Ilor wrote: > As to items, I think it may have less of a priority right now -- there > aren't that many items commonly used on maps as far as I can tell, and > they mostly play some role in the scenario, so maybe they should stay > in the scenario WML. However, looking at the example of some other > games, like for instance Starcraft, I think if we could (should?) end > up more "decoration-only" items / doodads. Using such items in large > quantities on maps for visual effect would be much easier if it could > be done in the map editor. > The reason why there are not much icons used on maps is the fact that it is hard work to do it right. But have a look at IFTU, Shadowmaster does place them in huge amounts together with sound sources to a great benefit for the atmosphere of the scenarios. I don't want to know how much work it was to get all that bling right.
If they were placable by the editor there amount will increase rapidly. >> If we decide that we want to add features to the editor, we seriously >> need to look at the gui before starting, the gui is already pretty full >> and in fact already broken on 800x480 (--smallgui is needed for that >> resolution). >> > That could be called an implementation problem, in my opinion. > > Hmmm, don't see the problem. Plenty of room in the menus, they are nearly empty. The sidebar on the right could grow a little more to the west, there are only a few more tools needed to display. >>> * Scenery or item images. >>> >> Idem. >> >> >>> There are two main goals associated with these features: >>> >>> A) What *can* be edited visually *should* be, in the map editor, >>> in order to reduce the complexity of (the quasi-procedural part of) >>> scenario WML. >>> >> Where does this stop? eg placing units can be done visually as well. (Not >> meant sarcastically, but a serious question about what we want to >> achieve to do visually.) >> > > Units are dynamic parts of a scenario and I don't think they belong in > the map editor. Visual decorations that are simply part of how the map > looks, however, would fit in well with the purpose of the map editor. > The distinction I'd use is between static stuff, and stuff that does > more than just look nice. For the sake of this argument assume that > labels look nice ;) > > The units used at scenario start to play the cutscenes are quite static. Doing good looking cutscenes is much hard work. In fact, the "Legend of Wesmere" was full of cutscenes and I removed them all. They were all a little bit broken because of their age. Fixing them would have been much work, maintaining them as well. They often go out of sync with the map because you don't have an idea about them in the map editor. So I replaced with one exception (Scenario 13) every cutscene in the campaign with storyscreen only scenarios that display the characters high resolution portraits. Every scenario intro and outro talking is basically done by just recalling into a bulk and displaying the messages. I would like to add more cutscenes to the campaign but it's just to much work at the moment. Adding support for unit placement is a step to improve that a lot. The usage of good looking cutscenes would increase like the usage of items and scenery images. >> But since the we haven't decided which goals we want to achieve talking >> about the implementation details seems silly, so let's talk about what >> we want the editor to do and whether it will get bolted on top of the >> map editor or becomes a separate editor before diving in these details. >> > > I don't think the changes are major enough to warrant a separate > editor. More importantly, the whole point is to have a single tool > with which to edit the map terrain, mark areas for use in WML, place > labels and scenery items. A single tool to edit a single file with the > map. What's more, I don't think that implementation-wise there will be > many problems with the editor. > > *FullAck* _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list Wesnoth-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
