CSG Difficulty

[3Dski7059]

As a side note, in the old Leadwerks, attempting to create a whole in a wall with a cylinder didn't work well at all. The basic operation works as expected in the UltraEngine beta. However...

In the process above, the cylinder remains selected and you can move it out of the way, so that's great. But, the wall has been pretty much been deconstructed such that it is no longer treated as a single object that can be moved as a unit.  To add to the difficulty, there isn't a way to easily select all parts of the geometry to perform any kind of operation; there's no selection mode that allows you to block select the parts.

A possible option would be to create a parent with a scene hierarchy that the children would fall under so that would be treated as a unit, but that option is also not currently present.

Both of these may not be buga, because they aren't features that are broken, but I think they're both important features that would be very helpful.  It common practice to want to group things in a complex scene. The means to select a deconstructed wall after a CSG operation doesn't really exist from what I can tell, because select all is going to select everything in the scene, not just the wall parts.

 

[Josh]

Yeah, I was thinking the brush fragments should be placed under a single pivot that gets created, if a carve operation results in more than one brush.

[3Dski7059]

Hey, Josh... I just saw that an "empty' was at the bottom of the object options. I could manually move things into that, but it seems that can only be used for organization, because selecting that doesn't select the parts for performing operations.

At any rate, this did make me focus on the scene panel and see that you can pick multiple items there, so now that works, but you can't select more than a single item to move them to another parent.

 

[reepblue]

16 hours ago, Josh said:

Yeah, I was thinking the brush fragments should be placed under a single pivot that gets created, if a carve operation results in more than one brush.

If/when the group feature is implemented, it would be better to auto group the brush segments.

[Josh]

@3Dski7059 You might enjoy the event tomorrow:
https://discord.com/invite/wMTpqCYM?event=1192895050342994001

[3Dski7059]

Last night I created a simple scene from scratch to get a feel for that workflow and tool behavior.  I am set for beta releases, btw : )

I did see that item selection does occur per grouping if items are place under an empty for organization. I think this is a plus, because selected any of the sub-items selects the group if you're using the view port for selection. But, if you need to make adjustments to a sub-item, you can still individually select them from scene tree.

I think the editor should open to the project manager. Currently, the editor is initially opened and it really isn't immediately apparent what project it's open to unless you over at the Project tab/pane.

On a related note, I think in would be an advantage to automatically load load the last map saved (or what was present when exiting) for the project the user has selected.

I did notice the coordinate display at the bottom right, which is cool. I noticed that if you move the mouse to another view port the coordinates don't update unless you click on the port. I think this is okay and something most folks would get used to, since you do highlight the active view port.  BUT, I just noticed that the coordinates don't update for  mouse movement in the left view. I think that X, Y, Z should be labelled. If an axis doesn't apply due in the active view port, then may change the value to a dash, asterisk, or "NA".

When adding an object (i.e., a box) if the active view port is top, left, or back the object is created at the origin. But, if the perspective view is active the object is NOT placed at the origin, so this is inconsistent and a bit weird.

I think I may have seen this reported by someone else.., Objects don't appear to be aligned with the visible grid.

It might be nice to have Width, Height, and Depth input fields for the primitive objects inputs that the editor offers. I'm not sure if this a pressing need for imported models.

Snapping appears to always be set and if it can be turned off I couldn't find the option. Snapping is great for general construction, but not always wanted for prop placements.

This could be very important!... The ability to identify and move the axis, or pivot point, for an object; hinges, joints, or the point of rotation for swinging objects.

I'm a developer by trade (Java web dev, but started out with C desktop development way back in 1992.  I'm struggling with understanding how all the pieces fit together when trying to create something from scratch, so it will be a lot for someone real new.  What I seem to have interpreted is, you need to use, or create your own component using Lua or C++ header. This exposes settings to the editor. You then use the API to interact with the component data. This may, or may not, involve the flow editor, depending if actions/events are defined in Lua or C++.  That's my starting perspective at least.  A good grasp of this will require most to do a deep dive on the sample project and really work out what's needed for a component, the flow, how to program for events, and then apply this to what's needed for the working game. I'm not seeing any a tutorial specific for tying these concepts together that digestible for a newcomer.

So, apart from sharing my observations, my homework will be to figure out how to apply the ideas from the sample project to my own introductory project made from scratch.

I hope my list is helpful, and appreciate all the work you're doing on this endeavor! Power on, brother!