Civ3 editing tools: what do *you* want to see

[Maccabee2]

If external map/scenario editors will make them
(1) easier to use
(2) more customizable
then I am in favor of external over internal editors.
I want customizability and ease of use, in that order.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

*knocks off the UBB rust*...It's been a while...

Customizing.......I suppose open-sourcing it is out of the question?

I'd definitely want an external editor. I think in-game editors are too restricted by the the game interface...usually playing a game and designing for one are different enough that an interface that would be efficient for one is clunky for the other. I'd also stick with standard Windows controls...everybody is familiar with those metaphors, so it's easier for most people.

Also, I'd try to integrate as many options as possible into the editor. When you load it, you should be able to create or select a working directory that has the map file, unit graphics, txt files, etc., and edit them all in some kind of integrated manner. For instance, a dialog box where you edit units should allow you to set the attributes, prereqs, unit graphic, and attack sound seamlessly, without the user ever knowing what files are being edited. There doesn't need to be an integrated bitmap editor or anything...this dialog box would just have the ability to import from a bitmap to the game file.

It would be nice if you could export a mod/scenario to a single .pak file or whatever for distribution.

Map editor...definitely paint-style, but I want more options as to brush styles than boxes of different sizes. I'd love to see a 'near terrain' brush, where you pick a certain type of terrain and it paints not just that terrain, but terrains that are related to it. For instance, a 3x3 near terrain brush set to 'hills' might paint hills, forest, and a mountain in a 3x3 block, but never ocean or desert. A brush shape other than a box would be nice, too. Is the map going to have altitudes a la SMAC?

Cut-and-paste is a must. A drag-and-drop palette would be nice for resource squares, terrain improvements, and units. I think cities wouldn't work well from a palette because of the number of options involved...a 'city placement wizard' would be truly sweet. Click a square, and a wizard gives you the option of quick or advanced options. Choose quick, and you just select the alignment and a generic city template (customizable templates!) like 'large industrial' that sets population, structures, units, surrounding terrain improvements, etc. Ideally, the template would be able to detect the tech level of the civilization and modify the structure list appropriately...but that's candy. If you chose advanced, you'd get a dialog box with a tabbed interface for setting up everything associated with that city by hand. Structures should be set from a list of checkboxes...the list should be read from the scenario's rules files, not a generic one.

Structure, unit, city, and terrain graphics should all be importable by this editor and automatically placed into the appropriate files. A 3DSMAX->CivIII import filter for units would be truly sweet. ...failing that, you should be able to override any 3D graphics with a 2D bitmap. Out of curiousity, are you doing voxels again? Integrating an interface skin with your scenario distribution would be a cool toy...

There should be the ability to just create and export mods without needing an actual scenario to go with them.

Scipt editing...I think this should be left to text files for the most part. Most people never use scripting, and I'd prefer power to ease of use because of that. If you do integrate it in the editor somehow, the ability to do step-through debugging would be very nice. Might have to do that in-game, though...I don't know. I think as many events as possible should be visible to the scripting engine. That's a broad statment, but I don't really have much in the way of specific requests there. It would be nice to be able to detect a change in government or SE settings, whatever will be used in CivIII.

If you guys allowed AI bots for different civilizations, I'd give you my firstborn son. If you wanted him. Ditto for making the interface XML customizable...but, that's beyond the scope of the editor, I suspect.

Tech tree editor...the interface for this is critical. I'd love to see some kind of hyperbolic tree viewer where you can drag and drop prereq connections around the tree. The viewer could also be loaded in-game as part of the help files. Some kind of GUI for defining prereqs is an absolute must, though, and you should be able to see unit and structure prereqs as well as the tech tree itself.

Yeah, I know, I don't ask for much, do I?

[Father Beast]

My 2cents worth.

I want an external editor. Ok, that cheat menu is cool enough for minor things and tweaking the game you're in. but for main creation, I go for an external. one I can call up from the main game if I want.

I want to be able to have multiple maps open, and select any size of terrain, and put it (with or without cities, at my convenience) into my new map. I currently can lock the oceans/coastline. I want to be able to lock terrain types, or just select a hunk of the map (of whatever size or shape I choose) and lock it down, so I don't accidentally screw up my piece of work while building onto other stuff.

I want to be able to set down terrain specials, Tile improvements, and pollution on the map I design.

I also want to be able to change government effects (not just their names) and improvement and wonder effects (not just their names).

I want to be able to designate which wonders, techs, units, and city improvements are availble to each civ. a check on and off list would be nice.
I would like to have a few representative scenarios available, and a tutorial showing us how you made them with your editor.

That's for me. I'm not much of an in depth person, but the great scenario makers should have a massive array of stuff at their hands. I barely know what photoshop is, much less how to use it, but these masters use it a lot and need to have their files accessible.

Ad PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!! make the AI accessible. the civ and civ2 civs had somewhat of a temperament (the mongols and zulus were warlike, etc.) the AC factions had something resembling a personality, which was a plus. Make it so the AI can be customized for goals, some decision making, intelligent warmaking or peacemaking. Imagine some sort of switch where a certain civ will stay allied to you until your rep becomes less than spotless. Or where you can specify what cities or stretch of ground is "sacred" to a civ and they will not make peace with you as long as you hold it.
I realize it can be difficult to make this like a GUI, but make it accessible somehow, and I will cheerfully download the "Stalin.ai" file from someone who is good at it.

[onepaul]

[1]well, If you Firaxis girls are going to release CivIII for other platforms then I don't think making an editor using the good ol' MFC and other Windoze classes as the UI and base code is such a good idea, put in the game. Unless u're not going to release for other platforms...
[2]
someone prolly mention this, but a technology editor/maker/modifier/whatever would be nice. Would be nice to have the ability to create a poop-load of new techs and actually tie them into the game somehow, create a new technology with the editor and when discovered in the game, make the units tougher, faster, etc. or make new building avaiable or even new units avaiable (which would have to be created by the player)... ... ... ...

[Dr Strangelove]

Of course I want a decent map editor, and the ability to place special resources where I desire.

I'd like to caution Firaxis about making the sprite graphics so sophisticated that creating new units, city improvements, and etc, would be beyond the expertise of the average Civ fan mod creator. Fan created Mods have done a lot to keep the Civ genre alive.

A user friendly interface that enables the average mod maker to edit the properties of units, advances, wonders, technologies, to edit the tech tree, to insert new "sprites", and to set events is also essential.

The Talonsoft "Operational Art of War" game series has an interesting event editor feature. While the nature of these games is very differnet from Civ I'd encourage you to take a look at this particular feature of the games. It makes thr timing and placement of events and event triggering very easy to handle.

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

Hey guys. What would be useful for me is for you to list your top 5 additions to the way the each Civ II FW editor worked. Don't bother mentioning features that were already included in those. If you want to email them, you can reach me at jmorris@firaxis.com. Thanks!

Jeff

[Shadowstrike]

OK....

Map Editor

1. The ability to crop and resize maps.
2. The ability to cut & paste large sections of the map.
3. The ability to place cities, units and tile improvements on the map.
4. A preview option on the load map screen that shows the map in very little detail.
5. The ability to set national borders.

Technology Editor

1. The ability to see the tech tree in a flow chart format.
2. The abilty to "attach" (set prerequsites) technologies on the flow chart of the entire tech tree.
3. The ability to alter the abilites of each technology (i.e. allowing tile improvements, etc.)
4. A limitless amount of tech slots.
5. The ability to set the abilities of the technology from panels.


Terrain Editor

1. Allowing different drawings of each terrain that depend on its position and randomization.
2. Allowing the setting of sprites for terrain.
3. Allowing the making of tile improvements of your very own.
4. Allowing as many terrain types as the scenario designers wants.
5. Allowing the setting of how the AI reacts to different types of terrain.

Unit Editor

1. Limitless unit slots.
2. The ability to give units abilities made by the user (i.e. factory units which can produce 1 unit of a predefined type per turn)
3. The ability to choose whether a unit displays a shield or not.
4. The ability to create land and air units that can carry other units.
5. The ability to create sprites for units easily.

Events Editor

1. Many more triggers and actions (see SLIC)
2. Allowing a limitless number of flags.
3. Allow the usage of the @AND command as many times as one wants within a single event.
4. Creating commands of your very own without hacking into the game.
5. The ability for users to post "their" commands on the Internet for everyone else to download and use.

That's my two cents. I hope that you find my suggestions helpful.

Shadowstrike

[DarthVeda]

I agree with that list 100%

[techumseh]

Ditto.

[zyxpsilon]

quote: Originally posted by Shadowstrike on 11-30-2000 09:28 PM OK.... 1-2-3-4-5 ALL THE WAY... Shadowstrike

Look it up, Jeff... he summarized it exactly like most of us would.

Thank's, Shadowstrike!

[Ralf]

I agree with everything, accept for a slight change of priorities in the map-editor. Many of us civers just wants a more intuitive way of making some nice quick-and-dirty standard-game setup scenarios.

Dont forget our needs, because we are many!

Map Editor

1. The ability to drag-and-drop cities, units, tile improvements on the map. Included in above is the idea of global and national city-distrubution of units and city-improvements. Dont make the process more repetiously tedious when it has to be.

2. The ability to crop and resize maps.
3. The ability to cut & paste large sections of the map.
4. A preview option on the load map screen that shows the map in very little detail.
5. The ability to set national borders.
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 01, 2000).]

[techumseh]

Sorry, here's another suggestion for map editability. I don't know if you're planning to retain the multi-map feature of Test of Time or not, but if you are, make the coordinates of the "teleporters" programable. Now a teleporter transfers a unit to the same coordinates on another map; only the map number is programable. Allow the coordinates to be edited, either with a specific coordinate (eg. 47,12,3 to 19,8,1), or with a simple equation (eg. x+7,y-3). This would allow a great deal more flexibility in creating linked maps and would make the feature more useful for historical scenarios.

[Ribannah]

I would like to add one more:

The ability of building & accessing libraries, to make it easier for us to exchange information. The libraries should be able to contain an unlimited number of units, techs, wonders, maps, misc. art, etc., and should also be manipulatable themselves (importing, exporting, printing).

------------------
If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[airdrik]

quote: Originally posted by techumseh on 12-01-2000 11:07 AM Sorry, here's another suggestion for map editability. I don't know if you're planning to retain the multi-map feature of Test of Time or not, but if you are, make the coordinates of the "teleporters" programable. Now a teleporter transfers a unit to the same coordinates on another map; only the map number is programable. Allow the coordinates to be edited, either with a specific coordinate (eg. 47,12,3 to 19,8,1), or with a simple equation (eg. x+7,y-3). This would allow a great deal more flexibility in creating linked maps and would make the feature more useful for historical scenarios.

If they are going to use teleporters in the real game, then they have two options: teleport from anywhere to anywhere, or teleport between specific locations (several locations around the maps will teleport to all other locations). Either one would be just as realistic (star wars vs. star trek, either one could happen but not both).

Probably before the discovery of teleportation, you would have to fly troops between maps(in a real game), which would take so many turns(1-2) and could only happen between certain locations (1/civ/map) to represent shuttling troops between worlds.
[This message has been edited by airdrik (edited December 03, 2000).]

[Zulu Elephant]

I think pretty much everything editingwise got covered in Test Of Time.
Except the GIVECITY event theat everyone seemed to want - it would be soooooo useful in scenerios to able to use that event
Apart from that everythings fine - you could edit whatever to want
Oh, and make the editor like the fantastic worlds one (only make it work)