Map Editor Suggestion

[Prodigal Son]

This is my first post although I've been following progress for years and have played most of the alpha's. I must say I love the awesome work you people have put here and how it moves on:)

I'd like to suggest something on the way the editor works and it's possibilities. I have no clue on programming so not sure if those things are really hard, or if they are doable as additions to the existing editor.

Have you seen the Warcraft 3 world editor? It works quite differently in many aspects than the 0AD one (and the age of empires one which i guess is the main influence on 0AD). There's many interesting extra possibilities on it that you can check, but what mostly want to focus on is the object editor part. It allows for customizing the stats, abilities and models of units, buildings and doodads (as well as creating completely new ones) within the editor with much ease, and saves any changes in the map file. It's a very usefull and interesting feature for mapmaking, and one of the main reasons for WC3's lasting power as a game all those years. Would such a feature be possible in 0AD?

Edited June 3, 2011 by Prodigal Son

[av93]

+1, it was thinking to suggest that. Also would be interesting a civilization editor, to make civs fast without learn to mod (like war3)

[Prodigal Son]

The object editor can actually do that as well:) A new "town hall" that creates new villagers/soldiers, who can build new structures which have have new units and techs. Or some new and some existing ones, works whatever way you adjust it. Only thing it can't do is adding the new "faction" at the selection menu, so i guess that's where an extra function would be useful.

For those new units/building etc, you can adjust the existing models/icons or use the import system that saves imported models and icons within the map. I'd be really pleased with an object editor even without the import option if that's hard.

Edited June 3, 2011 by Prodigal Son

[Ykkrosh]

It should be technically feasible to add something like that - the game engine is capable of loading mods that override the standard files, and we could (and have been vaguely planning to) make it so each map is a self-contained mod that contains whatever extra files you want. Currently the unit types are defined in XML files like this, but it should be feasible to add some UI for editing them (which we've also been vaguely planning to do) so you don't have to touch the XML directly. It'll need quite a lot of code so it probably won't be done particularly soon, but I'd certainly like to get those features implemented eventually

[Mythos_Ruler]

The 0 A.D. editor isn't based on the AOE one in the slightest, actually. Carry on!

[Ykkrosh]

It sort of is, since about the only RTS editor I had much experience with before implementing Atlas was the SWGB editor (which is the same as AOK's), so I probably stole some inspiration from there . (But more came from the design mockups, and a bit from ScEd, and some just made up based on what seemed sensible/easy at the time.)

[Mythos_Ruler]

Yeah, but the way it's developing, it doesn't look or feel like any of the Ensemble Studios editors at all. (ours is a better direction, IMHO, thanks to you and others)

[Ykkrosh]

True, I suppose I see it more as a reaction to the older editor designs than as an imitation of them, so a slightly different kind of influence . (Probably the most fundamental difference in the implementation is that the UI is outside the game engine and uses the standard Windows/etc controls, whereas Age games do the editor inside the engine, which leads to a very different code design. But most fundamental concepts are pretty similar - see the standard game view, paint on the terrain tiles and elevation with brushes, drop units onto the map, add triggers, etc. That seems a generally sane approach but probably not the only conceivable approach, and I suppose we could have ended up with something very different if we'd had different influences, where you e.g. build the map's terrain as an arbitrary mesh in 3ds Max and export it directly into the game, or build every map out of thousands of precomposed chunks of terrain+objects (like Dungeon Siege), or something.)

[Mythos_Ruler]

I suppose we could have ended up with something very different if we'd had different influences, where you e.g. build the map's terrain as an arbitrary mesh in 3ds Max and export it directly into the game, or build every map out of thousands of precomposed chunks of terrain+objects (like Dungeon Siege), or something.

Horrible influences indeed. I think our current approach is ideal. I attempted to use the Battle for Middle Earth II map editor the other day and RAGE QUIT because it was so unintuitive. Same with the Rise&Fall editor (a game that does not work on Windows 7, blah!). I think what makes the direction our editor is heading in so good is that you are building it with end-users in mind (mainly). Whereas these other editors were designed to build the game world with as little work required in maintaining the editor as possible. Releasing them to the public was always an afterthought with many of these commercial developers.

[Prodigal Son]

I talked about the AOE influences because it's pretty much the most simular out of the 4-5 strategy game editors i've used. As of layout, looks, current functions etc. No clue on code.

Glad to see you plan to include this feature, way to go:) And the more functions and ease to use it the better, it can keep this game to life for very long.

[SMST]

Horrible influences indeed. I think our current approach is ideal. I attempted to use the Battle for Middle Earth II map editor the other day and RAGE QUIT because it was so unintuitive. Same with the Rise&Fall editor (a game that does not work on Windows 7, blah!). I think what makes the direction our editor is heading in so good is that you are building it with end-users in mind (mainly). Whereas these other editors were designed to build the game world with as little work required in maintaining the editor as possible. Releasing them to the public was always an afterthought with many of these commercial developers.

Now don't say anything against the R&F editor. Its basis are the Stainless Steel Editors of Empire Earth (1) and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. Both editors are much more flexible than any of the Ensemble Editors I know ever was. I havn't tried the R&F editor to its limits (for the reason you mention), but I am sure it can't be that bad with the excellent basis of its predecessors.