New Atlas helper tool - Mercator

[Grautvornix]

Having played around with Atlas and a post processor/analyzer/converter post Atlas
(https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/169808-map-making-support-and-conversion-tool-post-atlas/?do=findComment&comment=762301 )

I thought it might be useful to add a few capabilities to Atlas without actually changing it. My initial concern was the difficulty (for my clumsy attempts of editing) to place walls with segments and turrets properly algined and without gaps. Hence, I started defining a tool that replicates the in-game way of placing walls by dragging and connecting rather than placing individual elements. For this the tool would manipulate the Atlas-generated xml-file and hand it afterwards back to atlas for further editing and final touch.

Well, implementing this handover in both directions, Atlas --> tool and tool--> Atlas, certainly allows manipulating other simple things in a kind of co-editing mechanism.

Important to note: ATLAS is and will remain the primary tool mastering all the map creation complexity. My tool tries to help offering a few workflows only preserving Atlas' role as the master editor.

So currently the workflow can be like this:

• You define a maps basic parameters, game characteristics, player characteristics etc. - either in Atlas or the new tool (in this case with a handover to Atlas).
• Then Atlas is used to sculpt the terrain and place landscape items.
• The tool can read the xml file output by Atlas and visualize both in 2D plan view and in simplified 3D what has been placed where and for which player, listing all elements. 
• If desired, a wall or palisade can be drawn like in the game and gates can be added by simple selection of a wall segment.
• The tool also allows placing enitites of all kinds selected from a list with little images representing what the entity looks like in game.
• The game's rules where entities can actually be placed are explicitly applied (e.g. no hous in the ocean or on a cliff slope).
• Handover back to Atlas for modification/manipulation finalizing, whatever.
• If finalized, it is certainly possibly to use post-Atlas tool to verify a map works

Oh, and finally, I had to find a name for the tool (used to be "prep-Atlas" similar to "post-Atlas"), but then I thought I should be a bit more creative. With a probably a bit to much creativity enhancer made from grapes,  I cam up with this silly story: A character in history used and improved historical maps and related all to the legendary King Atlas of Mauretania, said to have been a geographer and astronomer (potentially related/referring to the Greek mythodologic Titan Atlas). This occured many centuries later (in the 1590s) when the Flemish cartographer Gerard de Kremer (Merchant), latinized Gerardus Mercator, came up with a map collection in a book named "Atlas" referring to that King and/or Titan.

Our tool also came much later than the Atlas tool and uses its maps and tries to improve a bit. Strictly speaking the name "Mercator" in this context is not at all related to the 0AD timeframe, but, hey, the game calls a roman trader rightfully "Mercator" as well)  

So here is the first BETA version for people willing to test:

 

 

mercator-0.9.0.zip README.md CHANGELOG.md

[Thalatta]

Small comment: naming a map editing tool "Mercator" while having nothing to do with the ubiquitous Mercator projection would be like naming a financial tool "Crypto" while having nothing to do with cryptocurrency. But this leads me to a bit of an unrelated question: do you think it's possible to make spherical maps? To map a whole planet.

[Atrik]

So @MarcusAureliu#s is OP?