Enhancement: Update the Engine Tools

[sheepy676]

What would this enhancement be for?

Tools

Describe your enhancement suggestion in more detail

Currently the Engine Tools are made with vgui and have a few problems that come with that.

General Problems With the Tools

1. The UI is scaled poorly for larger displays
   
   (Example from the particle editor)
2. It can be confusing to navigate. which is made worse with the improper UI scaling
3. There are a few areas that are missing or have broken parts of the UI
   
   
   (Examples from the particle editor)
4. The Engine Viewport Doesn't scale properly
   
5. Not enough documentation on how the tools work and how to use them
6. There Isn't a autosave

There may be more general Problems I just haven't been able to find them due to the fact they are hard for me to use as I have a large display.

Tool Specific Problems/Improvements

Actbusy Tool: (I haven't really used this tool but here is something that could be improved)

1. There isn't a search function for models (If there is Its broken)

Vmt Editor: (This tool I feel has a lot of potential to improve texture and material creation)

1. The Preview doesn't work properly, Some Shaders appear black.
2. You can't change the Preview to a Plane or Cube you can only have a Sphere (It would be nice If you could also load a model)
3. A lot of textures are just missing even when they aren't (They show fine ingame)
4. Reflections are missing textures and still uses the orange default cubemap
5. The background colour of the Preview is unchangeable and defaults to the old vgui green
6. You can't change the portalability of a material (this could make making non portalable textures easier)
7. All the parameters are shown In one big list which can be hard to read especially on larger displays

Commentary Editor:
I haven't used this tool at all no clue how it works or what could be improved If someone has used this and has problems/improvements they have with this, please lmk and I may add them here. (this applies to the other tools too)

Particle Editor:

1. Control points have to manually be moved by typing units In a separate tab (not really a problem but could be replaced with a translation tool)

Again there may be more Problems that I just haven't found due to the aforementioned difficulty to use.

Some of these Problems/Improvements are just little things but those little things can improve the tools and make them easier to use.

How It could be Fixed and Why It Should be fixed

These things could be fixed and improved with a update from VGUI to Qt or Imgui, Qt Though might be the better option for ease of use for the end user and valve did use Qt for the SFM so It can be done.

If the Tools were to be updated It would mean that more people could use them and make many new cool things and could speed up the creation time too. Such as the VMT editor, It could speed up material creation as instead of writing everything out by hand in a file then going ingame to update It you could have a live preview of the material with all the options of the Shader and you wouldn't need to mat_reloadallmaterials just to notice that you did something wrong and now need to fix It, This Is made worse with people who don't have a secondary display and have to do constant alt-tabbing between the game their editor and their browser.
A new Tool could also be added which would be a Soundscript and Soundscape editor It could made In the Tools and It could speed up the creation of those and make them less confusing to make.
Those are just some examples of what could be added and made easier.

This would be a lot of work and be a large task but If done It could speed up mod and map creation and If Its made more accessible more people could make cool new particles, make materials faster or make Soundscripts, More people would make these and not be frustrated with making them.

[Maxkatsur]

Updating the engine tools for P2:CE is what everyone really desires, and yes it will be a large task indeed. I believe that this upgrade task would be a significant achievement.