TrenchBroom Help - Miscellaneous

## Miscellaneous

This section contains information about tasks which are not directly related to editing, but which are still important if you want to create maps for Quake. You will learn how to undo and redo your editing actions, how to manage textures and prefabs as well as how to use and edit compiler profiles.

### Undo and Redo

TrenchBroom has unlimited undo and redo of all action that modify the current map. To undo an action, choose Edit » Undo <Action> from the menu or press ⌘Z. To redo an action you just undid, choose Edit » Redo <Action> or press ⇧⌘Z.

### Managing Textures

Quake textures are loaded from so-called texture wads. Once you have one or more texture wads loaded, the textures contained therein are displayed in the texture browser, which you will find in the face tab of the inspector. Note that the order in which you load texture wads is important to the way duplicate textures are handled. If two texture wads contain a texture with the same name, TrenchBroom will use the texture from the most recently loaded texture wad. The order of the texture wads can be seen in the texture wad list below the texture browser.

Managing Textures

In the above screenshot, only one texture wad was loaded. To load another texture wad, click on the plus button below the texture wad list. Click the minus button to unload the currently selected texture wad. You cannot reorder texture wads in the wad list. If you need to change the wad order, you need to delete the wads and re-add them in the desired order.

The texture browser displays all loaded textures in alphabetical order by default. Using the buttons on the left above the browser, you can toggle between ordering them by name and by usage. To filter the textures, you can use the buttons and the search field on the right above the browser. The buttons allow you to toggle between displaying all textures or only the textures used in the current map. If you enter a string into the search field, only the textures whose name contains that string are displayed in the browser. Each texture that is used in the current map is drawn with a yellow border in the texture browser (see screenshot on the left).

The editor tracks which texture was most recently used. This is the texture which was on the most recently selected face or which was most recently clicked on in the texture browser. The most recently used texture is drawn with a red border in the texture browser. This texture is used for newly created brushes.

### Managing Prefabs

TrenchBroom comes with a number of builtin prefabs which you can use to quickly create new shapes. You can of course also create custom prefabs and you can delete, rename and reorganize them. Note that you cannot modify the builtin prefabs in any way.

Prefabs are available in the Brush tab of the inspector. To change the zoom level, drag the slider below the prefab browser. To insert a new prefab into your map, simply double click it in the prefab browser. The prefab is then inserted into the map at a certain distance to the camera and it is selected automatically so that you can edit it immediately. Note that prefabs have all their textures set to "none", so you'll need to assign new textures after inserting the prefab.

To create a new prefab, simply select a few brushes in the 3D view and click on the plus button below the prefab browser. A dialog will pop up where you can enter a name and select a group for the new prefab. You can simply create a new group by entering some non-existent name in the dialog.

To rename, reorganize or delete a prefab, you must first select it by clicking on the prefab in the prefab browser. In the screenshot, the prefab with the name "test" is currently selected, which is why it is rendered in red. To rename the selected prefab or to assign it to a different group, click on the gear button below the prefab browser. The minus button will delete the selected prefab.

### Compiler Profiles

You can compile your map directly from inside TrenchBroom using the builtin compilation tools. To this end, you can trigger compiler profiles using the Run » Compile menu. There are three predefined profiles:

- Quick - Compiles the map as quickly as possible at the cost of low vis precision and reduced light quality.
- Full - Compiles the map with as much precision and quality as possible. This takes significantly longer than a quick compile on large maps.
- Entities only - Only updates the entity information in the BSP. This is useful if you have already compiled the map and only want to change entities around.

You can create, modify and delete compiler profiles in the preferences window, which you can bring up by choosing TrenchBroom » Preferences from the menu or by pressing ⌘,. Click on the gear icon in the toolbar of the preferences window to reveal the compiler profile editor (see screenshot below).

Managing Compiler Profiles

Here, the available compiler profiles are listed on the left side, while the details for the selected compiler profile can be edited on the right side. To add a new profile, click on the plus button below the profile list, and to delete the selected profile, click on the minus button. Unlike the builtin prefabs, you can delete and modify the builtin compiler profiles.

Each compiler profile has a name and a list of commands that is executed sequentially when the profile is invoked. You can edit the name and commands of the selected profile on the right side of the window. Use the plus and minus buttons below the command list to add or delete commands. For each command, you can set the path to the tool that is launched when the command is invoked and the parameters that are passed to that tool. In the screenshot above, you an see that the selected command launches the TxQBSP compiler with the parameters -hilimit $map $bsp.

Note that the tool path can either be relative or absolute. Relative paths refer to the builtin compilers, whereas you can use absolute paths if you want to use a different compiler. The builtin compilers are

- Compilers/TxQBSP - Bengt Jardrup's TxQBSP
- Compilers/TreeQBSP - Bengt Jardrup's TreeQBSP
- Compilers/BJMHLight - Bengt Jardrup's and MH's multithreaded colored light
- Compilers/Vis - Willem's multithreaded vis

The working directory of a compiler profile is the directory that contains the current map file. There are two placeholders you can use in the parameters for a given tool:

- $map - the name of the current map file (without path information, example: ne_ruins.map)
- $bsp - the name of the BSP file (without path information, example: ne_ruins.bsp)

Note that the BSP file is automatically placed in the current mod dir after compilation.