Another month, another beta. I know 3 was meant to be the last, but there have been very many changes and fixes since then and I still don't feel that everything is stable and complete enough for a final release. Since it has been over a month since the last beta, I figured it's about time to get another release out.

The map editor in particular should be a lot more stable now, and hopefully will no longer have problems with sector references on merging and issues with undo/redo.

Who knows how many betas it will take, but I would like for the final release to be as stable as possible, and as long as the bug reports keep coming in, the longer the final release will be delayed - but hopefully will be much better for it.

For full information about changes since beta 3, check the release page over at GitHub.

And it's the third beta for 3.1.0. There have been a huge number of changes since beta 2, and for the most part everything I wanted to get in for 3.1.0 is done. As such, this will likely be the last beta before the final release, and until then the focus will mostly be on bug fixing and polishing.

For an overview of changes since beta 2, check the GitHub release page here.

SLADE 3.1.0 beta 2 is up, with numerous changes since beta 1. For more information and a full list of changes, head over to the GitHub Release page. You can also download the windows binaries and sources from there, or as usual from the downloads section here.

Work on SLADE has been increasing in pace lately, and I'm hoping to continue this trend and get another beta out reasonably soon. Might even end up with 3.1.0 final before the end of the year if all goes well...

Well I figure it's about time I released a beta for SLADE 3.1.0. The Windows binaries are up at the download section. Note that it requires the MS VC++ 2012 runtimes to run.

As it is a beta release, expect some bugginess, and some things to not quite work right. So make backups and save often, all the usual common sense stuff.

If you happen to come across a bug, be sure to post it (and the stack trace if it was a crash) as an Issue over at GitHub. Feature suggestions can be posted here as well, though for the most part I'm just looking for bugs to fix up at the moment.

As this is the first somewhat public release of the SLADE3 map editor, I'd like to hear some feedback on it - what works well, what doesn't, etc etc. I've done a few things a bit differently to what people might be used to from SLADE2 / Doom Builder. Eventually there will be more documentation up about it on the wiki, but for now I think it would be good to see if things are intuitive or not :P The map editor is not currently feature complete - if there's something that was in SLADE2 that isn't there yet, it's coming (eventually).

Apart from the map editor, there have been numerous changes to the rest of SLADE3 since 3.0.2. Below is a list of some of the bigger changes:

General:

• Added ability to open maps with Doom Builder 2 (if it is installed)
• Added console commands to list/set cvars
• Keybinds are now configurable in the preferences dialog
• Added colour configuration to preferences dialog
• Removed the maps list from the open archives tab on the archive manager
• Merged the Archives and Recent Files tabs into one
• Implemented a custom toolbar, replacing the ugly wxAUI ones
• Implemented notebook tab art class from CodeLite, now tabs look a fair bit nicer, especially in linux
• New maintenance option: cleaning out entries that are identical duplicates of an IWAD lump
• Added new maintenance option: check for duplicated entry content with a CRC-32 check for each entry
• 'Replace In Maps' stuff
• Improved entry type detection speed
• Console command batches (run all commands contained in a file or a lump)
• Implemented basic undo/redo

Resource Editor:

• Added ability to export a texture to a single graphic entry
• Gfx offsets are preserved on import
• Added palette editing functionality
• If alt is held down when moving a patch with the arrow keys, a duplicate patch will be added and moved'
• Added ability to quickly jump to items in the patch browser by typing the first few letters of the patch name
• Added word wrapping checkbox to text entry panel
• In the gfx conversion dialog, the transparent colour can now be set by left-clicking on the current preview image
• Multiple entry name filters can now be entered (separated by commas) eg: "MAP01, MAP02"
• Implemented basic 'remove unused textures' and 'remove unused patches' actions
• Added mp3 and tracker module playback
• Changed the browser to use a proper font for item names
• Browser background changed to the checkered texture used in most other gfx views (optional)
• Added 'zoom' slider to the browser window
• Added ability to directly generate new PLAYPAL, ANIMATED and SWITCHES lumps instead of having to create an empty lump and then import content in it
• Texture editor: implemented support for "UseOffsets" property
• Added "Edit Level Script" button to MapEntryPanel and FraggleScript language
• Added playback of Wolfenstein digitized sounds (VSWAP)
• Added COLORMAP lump generation
• Various additions and improvements to texture editor for ZDoom TEXTURES format
• Added option to colour entry list item background by entry type

The list probably isn't complete, but hey, it's been over 2 years since the last release.

So I just realised it's been more than two years since the last official SLADE release of v3.0.2. I doubt too many people end up reading this stuff, but I figured I should at least post some kind of news about how things have been coming along.

3.1.0 and the Map Editor

Since 3.0.2 was released, I have slowly been getting work done on the map editor component of SLADE3. Currently, it is fairly usable, although missing some features and somewhat buggy. As things are going currently, I don't really see it being complete any time soon. Because of this, I think it's about time I set some kind of cutoff in terms of features for the map editor, started fixing up the bugs and release a beta version of 3.1.0 for testing. Expect this sometime soon.

Version Control and GitHub

Recently I was beginning to realise that I just have too many different sources for bug reports, feature requests and the like. Between the ZDoom forums thread, the SLADE forums, IRC and email, it was getting increasingly difficult to keep track of all the feedback coming in. Additionally, there has been a (justifiable) move away from centralised VCS (cvs, svn, etc) to DVCS (git, mercurial, etc).

I decided to give Git a try, having the source repository for SLADE up at GitHub. This brings multiple advantages, on top of those from using a DVCS, GitHub provides an issue tracker and wiki for the project. The issue tracker makes it much easier to keep track of outstanding bugs and feature requests, anyone can post an issue (just need to sign up for a GitHub account), and I can close said issues via commits when they are addressed. This will be the preferred method for bug reports and feature requests for 3.1.0.

The current SLADE wiki is hosted at Wikia, which while being decent enough for a free wiki host, has become a bit too ad-heavy, among other things. Over the last few days I have been moving the wiki content over to the SLADE wiki on GitHub, which is both nicer than Wikia aesthetically and has no ads.

Documentation

As a whole, SLADE noticeably lacks any real documentation. With the wiki move above, I plan to start writing up some proper documentation for SLADE interface and resource editor features on the GitHub wiki, while the 3.1.0 betas are in development. Once I get started on some of it (so as to have some examples of how the documentation should look), I would not be opposed to anyone else helping out with writing documentation/tutorial pages for the wiki :)

Mac OSX

SLADE is a cross-platform application, and while in the past I have been able to keep it working correctly on OSX, recently I have not been able to do so. As such, I am looking for anyone interested in helping maintain an OSX package for SLADE, so for 3.1.0 it can have an official OSX release. So yeah, if anyone is interested, let me know.

Well I guess that's it for now, stay tuned for the first beta for SLADE 3.1.0 in the coming weeks...