In-Depth Map Editor

Suggestions
1

Well, I had the idea thanks to the ‘Be the Dungeon Master’ thread, so credit to our hard workin’ Smith there.

Get on with it, you pompous fruitcake!

Gah, fine! So, we know the game will have random generation, big enough to where you’ll (probably) never see the edge of a map unless it be an ocean, a mountain, or another natural boundary. So, I was thinking, a map editor might be very nice. A really cool thing to make challenges, your own story-driven worlds, or just a scenic landscape.

How in the world would this work, knave?

Well, it’d be rather simple. You’d have drop down menus for every object or entity in the game, including units, the ability to create AI buildings (like bandit camps, or bunnimen outposts), along with the triggers and entities to control them properly, such as selecting a building and setting it to a ‘spawner of ‘x,’’ so a bandit camp might have tents that will spawn bandits slowly, over a modifiable time, with a limit or not.
Then you could have triggers that you could set up (the most arduous and time consuming part of map making) to make something happen once you hit a certain money threshhold, when you found a certain camp or ruin, or even when you pop out your first building that would cause other events to happen. So, you found the ‘Ruins of Axothemth?’ Well, good job! Busting open that door released the spirits of the damned, undead have started roaming the land, and undead camps begin growing more numerous.

What do you mean, ‘camps begin to grow more numerous?’ GET ON WITH IT!

That’s a short one, you could place certain landscape features that only appear after a set trigger that has gone off. So, like I said, you open up some ruinous tomb. Well, undead bases have appeared in the world. You don’t know where they are until you search, but they are now there. Good job, dumbo.

You’re expecting a lot out of this game so early, get over yourself you brat!

I’m not expecting this, and I will never expect this, until a dev comes out and says “hey, thats a neat idea.” And even then, I’d expect it post-release. Map editors are very difficult tools to create, but they are amazing, and community content like custom maps (even with random seeds) can keep a game alive for a lot longer. Just look at Minecraft! More than half of it’s community is thriving off of community-made maps and nothing else.

If you think Tom, Tony, and the rest are coding gods, get your head out of the clouds.

I’m sure they are gods of our day and age for this fantastic game they are making for us, but everyone has limits. Especially indie studios.

You’re dumb.

Shut up Bob. Anyways, a few little pieces I’d like from this would to be mostly easy to learn, but difficult to master. Also, perhaps some options would be nice for it, such as being able to design a map on top of a randomly generated seed, or just build it completely from scratch with a flat plain. Also, control over biomes would be nice, and, as I stated earlier, *be able to place every object in the game, not only basic stuff you could already build in the game. Also, very importantly, being able to pick the starting area of the city, so yeah, planning out a map around one area so it could be extremely useful, and make some amazing maps.

Anyways, just my thoughts, opinions, and suggestions. Anything to add, guys? Do you hate this idea? If so, I’ll just go cry in a corner.

3 Likes
2

Well, Sounds good to me. I’d support this. But more death and steam punk, the engineer probably solely drove me to kickstart this game. Back to topicish, I love the fact that my name makes your first quote so confusing, The devs should totally see this as well as @SteveAdamo and @Geoffers747 Yah, love the idea.

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They see all of those in their domain.

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I actually thought of doing something like this, but it seems to me like if they just gave us a world editor a few things would happen:

  1. Geomancer would be purely for spawning worker golem - This would be a problem because the ability to move landscape would be pointless if you can create a dream world using a tool. The unit would lose all purpose and destroy a grand idea
  2. It eliminates the fulfillment of completing a task - If people are anything like me, I enjoy the feeling of working hard and finally achieving the product I am working towards. If I wanted to make a landscape in the vanilla version of the game I would need to work up enough of a military force to defend the village needed to achieve the necessary on getting the Geomancer, then I’d need to move the earth to my will which we have no clue how long it would take to do.
    I feel if we had a tool for this it would destroy the feeling of finishing a big project.
  3. Would Limit Adventure - Having randomly made terrain adds a feeling of discovery. If we could make our own worlds it would take the feeling away, and before people start saying “Well, what if someone made it for download” the internet will release videos on this stuff.
  4. Albert - His task atm (that we know of) is terrain generation. HE JUST STARTED! Lets not make his hard work be pointless just so we can do it ourselves. Hell, we haven’t even seen the dude yet.

I like the idea in a way. Making your own landscapes would be nice without the track up to Geomancer, but instead I think it would be better for it to be a Mod, rather than a direct feature.

2 Likes
5

This would definitely add more control and versatility for adventure and script-organized maps. I can easily picture Stonehearth “campaigns” in the style of StarCraft and Age of Empires–here’s hoping for an excellent vanilla or mod pursuit on this editor.

I wonder if liquids (water, lava, (etc.?)) could be raised or lowered via scripts, in order to simulate droughts and floods during a game. Granted, we’ll need to see how water works in the game to begin with…

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This map editor (that I have in mind) is not for cheating and popping in some interesting terrain when you want it. It’d be out of game, and preferably would not be able to be used on saves. You could say “oh I like the terrain on this save though” you can just copy the seed down. So no, it would not make the Geomancer useless, because you wouldn’t be able to just pop stuff in whenever you wanted. Sure, you could make the ideal starting spot, but you’d certainly want to change things around as you played, so the Geomancer has plenty of usage.

A map editor like this would not be for just making pretty scenery, though I suppose you could. It would be for making natural landscapes, that you could include AI, custom placed modules, ruins, and other things out in the world. It’d be great for campaigns and such too, like Atralane just said as I was typing this. So, if someone makes a really cool and challenging map (such as a map where you’re surrounded by huge amounts of very dangerous undead zones, or there are no friendly factions on the map, etc). Also, there would be (hopefully) triggers, which could make a campaign even more plausible.

The worlds could and would be generated on random seeds, and whats forcing you to go watch videos of maps you find uploaded to the internet? If everyone said “Pfft, it’ll end up on the internet anyways” no game in existence would have any form of… well, anything interesting. When one person uploads a map, its not like “OH NOOOOO, THE MAP I’M PLAYING ON IS NOW BORING!” That’d just be absurd. The point your trying to make here is just dumb, no offense to you.

Did you read the post, friend?

VERY post release most likely. I never said, and never will say, “code this ASAP or I will hate you forever.” Why would I want this before the core game and many side stuff is done first? Then it’d just be pointless. And I said it’d be best if the map we designed would be formed off of his code. And you wouldn’t even need to ever touch the editor, because its a side thing for people who want to make cool stuff in a powerful tool for things like challenges, campaigns, custom little stories, or just for fun.

You have no idea what you’re saying. We can’t rely on mods for absolutely everything. That excuse is just getting stupid, and is used for every single suggestion. This would be engine stuff, not just tacked on fluff that a modder would make. And I’ve already answered all of the geomancer stuff above. This is not a ‘cheating/hacking’ tool, its an artists tool, a creative mind’s asset. Not just junk to make some ‘uber cool’ terrain formation in the world whenever you feel like it. Besides, who would ever even do that? Only someone who doesn’t like the idea of the geomancer, or doesn’t want to wait dozens of hours before they can have something pretty to look at. Or their just lazy, but that’d be their fault.

1 Like
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You can still create random maps even if there IS a editor… how are you gona get the maps to edit? a flat continent? I THINK NOT!

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om-nom–nom-ni-pres-ence

p.s. love the idea for an in-depth editor… best of luck! :smile:

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There is a middle ground. Modders can do everything other than the engine stuff, it should require next to no engine stuff anyway as they seem to be trying to avoid engine usage for lua as much as possible. What that means is that if you had some dedicated people they could make this, and then it would be a perfect candidate for the suggest idea of including community mods in the actual game. It would be hard but it would be awesome, there’s so many ways it could be extended as well. I’ve mentioned before that I’m interested in seeing what kind of modding tools can be created in the game and that I’ll be trying to create some, although my plans so far have been to more modding than this. Combining could be really awesome though, not only can you create a map and events you can also create monster, items, buildings or whatever else specifically for your scenario. We could do most of it and just appeal to the devs for the little bits we won’t have like carefully regulated file system interaction to be able to choose what .qb files to load and the like.

I might write up what kind of features I believe would be needed to pull this off later but unfortunately I don’t have the time to work it all out now.

10

But…but…people have it on t-shirts…

@SteveAdamo say it ain’t so, say it ain’t so!

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I definitely want this to happen it would be more easier for my idea of [Warhammer fantasy someone?][1]

[1]: Warhammer fantasy someone? take two! i’m still working on a better way to present my stuff with @Cookie so i will be able to tell what it would be but one thing i need a tool to be able to create the world map as precise as i can and this tool is THAT tool! We need

Best of luck with your project!!

12

Well, I really like the idea, especially to be used in the construction of scripted events, missions and areas in the game. It would also be an interesting tool to play around with.

We know this so far:

So it’s very possible to do. Well, a world editor would be different to the map editor you’re talking about as I assume the world editor would primarily be around terrain and resource placement.

Firstly if we could try and avoid things like this that’d be great - you can argue against a person’s idea without resorting to saying it is dumb. Secondly I actually feel @pandemic has a very valid point, but, there is a divide between both the ideas.

By this I mean that whilst @Pandemic is right about the excitement of discovery, this discovery isn’t going to be removed because of a map editor. I see the map editor as being used by those wanting to create specific areas for certain reasons i.e. scripted events/ missions, I’m sure somebody would use it to cheat, but that is their prerogative. I don’t envisage such an editor as removing the excitement, but similarly there would be less excitement of exploration for those constructed maps.

Either way it doesn’t really matter :smile:

1 Like
13

I apologize, I didn’t mean to come off so much like a jerk. I just dislike the mentality of “they’ll just see it on the internet anyways lol”

I am also fed up with the ‘just mod it in’ mentality for every single suggestion, no matter what the suggestion is.

Depends on what they mean. A ‘world editor’ I think they’re referring to is just making a static map that you start your game on. Sure, that’s part of my idea, but my idea mostly correlates to being able to make ‘missions,’ ‘campaigns,’ ‘challenges,’ and other fun stuff.

I’m still very doubtful anyone would make a full on map creator, even if they end up being able. There is a limit for everything, no matter how open you make your game to moddability.

14

Apology accepted :smile:

I appreciate that “mod it in” is a kind of annoying response that doesn’t really provide any substantial feedback. but we are still 3 months from Beta and as such haven’t got the bigger picture in terms of what the team will have and want to work in including in the core game … I agree that perhaps more of a fruitful discussion should happen rather than just default to mod it in, but if an idea is posed and discussed and some sort of consensus reached I suppose the response is then “well, let’s mod it in!”

When we get a clearer picture of the content we will have in the game, I think this sort of response will clam a little :smile:

That was my understanding as well, but I’m sure they’ll think about what sort of features they want a map editor etc to have if one is ever made!

1 Like
15

Alrighty, Here I go. This is a bit of work put into a list of the features we’d need the modding to be able to support to do everything mentioned here.

In-game stuff (Just some thoughts)

  • Height (Valleys, Cliffs, mounds, etc.) - Something similar to the sims with a sharp/smooth decay toggle?
  • Type (Rock, Magma, Water, Grass, Nothing/Erase etc.) - A type of brush? Not sure how to pull some of these off in 3d really
  • Module Placement (Ruins, Goblin Camp, Grove, etc.) - Some kind of list with click to place selected module
  • Event Creation (Goblin attack, Merchant Caravan, Tornado, etc.) - Predefined components with large trigger screen to allow control there
  • Piratefu (Ninjas, Parrots, Pantaloons, etc.) - Crew screen with list of potential members? Maybe triggers too
  • Entity Creation (Stats screens, model choosing, etc.) - Lists of traits/abilities, models, stats screens, all working together
  • Entity Placement (Monsters, Villagers, Buildings, Items, etc.) - Large lists of everything in the game that could be placed just with dragging or clicking or something

Backend/Engine stuff (Hopefully all possible)
  • JSON IO (Editing JSON) - (Should definitely at least be possible within the context of the current mod just for settings and things)
  • Lua IO (Editing Lua) - (Less likely but would be probably needed for things like custom actions and the like but might be able to bypass with good JSON parsing)
  • Intermod IO (Editing other mods, Creating mods) - (Fairly unlikely, would be required to export creations to their own mods so something that allows you to create inner folders and then declare them as a separate mod maybe?)
  • Loading from non-Stonehearth locations (Getting Qubicle models, sounds, etc.) - (Much more unlikely, would be used for things like choosing models from a different part of the filesystem. Not getting my hope up here)

I think that’s it really, some thoughts on what we’d have to do to make it in game and some more thoughts on what would be required to let us do it. It wouldn’t let you do everything but it should let you do pretty much everything when it comes to content changes short of tampering with mechanics.

3 Likes
16

So at the heart of it, is Rosey asking for the power to create parts (or whole?) of maps in a non-running game in order to create areas for adventure / modules / mods?

I feel like I asked this question in the questions bank last week:

I think we all have very similar questions / wonders about how we can change the map, in some ‘non-running’ game fashion? (eg. not altering it with units in game)

If I understand correctly Albert is working on land generation and its still early in the process. So perhaps the questions can’t be answered right now, but maybe a hint as to what it will look like? It is pretty fundamental to how we’re going to mod the game really.

To be clear, I’m referring to modding as changing things that are intended and supported by the engine, not hacking/modifying the client. If I understand correctly Rosey, you weren’t meaning modding, but more of a basic feature of the game that would allow for easier, more direct changing of landscapes? I agree on the “just mod it” mentality gets old for some things :slight_smile: it’s not practical/realistic for some features.

Good thread :slight_smile: looking forward to finding out more in time.

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I’m thinking something like the Civ 4 Worldbuilder if you’ve ever used it, something where you could at any time enter it and basically change most parts of the game. It could completely be used for cheating but with the modding if people want to cheat they’ll just change the files to give ultimate weapons or something anyway so trying to prevent cheating is stupid.

As for the “Just Mod It” mentality, I think it’s fine but only if you can see how. For example something like I’ve done here or in other modding threads and said or discussed what would be required and problems that may occur. Don’t just say “Just Mod It”, go into details or discuss why you think it could or couldn’t work, otherwise it’s just saying that it sounds kinda cool but isn’t really putting much effort into. If you say it should be modded in you should say why.

What I want to see is a community that thrives off mods, where by the time we hit full release there is more, better mods than the game is without them. Where the game starts getting extended faster in every direction from giant works that make it into sci-fi galactic scope empires to subtle things like diplomacy systems where assassins and deception are perfectly valid. Of course most of the planned mods so far seems to be mostly factions from the Bandits to the Tribes to the Norse it’s mostly just a couple of minor changes and a lot of modelling. It’s why I’m looking forward to beta so much, people will have all this stuff to work with and once they can actually play with the game I expect a lot of ideas will be appearing, It’s why I want to make something like what I’ve talked about in this thread. It will lower the entry barrier into modding which should increase the amount of mods because there’s a lot of people who can’t program but can think of awesome ideas or make cool models.

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he is indeed, and from last week’s update, it seems he’ll be (hopefully) providing us with a nice blog entry on what he’s been working on… as soon as he’s back from that wedding trip and stuff… :smile:

After he gets back in a few weeks, he want to do a blog update describing his work on terrain generation, which should be a pretty informative piece.

2 Likes
19

Don’t forget temperature might also be a pretty big factor once the world generator starts getting underway–I only thought of that when I saw the “Type” list: [quote=“Xavion, post:15, topic:2805”]
(Rock, Magma, Water, Grass, Nothing/Erase etc.)
[/quote] I figure ice and snow should also be options, but the climate itself would need to be defined in order to manually create these particular hot and cold biomes (otherwise it’d just melt in Summer and freeze in Winter).

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Temperature might matter depending on whether or not it’s actually on the game but some type of biome control definitely sounds necessary. As for the ice/snow I was just listing examples of everything, the actual lists would be much longer as there would be many different kinds of ground but everything should be generated from what’s possible anyway so it doesn’t really matter.