DarkRadiant Tips and Tricks

Rendering Performance

For large maps the rendering performance of DarkRadiant can be poor, depending on your system. Use this to give DarkRadiant a small powerup:

Got to Edit -> Preferences and then select Orthoview and make sure the Update Views on Camera Move is unchecked.

Disabling this option will stop camera movement from triggering an update of the orthoviews, which is expensive.

Centering Camera in Ortho views

Sometimes you try to resize a brush in an ortho view and your mouse pointer hits the edge of a window. This will zoom you far away very quickly and probably resize your brush very large. This happens to me alot.

An easy way to get back to where you started is to first hit Ctrl-Z, this will undo the mistaken brush size so you can try again.

Next hit Ctrl-Tab, this will cycle your view to the next view (top, front, side). If you were in the top view you want to Ctrl-Tab 3 times. This will take you back to the top view and you will be recentered on the selected brush. The brush you were working on is still selected because you only Ctrl-Z'ed once and you didn't hit escape.

This is also an easy way to center your front view in on an object you have selected in your top view.

Tips for Organization

Try to avoid using very small grid sizes for walls which are on the outside sides of your map. I prefer using no less than a grid size of 4 or larger. By doing this it makes it a lot easier to prevent and find leaks than if you are using a very small grid size.

Layers

One should always try and utilize the layer function in DarkRadiant. As one's map grows, the perfromance of DarkRadiant will shrink and by being able to isolate the area you are working on you can improve performance for both your computer and yourself!