[crossfire] On the software side of "reorganizing the world"

[Andreas Kirschbaum]

Lalo Martins wrote:
> What I think we need is a "world editor".
[...]
> Ideally, I'd like an UI on at least the magicmap scale, maybe farther,
> where I can lay mountains, rivers, forests, marshes, sea/land, and
> preferably copy large chunks right out of an older map (say, Lone
> Town) and paste into the world.

Some of the features I plan to add to the editor:

- Allow to shrink the map window. This affects only the map window but
  still allows all edit operations. I think this will help editing
  (untiled) maps that are (much) larger than the available screen space.

- Add tiling support to map windows. That is, seamlessly display tiled
  map files in the map window.

Though, don't expect these features to be implemented too soon since
there are still a few unsolved issues. For example: loading all 900
world map files into the editor would need about 1.3GB RAM. This is way
too much. OTOH, limiting the zoom feature to less then the whole world
map seems not correct to me...


> Also control elevation by hand, using an interface similar to map
> editors in god games (eg, Sim City).

For now, the editor mostly ignores elevation values. It tries to retain
the elevation values when editing the map but I didn't add more support
since I don't think elevation values are a sensible feature. (OK, I'll
stop now because it's not the weather discussion...)


> And define things like regions right there, too.

If you think the editor needs improvements, feel free to add your ideas
to https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=166996&atid=841185 I do not
promise to implement all features, but not knowing about a feature, I
cannot implement it.


> If someone wants to pursue that, either as a separate tool or a mode
> for the new editor, I'd be happy to contribute, although I don't know
> where to start if I were to write it myself.

Generally speaking, I think almost all tools for map editing should be
included into the editor. This makes it much easier for users to use
them (no need to install yet another application/library/whatever and
the feature is easily accessible though menus). It also makes it easier
to maintain them (for the same reason).

Also, the editor's code base now has reached a state to allow adding new
features without breaking too much existing features.


Andreas