0ad Map Editor Wishlist

[Aeros]

Its surprising how many of these suggestions we've already thought about and have documented I'm not going to say which specific ones we're doing since alot of them are highly expiramental and already our editor is planned to be much more advanced than any other... Keep the suggestions comming! They help get the creative juices running, for example:

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

That gave me an idea about including in-game tutorials to teach you the basics of scenario design in the editor...

[Caesar]

I suppose my biggest concern about a map editor is user-friendliness. An in game tutorial would be very helpfull as well as a ful and detailed list of the triggers and what they do. Perhaps a guide mode inside the editor would be a handy tool for newbies. Whatever you do, please, please do not let you editor be anything like the AoK editor!

[Mythos_Ruler]

Or the as-shipped AOM editor (pre-Reyk's New Editor mods).

[Titus Ultor]

Starcraft. That's all I have to say.

[Wize1]

If you want to stand out, I suggest this. It's an easy, fast, and efficient way to place terrain. Ok, have a "lining tool" which allows the editor to draw a line. Make any shape you want as long as the beginning and the end of the line attach. Then click a "filling tool" and fill in the hollow shape to place terrain quick and easy. : )

[Wize1]

Ooooh, another idea! To raise and lower terrain, click and hold and area of the map, then move the mouse downward to lower and move the mouse upward to higher it! I dunno if any of my ideas are possible, but they sure would be hella easy to use.

[Mythos_Ruler]

It's just as easy to use the mouse buttons in that case, Wize.

[Aeros]

That sounds good, but unfortunately it won't help at all. If you have to be moving the mouse to edit elevation in one spot, then that kind of defeats the way elevation is placed since you usually need to move the mouse around and "paint" it.

Realize Wize1 that you wouldn't be able to move the mouse to directionally effect the elevation, you would just get a huge block which you could at variable speed control how far up or down it is.

[Brian]

What i would think would be really cool is a Random Map Script generator. You make a scenario and you want to convert it into a basic random map script that keeps the basic triggers(time delays, lighting effects, messages, trigger for a specific generated unit death, etc) and also creates the random map script based on the buildings, trees, specific units, terrains, eye candy, mountains, and water to land ratio.

I just think it would be neat to be able to convert advanced scenarios into a script that changes the rules every time you play your scenario. Things just don't get old that fast then.

[Zeusthor]

That's impossible... the nature of scenarios have nothing random about them so you can't create random maps using a visual editor like that.

[Mythos_Ruler]

It can be done.... just not sure with our capabilities.

[Zeusthor]

it can't... you could convert a scenario to script code, but you can't make it random.

[thedrunkyak]

it can't... you could convert a scenario to script code, but you can't make it random.

←

Mmmm...I'll bet it could be done if you cheat a little. Say, create a scenario with say, 10 (just a purely random number) different requirements for success or failure, then have 2 or 3 randomly chosen when you start the game. Then a map may stay the same, but the requirements for success or failure could be completely different, possibly changing strategy or gameplay. Maybe that would be a good idea to add randomness into the scenarios.

Or was the origional poster looking for more of a Diablo approach to adding random factors to scenarios?

[Brian]

Actually, when i said that it could be converted to code, i was thinking in sections. For example, the game engine would read the map and divide in by the tiles on the map. It would then get the objects on each tile and average elevation of the tile. It would then rearrange the tiles as well as objects on the tiles, such as trees, eye candy, etc. Once it re-arranged the objects on the tiles, it would then re-arrange the orders of the tiles themselves, such as placing a tile with trees on it next to the other tile with trees on it to create a large forest.

The image above represents a scenario. In it, there are trees(green), gold(yellow), and water(blue). When the game would read the map, it would divide it into the tiles shown and record the objects on each tile. When the game would save the info, it would create a list:

 1: 
 2: 
 3: //Generated by the scenario to random map script converter
 4: 
 5: [scenariodata]
 6: tree.types = "redwood,pinetree2,etc." //lists all trees found on map
 7: pinetree2.number = "600" //number of pinetree2
 8: redwood.number = "100"
 9: water.area = "2154"  //total area of water on the map
10: water.touchesSides = "True"
11: water.touch.perimeter = "100" //perimeter of water when it is touching the edges of the map
12: water.touchsides.number = "2" //water touches the left side and right side of the map for two
13: [/scenariodata]
14: 
15: [Tile.A1]
16: elevation.average = "30" //average elevation of tile A1
17: [/Tile.A1]
18: 
19: 
20: [Tile.A2]
21: tree.type="redwood"  //type of tree, could be listed like above or like this
22: redwood.number = "5"  //number of trees on that tile that were redwood
23: tree.type="pinetree2"
24: pinetree2.number = "20"
25: elevation.average = "15"
26: [/Tile.A2]
27: 
28: 
29: [Tile.A3]
30: water.area = "10"
31: elevation.average = "5"
32: water.JoinedToAdjacentTile = "True"  //this is true since the water goes on to tile 4
33: [/tile.A3]
34: 
35: [Tile.A4]
36: water.area = "120"
37: water.JoinedToAdjacentTile = "True"
38: elevation average = "5"
39: [/tile.A4]
40: 
41: 

The code above would then allow the game to place tile A4 next to tile F5 because they are both water tiles with an adjacent water tile. The same could be done to preserve large forests etc. A tile with gold would not initially be placed next to another tile with gold unless the random map script engine decided that it had no other choice, so it would determine the tiles with resource placement last. The town centers would be given a distance around them to prevent other town centers from being placed too close. The distance and other parameters would be loosely followed by the random map generator, but it would attempt to generate a map with parameters as similar to the above as possible. It would be hard, but it would be possible. I may write something like it someday and maybe you guys could then integrate it into the engine. This would give amateurs the ability to create random map scripts which i feel is real important. At least i did back in the day.

Do you see what i am saying?

[thedrunkyak]

I think I see what you're saying. I'm sorry, before I was on a completely different tangent. I thought you were talking about a certain scenario where you would have to say, move troops from point A to point B with multiple scripted triggers along the way (such as natural disastors or assults from opposing forces), with the map and scripted triggers being randomly placed on the map. Thinking about it, your idea might even work for this, as you would design all the different sections with triggers, and the computer would place the sections in different areas of the map, redesigning a scenario. Of course, I might be living up to my namesake and am completely confused about this right now.

Any way you look at it, it would take some work to get this implemented. If you think you could bang something out you should definitely try.

Dan - Still working on my signature.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Brian is definately on the right track. I don't think anyone is saying a 1000 trigger RPG scenario can be made into an RMS dynamically with a click of a button (could be done with extensive scripting by hand, but not with a direct conversion from scn to rms). However, scenarios with terrain, start points, and basic "modify protounit" triggers and simple Victory Conditions could be done in the way Brian describes.

[Aeros]

Heres an interesting thread on exactly this subject at AoE3H

http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums...&f=1,24379,0,10

[Zeusthor]

Okay, I'll take it back... It should theoretically be possible. Even more so because our RMS language is object-oriented. It's alot of work to create that type of editor though. I wouldn't dismiss a possible Visual RMS Editor in the future. But the first 0ad release most likely wouldn't include it.

[Aeros]

Well what I meant was I found this part worth noting

AOE3 does have a nifty feature called groupings. Think of a grouping as a tiny little piece of scenario terrains and units that you can copy from the editor and paste into an RM script. It is through groupings that we can make the Native villages look so good in an RM. You could use groupings to make towns, forests, cliffs, or virtually anything. Because they need to be placed by the RM script, it is easier to use small groupings (say 20x20 tiles or so) rather than try to paste something continent-sized. For that, you are probably better off just doing a scenario instead.

Being able to copy unit locations and exporting them for RMS use nifty, could definately add alot of spice to RMs

[Zeusthor]

I was thinking of a much larger scale... Something like how Visual Studio makes Windows Forms.

That feature is relatively simple to implement into scened, but it screams feature creep . A scenario editor should be for just that... editting scenarios. When time allows, I'm sure we could get some people to code an RMS editor. BTW, RMS isn't that hard . IMO. our RMS language is simpler than AOK/AOM. You can create detailed groupings in code with ease although it'd take some preplanning to figure out .

[Brian]

Yes, i am glad i got some serious discussion going on here. So you guys now understand where i am coming from when i say scn to rms converter.

[golthos]

How about having a campaign editor that has a feature to string scenario map objects together in a way that I can be able to continue with the same stuff as I had in the last scenario into the next map.

For instance if I wanted to create a large city that is larger than the largest map can allow space for.

I would like to continue designing the rest of that city on another map that would be accesable after a a new scenario started. All the units Ihad had in the previous scenario continue to exist in this scenario.

The net effect would be that the campaign would seem to have units scrolling from map to map.

is that possible? does that make sense?