Editor wishlist

Download scenarios and talk about scenario design.

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junk2drive
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Editor wishlist

Post by junk2drive »

Hotkeys for mass changes to height and ground terrain. With the default of green grass and level 0 it takes a long time to change large areas. Painting works somewhat for terrain but there is nothing for height.
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Post by pipfromslitherine »

I'm going to sticky this as a thread for these kinds of requests. If you want to add an entry, please be sure and be specific about the feature you'd like to see.

Cheers

Pip
junk2drive
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Post by junk2drive »

Shallow water tile. Can be crossed by units.

-1 height level for sinking rivers, trenches and foxholes.

Hotkey to destroy units, like the one for objects.
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Additional plugins

Post by Jugger »

A simple reinforcement plugin/tab instead of scripting reinforcements would be a valuable addition to those of us who cannot get the grasp nor the time for scripting.What turn the reinforcements arrive on? What is there composition? and what map tiles do they arrive on? A plugin to allow you to write text straight onto the map you are creating rather than have to script it. This would be good for victory markers or village names, places of interest...etc. Simple buttons to create Campaign Text, Scenario text and even text which is triggered by events such as start of turns, capturing victory point or the arrival of reinforcements. Keep up the good work guys. :)
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Post by maximvs »

Yes, reinforcements would be easy if the editor allowed you to place them where you want them and then say, right click to enter the turn when you want them to appear!

Not being a programmer means I will be avoiding all this scripting business, but my efforts with the template are very satisfying!

As someone noted in another thread, the fords (if placed over a water tile) don't make the water crossable. Has anyone found a way round this yet? Apart from the obvious - change it to a bridge!)
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Post by tim1966 »

Maybe a plugin for achievements if possible and also setting bombardments and air attacks for AI- the target position and turn they happen.

The new plugin is great by the way!
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Merr
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Post by Merr »

maximvs wrote: As someone noted in another thread, the fords (if placed over a water tile) don't make the water crossable. Has anyone found a way round this yet? Apart from the obvious - change it to a bridge!)
maximvs,

Look at this thread ... viewtopic.php?t=18778&highlight=ford

Hope that helps,

Merr
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Post by Merr »

UNIT SORT BUTTONS ;
Since you're adding a lot of new units in your add-on ... Perhaps sorting the unit list with "type-buttons".
You know, like TRACKED, WHEELED, INFANTRY, ARTILLERY, etc.

Right now it's getting too jumbled up and I'm getting too lazy to scroll to the bottom of the list when trying to find a new unit!

Thanks.
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Post by junk2drive »

Merr, good idea. Did you try that with Open Office?

I took the stock csv, highlighted and deleted everything but the header lines, and saved as headeronly.csv

Now I can copy my last line to the new csv and view all the info or compare units.
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Post by Merr »

junk2drive wrote:Merr, good idea. Did you try that with Open Office?

I took the stock csv, highlighted and deleted everything but the header lines, and saved as headeronly.csv

Now I can copy my last line to the new csv and view all the info or compare units.
I shy away from messing with CSV as much as possible ... and sorting them would only get me in trouble!

Your comment about "comparing" gave me another suggestion for the editor, although it's been mentioned before ...

UNIT STAT INFO BUTTON ;
When you click on the units name it will activate an info button that you can click-on to bring up a window with basic unit stats... ie, tracked?, wheeled?, armor?, speed(ap)?, transport?, etc.
To be honest, when I first ran the editor I didn't know what a "8RAD" was :roll:
I'm thinking in terms of "newbies" and veteran alike.

Merr
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Post by pipfromslitherine »

All good stuff - some more practical than others ;). But keep them coming.

Cheers

Pip
junk2drive
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Post by junk2drive »

Showing points is a nice addition but an info window would be better.
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Post by junk2drive »

Ability to change the number of men in a squad.
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Post by junk2drive »

Terrain type woods and/or light woods, cover less than forest, allow slow movement of tracked.

Rubble with cover and block vehicle movement.
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Post by Merr »

reference this thread ... DeLaVega made some good points and ideas for Random Battles ... viewtopic.php?t=20231

I'll quickly outline how this could work ....

1. Add a new button in the Editor called ... Random Battle.
2. Clicking on this button will open a menu that will look like the purchase screen, showing Side 0 and Side 1 buying points.
3. Additional buttons can be included on this "buy screen" that are used to select the forces "types" ...

Force types include ;
a. Infantry ... random code looks to buy infantry as majority of force.
b. Mechanized ... bias towards transport/infantry with little armor.
c. Armor ... bias towards 75% of force as armor.
d. Random ... all unit unit types considered equally.

So, basically the BAM is just a map with AI points and flags.
By selecting the Random Battle button it will flag a new line in the BAM called ... Random ... with a 0 or 1 switch. If it's on (1) then it will look for code in a new PLUGIN folder that contains the OOB info.

And ... yes ... what about deployment? Well, you will need to have deployment "zones" ... which is another idea along the lines of how we adjust the "map size" in the editor ...
Simply select a new button called DP (deploy zone), then select the side, then click-and-drag the area, then click OK to save the X/Y boundaries.

Another way to have random battles is to move the PLUGIN stuff to the scenario folder and the players can make all his selections in-game, before the battle begins. In this case, you only need a basic BAM with (again) containing flags and AI points.

I can go on and on and on ... I have another ideas too about Dynamic AI points, Dynamic AI artillery, blah, blah blah.

Thanks for reading.

Rob
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Post by Merr »

Here's something pratical for the Editor ... Visibility and Ambient Lighting settings.

I know visibility is easy to add ... just add a button to the VP screen that toggles the tile vis range from 1 to 6.

Ambient lighting might be an issue unless the engine is told to read the parameters in the BAM file(which the plugin adds) instead of reading the lighting text file.
Could contain 3 preset lighting conditions, DAY, NIGHT, and DAWN/DUSK.
Merr
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Post by Merr »

Pip,

Here's another idea regarding BAM loading.

Currently, when we want to load a BAM it defaults to the directory we're in.
What I'm proposing is this ....

When we open the LOAD screen it will contain 3 FOLDER buttons ... defaulting to the current user folder we are in (folder 1 of 3 )
The other 2 folder buttons can be called USER CAMPAIGN and SLITHER CORE.
When you select the other folder it will load ALL the BAMs from that folder to select from.
Also, there is a box to check called CLEAN MAP, meaning when you load a BAM it will only load map info, not units, plugins, etc ... just the map.

Basically this speeds up the process allowing the designer to skip the process of cutting and pasting the correct BAM in the correct folder, then deleting the bits they don't want, etc, etc.

Remember, the scenario designers are lazy :wink: and the less "manual" work we have to do the better.

Merr
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Post by pipfromslitherine »

There is actually half the code in there to do precisely that - it's just on hold while we try and solve some of the issues with the French expansion. But good to know it's something that people actually want!

Cheers

Pip
junk2drive
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Post by junk2drive »

Plugin for briefings. A GUI popup window that you type in your text and save. It will then appear in the scenario selection screen. Beginner designers don't need animated one line texts. Or more serious battles can have a detailed history and battle description.
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junk2drive
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Post by junk2drive »

Back to my first post, I can't imagine how the dev team makes a snow or desert map from the default green grass map.

Is there a secret key combo that changes the whole map to snow or sand?
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