ericwa
Feature Request: Support entities in _external_map
The current _external_map implementation is great but it would be great to be able to combine more complex map files.
It would be great if it would just import an external map file in its entirety, not just the Worldspawn, and not do any conversions, merging entities, and brush entities, as-is.
The new -add feature can merge map files into the current one, but it can't be specified as an entity. I don't know if this feature would make much sense as an entity.. prefabs would be hard to do this way because of name conflicts
I guess if the external .map uses target/targetname for anything - e.g. if it contains a button targetting a door (all within the same external .map), that will break once several instances of the external .map are inserted into a main map - every button will target every door.
The only workaround for that is to use a better prefab system like TB's that lets you do selective edits to instances.
Despite that, this improvement to the _external_map system could still be useful for things that don't need target/targetname connections, but still need multiple entities (e.g. light fixtures, or prefabs that mix detail/structural), and it should be a quick change
We could add a "prefix/suffix" option to the _external_map entity, along with a list of keys that need to be prefixed. That would allow that to work, in theory.
To be honest I wasn't even imagining something that complex; but rather just importing and transforming map files as-is.
I see more involved prefab support (prefixing entity properties, etc) to be the domain of the editor itself.
Yeah, I'm just thinking of ways people are going to use this and then complain when all of their doors open when they press a button, lol.
If it's just all simple entities though then yeah it should just work.