Jaimi: If I could request only a few features fixed/added, it would be these:

Jaimi,

I have a few suggestions that I believe are very important for constructor. I know its not your job to code for constructor, but you are the only one who has been willing to help.


-The CSG subtract tool. It makes some pretty bad geometry, especially when you subtract a cylinder into another. This produces errors in a lot of the older versions of map2dif needed for use with some games based on older versions of Torque. Basically, it produces many more brushes than necessary, and much smaller brushes than it should. Smaller brushes = more likely for conversion errors in older versions of map2dif still used by many people.

-Extending faces. Often times when you have built a brush on a slant (well, a slope to say) you need to make it longer or shorter. In quark, you can simply select the side face and extend it. However in constructor, it extends it but messes up the angle it is at. You have to bring it back down to flat, extend it, then angle it upwards again for it to do this correctly. This probably conflicts with Constructor's technique of fitting the faces to the brushes, so this one would probably be a bit more complicated to code, I assume.

-Pie slices. When creating cylinders, there should be an option to create it as pie slices. So for example if you had a cylinder with 16 sides, each pie slice would have an angle measure of 22.5 degrees (360/16).

Additionally, if the pie slices option is checked, it should let you select hollow values (x, y, z) (imagine creating two different cylinders with pie slices, one slightly smaller size than the other to create a tube, and csg subtracting the smaller from the bigger just to leave the difference in the sizes there).

Continuing with this, the hollow tool/csg subtraction tool would also have to be fixed. Currently, if you try to csg subtract something from a bunch of pie slices, it still produces bad geometry rather than acting as if the brush being subtracted from was pie sliced, and subtracting it slice by slices, simply cutting each pie slice shorter. The hollow tool I would assume would need to be fixed as well to do the same.

-Cycling through occluded brushes. In quark, there is a nifty feature that lets you cycle through brushes if some are occluded. You click in the area that the occluded brushes are multiple times until it selects the "hidden" brush inside. Constructor doesn't let you do this and only selects the outer-most brush; and thus to select the occluded brush, I usually have to move the camera inside the outer brush to select the occluded brush. Not fun.

Thanks a lot for considering (and hopefully following through with) these.




Additional Bug Fixes / Feature Requests (Not Top Priority) - Using current Mac 1.0.4 build

-When a brush is selected, you cannot change the camera center (well, location) in the top or bottom views.

-Usually upon importing a fair amount of textures from a directory, constructor crashes, and upon reopening they are all there. I do not know if this a a problem with the textures such as a size that is not a power of 2 (even though I sorted through them, and they all are), but it would be nice to do some basic checks on them and give error warnings before importing if it may crash.

-Ability for constructor to save your sun settings on .map. I understand that .map files do not store any environment settings (well, bare minimum) but it would be nice if Constructor was able to save default sun settings just for building purposes. Every time I open a .map to work on, I have to change the sun settings from their blinding current values to duller, darker ones.

-View tab. I really am not sure what the heck is going on there, but it seems very little. Instead of those odd options going on there, a nice option would be to center the camera on the selected brush in the perspective view. Often when I load a map I need to work on a specific area of the map, and I have to zoom in for 10-20 seconds just to get there so I can see the brush clearly.

-Ability to export/import layouts. Constructor currently lets you save and choose layouts for use when you make them yourself, but there really isn't an easy way to use layouts made by others. Yes, you can just pass around the config.db file, but you basically can not cut and paste from it to add the specific one you want, and instead have to overwrite all your current layouts with the new file. This poses a problem if you want to a collection of different layouts from others to use- you would only be able to have one layout at a time. And if you want to keep your existing customized layout, there really is no way as it would be overwritten.

-Automatically center the tool area (moving selectors) in the center of the brush when selected. So often when building, the x,y,z handles to move the brush are far off from the actual brush.

-Pyramids. Oftentimes when making pyramids, after reloading the .map I get a malformed error warning that Constructor was not able to load them and they do not show up or convert.

-When you shift and drag over an area of brushes in the perspective view to select them, holding shift and dragging over a subset of that area does not unselect them.

-In the brush list, you cannot use the shift and select to select a range of brushes. It just acts as if you were control-selecting them.

-There is no way to group multiple brushes as "one" door_entity outside of modifying the .map file. More work than it should be if there are more than just a few brushes needing this.

More to come as I remember/think of them.