The Parts and Whole: DR Region

By Geep, 2022. Available since early DR. From Greebo, SneaksieDave, et al here

Introduction

A DR "region" is a temporary grid-aligned cuboid volume of interest within your map. Once established, everything completely outside the Region is hidden. It has two purposes:

• As a visualization tool, to show only what’s of immediate interest, clearing away some of the competing items (e.g., surfaces in the camera view, wireframes in the orthogonal views). It is an alternative to Hide/Show, Filters, and Layers. Or really, a supplement to them, since you can continue to use them with the Region in effect as you work.
• To permit export of just the region (auto-sealed) as a separate .map file for testing purposes. When your project is large, selective compilation of just the region would DMAP faster. There are caveats.

Defining a Region

Under DR’s "View/Region" menu, there are these defining options:

• Set from XY View. To use this, beforehand, zoom in to the region of interest in the XY orthogonal view. When set, the view’s frame will establish the region's XY dimensions. Z will be +/- "infinity" (i.e., max & min that DR allows).
• Set from Brush. The selected brush defines the region in XYZ. The brush itself will not be included. If the brush is not a grid-aligned cuboid, a tight-fitting one will be calculated around it.
• Set from Selection (shortcut Ctrl+Shift~R). With one or more items selected, a tight-fitting grid-aligned cuboid will get defined around them.

How a Region Looks

As a visual cue that a Region is in effect, the DR views will show a reduced extent of grid lines.

Objects will be included in the Region if they intersect the defined volume; they will not be clipped or resized. This includes, for example, light volumes.

Undefining a Region

Under DR’s "View/Region" menu: "Switch Off". It is not necessary to do this before saving your map; the Region info is not maintained across DR sessions.

Exporting a Region as a Separate Map

"File/Export Region…", allows you to create and name a separate .map file.

To support this, DR automatically seals the selected Region off with brushes and places an info_player_start within it, informed by the current camera position. The sealing process determines the largest bounds and then build a simple box around everything. However, it may be sometimes difficult to include in your Region all the components for scripts, objectives, conversations, sealing of internal locations, etc. to DMAP and run successfully. So further manual fixup may be needed, if warranted.

After testing, any improvement you make to the separate .map would have to be copied back to your main map.