thanks for your detailed opinion, I'm open for any critics! (in the worst case I ignore it )
my short answers:
- those are all the existing shortcuts, imo not too much, mainly mouse and camera control which are unavailable from menus. fast level save-reload are shortcut only functionality.
- it's not a conventional 3D editor, it's basically my game editor made due to only my own requirements, whose limited version is published as a free editor, because I saw it could be useful for several 3dgs users, mainly for beginners.
- it's rather like a RTS game modding tool. why? because I had no any 3D knowledge before this project, only some experience in game modding (age of empires 2, age of mythology, rome total war etc.), and MapBuilder is basically made for making RTS games, and built around my game AI and pathfinder system that requires some special design time settings. but I think it can be used for a couple kind of outdoor games, if its limitations are acceptable.
- you can set height manipulation strength by the "Adjust" slider, and by using different brushes. it is mainly for fine tuning terrains made by real terrain generators like L3DT. imo making realistic terrains requires task specific tools.
- terrain texture painting is available from a submenu when you select terrain editing: height, texture and erosion. the latter is not implemented.
- mostly I wrote it in A7 Free, it is the reason of a lot of limitations. as I can buy a new notebook I can add more features requiring A8 Commercial what I bought in May.
- I'm not experienced enough in C++ to use the SDK, so I can't implement at the moment better terrain management, sorry. I would like to improve it, but it has low priority atm. but an engine bug is fixed based on my bug report and demo, so deformation will modified to be real time (hull update now works in the beta I have to manage only vertex normals) after the new A8 update is released.
- those terrains are samples made by L3DT free. the trees are also samples by TreeMagikG3 what I do not use any more. the textures are from free photo sources, and there is some stuff from Loopix too. I could add more resources, if there is a real interest ( but it's boring ).
I know the documentation is unfinished, once I will do that too... maybe once I will extend it to be a more general tool, but it is more important now for me to start to develop my game. my rts battle pathfinder is fine now, I'm currently upgrading it to be siege capable, and will work on other special battle behaviours and AI decision making system. maybe beside it I will develop MapBuilder a bit time to time...
sorry if I did not answer some of your questions, I'm on holiday now for a few days...

Ok i mean, i didn't understood that it is not a full general world editor.It's more for your RTS, with lot of specific stuff also.
So this is not some complete terrain editor for 3DGS like what we can find in some other 3D engines.

By the way i really liked the grass painting on terrain, so you could use it for trees also a presume ?

Not to say , go try another 3D engine beacuse you're more a programmer that like programming, but using another 3D engine having a complete terrain editor you'll have perhaps directly spend time on coding gameplay and created directly the terrain with all tools already existing !

Anyway, great work, and we have just to wait to see more about the game you'll make with it

of course I'm testing other engines, but currently 3DGS is okay for my purposes taking into account my knowledge, capabilities, and taste. but I can get good ideas from other editors.

grass sprites, shrubs (made of some similar crossed sprites), grass models, and obstacle models can be painted like grass: simply select one or more types (in case of obstacle models only one) and hold down left mouse button and move the mouse around. or you can use mass placement to cover the full area by a given quantity.

Moreover, I will improve a bit placement area representation by replacing that ugly transparent cube by a decal aligning nicely onto the terrain surface, and in case of single placement I will use a model preview, maybe with some tweaking possibilities before placement (move-rotation-scale). Also terrain editing will use a decal showing the actual brush. Small steps

I have some terrain game in mind.
Can we use your editor for sommercial projects making ?
(The only weak point will be in some future 3DGS version, your code won't be compatible 100%, but we can wait a lot before some new versions ... so it's ok !)

yes it's totally free, just mention it in the game somewhere and in the documentation. of course donation welcome it would also inspire me to add features you need (there are some weak points in general purpose usage). but anyway I'm planning to improve it periodically and follow engine updates, mainly because I'm also using it and adding things I need (mostly game AI).

hi
I decided to postpone the new release, because I had to do first some background works, and also worked on my game AI, and had no time beside my job and family to deal with creating new gui elements and menus for the new features.
I plan to make one bigger step instead of frequent minor updates. pssm integration is now also ready, I created some modified shaders, so the work is not stopped, I continue it at least for my own needs
I found a more flexible gui essential to be implemented too... but it will be definitely ready before the new WED

Is there a new update with alpha support for shadowmapping? I want to give it a try

thanks for the interest, but atm only a wip version with a hotkey is done, all parameters that should be tweaked are hard coded currently, the lightmap file name cannot be changed etc, so it is not really suitable for usage yet...
imo it would be better to wait a bit, not too much only 1 or 2 weeks, until I add some buttons and sliders, and then I can give you a pre-release version.

beside this lightmapping feature, in the next update I want to make a new startup menu with graphics options to select resolution, engine version, shadow system, enable/disable some shaders, which are currently initialized from a text file... pssm shadow settings also require another menu... so I want to add a complete system to work smoothly.

nice and clean website man, shall later download your map builder and give
it a wing it sound cool ,keep up

thanks, I'll need a webpage update with news, and imo better to wait for the new editor version, it will be much better. the online one is mainly for free/extra users, thus a lot of improved graphics options are missing.