I've just been playing around in J.A.C.K. 1.1.1064 for a bit during Map Jam 7, and have noticed a few things:
1.) Is there any chance we could have an option to revert to the old Ctrl+Scroll wheel behavior? I can understand why easy grid size changes are helpful, but I've always found Ctrl+Scroll wheel to zoom all the 2D views incredibly helpful, and I find the bracket keys fast enough for changing the grid. I don't expect my personal preference to override everyone else's, but maybe we could have a checkbox somewhere?
2.) Also on the subject of options, would it be reasonable to request the ability to have entities' yellow bounding boxes, and entities' rotations, based on the size(minX, minY, minZ, maxX, maxY, maxZ) defined in the FGD? Currently the boxes are displayed, and the object sizes are reported, based on the bounds of the model, not the bounds of collision (even with "Draw models" disabled in the 2D views preferences), and rotation happens about that box's center, which I don't find as useful as I would the alternative. Snapping to grid already uses the FGD-defined center, which is good, but rotations don't.
I've also got a few notes regarding FGDs, if I may. Map Jam 7 is using the Quoth mod, version 2.2, and like many others I want to use both it and EricW's updated tyrutils compilers. Preach has an FGD for the former available
on his website, and Daz has put together
an FGD for the latter. Unfortunately, there are conflicts (leading me to
combine them myself), and I have a few questions:
3.) Would you be willing to add sharing violations with regard to PAK files to the message window? In testing all of this FGD stuff I found sometimes PAK0.PAK from Quoth wasn't being loaded, but the message window didn't show any errors. In my stupidity I had opened the file in PakExplorer, forgotten about it, and proceeded to spend twenty minutes wondering why the file sometimes loaded and sometimes didn't. An error in the log might be helpful for dopes like me.
4.) Multiple FGDs can be loaded for a game configuration, and they're combined with conflicts resolved by having files farther down in the list override ones farther up in the list. This is sensible, but there doesn't seem to be a way to easily rearrange things. Arrow buttons, or clicking and dragging, something like that. I know removing and re-adding the FGDs isn't the end of the world, this is just a bit of polish that would be nice to have.
5.) As I mentioned, conflicts between FGDs which define the same entity are resolved by replacing earlier versions of an entity with later definitions, but this only happens with entire classes. Would it be feasible to have this happen at a more granular level? That is to say, if first.fgd has info_example_entity, and its only content is a key called "targetname", while second.fgd also has info_example_entity, and its only content is a key called "delay", I'd expect the result to be a version of info_example_entity that has both "targetname" and "delay". Currently the version with "delay" completely replaces the other one. In cases where the same key exists, you could do what you do now and just let the later version of the key override the first.
Finally, in assembling my own FGD for Quoth 2.2, I've come across some difficulties I'd appreciate some help with.
6.) Quoth has something called mapobject_grill, and two variations that use specific sprites. These sprites provide alpha-masked grate objects. I'm able to use sprite("progs/grill128.spr") to make the sprite display in Jack's 3D view, but it rapidly cycles through all the sprite's frames instead of sticking with the one chosen by the 'frame' key, even when "Animate models" is disabled. Is there a way to display only one frame, and synchronize what's displayed with what users have chosen? I see TrenchBroom has accommodations for that in its model() definitions, does Jack have anything like that?
7.) A similar question applies to the corpse_crucified entities, which use different frames of the same model as static props for level designers to place. Is there any way to dictate which frame of the model is shown in Jack? I can choose a skin with skin(X), alongside studio("progs/model.mdl"), but I can't figure out how to choose a frame, if it's possible.
None of this is critical for anything I'm doing, and I'm sorry to be such a pest with requests and dumb questions, but I wanted to get this out there in case there actually are answers I'm simply missing.