Topic: More supportive tools for mapmakers?

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 09:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-04-22, 08:01 One of the problems you face when trying to come up with a clever map is finding a good way to display the conquer/working and visibility radii for potential buildings in a certain spot. You often have to know whether a quarry at some coordinates will be able to clear stones at some other coords to guarantee further progress - or whether a medium size military site can bridge the gap to the next possible building space. The toolsize is not bad for this, but it is limited to 10 max. (Can that be increased as a first step?) and you must look up these values. The best way I can think of would be to allow simulated placement of all buildings on the map with those radii displayed. We also need a buildhelp for the Editor that ignores trees and stones and shows building spaces based on terrain type and altitude profile only. It should be possible to save a map in this stage for further work, but it should not be the same as the final, playable map format. Or am I taking things too far here in my imagination? Can our coders please comment on the feasability of such a feature and the effort/benefit ratio? I realize that things of this nature must be a major undertaking, but the editor really needs some improvement IMO. Compared to the game itsself, it's still in a rudimentary stage. Making maps can be great fun for the players, but constantly swapping between editor and game for testing, isn't. We need more advanced tools to support map makers, I think. Also, I remember that Erik implemented some support for named regions, but there is no UI for this yet and I don't know what has become of it.. Sorry, if all this is a bit unstructured... but hopefully it can start a discussion on Editor improvement. It's a bit quiet in this forum. Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

SirVer Joined: 2009-02-19, 14:18 Posts: 1445 One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich	Posted at: 2011-04-23, 12:57 I already tried to make it possible to place player immovable (buildings) in the editor. Actually, I already tried this twice :). It is not easy but I have not given up on this as I also would have needed this functionality a few time before. Very similar for the regions, they seem hard to get right currently. However, I want to give the Editor some love for build 17, let's see if this can happen. Top Quote

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 09:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-04-23, 13:22 Wow -- that would be cool! As usual - glad you see things not too different Happy Easter, Sirver! Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote