Questions & Hopes with stock Dom3 map editor...

[Ballbarian]

If this has already been discussed and I missed it, my apologies.

First off, a screen shot of the map editor might answer a lot of my questions.

1. Is the basic editor pretty much the same?

2. Will I still have those head slapping moments when I accidentally hit the "Remove Neighbors" button intending to clear the neighbors for the selected province instead of the entire map?

3. Will there be the addition of a #start button for designating a province as a potential start location?

4. Is it possible that if 3 is there, that I can see little icons simulating where the start locations are on the map as I assign others?

5. Will I be able to hit a button and simulate a random placing of X number of nations to see any potential problems with congested or insufficient placements?

6. This is a real stretch, and more of a request than a question, but is it possible to see little icons marking a given provinces terrain settings across the entire map at a glance to help reduce missed provinces during editing? (Really sucks to find your fish on dry land during your first test game when you thought you were attacking a sea province.)

I fully realize that the map editor is just a helpful tool for us mapmakers that was included with good will and good intentions by the devs (thanks guys!), but I still hope for a better mouse trap.

[Endoperez]

Ballbarian said:
If this has already been discussed and I missed it, my apologies.

First off, a screen shot of the map editor might answer a lot of my questions.

1. Is the basic editor pretty much the same?
2. Will I still have those head slapping moments when I accidentally hit the "Remove Neighbors" button intending to clear the neighbors for the selected province instead of the entire map?
3. Will there be the addition of a #start button for designating a province as a potential start location?
4. Is it possible that if 3 is there, that I can see little icons simulating where the start locations are on the map as I assign others?
5. Will I be able to hit a button and simulate a random placing of X number of nations to see any potential problems with congested or insufficient placements?
6. This is a real stretch, and more of a request than a question, but is it possible to see little icons marking a given provinces terrain settings across the entire map at a glance to help reduce missed provinces during editing? (Really sucks to find your fish on dry land during your first test game when you thought you were attacking a sea province.)

I fully realize that the map editor is just a helpful tool for us mapmakers that was included with good will and good intentions by the devs (thanks guys!), but I still hope for a better mouse trap.

Yes, Yes, and then lots of "I don't know"s.

[Ballbarian]

hmmm...
Perhaps I will try to incorporate some of these abilities in my hexmap editor. Perhaps a change in direction. I may try to just forget the hexmapping portion for now and focus on map file editing. Gandalfs expandable random name generator's could be incorporated into it and the ability to display icons and edit a few more aspects of the map file from within an external editor. Problem is that if I do it, it will be in VB and therefore not very friendly to users of non-M$ operating systems.

[Gandalf Parker]

Its very difficult to create a gui that works on multiple OS's. I write my routines in YaBasic because they work in linux and windows, but there isnt much in the way of a graphic user interface.

I could finish up those routines doing one for swamps, mountains, wasteland.

I also had one for doing random names that were not words but were pronouncable.

[Cainehill]

Not that difficult - in the 90s I wrote GUI and graphics libraries that worked on SunOS/Solaris (Unix) and Windows both, using OLIT or Motif on Unix and MFC on Windows. Admittedly the stock GUI facilities aren't what you want for a game, but it was perfectly suitable for wargaming - plain buttons & menus and whatnot, but scalable map images, terrain and unit icon (with barometer) overlays.

And these days, there's at least two widely available GUI libraries that work on at least Linux and Windows, possibly macs and others (GtK and Trolltech's QT). Then, if you want hand-drawn _graphic_ interfaces, there are multiplatform graphic libraries - the one Illwinter uses, I'm not sure if Demon Whiskey (Bard's Tale clone) used a different one. But then you need a graphic artist _and_ someone who can code a custom GUI with pretty graphics.

Still - as long as you're willing to limit yourself to Linux, Windows, and possibly Mac and commercial Unix's, it's definately doable, and for lowest common denominator UIs, easy.

[Nerfix]

Interesting, you worked in the game industry?