Early information about ID Tech 5 I had read lead me to believe that the game was live tweakable/tunable. So I thought I could be in game/engine, change some values and then continue playing to test those changes. Is that possible with the engine tab of idStudio? Currently, I've been doing it the long way of building, copying the directory over to RAGE and then loading up to test.

Depending on what your mod does, you may be able to build your map and test it in the local ID Studio Engine tab. IE: After you build the map, go to the tab, open console and try typing devmap . However if you are changing the vanilla game, you will have to export the mod and launch Rage as the vanilla assets aren't available for local testing. The other side of that is when you export to Rage, you normally clean up your old mods. I am uncertain how ID Studio handles someone who has built/exported their mod multiple times. When you type devmap foo, how does it know which version of foo to load? I suspect this is buggy at best.

There are a number of edit functions that all claim to launch in-game editors. I have tried them from Rage (full), but all they seem to do on my computer is make the game really laggy until I type stopEditing. They might work from the ID Studio version of the engine. For example, I tried putting the pointer on an object and typing "setDebugEntity" followed by editEntity. The full version of the game more or less just locked up. But in IDStudio engine tab, it might have broken out to the entity inspector. I don't know. Haven't tried.

There are a number of tm_ commands that I haven't tried out in either the full or the ID Studio versions of the engine:

tm_spawn spawns a test model
tm_play plays a non-looping animation on the current test model

tm_addAnim add a named anim to the current test model's blend equation animator
tm_addAttach adds an attachment to the current test model
tm_addBlendVariable add a blend variable to the blend equation animator
tm_addPitch add the specified angle (in degrees) to the selected test model's current pitch
tm_addRoll add the specified angle (in degrees) to the selected test model's current roll
tm_addYaw add the specified angle (in degrees) to the selected test model's current yaw
tm_blendEq set the blend equaton for the current test model
tm_clearAnims clears all named anims for the test model blend equation animator
tm_continuous selects the translation mode of the current model's origin to translate continuously without resetting
tm_fixed selects the translation mode of the current model's origin to be fixed in place
tm_frame set the current frame of the selected test model
tm_keep keeps the current testmodel around even if a new one is spawned
tm_listAnims lists named anims for the test model blend equation animator
tm_loop plays a looping animation on the current test model
tm_nextAlias change the animation to the next alias in the modelDef
tm_nextframe advance the current frame by 1. Will wrap if the frame exceeds the animation length.
tm_nudge push or pull the test model along a line from the player to the testmodel. Postive values push, negative values pull.
tm_prevframe go to the previous frame. If at frame 0 this will wrap to the last frame of the animation.
tm_remove removes the current test model
tm_removeAnim remove a named anim from the current test model's blend equation animator
tm_removeAttach removes an attachment from the current test model
tm_removeBlendVariable remove a blend variable from the blend equation animator
tm_reset selects the translation mode of the current model's origin to translate but reset when anim loops
tm_select selects the test model the player is looking at as the current test model
tm_setAnim set the animation for a named anim in the current test model's blend equation animator
tm_vo plays a voice over with lip-sync on the current test model

And then there are even more test functions:

test_dlc_rewards Call give dlc rewards on the player
Test_FloatBilerpClamp Function test
Test_PageBreaks Code test of FirstCompletePageAfterCoord() / LastCompletePageBeforeCoord()
TestAllIES Loads every file in the ies directory
testArray Test idArray
testArrayWrapper Test idArrayWrapper
TestAtomicString Exercises idAtomicString
testBinaryHeap Tests the binary heap impl
testBinaryTree Tests the binary tree impl
testBreakTrianglesIntoTextureIslands function test
testBSPSurface
testCircumferenceFractionToAreaFraction
TestCompressionSpeeds Compares zlib and our code
testCreateOSPath tests idFileSystemLocal::CreateOSPath
TestCubeImage displays the given cube image mapped to a sphere
testDeath tests death
TestDefMemory Test memory savings
TestDeInterleaveBits test bit extract
testDiskSwap testDiskSwap - Testing mainmenu's SP -> MP disk swap
testEmblem test function for emblems.
testEnv overrides default dynamic environment processing with a specific declEnv
TestFLog2 Math test
TestFMT_X16 Tests the X16 texture format to make sure it reads as integers in fragment shaders
TestFont Render text to the screen
TestFx tests a fx impact
TestGammaTable Checks for perfect inversion
testGiveAllEmblems test function for emblems.
testGuardPages Enables guard pages and performs memory operations to test
testGuardPagesOnNew Enables guard pages and performs memory operations to test
TestGui For testing GUIs
TestIES Tests the sampling of IES lights
testImage displays the given image centered on screen
TestInitializeVmtrsFromResourceFile Test DLC generation
TestInterleave Tests bit interleave
TestJobParallelHQDXTCompress compress an image
testLCP test LCP solver code
testLight tests a light
TestLoadImage Tries to load an image with type based on the extension
TestLocalReport Tests the Local Report code
testLog2
testMainMenuEnumerateSavegames to re-enumerate savegames
testMainMenuHideSaveLoadScreen to simulate hiding save/load screen
testMainMenuShowSaveLoadScreen to simulate showing save/load screen
TestMapVolumeFromFadeDB Tests TestMapVolumeFromFadeDB
TestMaskBlock idBitBlockAllocator test
testMatchParms test function for match parms.
TestMaterial displays the given material centered on screen
testMemoryMappedFile test idMemoryMappedFile
TestMipLevelForTexelStep function test
testmodel spawns a test model
testNegativeWrappingMod Function test
TestObjLoader Tests the new obj file loader
testParallelLight tests a point light
TestParseFaceLine Tests part of the obj file parsing
TestParticle tests a particle impact
testPlayBashTv tests games played and score for bashtv
TestPlayerProfile Toggle the main menu
TestPlayerViewParticle tests a player view particle
testPlayWingstickGame tests games played and score for wingstick minigame
testPointLight tests a point light
TestPoiPlayerColor Tests the color for player POI
TestPoisonAllocs Check for extremely bad allocation times
testPreloader
TestPreprocessorMacros check anolyze warning
testPrettyMapName returns the pretty map name of string passed in or current map
testRenderProgs Load and compile all render progs
TestRnd Tests random number generators
testSavegameAutosave simulates an autosave
testSaveGameCheck tests existance of savegame
testSavegameDelete deletes a savegames without confirmation
testSavegameDeleteAll delete all savegames without confirmation
testSavegameDeleteInstance deletes one or more instance from a folder, specify the map names space separated
testSaveGameDetails returns the pretty map name of string passed in or current map
testSavegameEnumerate enumerates the savegames available
testSavegameEnumerateFiles enumerates all the files in a folder (blank for 'current slot' folder, use 'autosave' for the autosave slot)
testSavegameEnumerateInstances enumerates the instances in a folder (blank for 'current slot' folder, use 'autosave' for the autosave slot)
TestSaveGameFile Exercises the pipelined savegame code
testSavegameGetInstanceName gets the filename for the instance to save and whether it should be saved
testSaveGameLoadMostRecent loads the most recent savegame
testSavegameMapHashNames calculates hash names for all the maps and flags duplicates
testSaveGameSaveCheckpoint saves as a non-crawl save
TestSeparateBits function test
TestServerArmor test
TestServerArmorRestore test
testShowDialog show a dialog
TestSignBit Test the INT32_SIGNBIT functions
testSound tests a sound
TestSphereSamples Visualize sphere samples
TestSquishVmtrs Builds and uses test images for the 128 to 120 squeezed vmtrs
TestStaleIdListReference Tests the test code
testStatsBegin starts a test session for recording stats
testStatsEnd ends a test session for recording stats and exits the game
TestStreamFileLog Flushes all caches and logs the events to bring everything in
TestStrStatic Test idStrStatic
TestSummedAreaTable Tests the idSummedAreaTable class
TestTracerKD Builds a trace world for the current map and fires test rays through the eye
TestTraceWorld2 Builds a trace world for the current map and fires test rays through the eye
TestTransImageAtlas image atlas tools
TestTrianglesShareAnEdge Function test
testUnlock test function for vehicle unlocks.
testUpgradePatch1Saves upgrades all the player inventory files to the current version
TestVMTR displays the given vmtr centered on the screen
testVmtrBlocking Test the page read optimized tiling
testVmtrLoad
testWeapon test a weapon model
TestWinHansoftReport Tests the Windows Hansoft Report code
testWorld copies current world to the testWorld
testXML tests the idXML classes
testZipBuilderCombineFiles test routine for memory zip file building
testZipBuilderExtractFiles test routine for memory zip file extraction

If you have any success with these, you should post a blurb and let other know. I myself am making a mod that changes the vanilla game, so I generally have to launch rage anyway.

Ya, I'm just tuning/tweaking the vanilla game as well. I think I'm going to try making a quick sandbox level where I can load in enemies and loadouts for the player and hopefully I'll be able to live tune with that.

Thanks again for your input and all those commands.