Age of Strategy Forums

Here i write where i am with the on-device editor:
- the basic framework is working
- but the appearance in the game is not final yet, and there a few missing visual forms

I write here the final way of working and will indicate with blue what is not ready

Designing a Random or a Skirmish map
- A random map can be used on your own device as a normal random map, you can not create multiplayer game out of it since others does not know the map, later when we have MAP Market we can share the maps we have and can launch multiplayer games on it.) A random map can contain only terrain and “terrain” like objects (deers, bears, big stones and so on)
- A complete skirmish map will appear in the Campaigns/Own maps section, you can play the map, but you will not receive any gems for completing it.

How to design a map:
1. Go to “Map editing” menuitem
2. Draft list: You see the list of draft maps you are working on currently, or nothing if you came here for the first time.
-- a. On this form you can
-- -- i. Create a new map draft (random/skirmish) - a button below
-- -- ii. Publish it to your phone (random maplist / campaigns - Own maps section) - longclick on a draft map
-- -- iii. Send it to developer to offer it implementing into the core game as normal gem paying FAN map / as a built in random map.
-- b. Now hit the “Create” button
3. Map type selector form: you see a form where you can set
-- a. Map size
-- b. Map design name
-- c. Type (Random/Skirmish)
-- -- i. Random
-- -- ii. Skirmish
4. Editing the map: you are transferred to the mapeditor where you can
-- a. edit terrain
-- b. edit units (only on skirmish map)
-- c. change players and game setup (only on skirmish map)
-- d. edit the triggers
5. Activating the Draft map:
-- a. when you quit from the mapeditor it automatically saved the draft that will appear in the drafts list
-- b. longclick on the map and you see the “Activate as Random map” / “Activate as Skirmish map”, hit the option
-- c. now the map appears in the
-- -- i. random map list (when you create a random map you will see your map)
-- -- ii. Own maps list, where you can play the designed “FAN” map.
6. Modify map: You can modify the draft anytime and re-activate it after any fixes.
7. Deleting draft: If the activated map is ready, needs no further fixes, you can delete the draft by lonclicking on it

(when the editor is totally ready i will put this text onto the top as the official map editing way)

TESTING: it is up on server in 10 minutes! but it needs extra testing on existing functions, almost all functions...

Please help me and use the game as many ways you can (campaigns, random maps, multiplayer maps, player setup variations on creating maps, map designing quitting/continuing design and so on, old style mapdesigning (the tmx based built in maps), trigger editing and trigger working in-game, waypoint / messagespot functions... as many things you can.
Send me reports on all crashes you face - thanks!
Thanks!

tha above mentioned "Draft list: You see the list of draft maps" is ready.
so you see the draftlist now.

blue parts removed about this.
up on server in 5 minutes.

This sounds really cool!

I have opened this topic for the mapeditor to collect any suggestions you have on the mapeditor

here are my suggestions
- the default fill terrain (when creating a new draft map) should be the green grass tile
- ability to select a terrain or unit tile from the map for the "tool" (to avoid going into the list and selecting a tile for the tool)
- unit type selection: units list should "remember" which category (ships/ranged units/...) you were in
- in mapeditor view the units should not be movable / attackable.
- in designing a random map all random map problems should be pre-checked before saving (eg is there ground places on the corners of the map for generating TCs and so on.
- in random mode the default "tool" should not be the wagon, since that is a forbidden unit on a random map - so change it to the deer or bear.

(i have merged it here, it is ok to put these here)

Would it be possible to have the engine select which tile to use on some of the simpler things like water shoreline?

Here's how I mean:
-there is one "water" tile in the map editor instead of all of our water, shore, and river images
-the engine chooses which image to show automatically based on the adjacent tiles
-I guess it is similar to what the walls do

yes, good idea.
the only big thing in it is defining the combinations...
there could be a file (json) where there are the tile to be putted (eg. water) and all adjcent tiles (corners too so 8tiles!) to calculate the appearance for all tiles! (since others can also change)

or something like this

new:
- you can change teams/players and map setup in the editor screen by hitting the menu button and entering the "Map setup" option. needs great testing...
- fixed bug: multiselect works on generated maps too.

Daniel (the dev) wrote:yes, good idea.
the only big thing in it is defining the combinations...
there could be a file (json) where there are the tile to be putted (eg. water) and all adjcent tiles (corners too so 8tiles!) to calculate the appearance for all tiles! (since others can also change)

or something like this

Thanks! But we wouldn't need to calculate the corners would we?

I think we should. If u place a grass into the ocean there will be 8 hybrid tiles around it

COOLguy wrote:Would it be possible to have the engine select which tile to use on some of the simpler things like water shoreline?

Here's how I mean:
-there is one "water" tile in the map editor instead of all of our water, shore, and river images
-the engine chooses which image to show automatically based on the adjacent tiles
-I guess it is similar to what the walls do

i am reading a bit around:
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_ ... errai-r934
http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questi ... cent-tiles

Daniel (the dev) wrote:I think we should. If u place a grass into the ocean there will be 8 hybrid tiles around it

You are right : we need to check all eight.

But isn't it the water image we are changing? so the water must check the tiles around it, not the ground.

When we get the desert and snow fixed too, the water will need to check for those too. So our "JoinX" type might not work like it did for the walls. Maybe more like an "IfX" : If the tiles around are grass, desert, or arctic?

This site seemed to talk a bit about it too. http://www.angryfishstudios.com/2011/04 ... itmasking/

But it would require that 256+ images to get all transitions for just two types of terrain.

Would it be possible to divide the tile like this and have the engine generate transition tiles coupled by the way described by the "Handling Terrain Transitions" post?

(i do not like overlapping i thing that cost too much cpu on weak devices.)
i started to implement the 8bit based 32 version identification in a json file, we can later modify it to the overlapping ones, will work with that too.
i also planned to being able to read the json from sd card, so you or anyone can modify the definition until we finished with all.

i also plan to put in a way to inactivate 8 tile surrounding mode and reduce it to 4 tile mode, since i think the wood-grass is a 4 tile type.

ok! the first version of the autotileing is ready! if you put simple water tile on grass then it will make shores automatically (not all cases are parameterized yet but it works cool!)

up on server.

also the forests are autotiled from now!

new terrain tiles on forests (eg. 1 tile with forestline)
also modified images for water bottom coast (so ships will not seen as to be towed out to shore) - available only on mapeditor, existing maps are not afected (yet)

thanks all to Josh from the Stylin' Strategyists! (CoolGuy)

mark the ones that are ready.

here are my suggestions
- the default fill terrain (when creating a new draft map) should be the green grass tile
- ability to select a terrain or unit tile from the map for the "tool" (to avoid going into the list and selecting a tile for the tool)
- unit type selection: units list should "remember" which category (ships/ranged units/...) you were in
- in mapeditor view the units should not be movable / attackable.
- in designing a random map all random map problems should be pre-checked before saving (eg is there ground places on the corners of the map for generating TCs and so on.
- in random mode the default "tool" should not be the wagon, since that is a forbidden unit on a random map - so change it to the deer or bear.

I think an "Undo" button might be nice.

(undo button is ready.)

ready: unit type selection: units list should "remember" which category (ships/ranged units/...) you were in
will be in next version.

Would it be possible to add a rectangle select tool that could copy sections of a map? The way it would work would be you rectangle select an area on a map and copy it to a clipboard thing. Then you could paste it into the same map or maybe even a different map.