----------------------------------- DCK 3.1 Release notes and Readme file Ben Morris bmorris@islandnet.com ----------------------------------- --------------- Introduction --------------- Don't forget to check out READTHIS.DOC - it contains fairly important information about DCK and Hexen Editing. DCK can edit all five id/Raven games: - Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead - Doom 2: Hell on earth - Heretic - The Ultimate Doom - Hexen: Beyond Heretic I might release a Quake editor, depending on divine inspiration (hah!) providing me with a _nice_ way to facilitate 3D editing. -------------------------------- Changes since the last release -------------------------------- 03/07/96 Release 3.1 Bugs Fixed: - The .GD files still didn't use ZenNode properly.. sigh. Fixed. - Sometimes, a level would not run properly due to the misuse of ZenNode; fixed. - If you included a texture file in the Textures list that had levels in it, DCK would incorrectly run THAT wad instead of your wad when you pressed F9; fixed. - After running a Tool from the Tools menu, the main menu bar disappeared; fixed. Also, the palette was screwed up; fixed. - Some of the game data arrays weren't as big as were needed, and memory was being overwritten. This is a bug that's been there since 2.2 -- jeez. Features Added: + This has been here for the last couple releases, but I forgot to mention it: While you're dragging anything except Items, hold down Ctrl to have the reference cross "snap" to the line that the cursor is over. This is great for creating connected regions. 02/28/96 Release 3.0a Bugs Fixed: - Create Outside Region bug fixed. - Editing linedefs in non-hexen maps crashed DCK. duhh; fixed. - Editing multiple linedefs in non-hexen maps didn't set up the dialog box properly and resulted in wacky linedefs; fixed. - Rotating and Scaling lines/sectors would ask you if you wanted to join vertices after you'd finished -- fine, but DCK would join vertices to themselves; fixed. - The motif editor treated the wall/flat textures as fields (you could move into them, which served no purpose); fixed. - The "Create Door" menu would sometimes appear partially offscreen; fixed. - The Popup Help would sometimes obscure the dialog box it was helping you with, which _didn't_ help; fixed. - The Polygon tool didn't work! -- oops; fixed. - Marking lines/items and switching to sector mode left the same numbered objects marked; fixed. - Adding to / removing a file from the list in the Textures dialog didn't update the displayed list; fixed. Stuff Changed: * Changed the background colour of dialog box fields to something darker. Now DCK doesn't look so much like Windows 95, and is probably easier on the pink eyes that doomers are all born with :) * The tag of a line is now displayed regardless of the line's special. Features Added (by popular request): + Added v2-style line grid -- use the 'G' key to toggle between no grid, dot grid and line grid. + Created a hybrid between the v2-style selection mechanism (Categories and Items) and the new v3-style (Search Item List.) Chock eet awwwt. + Hold down Ctrl and left-click once to quickly create the last kind of Item you edited in Item Mode. 02/20/96 Release 3.0 - DCK and HCK combined. - Many little bugs fixed. - Mirror feature - use the Object menu. - "Tips" feature added on startup. You can't get rid of it unless you register :) - "Replace Textures" (Alt+R) feature works again. - Because I'm such a dissident, DCK now calls THINGs "Items." - Full Screen Mode - press 'F' to toggle, or use the Edit Menu. - Built-in version of DEACC by Luc Cluitmans. - Line-length display while dragging is more intelligent. - Hexen: The "create door" dialog box created doors that were activated by _crossing_ the door lines. Useful? no. Fixed? yes. - Hexen: The ';' search key now searches for Items with the same TID as a Line, and Lines with the same TID as a Items. - Hexen: The Auto-Tag utility (Ctrl+T) now tags Items to Lines, and vice-versa. - Hexen: No more compiler problems - the file ACC.DLL is a loadable version of the script compiler, which is run right inside DCK now. - There's a customizable TOOLS menu, just like Windows programs. - Hexen: The Consistency Checker (Alt+C) now checks for Lines that require TIDs but don't have them. - Hexen: The Consistency Checker now checks for a Player 1 Start that has a blank arg0 parameter (which is required if you just -warp to a level in Hexen.) - Hexen: Player Starts now have an editable arg0 parameter. - The status bars are about 25% smaller, so you get more map space. - Hexen: Item and Line Properties dialog boxes now have a "Clear" button that sets all the unused special args to 0. 12/07/95 Beta 3 - There were STILL problems with the "find Hexen" feature. This has been fixed. - The "Create Door" feature never set the Repeatable flag, even if the checkbox was set. Fixed. - Saving a new map didn't prompt for a filename - DCK just saved the map as MAP01 in UNTITLED.WAD. DCK now prompts for a filename. - The save status window was a little messed up. - A couple minor interface changes. - Editing multiple THINGs with different TIDs set all the TIDs to the first selected THING's TID. Fixed. - Creating a new THING set its TID to that of the last thing edited. It is now set to 0. - Deleting sectors didn't work. - The auto-tag-set function didn't work properly. - The Sector number is now displayed on the Sector info status bar. - Deleting a line to join two sectors didn't work properly. - The beta testers didn't work properly. - I'm joking! 12/06/95 Beta 2 - If your copy of Hexen wasn't in C:\HEXEN, DCK would crash when it first loaded, after scanning and finding Hexen. It was work-around- able, but what a dumb bug! This is fixed. Now, on to the good stuff: --------------------- What's new for 3.0? --------------------- New Features: - Hexen support, of course! DCK contains lots of Hexen-specific enhancements: - Pop-up choices for Arguments, where available - for example, you can pop up a list of THINGS to spawn for the Thing_Spawn... specials; - Built-in version of the ACS script compiler; - Edit your map's script right from DCK, using your favorite DOS editor; - Fully supports THINGS that take Arguments; - Highlights the relationship between THING TIDs and Lines whose Specials reference those TIDs. - No more built-in nodebuilder, so you can use whichever you prefer. - "Drag-and-align" texture alignment. Besides having a really crafty name, this feature is very useful: DCK displays the texture you want to align and allows you to drag a crosshair to exactly the point that you want DOOM to start displaying the texture. - Integrated vertex and line modes! No more switching back and forth in order to make structural changes. This is a BIG timesaver. - A totally new user interface. It looks and acts a lot more like Windows, and is much easier on the mouse hand. - More responsive dialog box controls, drag-scrolling listboxes, and so on. Buttons actually push DOWN now - incredible! - PopUp help in dialog boxes. If you like, DCK will display a description of the field you're editing in a Pop-Up window beside the dialog box. You can turn this on and off in File|Configure. - A nicer-looking, proportional font. - More configuration options. - A much quicker method of finding what you're looking for in lists of items, specials and so on: type a couple abbreviated words and DCK displays all the items that contain those words. You'll see what a difference this makes when you're looking for that bloody green thing, but you can't remember what its proper name is! - A real mouse cursor instead of that awful green thing. - A full-screen texture browser with multiple zoom levels: view textures from 256x128 all the way down to 32x32. The new browser will optionally display names only (with one picture at the bottom), so you can view most of the textures available for picking without having to page-down the list. - More informative status bars contain all the information for Hexen objects. - Small features like: - Shift-key flag toggling. In line mode and thing mode, you can turn on and off any of the object flags just by hitting a Shift-key combination. - Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right rotate THING objects. - Horizontal and Vertical mirroring. - You guessed it: And even More! All the good old features of previous releases: - Graphical THING display: shows graphics of the Things in the game, right on the map! - Rectangle and Polygon tools. - A fast wall and floor/ceiling texture browser. - Runs the game right from within the editor, so you can test your levels out and get right back to editing! - Seamless support for custom textures. - Automatic texture-alignment tools. - A clipboard with Cut, Copy and Paste - even between levels! - Full drag and drop functions. - An easy-to-use and thorough map "error checker." - An UNDO feature. - A powerful, built-in WAD management tool. - Motifs: named sets of wall and floor/ceiling textures for "coloring" areas of your map quickly and easily. Future plans?: - There WILL be a much-nicer-looking help system sometime soon, with hypertext links and other cool stuff. - This is a maybe, but a texture-creation facility has always been on my to-do list. If I find the time..! - Project files. Hexen maps have script functionality, so you have to have some way of telling DCK which script goes with the map you're editing. Project files also allow you to specify multiple sequences of "level-building" - for example, you could have a sequence that builds the BSP at a draft level and runs the map so you can check out your texture alignments quickly, and a sequence that builds the entire 10-level PWAD you're working on and zips it up for distribution. These are simple descriptions, because projects are totally configurable. Kind of nifty. Bugs fixed: - Deleting multiple sectors in one operation never worked before. - The crashing bug has been fixed -- i hope. ---------------------------------- What's in the registered version ---------------------------------- - The WAD manager. - Graphical Item display. - Item Display Filter (for example, to display only those items that appear on skills 1 and 2.) - A feature to find the selected object's associated- by-sector-tag objects. - No more welcome windows. - A printed manual! ---------------------- Where can i get it?! ---------------------- DCK is available at the following locations. It should be under the filename "DCKnn.ZIP" (where nn is the version, eg: 30 for 3.0) FTP - Always at: ftp.cdrom.com /pub/doom2/utils/level_edit/ ftp.islandnet.com (T1 link) /bmorris/ WWW - http://www.islandnet.com/~bmorris/ (Due up soon.) Other - Compuserve ACTION forum, browse for DCK*.ZIP