..

[Gez]

It's kind of weird to me to put SLADE 1, 2, and 3 together while separating every Doom Builder fork and version. Except for the also very odd decision of putting Doom Builder 64 with Doom Builder 2.

 

Also, where'd DoomCAD? :p

[TheNoob_Gamer]

21 minutes ago, Gez said:

It's kind of weird to me to put SLADE 1, 2, and 3 together while separating every Doom Builder fork and version. Except for the also very odd decision of putting Doom Builder 64 with Doom Builder 2.

It might be worth noting that Slade 1 2 3 are maintained by the same author, whilst Doom Builder and its forks are maintained indepdently.

The reason I put DB64 and 2 in the same place is because I'm lazy (mainly), but also because DB64 is very niche and is a specialized fork for Doom 64 EX.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

3 hours ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

I feel extremely uneducated though. I've never even heard of DEU, DeePsea, Eureka (though Pegleg had just recently mentioned this in discord),

Hey me too lmao. Came across all of those by chance and Doom wiki researches.

@Ribbiks Ah yeah, thanks for that puzzle wad btw. Can you tell me some good stuff that are made possible with the lua editor?

Edited January 20, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[Gez]

41 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

but also because DB64 is very niche and is a specialized fork for Doom 64 EX.

Why list it at all then? Because specialized forks also include stuff like 3DGE Builder or even Zone Builder.

 

Also, where's ZETH? :p

[TheNoob_Gamer]

1 minute ago, Gez said:

Why list it at all then? Because specialized forks also include stuff like 3DGE Builder or even Zone Builder.

 

Also, where's ZETH? :p

Lol, thanks for opening up my mind about editors. Not going to include them all though.

Edited January 20, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[boris]

4 hours ago, Gez said:

Also, where's ZETH? :p

 

And don't forget DETH, without which ZETH wouldn't be a thing.

[Ribbiks]

5 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Can you tell me some good stuff that are made possible with the lua editor?

 

All sorts of stuff, broadly fitting into 3 categories:

 

1) Inspirational: scripts that contort or alter geometry in ways that I wouldn't have thought to do by hand.

2) Workflow-improving: things like "merge all selected sectors with identical properties" or "flank the selected linedef with edges of length X" or "make 242 control sectors for all selected sectors". basically anything I find myself doing frequently that I think can be automated, I'll automate it ;D

3) Generative: includes randomizers, and lots of one-off scripts for drawing complicated things.

 

Some examples:
 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

the "squarifier":

 

 

Spoiler

 

this room was randomly generated, and the 242 actions were all created automatically:

 

 

Spoiler

 

drawing randomized fence sectors:

 

 

Spoiler

 

20 seconds or so into this mapping video, you can see an example of the "bevel" script, which was the basis for much of the geometry in my recent stuff, e.g.:

 

 

Spoiler

 

complicated voodoo doll closets involving hundreds of tags:

 

 

Overall, it's nothing that theoretically couldn't be done by hand (and a lot of spare time!), or with other scripting functionality like WadC. but the fact that it easy to write, leverages doombuilder's robust methods for handling geometry, and is part of the editor itself (so you can see results immediately and iterate through ideas quickly), makes it a lot of fun to use.

 

 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Ribbiks

[Pegleg]

I use Eureka because it can run natively on a Mac and it feels better to me than Slade. Eureka is also cross-platform and doesn't require a lot of resources to run it. It reminds me very much of DEU, which makes sense, since it's based on Yadex, which was based on DEU.

 

@RonnieJamesDiner To add to what reflex said, Eureka is an editor that was compiled by Andrew Apted based on the code for Yadex. It doesn't have all the features of the DB family, but Andrew is back to developing it and is upgrading some of the features. DeepSea is a relatively modern editor with a number of features, and also supports resource management (like Slade). It was shareware and came with limitations on the size of map you could make unless you registered it.

 

@reflex17 I started with DCK back in the 90's. It was a great editor, particularly for its time. As I recall, it actually had an automatic texture alignment tool, and may have been the first editor to have that. And it was freeware. I switched to DEU when DCK became shareware.

[joepallai]

@Tango that made my day--funny as hell 

@Ribbiks stunning shots.  

 

If I had only one choice it would be WadAuthor as it's what I had my first successes with and can still use today; however for the past five or so years I've adapted to Doombuilder and GZDoomBuilder and don't see myself going back; except for one or two features that I could find a work around for if I wanted to not be lazy.

[reflex17]

59 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

As I recall, it actually had an automatic texture alignment tool, and may have been the first editor to have that. 

 

 

That's right yeah, you could select all the lines and you would see the line selection go along as it aligned them all. The version I had was one of the later shareware versions. I remember it had clockwise and counter-clockwise alignment, but the version I had, counter-clockwise alignment didn't work well, or at all. DCK also had the in-game sprite display for things, that was useful to scan a level and quickly see item types and placements.

Edited January 20, 2020 by reflex17

[Doom_Dude]

It used to be DoomCad and then CodeImp came out with Doom Builder, then it was Doom Builder 2 and GZDoom Builder then GZDoom Builder Bugfix.

 

I voted for Ultimate Doom Builder. It's what I'm using now.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Doom_Dude

[Remilia Scarlet]

I've mostly been using UDB these days.  But

I started with DEU (and it's offshoot, ADE) and still have a nostalgic soft spot for it. That soft spot extends to Eureka via Yadex.

 

For lump/pk3 management, I mostly use some command line tools I wrote and occasionally Slade.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Remilia Scarlet

[RonnieJamesDiner]

@Ribbiks I had no idea that DBX had a lua-scripting system, and really had no idea that it was capable of automating those sorts of processes. I used to always look at screenshots like that and think, "wow, that's serious time and determination". Granted, there's still a considerable amount of creativity involved, to think it doesn't necessarily have to be done manually is sort of mind-bending. Feels like it would open up a lot of opportunities that I may have otherwise shied away from. 

[JBerg]

What's keeping people from upgrading to UDB from GZDB?

[Snikle]

What is UDB? This thread is the first I've heard of it and the wiki doesn't have anything. I'm pretty happy with GZDB, but if there's a better choice out there I'll gladly check it out.

[JadingTsunami]

I use a modified SLADE3:

 

- Allow relative and absolute math expressions in numerical inputs (e.g., "32 units higher than the current ceiling height" or "(64/16)*3")

- Allow applying settings from quick edit sidebar to multiple items

- Find-as-you-type for all pop-up windows (e.g., things, textures, etc.)

- Press enter to choose top result from all pop-up windows

 

I find with these modifications, SLADE3 is very fast and easy to use.

[JBerg]

1 minute ago, Snikle said:

What is UDB? This thread is the first I've heard of it and the wiki doesn't have anything. I'm pretty happy with GZDB, but if there's a better choice out there I'll gladly check it out.

 

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=66745

[Spectre01]

38 minutes ago, JBerg said:

What's keeping people from upgrading to UDB from GZDB?

 

11 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Thanks to this thread I learned Ultimate Doom Builder is a thing!

Lack of marketing and exposure! It will likely take some time for more people to catch on.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

1 hour ago, JBerg said:

What's keeping people from upgrading to UDB from GZDB?

 

Personally, I just want to finish the project I'm currently working on before switching over. The map has been stressful enough, and the thought of fighting with new UDB bugs/crashes* is something I'm just not interested in, at the moment. I'll probably switch over at the beginning of February.

 

*There may not be as many problems as I think, but from some of the discord chatter, it seemed like people were having all sorts of little issues/crashes for a while there. 

[Steve D]

12 hours ago, Ribbiks said:

Lets add Hellmaker while we're at it, just for @Steve D :p

 

Ah, yes, the glorious Hellmaker, the editor on which Realm of Chaos, Batman Doom, all of Laz Rojas's Wolfendoom efforts, and the pixel rex masterpiece Simply Evil were composed. Literally, Hellmaker put Mac Dooming on the map . . . for the brief time that it existed.

 

I still sing the praises of Hellmaker, which, for all its faults, was relatively easy to use, and had advanced features like the rotatable 3D view. Too bad Paul Davidson never quite finished it, but I'm guessing his shareware income from the microscopic MacDoom community was a disincentive.

 

Crazy as it may seem, I'm thinking of buying a G4 PowerMac for some nostalgic Mac experiences, including some fun with Hellmaker Enhanced, the cracked version which IIRC @esselfortium put together. For now, it's sitting on the HD of my dead Mac Mini G4. Yes, it feels Pre-Cambrian by comparison to any version of DB, but nostalgia isn't about best practices. ;D

 

As for the OP's question, I currently use GZDB-Bugfix, which I adore, but after reading about UDB, I downloaded and installed it and will give it a whirl soon.

 

Those were some cool screenies, Ribbiks. Please stick around. Like, indefinitely. :)

[Noiser]

Doom Builder X (DBX)