500+ hours of wrpTool 0.950 (feedback)

WrpTool island creator utility

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fasad
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Posts: 19
Joined: 2005-12-18 18:45:51

500+ hours of wrpTool 0.950 (feedback)

Post by fasad » 2006-12-05 05:20:21

G'day,
I've just (almost) finished a large island project using wrptool to do pretty much everything except the heightmap and most ground textures. Basically I want to say it's a great tool, but could easily be polished up and made a lot more user friendly. Here are my recommendations and bug list, tool by tool. I'm assuming that wrptool is still under development.

MAIN WINDOW:
Bug: It is impossible to "click and drag" on objects that have their centre on the cell grid. They can be highlighted with a box and moved that way.
Bug: The main window sometimes decides to be drawn over all other tool windows. Closing and re-opening wrptool resolves this.
Bug: if I zoom in too far windows crashes hard.
Bug: Moving objects with the arrow key does not work at high zoom levels, while ctrl-arrow still works.
Request: It would be very useful to be able to save the window setup. Each time I load Wrptool the first few minutes are spent arranging the tools into a usable arrangment. Doing this hundreds of times gets really annoying.
Request: It would be great to be able to define the heightmap colours. They are painfully bright and make it hard to see objects.
Request: being able to define the OFP map grid. It assumes 256 cells and BI AA00-JJ99 grid.

OBJECT BROWSER:
Bug: The object count does not update after changing an objects type with the object inspector or placed with object placer tool.
Request: be able to select every object of a given type.
Request: new objects placed with insert key should be able to use random scale and slant angle within specified ranges.
Request: should be able to save object list without manually editing config files.

OBJECT INSPECTOR:
Bug: Some kind of low precision error when selecting objects. If you highlight and object then press apply, it moves to the nearest point within 1 or 2 dp accuracy. Very annoying - worst bug in wrptool!
Request: option to allow the position info to update as you move the selected object with the keys or mouse. Sometimes it is useful as it is (does not update from when the object was first selected) so it would be good to have it behave in two modes.
Request: Ability to use "slant" angles. OFP Objects can be rotated in 2 axis, not just the one.

OBJECT PLACER:
Request: to be able to save or permantly define locked distances. The way it is automatically using the objects dimensions is very inaccurate. I have had to use a written list of all fence objects real distances.

SELECTION MANIPULATOR:
Request: number of selected objects of each type
Request: random slant angles

TEXTURE BROWSER:
Bug: not able to see textures in list without scrolling through list. Automatic refresh should fix this?
Request: number of times each tile is used on map

ROAD TOOL:
Bug: Most wrp loading crashes that seem to be caused by this tool, so I routinely delete the road definition file to improve stability.
Bug: rebuild road does not work if road was not built during this session.
Bug: list of new road parts does not update when selecting piece of a different road type.

REGION TOOL: (by far the best thing in wrptool!)
FOREST TAB:
Bug: Does not automatically delete objects from diagonal 1/2 cells. This can cause problems if you accidentally place the forest more than once, every corner cell is placed multiple times, causing very low fps in game. (this took me a while to track down).
PLACE TAB:
Bug: random tool is not truely random when using a minimum distance. It places small objects far more often, especially when used on maps with high object counts. Maybe the "time-out" could be extended to give large objects more chance of being placed?
Request: Being able to weight objects in list rather than having to add them twice or more.
Request: Being able to save object list. Again, I spend many hours reloading my vegetation palettes.
Request: A maximum distance option. This could make vegetating islands with clumps much quicker.
Request: random slant angles.

MINI MAP:
Request: To be able to resize the minimap.

3D VIEW:
Request: Change the lighting model, so that the "sun" is much further away from ground. As it is very hard to see any details on objects from certain angles.
Request: Textured 3d view (very low priority)

Finally, Thanks! I wouldn't have completed my island without wrpTool :)
Last edited by fasad on 2006-12-08 05:07:19, edited 4 times in total.

Snake_Man

Re: 500+ hours of wrpTool 0.950 (feedback)

Post by Snake_Man » 2006-12-05 07:01:59

Thank you for this great feedback post, excellent read.

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Gnat
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Joined: 2004-01-07 08:46:56

Re: 500+ hours of wrpTool 0.950 (feedback)

Post by Gnat » 2006-12-05 11:15:38

ooooooohhhhh!  :) Nice list fasad, yep, thats most of them!!!

Also;

OBJECT INSPECTOR:
Bug - Fit To Ground doesn't update straight away, you need to de-select and re-select to get it to work.
Bug - Fit To Ground seems to re-vert if you accidently touch the item again

All a REAL pain when doing docks and bridges.


RUNNING WrpTool:
Bug ? - Have never been able to run Wrptool with a map loaded and start OFP, OFP crashes, then WrpTool crashes. As you can't "unload" a map in WrpTool you have to close WrpTool every time you want to run OFP.

Probably a memory thing, but "Unloading" a map without closing WrpTool should go some way to a solution.
Last edited by Gnat on 1970-01-01 00:00:00, edited 1 time in total.

fasad
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Posts: 19
Joined: 2005-12-18 18:45:51

Re: 500+ hours of wrpTool 0.950 (feedback)

Post by fasad » 2006-12-06 00:29:52

I've also had trouble starting OFP while wrptool is running, but only on high object count islands. Also alt-tabing back and forth can crash ofp. I assume this is a ram or video ram hogging issue, but realistically, fixing this would probably require a complete re-code. I have found the chances of starting OFP while wrptool is running increase if I turn off textures, levels and objects, zoom in a lot (~5m) then win-D (to minimise everything).

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