Mechanized Assault & eXploration Reloaded

Subject: Must-Have features for editor?

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Hi,
what are the Must-Have features for a map editor?

No feature pest, please. Just the basics you really really need in an editor

Rumors are true. I've something in the doing.

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Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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( Probably you know already everything what I write, because you are a good developer, but it's worth saying anyway )
well not really a feature, but I would say the most important thing is good usability
easy equation: good usability => many people use it => many maps are done => more people play the game / other good stuff happens => community grows
try to find some early testers, that can give you early feedback, so you have less work, when you change something

edit: maybe the different colors were nice, some obstacles that are easy to put in. Changeable Map-size. Maybe a Random Mapgenerator ^^

Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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thats just amazing

just what i can think for now, i will add stuff later too:

- mapsize bigger than 256x256 (maybe something like 1024x1024)
- painting user-defined blocks, like if you want to make for example a 50x70 isle in the sea
- to move that blocks with the arrowkeys arround
- free zooming
- to mirror the map if you want to make a symmetric world

Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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Basics:
- New/Load/Save
- Edit tile.


Advanced:
- Map comment Field (suggested #player, history, version, ...)
- Resize Map
- Different brush size.
- Undo/redo
- Copy/Paste
- Mirror editing
- RandomMap generator
- Map statistics viewer (water area, ...)

I don't know if it is also the place for 'scenario':
- units
- triggers

Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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some kind of automatic coast completion, you draw the shape of the ground inside the see (click and drag should add the same tile), then maybe clic on a resolve button and it adds all good tiles on ground-see boundaries

Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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The thing with auto-coast features of any kind is: there's simply no information about what tile fits to the next. While this can probably be implemented for very similar tiles it will never work on corner-coast elements. WRL only knows about what tile a cost *is* but never what direction it is.

Mayhap I can think of a way. Eiko gave me some interesting input on this issue.

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Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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In stratagus, we have 'auto-coast' feature...
We have config files to describe some 'solid' tiles and 'mixed' tiles (and hard-coded number for the 'pattern' of 4-neighbour).
We also have a sort of (buggy) pathfinding to correct tile around
(if you put forest into water, 1rst neighbours should be transition from forest to grass, and second neighbours should be coast from grass to water, (in fact, it is worse because forest tile cannot be alone...)...

/me dislike this part of stratagus code (it is also mixed with internal warcraft representation :-( ) ...
(and we don't manage unit removing).

Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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I like Jarod42's list: New, Load, Save, Edit Tile.

After that, I like the idea for multiple brush sizes.

This is just too awesome! Thanks!

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Subject: Re: Must-Have features for editor?

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same basics plus :

maybee autosave function, as most mapeditors i tried were crashhappy.
Layer showing accesibility for landunits, seaunits or both.
Manual placement of obstacles.
Keep filesize low or remove the 1MB limit for uploading maps
generation of .png when saving map
custom size of map