The current forest brush object selection is a bit hit or miss. It randomly picks which objects to select, even if you move your mouse cursor a bit, and randomly drag-selects things too (this can lock up the editor when facing sharply downward, like when trying to position something against a building wall, or building a multi-piece stop-light). It would be nice to toggle drag-select off (for just the forest brush editor!) as it doesn't work properly anyways especially on complicated scenes, has never been useful thus-far in 2+ years of editing, and causes program lock-ups trying to figure out how to accidentally select the ENTIRE map of about 100,000 objects :x Actually, drag-select is never useful, it's never working as intended and is only a trap at this point. If your hands aren't as reliable as they once were, or you're just plain getting old, it's a disaster waiting to happen. The main point I posted this is thread, in most editors, the things closest to the camera, on complicated scenes, will be selected when clicked on. This is generally a good thing - but in fact, that's not the case with Torque/BeamNG editor. Maybe this can be changed to the objects drawn last by the render passes (the things closest to the camera) would be selected in-stead of something buried, that likely is already in place well enough. You don't often build stuff from the outside inward, you most often build from the inside out and then decorate your object (say a house, with variations like vents, chimneys, door or window variations). This would help usability for others with the editor, and make it more intuitive. Also, copy-paste functions DO NOT work in the forest brush editor. If you have a few similar lots in the map, it would be a big time-save (or bridges, commercial buildings, etc)... I am no fan of copy-paste "copy-pasta" maps but it sure would be a time saver for things where there is more than one of them, in the map. --Thanks in advance. I am sure other accomplished editor users, including some developers here trying not to go BALD, would agree. This is not a rant, just a suggestion. Please give it to your map-editor coder dude. P.S. Spawn points should ALWAYS default to being in the "player drop points" sim-group, why don't they? Have fun dragging *THAT* to the top of a list on a rather 'full' map, from the bottom. Better to just dupe a line in text-editing mode and change the coordinates to something nearby that you can find from text-editing mode (outside of the editor, with it closed). Times spent using the map editor shouldn't have as many swears per minute, or more, than a Russian car crash compilation...
I agree with most of your suggestions Bob - bolded the ones I really agree on you with. I've been meaning to make a thread with my own suggestions but I guess I'll shamelessly piggy-back off yours. Although I haven't made a map in a while, but regardless. -Highlighted boundary boxes on water blocks (similar in vein to how rivers display the edges in bright neon colors, just to make it easier to distinguish where the boundaries of the water blocks are.) -Have the "clear terrain" brush only work on terrain that is directly in front of you. Oftentimes I find myself having to "repair" holes in the terrain on the other side of a hill that I made a tunnel through because the brush actually erased the terrain in front of the viewer as well as terrain on the other side of the terrain. -Have forest brushes capable of rotating along multiple axis for a more "natural" placement of trees, shrubbery, and plants. Currently the forest brush only allows (as far as I know) rotation of a plant along one axis, meaning that the plant can't have any "lean" to it unless it is a manually placed static object.
Forest brushes can rotate all 3 axis, and expand all axis (only expand or contract all at once, unfortunately, that differs from regular non-forest objects which can be contorted in different amounts on different axis). Just make sure to grab the right red green or blue axis handles when rotating. Thanks for supporting this thread, the editor is much fun - only when it does what you expect it to, though.
