Friday thoughts on certain things.
Toolchains:
Please get better, the state of Linux tools for Quake engines is pretty poor, there is not a single model viewer I know of (more on that, later).
I tried to address that with my Quake tools release. Anyway, here are some good QE tools that I use almost daily:
- J.A.C.K. (Update sometime.)
- GtkRadiant
- Does FTEQW count?
See the problem? Two of these do the exact same thing even. I think with TrenchBroom being (supposedly, I don't use it) being good at cross-plat as well, I think we're good with map editors at this point. Really, it's fine. Go work on something else.
Where's Noesis' equivalent on Linux? Hint, it doesn't exist. Also yes, I approached Rich years ago asking if I could port it to Linux - but I think I'm glad he spared me the MFC nightmare.
I hate having to open FTEQW to display some mdls. I used to fire up Mete Ciragans Half-Life Model Viewer in WINE because I couldn't be arsed to write my own.
Because we're in need for a public vvm viewer eventually I started experimenting with Qt.
KDE marries well with Qt by design, being the main framework for everything. So it fits rather nice.
The layout is based on Mete Ciragans MD2 Viewer which I have been using for far longer than anyone should have. I simply love the UX.
The final viewer will support MDL (Quake and Half-Life), MD2, MD3 and IQM/VVM.
Anyway, thank god, no one has to use raw X11 APIs in this day and age. Yes Wayland will replace it anyway. No I don't care.
It's still not *there* yet.
Qt:
Eh, it could be a lot worse. Signals and Slots get really messy. Prepare to document a lot. Supposedly the newest framework supports connecting objects to raw functions instead of doing the Q_OBJECT bullshit which forces you to run qmake every time.
Let's hope it gets better that way.
--Marco