From: Arne Claassen <arne@telalink.net>
To: "'ml@qoole.com'" <ml@qoole.com>
Reply-To: ml@qoole.com
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 11:37:38 -0600
Subject: RE: Some things I'd like to see improved about Qoole (long)

On Saturday, February 28, 1998 11:23 PM, Alex Kay [SMTP:yak@iinet.net.au] 
wrote:
> I agree with most of your comments. One thing in particular that I
> would like is the ability to see the brushes that AREN'T in the
> current scope. That is, have them displayed in another color, so
> you can line things up if need be. I would think this would fairly
> easy to implement.

I've run into that problem already, i've got two scopes and i want to CSG part 
of one scope to fit a tunnel from another scope into it. But if i do a CSG 
right there, i'll affect both scopes, so i scope into the one to be CSG'ed, 
except now my reference is gone, since the first scope is invisible. At the 
same time, i know that i like the clutter free editing inside a scope. If 
possible it should be a toggle to either display the out of scope items in 
another color or hide them.

> Also, grouping of brushes, in addition to scoping. I should be able
> to select a number of lights (for example), group them and then
> alter the intensty,color, etc for all of them as a group AND not
> have to scope down to them either.

I wouldn't want to confuse everything by having scoping and grouping, but a 
multiple select would be useful to edit multiple items, such as setting 
textures, etc.

Something else, i wish i could do with scopes: In the old 2-1/2D games like 
Doom, when you had multiple connecting polygons, you could move a shared vertex 
and both polygons were changed. Now, if i have a Cube in Qoole, and i CSG a 
section out of it, such as putting a notch into, it creates a scope of multiple 
brushes. It would be great if i could, without scoping into it, use edge 
manipulation to change the position of the notch and have it resize all the 
affected brushes, instead of scoping in and doing it one at a time and making 
sure the line back up.

Then there is the problem of concave brushes. Sure they aren't permitted, but 
since Qoole can create scopes of multiple brushes when a CSG creates a concave 
one, so should edge movement give you the choice to either revert, or turn the 
current brush into multiple brushes to give you the concave shape you wanted.

While on the subject of automatic brush creation of CSG, here are two more 
things (i know, i keep coming up with more):
1) I with you could use hollow out on a scope of multiple brushes that was 
created by CSGing a simple cube. Sure hollow out is fun and all, but with Quake 
two raising the bar on less geometric shapes, it would be useful to hollow out 
more complex shapes.
2) CSG creats multiple brushes that line up perfectly. But if i want to just 
split a brush into multiple, i have to do it with a brush of a finite width, 
always creating a rift between the resulting brushes. It would be very useful 
if you could cut with a cutting plane of zero width. I.e. do into any 2D view, 
select "cutting plane" tool, click on two points in the view to define the 
plane (you only need two points for a plane perpendicular to the plane). On 
second thought that has limited usefulness as well, since you don't always want 
to cut perpendicular to a plane. Ok, select "cutting plane" and draw a 
triangle, that you can manipulate in all three views until it has the 
orientation. That triangle defines a unqiue plane, that then could be used to 
cut with zero width.

Arne