0ad Map Editor Wishlist

[Aeros]

Hey everyone As you know (hopefully), the 0AD editor will havesome spankin' good features for scenario designers to put to use, however we won't know exactly what you want unless you tell us, which leads me to the purpose of this thread.

The Map Editor Wishlist, gather round and post what you think would be really cool to have in our Map editor. Keep in mind that we are making a realtime strategy game, 0AD, and not "Map Editor Deluxe", so it won't be practical to put in 100 different types of trees. It would be cool, we agree with you, but it's not practical to the development of our game.

So let us know what you want to be in our editor! We can't promise you it will include everything you ask for but we sure will try .

[Ulysses S Griffin]

i would love a fully featured in-game "how to make triggers and other special things" guide...i have never been able to make any type of trigger in any game 'cause there wasnt any info on how to make them work good or even make them....

[Ornlu]

Many things in here and a trigger copy function .

[ZeZar]

Nice;)

[iNtRePiD]

From the Empires thread entitled "Insane editor ideas".

1) Multiplayer Designing: Imagine if will a the ability to host a game, but instead of playing the game you got together with your buddies and designed a scenario online. Scenario design teams would probably find this the most useful as it would make it much easier to get together with other team members to work on joint projects. However, I think the average player would enjoy it as well. A group, for instance, could make a map and then play against each other on it. A good descriptive name for this would be cooperative designing.

2) Effects that can write/read from/to text files: Visualizing the effectiveness of these effects is a no brainier. This would make it possible to keep track of various things outside of a scenario. The implications for such triggers for both multiplayer scenarios and single player scenarios are monumental if you can conceive of a few of the possibilities such effects could have.

3) Graphic Scaling: Most games already have this as a feature of their editor. However, it would be useful if you scale objects by individual axis.\

4) Graphical Effects That are Laid as Terrains: With this idea you could draw on the map where you want to see smoke, mist, fog, rain etc... However, for this idea to actually be something creative you should also be able to manipulate the elevation level in which the terrain is placed. These effects shouldn't just be objects that have been incorporated into terrains as that defeats the purpose of such an idea.

5) A Water Fill Tool: For this tool to work properly the editor would have to function under a system of numerical denotation for elevations. Basically this tool would allow you to fill a certain elevation level up with water. The water level would be adjustable so both shallows and deep oceans can be created. The tool would only you to fill an area with water if that area is constrained by a higher elevation. This tool would allow water to placed at any elevation level without the hassle of non-elevation water based systems.

6) Surfaces and Colour Overlays That Can be Applied to Terrains: Basically this would allow you to change the tint of terrains by placing colour overlays on top of them. Coupled with this would the ability to choose from maybe four surfaces that can be placed with the terrain. These surfaces would fairly simple; you could have a jagged, flat, bumpy and blocky surface. These surfaces would not act as elevations, they would act simply as if they were normal terrains.

7) A Physics System that can be Modified: The designer would able to change a series of constant values (i.e. gravitational force, coefficient of static and kinetic friction). The designer would also have the ability to distort simple equations in order to create surreal effects.

8) A Component Based Trigger Systems: Several games already possess such a system as they dwarf non component based trigger systems by providing greater power and flexibility. A component based trigger system basically allows you to construct the components of triggers before you actually construct the trigger itself. It turn these components can be used in multiple triggers. The next step up from a component based trigger system would be one that operates in a similar fashion to windows.

9) Numerical Elevations: Elevation levels are denoted with a numerical values.

[Black Op]

Nice ideas iNtRePiD, I really like them!

Maybe have an elevate, lower, and flatten terrian buttons to make hills, basins, and the like?

[Klaas]

I also think things that allow more player interaction would be pretty cool, like chat contains conditions or a pop up box with radio buttons.

A variable system would come in handy too.

[Ulysses S Griffin]

how about like aom when you paint terrain/generate a terrain map you can have to option to have small hills drawn automatically

[Quacker]

Not that any of iNt's ideas are bad, but I really like this one:

1) Multiplayer Designing: Imagine if will a the ability to host a game, but instead of playing the game you got together with your buddies and designed a scenario online. Scenario design teams would probably find this the most useful as it would make it much easier to get together with other team members to work on joint projects. However, I think the average player would enjoy it as well. A group, for instance, could make a map and then play against each other on it. A good descriptive name for this would be cooperative designing.

Tha'd take a lot of work (i think) for the programmers, etc., but if implemented, it'd be awesome. It could be done similar to MSN's Buddy Browsing (or whatever the name) where you and a friend can browse together, and you see his/her cursor on the screen, but slightly different than yours. Maybe color-coded cursors that match the player's name and chat text?

[The_Avenger]

Terrain Editing:

How about terrain, or even cliff/water editing, using triggers? Imagine using a cutscene during a scenario where you have many special effects of smoke and all covering your view, then zoom in to discover that the narroww mountain-path has had a landslide and now is covered by a huge cliff, or a flood has wiped out a village and all that remains is the extended lake.

Trigger-Style Object Movement

Any "object" (embellishment, unit, building, etc) is able to "move" - no animations, simply be dragged across - to a spot on the map, perhaps even on the z-axis. While it might not look natural (making them all llook natural is impossible) and rather like Jesus Ascends to Heaven, it would be useful for a lot of things.

But then, I'm asking for some wacked stuff, ain't I.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Protounit Scaling: This would be across the board scaling for all units of a specific type. In the AOT editor one can only scale individual units, but what I propose is the ability to scale the whole class of that unit... so that even if a player trains additional Legionnaires, for instance, the new legionnaires will be scaled accordingly.

[Klaas]

BB Code

Some kind of markup code designers could use to format text. Incloding bold, italic, font size, font (if possible), center, color, strike, etc.

Extra stuff like background color and border size/color would also be cool, that way for example the chat effect could be used to make a pop up text in a box.

[Ulysses S Griffin]

the ability to record your own voice into a senario would be nice, and trigger them off during cutscenes or key moments

[ZeZar]

Make it easy to change voice had been awsome. Like Half Life, just changing the .wawe file;)

[Aeros]

Hmm, at first multiplayer designing didn't seem practical to me, but then I thought about it some more and I guess it could be a cool feature, people could meet in the editor, discuss something, teach someone something, or work on a map jointly. However the problem is that I think a majority of people won't use this and only a handful of the designing community would.

Also our programmers will have to script a whole extra chunk into the Prometheus engine to support this. Also transfering actions online will require a pretty buff connection since the .scn files are uncompressed when you open up a scenario into something thats like 10 MB - it's like this for all games.

But then again I'm not a programmer, I'll talk to the programmer guys and see what they think of this

Great ideas guys

[iNtRePiD]

BB Code

Some kind of markup code designers could use to format text. Incloding bold, italic, font size, font (if possible), center, color, strike, etc.

Extra stuff like background color and border size/color would also be cool, that way for example the chat effect could be used to make a pop up text in a box.

Something along these lines can be found in the Empires editor. It should really be in every editor as it is a rather nice feature.

Protounit Scaling: This would be across the board scaling for all units of a specific type. In the AOT editor one can only scale individual units, but what I propose is the ability to scale the whole class of that unit... so that even if a player trains additional Legionnaires, for instance, the new legionnaires will be scaled accordingly.

This can be done in both the Empires and Empire Earth editor.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, that's what I'd like to see in our editor.

[iNtRePiD]

I was just mentioning it as a reference point so it can be seen how such an idea is implemented in an editor that currently exists.

[Aztec_Brave]

Variables and Constants. So you can do stuff like change your name or something.

Some other programming-like stuff like functions, case (or switch) structures etc would be good, but probably too hard to grasp for the average beginner so ignore my idea.

Data Export: mainly RPGish type scenarios. A small file would be exported from scen1 containing certain data (like RPG atributes). Scen2 ould then search for this file in a certain folder and if successful it will be able to read dat from it. Basicly so you can carry stuff from one scenario to the other.

Object import: Basicly you can import a 3d object (or a 2d sprite if there is still a 2d element in the game). It wouldn't do anything, but could look cool if used quite well. Would probably swell filesize like hell though.

[King Tutankhamun]

Several different sound packs themes you can add to it. There could be different grunts for only a specific person.

Or, have premade mini civilizations you can place down on a map. They might have a barracks 3 houses and otehrs pre-built to save time. This way you dont have to place all of the common ones seperatly, but with one action.

[Black Op]

Hopefully, make the editor as newbie-friendly as possible that even I could make a scenario. While allowing great things to be done with it as well.

[Alex]

How about editor that makes possible just "playing" the game in itself? It was seen already in "Stronghold" series (excluding Stronghold 2).

[ProgramZeta]

I would like to see a few preset trigger systems so that it is easier to learn how the game manages triggers.

Another idea would to make people able to save trigger sets seperate from the map, so they can distribute them.

[Lord Zorinthrox]

You know, along the lines of export data: you could have a trigger that can import/export the amount of units and what type (maybe even rough position) to a text file that it can, of course, convert into copies of the units in another scenario.

Say I have four hoplites and an archer at the end of a scenario; when I get to the next scenario, it loads the number of units I had left over from my Player Data folder, and spawns them at the starting point. This is helpful for this game because we will have unit levels to contend with; I'd hate to lose hours-worth of battle-hardened units to a simple thing as respawning at the next scenario.

We should definately be able to import grayscale images for bump mapped terrain generation, using the image both as a brush for the terrain editing tools and a global/area function that scales the map to an area. This could easily optimize terrain generation, as the designer could simply use GIMP or PhotoShop to create the terrain he wants from an aireal perspective without even opening the program first. And of course, reuse terrain elements from his editing career: potencial for editor mod packs!

O, yeah, what about being able to open the editor directly, out-of-game? For instances, you could get from the game to the editor, and from the editor to the game, and start-up in either. StarCraft does this, and it is convenient (except you can't open the game from the editor).

I REALLY like the "recess fill" water editing option; to go with it, I suggest being able to raise the water surface in the editor as another function, and having it re-calculate for the new elevation (provided, of course, the recess is closed).

EDIT: Was I too verbose?

Edited June 6, 2005 by Lord Zorinthrox

[SGE]

A lighting editor is very important, to give special moods to the scenario