[CF-Devel] crossfire map editor.

[Mark Wedel]

 Just to recap:

 current crossedit apparantly has severe problems with newest versions of Xaw
making it unusable.  So discussion has started on making a new crossedit.

 There are various considerations, like should it be a common editor between all
systems (windows, mac, etc).  That reduces/eliminates porting effort, but at the
same time results in no common code with the current server (so for example map
loading/saving  would need to be written in java, as well as many other
functions).  Also, there may be performance issues with using java.

 another method would be to keep it in C, but instead use a toolkit that has a
common API set for both unix and windows.  Once again, saves porting effort, but
this needs to be a pretty mainstream library.  If people running unix have to
jump through a dozen hoops to get the library and have it set up (Because of
various dependancies or other issues), this may not be ideal.  I'm presuming
that windows would be distributed in binary form, so they won't need to jump
through the hoops.

 Third idea would be to make a common backend (non gui portion), which a unique
gui for the front end.  But experience from the client shows that this doesn't
seem that realistic, as unless there is a clear idea of what the backend needs
to do for all platforms, we find that it doesn't integrate with the frontend.

 It seems that the editor will be the next high priority item, and to a great
extent, I agree.  Doing the editor will not affect the march to 1.0 at all, as
it is a separate project, and I think it is something that needs to be available
roughly when 1.0 is out (or shortly thereafter), as if we do get a bunch of new
players, I can certainly believe that a fair number may want to design maps, and
saying 'well, our editor is really buggy and only works on unix' isn't going to
help things much.  And  I think most will agree that crossfire could use many
more high quality maps.

 Whichever option for development is chosen, I do have the following thoughts:
1) Editor will be a separate package and not part of the server.
2) user can grab updated archetypes and image files for his editor to create
maps.  In face, breaking the files generated from the 'arch' distribution off
from the server may not be a bad idea in any case, as I get the feeling that if
1.0 ends up being very stable, the archs will probably end up changing more than
the source will.
3) user does not need map distribution to make new maps.  They can easily enough
make a standalone set of maps and send it to whoever who can then link it into
the the main distribution.