Tread 3.0

1.13.09 9:30 p.m.

I've added forums, the link is on the top left. Please feel free to post comments and questions.

Alpha 2 - Prelim Quake3 Support, Fixed Bugs

7.16.08 11:15 p.m.

I spent this last weekend fixing various bugs and adding preliminary Quake 3 support. Currently the editor does not read or write the brushDef style map files so you will most likely not be able to import maps built in other editors yet. There is also no patch support.

I also removed a bunch of crap from the source tree, so the source download for this new version is less than half the size of the old one.

Some people may notice that right now the editor doesn't work out of anything except pak files. I realize that this is limiting for people who have custom content and don't want to make pak files for it during development. I'll be adding that at some point down the line.

For the less hardcore, Tread does some work for you to extract the necessary files for the compiler tools so you don't have to extract any pak files for any of the Quake games. The goal is for it to work "out of the box" .

Installation

Tread does not need to be installed (there is no installer). Simply unzip the binaries wherever you want and run the Tread executable. Currently the editor supports Quake 1, 2, and 3. The configuration of the editor should be straightforward.

Steam

If you purchased Quake 1, 2 or 3 from Steam, then there are a couple tricks you need to do to get your maps to build and run in an integrated fashion with the editor.

For Quake, I recommend you download GLQuake and put it into your Quake folder, and point the editor to that. If you don't want to do that then point the editor to your Steam.exe and add the following in your game command line in the editor minus the quotes: "-applaunch 2310"

For Quake2, point the editor to your Steam.exe and add "-applaunch 2320" minus the quotes to your game command line in the editor.

For Quake3, point the editor to your Steam.exe and add "-applaunch 2200 +sv_pure 0".

In all cases make sure that you set the game directory to the correct spot.

Basic Navigation and Shortcut Keys

This new version of Tread is totally different from the older versions. People that have used the older versions won't find anything familiar here. This version of the editor is focused towards a fast workflow, and more intuitive and fluid editing (there are no "modes" like in WorldCraft and Tread3D2).

Probably the most unique feature of the editor is that the undo history saves with the map (up to 64 levels) .

ALT + right click creates the currently selected creation type (located on the right hand side).

The gizmos to drag and scale only respond to moving the mouse up and down.

The middle mouse button is used to navigate and zoom. Holding it down in any of the views will pan you around. Scrolling will zoom in or out. This applies to the texture view as well.

The 3D navigation is based on the 3DS MAX interface. Holding middle mouse + ALT will rotate you around your selection. If you have no selection you will rotate in place. If you have a selection and don't want to rotate around it then middle mouse + ALT + SHIFT will rotate you in place.

Press the Escape key to deselect.

Most objects have a right-click context menu which is the primary way you edit them.

You can nudge objects using the arrow keys (the nudge factor is on the right dock bar).

SHIFT + Drag duplicates the selection

Holding CTRL while dragging one of the translate gizmos will rotate the object in 15 degree increments. Holding CTRL + SHIFT will rotate in a fine control mode.

In face mode, the faces you are editing are not highlighted red (done so you can see what you're doing to it).

In face mode, left drag shifts the texture on the x axis, SHIFT + left drag shifts on the y axis, CTRL + left drag scales, and ALT + left drag rotates the texture.

Bounding box selection works in all views. Hold CTRL to add to the selection, hold ALT to remove from it (including in vertex mode).

You can't delete vertices you can collapse them and the editor will merge them.

SHIFT + left click in vertex mode in a 2D view will not select vertices on top of each other, only the closest one will be selected.

Press W while hovering over any view to maximize it. Press W again to restore it.

Press M while hovering over any view to turn it into a texture view, press M again to restore it.

Right click in the upper left hand corner of any view to see its options.

License

Tread and its source are released under a free software license, and can be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes free of charge. Refer to the licensing terms in the source code for source licensing terms.

Building the source code.

The code should build without problems under Visual Studio 2005. Open the Tread.sln file and you should be good to go.

The plugin architecture should give people the ability to do most things they need (all the Quake/Quake2 support is isolated in a plugin). Developers should be able to easily write plugins to export their own map files. The full source code is released for people to completely redo the entire application or make large changes if they want to.

I don't stand by the code in this editor (although it is better than the predecessor versions of Tread). It was built quickly (over about 8 weeks if I recall correctly), and has some fairly odd things in it, like the lack of STL where it would have been really useful. The code is manageable enough. At one point I was considering resurrecting it for a modern project but the tool chain for my currently technology is too .NET centric for it to be worth the trouble to effectively interface.