Upcoming features and changes

[Cvoxalury]

This topic will include previews of upcoming features and changes. Usually there's not going to be a release period estimate; just a brief update on what's being worked on.

[Cvoxalury]

Current public version (this feature will be added in a future version): 2.108

Func_button sounds playback

It was suggested that func_button should have a way to listen to its usually not-well-described sounds instead of using the game. Indeed it was deemed useful, so here it is.

SLE.button.sounds.mp4

This feature uses a new FGD data type, "soundchoices", which will be included via an @ExtendClass for func_button in level_editor.fgd.
This supports playback for general button sounds, locked sounds, and unlocked sounds.

[Cvoxalury]

Already released as of 2.117, going to retroactively list some new changes here.

TGA images in-editor
Artwork (concept art, references, blueprints) can now be added via editor_image that works similarly to editor_text.
It supports 24 bit TGAs where dimensions must be a factor of 4 (but don't have to be a power of 2, i. e. a 600x400 works too).
The image panels can be rotated, moved, or scaled, the image can be flipped horizontally or vertically or made translucent.
Works in both 2D and 3D.
The path can be relative to the mod folder (i. e. materials/references/myref1.tga) or absolute. For portability/sharing of maps, relative is recommended.

2D Preview and manipulation of Overlays
Selected info_overlays can now be seen in 2D and manipulated, making it far easier to connect them (in addition to already having had the vertices with snapping previously enabled).

Selecting Overlays and Decals with Mark, and Replacing textures
Both now support Mark'ing them via the Texture Browser or Active Texture panel. Overlays also support mass-replacing their texture names via these methods or via the Face Edit tool. Decals don't support mass-replacing yet.

[Cvoxalury]

The next update should include support for using an .ini file instead of the registry to store all the settings, making the program more portable and easier to back up. Regret not doing it earlier, as it ended up being extremely easy (still watching out for some unexpected consequences, but nothing so far.)

I'm still weighing the options here because on the one hand, I always meant for this specific change to count as a major version change (from 2.xx to 3.xx) as it is fundamental enough to cause drop of backward compatibility (change from registry to .ini would mean forcing the user to re-configure the editor). On the other, currently I've also added a launch option to keep using the registry, and I'm pondering if it'd be easy enough to add a setting for that in the editor directly and/or write some kind of registry export/ini import, so it may end up not being that fundamental to warrant a major version increment.

[Cvoxalury]

Another new feature, displacement vertex freezing. Wanted it for a long time and I dare say it's everything I hoped for. Freezing displacements with the Paint Geo brush lets you then move them, apply noise, subdivision without changing the frozen verts, so you can keep it attached to geometry where needed, produce more experimental subdivided shapes, or easily create repeated patterns like ridges or stairs in a fraction of time it would normally take, and with more precision.

SLE_disp_freeze.mp4

SLE_disp_freeze2.mp4

[Cvoxalury]

3D Flat View will be replaced with flat outlined view instead of flat shaded.