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QTFEdit Roadmap

This tracks work beyond the current VTFEdit Reloaded parity (which is complete — see parity.md). Items are rough difficulty buckets. The README has a short highlights summary pointing here for the full detail.

Big-ticket additions

Strata Source compressed VTF read/write

Strata extends v7.4 / v7.5 with a compressed-body variant where the image data is deflate- or zstd-packed after the header. Currently QTFEdit detects VTF minor versions beyond the supported max and fails with a specific error instead of a generic corruption message. Full support still requires:

  • A new flag / version field in SVTFHeader_75+ indicating the compression used.
  • Header-size / offset adjustments to read the compressed region and decompress on Load.
  • Symmetric compression on Save, gated behind a bCompress option in SVTFCreateOptions.
  • Library dependencies: zlib (already pulled in via tinyexr) and optionally zstd.
  • Round-trip test harness.

Not attempted until a format spec is either documented or received.

Console VTF read (Xbox 360, PS3)

VTFs produced for Xbox 360 and PS3 targets are big-endian and use platform-specific texture tiling / swizzle. QTFEdit now detects byte-swapped headers (Version field reads > 100 on a little-endian host) and fails with a specific error. Full support still requires:

  • Endian abstraction across VTFLib's header / resource-record readers. VTFLib's current Float16.h only has endian constants; everything else assumes little-endian structs.
  • Xbox 360 texture swizzle / untiling: the 360 stores textures in a tiled layout that must be reversed on load and re-applied on save.
  • PS3 swizzle: similar story with Cell-specific swizzle.
  • Format variants that differ from PC DXT (some consoles premultiply alpha, use different block ordering, etc.).

Even minimum viable read support is weeks of work and needs sample files plus spec/SDK access that isn't public.

Shell integration

  • Windows IThumbnailProvider COM DLL — Linux freedesktop thumbnailer ships (packaging/linux/); Windows has file associations (packaging/windows/) but no Explorer thumbnails. A separate COM/ATL project — likely a new Windows-only CMake target — would close that.
  • macOS Finder thumbnails — file associations ship in the bundle plist; Quick Look / Thumbnail Provider app extension is a separate Xcode target.

Qt GUI — quick wins (hours–days)

  • Split-pane A/B compare — extract the preview widget, drop two into a QSplitter with synced zoom/pan.
  • Per-mip diff: extra stats — the Properties dialog already shows numeric PSNR per mip alongside the Mip Diff heatmap. Follow-ups: RMSE rows, per-channel breakdown, line chart over mip level.
  • Route more popups through toast — several showWarningPopup / showErrorPopup sites could be demoted to toasts for non-blocking operational messages (see MainWindow.cpp resource import/export paths).
  • DXT round-trip tests — gated on Compressonator availability across CI runners; covered at runtime, not in CTest yet.
  • Non-square / NPOT round-trip test inputs — exercise the resize path with a 48×32 or 33×17 asset.

Qt GUI — medium (weeks)

  • Extend undo/redo coverage — the stack is in place (flags, minor version, start frame, bumpmap scale, reflectivity, compute-reflectivity already covered). Remaining sites: mipmap regeneration, thumbnail regeneration, resource add/remove/replace, sheet edits.
  • Sheet editor visual timeline — replace the table UI in VtfSheetDialog with a QGraphicsView thumbnail strip; drag-to-reorder frames.
  • Command palette: actionable help pages — add non-action entries (e.g. "Open Parity Checklist") so the palette doubles as discovery.
  • Cubemap-from-HDRI: per-face preview + seam filter — current sampler is bilinear only; add optional seamless cube filter and a 6-face preview grid before committing.
  • Headless GUI end-to-end smoke — current smoke is just --version / --help. Extend to QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen vtfeditqt path/to/sample.vtf --exit-after-load (flag doesn't exist yet) to exercise the real load/render path under a platform plugin.

Qt GUI — ambitious (months)

  • GPU preview path (QOpenGLWidget + shaders) — unlocks real mip LOD selection, anisotropic sampling, and a live lit normal-map gizmo. Prerequisite for any GPU-accelerated preview features.
  • Plugin API — QPluginLoader-based interface with optional scripting bridge (Lua / QJSEngine) so custom resource types can ship editors without patching the tree.
  • Non-destructive .qtfproj edit graph — rearchitect mutation sites to emit serializable ops; the .vtf becomes derived output.

Infrastructure & quality

  • Breakpad / crashpad full pipeline — a native signal/SEH handler ships today (writes to <AppDataLocation>/crashes/ with backtrace), with a clickable toast on next startup that opens the folder. A full minidump library with symbol-server upload would be a real follow-up.
  • Accessibility pass — tab order, screen-reader labels, keyboard-only navigation.
  • Localization scaffolding — tr() wrapping so translations are possible later.
  • Extract PreviewView + LiveReloadManager from MainWindow.cpp — the monolith is now ~5k lines; splitting it would halve that and make preview logic unit-testable.