Doom Builder X 2021.1 (September 20) - map editor

[Ribbiks]

very cool. thanks for the updates!

[jesuswithbazookaz79]

Is this GZDoom Builder?

[scifista42]

No.

[jesuswithbazookaz79]

Just now, scifista42 said:

No.

is this better than GZdoom Builder?

[scifista42]

In some ways yes, in some ways the opposite.

Edited November 6, 2017 by scifista42

[anotak]

it depends on what you're trying to get out of your map editor. gzdb-bf has more features, but runs less responsively and often requires more clicks to do similar things. dbx is more basic but i personally find it more pleasant to use (obviously i'm biased).

 

if you're interested in mapping, you should try both and see which one you like more.

[SuaveSteve]

anotak, from your posts, you remind me of the Factorio devs. You have the right mind set, and your heart is in the right place, to write quality code. I wish you all the best and look forward to what you turn DB into.

[StevenC21]

My only question is, why should I use this instead of GZDB?

[anotak]

1 hour ago, StevenC21 said:

My only question is, why should I use this instead of GZDB?

it comes down to preference.

GZDB-BF has more features, but is more complex, and slower. many things require more clicks/keypresses to do in GZDB-BF. a lot of people use both, depending on the situation. imo, you should try both out and see how you like them. I personally use DBX exclusively now.

 

what motivated me to create this was that me and many others used to mainly use DB2 over GZDB-BF for similar reasons. But DB2 had a lot of bugs and hasn't been updated in 5 years. DBX is basically just an updated DB2 that intends to preserve DB2's behavior, whereas GZDB is the fancy new thing. so if you didn't like DB2, you may be happier with GZDB-BF.

[StevenC21]

@anotak Thanks for responding! And I will most likely continue to use GZDB then: Personally, functionality is more important than simplicity. But that is an opinion.

[riderr3]

Interesting. I never knew about this fork before now.

[scifista42]

Icons in this editor seem to be 25% upscaled compared to DB2, which makes them blurry and slightly uncomfortable to look at, could there be an option to keep their original size?

 

Also, every single time this editor runs a node builder, the OS asks for security confirmation. This never happened in DB2.

Edited December 17, 2017 by scifista42

[anotak]

11 minutes ago, scifista42 said:

Icons in this editor seem to be 25% upscaled compared to DB2, which makes them blurry and slightly uncomfortable to look at, could there be an option to keep their original size?

 

Also, every single time this editor runs a node builder, the OS asks for security confirmation. This never happened in DB2.

uhh, the icons should be the same size. are you using a different DPI compatibility setting for this than DB2? (right click on the exe -> properties)

 

also for the 2nd, i haven't encountered that. is your nodebuilder in Program Files? i could see that maybe causing that, i'll try to replicate this. a non-ideal temporary solution might be to run DBX as administrator, but I don't really love asking people to run stuff as admin.

[scifista42]

1. I have identical DPI settings in both editors. Changing the setting didn't help.

2. I don't have DBX installed in Program Files. Running as admin didn't help either.

[tourniquet]

Hey, started using DB-X a while ago and so far i really like the changes & additions. Recently i wanted to continue working on some vanilla maps and added the Visplane-Explorer Plugin, unfortunately it doesn't work properly. Any chance you could add support for it with the next update?

[anotak]

11 hours ago, scifista42 said:

1. I have identical DPI settings in both editors. Changing the setting didn't help.

2. I don't have DBX installed in Program Files. Running as admin didn't help either.

1. weird. i'm now noticing that it's actually different on my machine too and i just never noticed. oddly enough, this is present on the SVN "beta" builds of DB2 for me, so it doesn't appear to be something I did. i'll try to track down the source of this.

 

2. this is going to be hard for me to debug but i'm asking around. what windows version are you on? also have you messed with your user access control settings at all? most people haven't had this problem but Wartorn (who is on win10) says

"i run into it with basically all variants of doom builder regardless of location- but i also haven't bothered to really change my uac settings since my last os install"

"nah, it was like this in win7 too. it merely followed me throughout upgrades"

really odd. still investigating.

 

4 hours ago, tourniquet said:

Hey, started using DB-X a while ago and so far i really like the changes & additions. Recently i wanted to continue working on some vanilla maps and added the Visplane-Explorer Plugin, unfortunately it doesn't work properly. Any chance you could add support for it with the next update?

i'll look into it, been having trouble with it myself, just haven't bothered to check because i've been messing with other stuff and nobody bothered to bring it up. i'll move it up the list.

Edited December 17, 2017 by anotak

[wrkq]

On 12/17/2017 at 9:07 AM, scifista42 said:

Also, every single time this editor runs a node builder, the OS asks for security confirmation. This never happened in DB2.

Find the nodebuilder executable DBX is set to use, right click->properties and check if you don't have a "This program has been downloaded from the internet, click here to unblock" note at the bottom of the properties window.

 

If you use the Windows Explorer internal unzipper to unpack a .zip that has the "downloaded, dangerous" attribute, it will put this attribute on every single unpacked file as it processes it.

Which will make programs prompt "are you sure, this is from the internet" on every start, and in some cases make DLLs refuse to be loaded into another program altogether, which then leads to very confusing "I unpacked the plugin and it doesn't load" support issues...

Edited December 18, 2017 by wrkq

[scifista42]

Thanks, indeed that was the issue, and unblocking solved it.

[anotak]

hrm that's genuinely annoying

 

is my only solution to this creating an installer? i'll have to look into everything

[wrkq]

On 12/18/2017 at 9:13 PM, anotak said:

is my only solution to this creating an installer? i'll have to look into everything

Well, you can always add a grand flashing warning to the download page asking people to "Unblock" the zip itself before unpacking (maybe with screenshot).

Other than that, yeah, installer is the best you can do.

 

From "real" installer engines, NSIS (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page) is kinda the standard for free/opensource use on Windows.

It requires a little scripting but docs are OK, and you could do all the "pro" stuff like installing SlimDX when not already installed, and making start menu shortcuts.

For the simplest possible alternative, 7zip's self-extracting archive option might be sufficient - but then the user will need to run the dependencies' setups by hand anyway.

 

I wouldn't recommend doing crazy hacks like having the startup routine of your program scan its directory and subdirs and reset the flag by itself.
It would be kind of user friendly in the sense of "after user approves on first start, it works", but it's just one of the thing that look kinda shady and may trip an antivirus. (If you would want to go that way, you'll need to research Windows APIs on how to look for and delete NTFS Alternate Data Streams, the one you want to fully delete is Zone.Identifier https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2013/03/24/alternate-data-streams-in-ntfs/).

 

G'luck.

[anotak]

i may release 2.1.3.5 sooner rather than later just because there's a crash bug i found. there hasn't been much updates otherwise but i've been sitting on the fix for that a while.

 

19 hours ago, wrkq said:

Well, you can always add a grand flashing warning to the download page asking people to "Unblock" the zip itself before unpacking (maybe with screenshot).

Other than that, yeah, installer is the best you can do.

 

From "real" installer engines, NSIS (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page) is kinda the standard for free/opensource use on Windows.

It requires a little scripting but docs are OK, and you could do all the "pro" stuff like installing SlimDX when not already installed, and making start menu shortcuts.

For the simplest possible alternative, 7zip's self-extracting archive option might be sufficient - but then the user will need to run the dependencies' setups by hand anyway.

 

I wouldn't recommend doing crazy hacks like having the startup routine of your program scan its directory and subdirs and reset the flag by itself.
It would be kind of user friendly in the sense of "after user approves on first start, it works", but it's just one of the thing that look kinda shady and may trip an antivirus. (If you would want to go that way, you'll need to research Windows APIs on how to look for and delete NTFS Alternate Data Streams, the one you want to fully delete is Zone.Identifier https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2013/03/24/alternate-data-streams-in-ntfs/).

 

G'luck.

hm, thank you for the details. this is pretty annoying, as i greatly preferred the flow of simply just extracting the files where-ever.

[Ribbiks]

greetings, I found a way to get 2.1.3.4 to crash.

 

some vague steps describing how it happened:

- open a map that had settings specifying it has in boom format, and required some resource wads

- while map is open, go into map options with the goal of adding another texpack to the resources:

--- see that map format is listed as Eternity for some reason, and resource section is empty

--- switch it to Boom, add texpacks back to the resource list

- hit OK --> crash window comes up, program exits.

 

lastcrash log: https://pastebin.com/4d9JPrLJ

[anotak]

apologies for not releasing sooner, that's the crash i mentioned in my last post actually.

i guess maybe i should just deal with finishing that up today since i have some free time

[anotak]

a new version! not a huge update, but there will be more in the future. if the new startup quotes/tips/whatever bother you, you can disable them.

 

 

- optional feature: instead of displaying the logo on startup, a tip or a hopefully helpful quote about mapping is displayed. you can disable this in the Tools -> Preferences -> Interface tab. if i quoted you and you want the quote removed (for any reason, no questions asked), feel free to contact me and i'll make sure to remove it in the next version.
- new hotkey for swapping upper/lower textures in classic 2d linedef mode. you have to set the hotkey yourself in the menu
- added flat scaling/rotation/panning stuff to EE-UDMF config for Edit Sector window
- fixed "upper/lower" being cut off sometimes in the linedef info panel if you had both checked.
- fixed a crash on changing map settings

Edited December 30, 2017 by anotak

[tourniquet]

cool, thx

 

[anotak]

1 hour ago, anotak said:

a new version! not a huge update, but there will be more in the future. if the new startup quotes/tips/whatever bother you, you can disable them.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

- optional feature: instead of displaying the logo on startup, a tip or a hopefully helpful quote about mapping is displayed. you can disable this in the Tools -> Preferences -> Interface tab. if i quoted you and you want the quote removed (for any reason, no questions asked), feel free to contact me and i'll make sure to remove it in the next version.
- new hotkey for swapping upper/lower textures in classic 2d linedef mode. you have to set the hotkey yourself in the menu
- added flat scaling/rotation/panning stuff to EE-UDMF config for Edit Sector window
- fixed "upper/lower" being cut off sometimes in the linedef info panel if you had both checked.
- fixed a crash on changing map settings

oh also i wanna make clear that i'm still looking into the other issues, it's just that i've put off releasing the crash fix for long enough, and it's a more serious issue because it can lead to people losing work

[Ribbiks]

awesome, thanks!

[theJF]

Thanks anotak this has become my preferred map editor.

Maybe I can make some suggestions here?

Checking Things for errors could report if no difficulty flags are set?

In the dialog box listing sidedefs with missing textures it would be nice to be able to select all and apply the default in one go, rather than one by one.

Is there a way to make a hot key to set selected texture x-offset to zero?

Have ten files in the most recently used list under "File".

 

Thanks again!

Edited December 31, 2017 by theJF

[StevenC21]

So hey! I have a potentially great idea for your project with this! Would you be able to add the ability to load pk3 files directly, instead of having to rip the wads out first? I have a personal project going, and that might make me switch from GZDoom Builder, which is currently my main editor.

[Mordeth]

Does DoomBuilderX also use sidedef packing, and does it take into account not to pack tagged sidedefs? See this issue.