Brad Wardell's site for talking about the customization of Windows.
Published on May 22, 2009 By Frogboy In Elemental Dev Journals

EarlyMapEditor1

I’m a map junkie. I love making maps.  I even bought a program called Campaign Cartographer years ago just to make maps.

One of the features of Elemental is, not surprisingly, a map editor. But the map editor is also being designed so that you can export your creations so you can easily print them out and such.

The map editor will let users build theri own mountain ranges, forests, swamps, you name it.

EarlyMapEditor1_WithList

Of course, it’s also useful that you will be able to then play on these maps with your friends and share them online but just the ability to make your own worlds sounds fun to me anyway.


Comments (Page 3)
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on May 23, 2009

keithLamothe
On dungeons/planes/underground/etc, do we have any confirmed information that there will actually be more than one map in a game?  As in MoM's Myrror or HoMM's underground?  Dungeons are confirmed, but do we have any info about how they are actually represented spatially or how a "dungeon crawl" is represented temporally (i.e. one turn or more than that)?

The map editor looks really nice, Brad, thanks for sharing that.  I'll get a good bit of fun out of just making cool maps; my office is notoriously non-decorated execpt for sql db diagrams but these just might make it onto the walls.

Thanks,

Keith

I asked the same question a while back, the response was there would be both dungeons like MoM that you would discover, fight the guardian monster, and get the loot and would only take up one map grid, but there would also be dungeouns that would take your group multiple turns to explore. Still not exactly sure how that will work as far as the map goes

on May 23, 2009

How big will we be able to make maps?  (based on how big the example map in the picture is, of course)

on May 24, 2009

According to this post, the large maps are 224 by 110 tiles wide.

on May 24, 2009

Here's hoping that we can indeed extract the baseline map from a game to re-use with other settings and/or tweak with the editor. I've also had that experience of wishing I could try again at a map that beat the crap out of me long before I learned this, that, or the other thing.

If there's an internal debate on planes/moons/whatever, I'd love to see a companion thread to the one on the econ mechanics. Or at least a semi-firm dev reply to this question that's been around pretty much since the boards opened.

on May 24, 2009

I think that at this point the answer is "no". However, the coding is going to be to some degree editable, so it might be possible to add them in later on.... they would look good in an expansion pack, too.

on May 24, 2009

DivineWrath
Quick thought, could we get it so whenever Elemental makes a map, it'll save it?

I have, from time to time, gone back and replayed maps in other games using different setups and start locations. I would like to have such an option for Elemental. I know for GalCiv 2, my skill level has greatly improved over time, and I would really wish I could go back and try to replay some of those older games that I had trouble with.

Could you also include a means to remember the starting setup for every game played on a given map? Many updates for GalCiv 2 have rendered older games non-functional, so having a means to remember the starting conditions and other details would allow us to replay old games from the begining. Think of it like a means for a player to check to see if they have got any better.

Also, could we also have a means include some notes along side a map? I would like to be able to keep a set of notes for training maps, or keep a list of games I have played with a given map, related details for every game.

 

Just a thought, if you want everything to be the same when you started previously on the map why not just save at the start, I have a simple system I use for that: saving as "### - GAMESTART" then any notes a jot down in the college rule notebook using the numerical reference and skipping a page or two before I start on the next one like 001, blank page 002 blank page... 121 blank page..... etc

 

I mean sure having the game do that is nice and all, but just a thought

on May 24, 2009

*drool* I like editors, can we get some teasers on the item editor that was my favorite from MoM

 

 

anyone wanting to play MoM on your windoze machine, download an abandonware copy of the game and implodeds mutiplayer edition (this one lets you set everything from map size to how much treasure is in the lairs) ive been using that to hold me over,

on May 24, 2009

If there's an internal debate on planes/moons/whatever, I'd love to see a companion thread to the one on the econ mechanics. Or at least a semi-firm dev reply to this question that's been around pretty much since the boards opened.
Indeed, this is mighty important, at least to me.  I thought it had already been answered and was asking to be pointed to it, but I guess not.

on May 24, 2009

I just recalled while reading the forums on how you could use the base map and use it to generate an alternate realm that has similar features as the base map, but in a distorted way.

Think of the emerald dream from the warcraft lore. It looks the same sorta but different.

Or even the feywilds as described in the D&D 4th ed.

But then again, 224 by 110 tile wide x N alternate realms = never leaving the house ever again

on May 25, 2009

@ Palverz, reply #36

Though I appreciate the suggestion, I already have a few methods for keeping track of my own games. However, I might add your suggestion of a notebook to track things to the list (or maybe a text file from notepad).

The problem I have faced in the past is that sometimes new patches renders the old saves non-functional. For GalCiv 2, this has happened many times. I would give an exact example, but I seem to have a bad habit of missplacing my backup game data.

My reasoning behind wanting the game to remember start settings is, in the event a major change in a patch that somehow renders the old saves non-functional, the game should be able to generate a new game from the original settings. Its more of a redundency than anything else, one that I hope will work when Elemental reaches its own ver 2.0 milestone.

on May 25, 2009

Will players be allowed to write map generator scripts? I much prefer random maps so I don't know what the world looks like beforehand. One of my favorite aspects of Civ IV are the wonderful map scripts. (Big and Small is my current favorite.)

This is still a cool feature. When I was a kid, I'd always draw fantasy maps in MS Paint. Half the reason I even bought RPGs back then was for the maps they included in the box

on May 26, 2009

I think a world generator like that of Dwarf Fortress would be nice here. Especially the more involved of the two ingame options. There are litterally hundreds of parameters in there which can be tweaked, everything from the desired percentage of megabeasts left alive to how volcanic the map is. It really fills the big void in world generating between the two extremes of "Completely random with no or very little say about the end result" and "The player decides where to place each and every last little rock on the map."

And a suggestion for a tool in the map editor:
An 'environment edge' tool which detects the environments in its circle and automatically creates an 'edge' for them. By that I mean the gradual/random looking transition between environments which are seen in nature, but often require painstaking effort to create in a map editor.

on May 26, 2009

drool......

I am a map geek as well and I used to spend my bored time in high school making made up worlds with maps.  I will love this feature for sure.

on May 26, 2009

I think the key to get a Dwarf Fortress-like editor might be to just provide a command line function for every function available in the GUI-based editor.  If we had that flexibility, it's possible someone it the modding community could come up with a good, parameterized algorithm set to call the Map Editor functions to build a world.

on May 27, 2009

Scoutdog
According to this post, the large maps are 224 by 110 tiles wide.

The post also mentions that in the 64bit version of the game the maps could potentially be bigger than that.

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