while looking for that old thread on the map editor docs, i found this one as well. some of this stuff now exists, some is still on the wish list.
posted 08-20-2001 09:08 PM
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the new editor is sweet. no question. but i'm a fussy old f*rt and lazy, so i'm always thinkin, 'boy, if i only had .....'. so, this is the place to post all those .....'s you wish you had in the editor.
a blending tool for blending any given texture into any other given texture. we've prolly all come up against that one situation where we cant quite get the look we want by using intermediary textures to do our blending. how bout a tool that would sort of morph or slur on blend the edge of one texture into the edge of any other and sort of mix up the textures on those 2 edges to make a new edge that blends one into the other smoothlessly. this is really more of a paint tool than anything else and a number of paint programs use this sort of tool as well.
either bring back the rgb mode or get rid of the 'hazy' look in the editor. most of the time i would set this haze in the stw editor to minimum when editing anyways. so either default to no haze or bring back the rgb mode so i can set it the way i want.
a weather mode would also be nice to be able to test map looks in rain, fog, and snow. not a biggie since it's so much easier to go from editor to custom and simply check it, but would be nice to have in the editor.
in the stw editor when using the height tool i could move the cursor around and the height tool would follow along with me editing as i went. this was a very fast way to edit height and i liked it. the current method wont do this. it stays editing in the same place no matter how you move the cursor around while holding down the mouse button. perhaps both methods could be incorporated, but if we can only have one then i prefer the stw method to the new.
i could easily stand having more textures. where's the browns? and maybe some reds and yellows? i love the new whitish granite looking rocks. great textures and i'd love to see about 8 more like this, specially that have rock going out all the way to the edge and not just gravel at or near the edge. and i'd also like to see the inverse of that where you have some that are gravel all the way around but with larger rock in the middle.
um, even though we couldnt place models on the maps in stw, there was a tool for scaling the models to other sizes. this would have been especially nice for bridges in the new editor. lots of folks dont play bridge maps because of the difficulty of crossing them. if i could make a bridge much wider and scale it how i wanted, i think this would make bridge maps more playable. and this applies to a few of the other models as well.
more models. the first that comes to mind is a wall with some thickness to it...great wall of china thickness, parapet thickness. if yer gonna be doin crusaders anyways, you might as well start making walls with parapets. also, how about some 'tall grass' models or textures or 'mature rice' models that units could actually move through and be shown being hip deep in weeds, grass, or rice. more rock models that match up to the color scheme of texture types.
water. this one is a must. water at heights above sea level. mountain streams, ponds, waterfalls. farm ponds and lakes. sloping rivers. shallow water that works like shallow water. river fords.
the ability to set impassable zones without the use or need of slope and texture. it's a bit difficult yet to tweak an impassable zone with height and texture. there sometimes key areas, like a mountain pass, where you need the impassable to match up perfectly with the terrain. the current method doesnt always.
river tools. rivers are fairly easy if you just follow the edges of tiles, but if you dont, then they can be a real pain in the butt. some kind of delineating a river edge tool would be great for this. draw a line with a mouse where you want a river edge and let up on the mouse button and the river automatically contours that edge to that line...something like that. even prefab river shape textures would be an improvement.
auto-designed/made maps. games like sim city had in their editor a feature where when you first called up a new map you could set certain percentages of trees, water, sloped terrain and so on and when you hit ok it would build a random map based on those percentages. this was a real time saver at times.
this one might be a bit trickier with the style of editor you have, but i'd love to be able to import real world height maps into the editor. for an example of this see railroad tycoon II's map editor. it allowed one to take real world maps that had height data included and import them into a map within the game. they were .pcx type files. this was a great feature in that game. we could take real world maps from japan, france, germany, the u.s., etc and simply load them into the game and have the height data set to real world settings. all you had to do then was color the map, tweak it a bit here and there, and voila, you had a map of pennsylvania that matched up height-wise with the real pennsylvania. very slick.
i know the main push is prolly on crusaders now, but surely that game is going to also have a map editor throw me a bone from time to time. i mean, who says we cant have a patch that is just for the editor!
K.
edit: bring back the old way of raising and lowering sea level. this was a much easier way to refine sea level. either bring it back as an extra key combo or if necessary, replace the current manner with the old.
multiple tile editing. we can currently edit only one tile at a time for texture and height. how bout a click and drag method for editing larger sections at one time?
bridges that can face any direction. i know somewhat why you did them like you did, specially after getting 9 in one map in an stw map (i'm a tricky fellow , but it would be nice to have more than 3 and be able to rotate them to fit over my rivers rather than rotating my river to fit my bridges
with a much lesser priority, bring back the old stretch tile/weird mode. we didnt use it very often and i know i abused it with my flying horses, but it was sorta cool. but if you can do it a bit differently, it would be nice...that half blue screen and tree thing was kinda confusing. why not just have a mode where you can 'grab' an edge or corner and pull or push as long as you kept the mouse button held down?
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
[This message has been edited by Kraellin (edited 08-22-2001).]
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Vanya
Kensai
Posts: 1199
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 08-21-2001 03:16 PM
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I'm sure there will be those that would like EA to add textures featuring tulips in the wild. That way, their generals could "tip toe through the tulips"...!
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Kraellin
Shukan
Posts: 1419
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 08-27-2001 08:55 PM
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ok, i'm finding i REALLY miss having the height numbers displayed along next to the curor. for really tight editing, this is a MUST HAVE. with the addition of having water on maps in the form of ponds and so on, the height numbers would be REALLY helpful for the EXACT heights necessary for using water realistically.
thanks,
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
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Kraellin
Shukan
Posts: 1419
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 08-29-2001 11:05 AM
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the more i work with the demo editor and the xpack editor, the more i'd like to see a texture tool or a different way of doing textures for land and water.
the situation currently is that you have a 'base' color on a given texture, say the medium green color on the #4 texture. then there is a bit of other color for shading and a more realistic look. you also have another base green texture but with a much darker shading, like #42 and another light green base color with shading and so on, like #63 (or is it 83?). for any other texture like trees, you'd need 3 different sets of trees to match up to and blend into these 3 different green colors. the same is true for just about everything else as well. gravel (9, 10, 11, and 12), blend into #4, but they dont blend into #42. so, if you want to go from a #12 to #42, you have to use blending or intermediary textures to make a smooth transition; 12 to 10 to 99 to 42. that's 4 tiles and 4 textures to make the transition. it works, but it takes up a LOT of space to do it. and, it makes for a need to have a LOT of intermediary textures to be able to blend everything into everything and there are a LOT of these missing currently, like a road texture with the #42 on either side of the road. and that's just one example.
there is also another situation where you need a texture that has the blending of textures in just the opposite corners and there are NONE of these currently. textures allow for blending to another by blending one corner, two adjacent corners, or 3 adjacent corners, but there is no texture blending on diagonally opposed corners.
the solution to all of this might be with an overlay system rather than a fixed texture system. if you took the base color of #4 and could overlay it with say a #42 texture on one or all of the corners, including opposite corners, you could essentially make a new texture yourself in the editor. each base texture/color could be overlayed with any other texture/color. any texture could then be overlayed with a road, for example, and you wouldnt need 64 different straight, fixed, road textures; you'd just make what you needed right in the editor. you might need a few different road looks, an actual gravel road as opposed to a dirt one, but it would still save a ton of space in the number of textures you needed in the editor and in the number of tiles needed to make a transition from one texture to another.
you have already removed models from the textures, which is great. do the same thing with trees and scrub and with the separation of the textures themselves into layered textures. trees would still be a texture, they just wouldnt be tied to one single base. you could have lots of different tree type textures that could simply be laid over many different base textures.
allowing for multiple texture layering would also be good. apply a base to a tile, then a shading/texturing texture, then maybe even a tree texture and depending on space, even a model on top of that. to get what you wanted as far as building your map, you would simply layer things in as you went.
this shldnt require any more texture memory than before as all of your textures are still there in a given map and any other player using the map would also still have all the standard textures within his game as well. map sizes might well increase due to keeping track of which texture layer is on which tile, shld still be a managable size.
to same time, there could still be default, fixed textures, like we have now, and one could even allow for 'custom fixed textures' which are made using the texture layering feature and then saved and loaded within the editor. you could even build up 'sets' of these custom textures to be loaded and unloaded with the editor and a very nice library of these would no doubt be built up and swapped between players, like the custom maps are now.
and if you ever want to really hear about my ideal map making utility, send me an email and we'll talk :)
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
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The Daimyo
planettotalwar.com
Posts: 659
From:Albq. NM - USA
Registered: Oct 2000
posted 08-29-2001 11:42 AM
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Kraellin, why haven't we seen you offering your assistance and input to the Warlord Project yet?
There's a spot reserved here for you if you want it man!
Much to do, little time. Come with us, it'll be fun!
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The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com
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Kraellin
Shukan
Posts: 1419
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 08-29-2001 08:21 PM
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TD,
us old shukans are kinda lazy. i mean, why else would we work with the pen and not the plow or the sword ;)
besides which, i really dont know much about it, so, hard to commit to something of which i know not. perhaps an email would whet my whistle...starfire@apex.net
and third, i'm still actually cracking the editor to see what it can do, after which i'm thinking of tearing the file structure apart and seeing if it can be re-arranged, modded, or twiddled.
and then, there's always maps. already made 4 or 5 new ones and altered one of the old ones and am also enjoying looking at all the new ones coming along from other folks.
meanwhile tosa, tera, ansi and a few others keep popping an admin spot on the .org in front of my eyes and seeing if i'll bite.
so, all in all, i'm staying rather busy with just this stuff...i even manage to play a gam once in a while :)
td, i do appreciate the invitation, but i'd really have to know more about it first, so, if ya wanna send me something on it, why, i can keep me lips closed...mostly. :)
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
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Kraellin
Shukan
Posts: 1419
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 08-30-2001 02:37 AM
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folks,
this isnt just 'my' thread. if you think of any tools or features you'd like to see in a new editor, please feel free to post em in here.
one thing tosa mentioned to me was being able to take a small map that already exists and turn it into a larger size within the editor. great idea. be nice to be able to take something like totomi and turn it into a medium or large size map.
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
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Khan7
Kensai
Posts: 1131
From:St. Louis
Registered: Jul 2001
posted 08-30-2001 02:44 AM
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LOL, you've made it your thread with your very voluminous posts, LOL!
But I dunno, you seem to have summed it up very well, and I don't work much with maps.
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Khan7
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NoFearWonton
Tai-Sa
Posts: 537
From:Seattle, WA (USA)
Registered: Aug 2001
posted 08-30-2001 03:18 AM
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map rotation. the ENTIRE MAP! my map is of the DDay beaches and i cant get the deployment circles where i want them. thats another thing, how about we control where the troops can be deployed? you know, we make a bunch of large circles on the overhead map, and those are the deployment zones?if i had that then map rotation wouldn't be neccessary.
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theforce
Kurayami no Kami
Posts: 1383
From:Larnaca,none,Cyprus
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 09-04-2001 07:08 PM
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Nice suggestions mate. Well some of the suggestions can be done other not. Can't we just simple make textures by our own. And also l do not like the limited model thing.
Also l found out(might seen that before map experts) that if you make a wall near the edge of map it pops up an error that is too near but it doesn't cruch or anything and doesn't affect the AI. Also units don't have any problems going through there, too.
I like the waterfall idea.
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Don't use only honour, use theforce, too. http://lod.fateback.com
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Kraellin
Shukan
Posts: 1419
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 09-04-2001 07:19 PM
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theforce,
yeah, the textures could prolly be altered, but havent found out how yet. i think they're also using those elusive .bif files. the other problem with altering textures is that if i alter them on my machine and then make a map using them, you wont see the altered textures, you'll see the original textures cause the data comprising the texture is not stored with the map file. just the data of which texture to use is stored with the map. so if i altered texture #4 to look like a black tar pit, it would still look like green grass on your machine.
the same would also be true in altering unit shapes and colors. they might look great on my machine, but you wouldnt have those alterations on your machine unless i sent you the separate altered files.
be careful with the walls and castles and other models in the red zone. i'm fairly sure at this point that some of these will bug a map. pachinko made a map that seems to have a castle on it, but you dont see any castle and none is hidden below ground. what i think he did was put one in the red zone and the castle itself disappeared but the map still thinks there is one there cause it acts exactly like it has a castle. so, be careful with these in red zones. red zones are 2 tiles wide around the entire perimeter of the map, no matter what the map size is.
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
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Kraellin
Shukan
Posts: 1419
From:
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 09-17-2001 07:08 PM
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land bridges. would be great to be able to stretch a bridge over a gorge. and i dont mean the type of 'land bridge' i did in my pegasus map. i mean a normal wooden bridge for crossing between two raised points of land.
and did i mention this one above? editable starting postions IN the map data. and if i did mention it already, then i'll also add this one, editable reinforcement positions. and because of all the debate on reinforcements, this could be applied to or distinguished from the differences in 'reinforcements' and 'reserves' and could include the ability to mod either one within the map itself. and if you really wanted to get more elaborate, you could even make distinctions in game types like last man standing and king of the hill and castle maps and so on.
K.
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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.
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theforce
Kurayami no Kami
Posts: 1383
From:Larnaca,none,Cyprus
Registered: Nov 2000
posted 09-17-2001 08:02 PM
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Well the main reason that most of those cool things can't be done is the limitations of the engine. I would like to see lakes above water level, or shallow water or waterfalls but the engine doesn't support that. I would also like that sun glare with the light effects and moving clouds that could make the sun disspear. How about the reflections of shadows on the terrain? Ground Control had that and l am still amazed with it's graphics.
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Don't use only honour, use theforce, too. http://lod.fateback.com
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K.
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