Welcome to this sneak preview of Tread3D2. For the most part Nick
and I have decided to use that term instead of Tread3D 2.0 because
we feel this editor sets itself apart from others, even its predicessor.
Stability in Design We never thought we'd say something
like this, but Tread v1.12 is light-years behind Tread3D2. Starting
from a purely design standpoint, Tread3D2 was written in C++ with
an object oriented design. Because of this initial design things
are more flexible and allow for more root stability. This can be
seen all throughout the editor. Because of our experience with designing
an editor before, we were able to focus on the major lackings of
our last version, and fix all the problems. Tread3D2 has been rewritten
from scratch. Not a single line of 1.12 lives on in this version.
Speed A lot of hindrance came from 1.12's inherent
lack of support for hardware acceleration. Part of this was remedied
by visgroups, however, this often proved to be inadequate. Tread3D2's
rendering engine has been completely reengineered to be more flexible,
and way faster. On an AMD K6/2 450 with a diamond Viper V770
(or 550) Tread3D2 is wicked fast. You can pan a thousand brushes in
the 3D view without a hiccup. An entire Quake2 level will move in
real-time at about 2-5 f.p.s. That may not sounds impressive, but
trust me, it is. Often a designer works with much smaller subsets
of a level, but sometimes you need to see the whole thing, and Tread3D2
makes it possible. As far as the flat views go, don't even try to
slow those suckers down, you just ain't gonna do it.
Ease of Use with Power for the Pros Nick Randal's
partnership in Tread3D2 has taken editing to the next level with user
interface. If only he'd been able to work on 1.12 when it was still
in its infancy. Nick's thrown new controls and functionality into
the interface this time around. You'll sit back and say: "This is
how it should have been the first time." All colors can be customized
to your liking. If you hate the way a hot spot looks, then change
it. Fully bindable action and mode keys are still here. A debug
window sports the ability to show what's going on inside Tread3D2.
This will be useful for plugin designers. Nick has also come up
with a new editing paradigm: anchors. Points in your map that can
be centered on by a simple click of the mouse. You can also expand
and collapse views with the press of a key.
Eye Candy One of the biggest new eye candy features
of Tread3D2 is a ZombieLight Plugin. Tread3D2 will precompute the
lighting in your level in literally seconds and show you what it
will look like in the game. Currently this supports has only been
tested with Quake2 and HalfLife. It's fast! Tread3D2 can compile
the lighting for base1 of Quake2 in under 20 seconds on an AMD K/6
450 machine. With this feature the full source code is also
included. That conveniently leads me to the next topic.
Fully Extendable with Plugins Tread3D2 can be extended
to do anything an end user wishes it to with a fully integrated
plugin system. Users can code new texture loading, model importing
features, just about anything their hearts desire. Full source code
to five plugins is included to get you off on the right foot. Two
of them are used in Tread3D2 as major features: the leaktrace and ZombieLight (
Lighting preview).
Currently Tread3D2 provides the following plugins source code:
- Leaktrace
- ZombieLight (Lighting preview)
- Quake2 Pak Reader (Reads the Quake2(tm) pak file format)
- Quake Map (Read and write maps of Quake type)
- Shapes Plugin for Arches, Cones and Cylinders
Screenshots Didn't think we were going to leave
you in the dark did ya?
Features:
We feel that the quality of Tread3D2 speaks for itself. It’s intuitive.
It’s easy to use. And it just keeps getting better. It’s got more
features than any other editor available. From its creation Tread3D2
was designed to streamline the editing process. It’s the end-all
of editors.
Tread3D2 supports a slew of games, and support for new games is always
on the way. We have stressed our dedication to supports all id Software
games, and derivatives (assuming there is demand for the support
of such titles). Currently Tread3D2 supports:
- Quake 1
- Quake 2
- Half-Life
- KingPin
- Painkeep
- Counter Strike
- Action Quake 2
- Action Half-Life
If that hasn’t convinced you to click the "Get Tread3D Now" tab and get
your own smokin’ copy of Tread3D2, then have a look at our short
list of features:
Supported Games: Quake1 - Quake2 - Half-Life - KingPin - Painkeep - Counter Strike - Action Quake2 - Action Half-Life
Unlimited Undo/Redo.
Cut, Copy, Paste, even between maps.
3D View: Wireframe, Solid, Shaded and Textured.
Texture directory loading.
15 degree snapped default rotation (optional 1 degree control).
Leak file viewing.
Full source code to five plugins.
Target name paths drawn (+3d view).
Automatic path generation.
Fast texture viewing, with name/type filter.
Adjustable back clipping plane.
User customizable keys.
User customizable colors.
Selections crosshair.
Selectable View System, Standard 3 View (Top/Side/Front) or
Custom 1 View (One window with switchable views).
Ability to size, rotate, drag brushes.
Views are all changeable.
Opens multiple maps.
Real-time camera (See yourself resize and drag in 3D!).
Multiple cameras.
Option to preview only selected objects.
Very fast drawing (supports hardware acceleration).
Visgroups Support.
Ability to hide all/show all visgroups with the click of a button.
Integrated build window shows output from build programs.
Advanced hierarchical grouping.
Texture locking.
Support for contents/surface/value editing for faces.
Ability to edit multiple faces at once.
Zoom in/out.
Entity support with advanced scripting language.
Supports WAD2/WAD3/PAK2 files.
Supports various texture formats (.WAL/.WAL2/.TGA).
Recently chosen textures list (saved with each map).
Full vertex manipulation.
Clipping tool.
CSG subtraction.
Hollowing of any shape.
Models support: Store doors and anything you want to quickly add to your maps.
Supports any grid size.
Lots of quick key combinations and modifier keys to speed up menial tasks.
Comes with a script editor, allowing you to quickly make your own
scripts to facilitate mods or new games.
Full texturing control, includes: scaling, rotation, shifts.
Imports and Exports (Supported Game) .MAP files.
Map Statistics dialog shows you all kinds of neat information.
Ability to visually edit entity keys: Angles have an angle dialog,
colors have the windows color picker.
Entity names can be viewed as smart names or original class names.
Texture brightness settings.
Lots of user modifiable settings to tweak for performance.
Shows selected entities class names in the views.
Shows selected brush dimensions.
Shows selected objects outlines in 3D view.
Supports 3D bilinear texture filtering.
Supports multiple 3D views.
ZombieLight Plugin - Will show you how lighting will look like in your map.
Ability to change renderer’s (2D/3D) in real-time.
Ability to edit/change paks and game settings without restarting
editor.
Anchor support (jump to marked areas of your map with a click of
the mouse).
Scripted build steps in GDF2 language allows for custom builds.
Runs all builds and launches games from within Tread3D2.
Comes ready to go with ArghRad, and improved versions of vis and
bsp.
Unlimited tech support.
Comes with basic HTML manual, as well as many online resources.
|