cm2 scenario editor: stuff that would be nice

russellmz · March 9, 2001

<big>How to Increase Map to the South and West in CMBO Scenario Editor</big>

On the width and height buttons, hold SHIFT and click the height and width buttons to increase/decrease map to the south and west.

stuff that would be nice:

o be able to adjust terrain height, while previewing it

o edit unit status, name, ammo, etc in preview mode

o allow units to be set as destroyed or immobilized before a battle(i get the same effect by putting a vehicle down first, then setting a rubble tile over it...)

o allow squads to have wounded men before a battle

o allow user to set damage to buildings

o have a grid reference you could turn on/off so you can find the dang spot again after previewing...

new ideas:

o drag select units in preview mode and edit them

other suggestions from below/other posts that i like:

o join two maps

o copy, paste, cut map portions

o copy, paste units

o when shifting the map to the south and west, keep units on the same terrain, not same tiles(i mean when i increase to the west, the map is pushed 5 tiles over, but my units remain where they are)

o save map separate from scenario

o save a quick battle as a map

o have a nice thick red line around the map border so you can tell if you have any more map to edit beyond that square you can see

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russellmz,

Self-Proclaimed Keeper for Life of the Sacred Unofficial FAQ.

"They had their chance- they have not lead!" - GW Bush

"They had mechanical pencils- they have not...lead?" - Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

[This message has been edited by russellmz (edited 03-14-2001).]

March 9, 2001

The ability to extend the battlefield at the Western and Southern edges, by shifting the existing terrain. Or as a more general tool, the ability to move complete rectangles of terrain with heigth etc.

Nothing worse than the clickfest that comes when you run out of space on the wrong side.

Dschugaschwili · March 9, 2001

I think you can do this already by holding down SHIFT when resizing the map. Can anybody confirm/deny this? I don't have access to CM nor to its manual right now.

Dschugaschwili

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Erst hat man kein Glück, und dann kommt auch noch Pech dazu.

March 9, 2001

Originally posted by Dschugaschwili:
I think you can do this already by holding down SHIFT when resizing the map.

Ups, in fact...

Still, rectangle move would be nice.

[This message has been edited by Martin Cracauer (edited 03-09-2001).]

Gun_Hit · March 9, 2001

Firstly I agree with the above as these would add to the flexibility of scenario design.

I would also like the ability to record passwords while performing a Tournament Save.

PantherGunner · March 9, 2001

Ability to "join" two maps together would be nice.

Maybe not in the editor but the ability to play a campaign game where the player would set a base number of points then the computer would generate quick battles (maybe from 1-4 per month randomly) and give you a number of points (depending if it was a ME or attk/def) based on the "base number" of points. Depending on how well you do, your leader stats can increase and units can turn from regular to vets to green, etc. (very similar to Michael Dorosh's Campaign system)

aka_tom_w · March 9, 2001

Lets not forget Cut and Paste between area's of the map.

The entire interface design should really be reworked.

The thing I find MOST objectionable is having ONLY one way to move the map, Up or down Left or Right YOU must use those compass arrows. Now that's a pain

This may seem a little "out there" but Sim City lets you built terrain maps REALLY nicely. I would like to suggest BTS play Sim City and Design some terrain forms in there terrain editor and then compare that experience with the CM editor.

So I would ike to see the ability to pull and push land forms up and down like hills and valleys. Meaning that if I click on on terrain tile and then raise it up, the rest of the tiles would raise up around it with it forming a hill, same for pushing down valleys.

The hardest thing in the current terrain editor is evelation being set mannually for EVERY stinking terrain tile. you should still be able to do that but there should be a mountain making tool to build up hills without editing every single tile affected.

I think the sceario editor for terrain design needs to be a little more user friendly. I t works as it is but it is a pain to deal with evelations being set individually for every tile.

-tom w

Of course I'm the one that thinks things like:

-gardens

-statues

-fountians

-constuction cranes

-industrial warehouses

-oil refineries

-oil storage tanks

-water towers

-Rail stations

-Rail yards

-airport hangers

-airport air traffic control tower (WW II style)

and how about this

-special and specific Water Fall tile?

and surrounding Cliff tiles, (you know, bare, exposed dirt in Stratafied layers, vertical)

and sand and beach tiles as well,

...should be in the game for CM2.

Crazy eh?

-tom w

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 03-09-2001).]

Panzer Leader · March 9, 2001

Easy way to make all Tom's dreams come true:

A user editable tile where you can draw the image as a bmp and in the editor set the features, such as movement restrictions, cover, etc. With that simple addition, you could make ANYTHING and add it to the game. The ultimate MOD: an open ended user-edited terrain feature! Thing of all the beauties we could come up with:

Airport hangers

Waterfalls

Eiffel Tower

hospital

tunnel

the possibilities are endless...

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And King Xerxes looked to King Leonidas and spoke. "Our Archers will rain arrows down upon you to blot out the sun."

And King Leonidas replied: "Then we will fight in the shade."

Minnesota Joe · March 9, 2001

Martin Cracauer

Nothing worse than the clickfest that comes when you run out of space on the wrong side.

I totally agree. You should be able to expand the map in all directions, not just north and east. Also, I'd like to see the ability to copy units. If you have several platoons of Volksgrenadiers that you want all to be on low ammo, you shouldn't have to go into every squad and edit it to get the desired result.

I really like Panzer Leader's idea of having blank BMP files open for modding. It would be great if the came in different sizes and heights too, or adjustable ones.

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Ah scheist.

March 9, 2001

How about a handy-dandy polygon editor!

Do for armor poylgons what they did for scenarios and skins.

March 9, 2001

The ammo amount reminds me: the forces editor menu should have an slect field (like unit experiences) where you select "low/normal/max ammo". That way you wouldn't have to bump 10 of these high ammo units from 50 to 200.

The best thing would be a seperation of map and force editing. Edit them seperately and store them in seperate files. That way, you can carry around your force over different maps.

Even better when Quickbattles can import these: Use a hand-edited terrain (not Quickbattle generated) and both opponents don't select their forces by hand, but import them.

If the format of the files would be documented, I would implement a program that automatically modifies both forces, so that you can play a battle both forces know but so that you cannot count the opponents tanks. Many historical battles would gain enourmouse replay value that way, the whole tactics would gain an order of magnitude in realism. No more "count == 0 => overrun!".

Martin

GeoffP · March 9, 2001

I did a search and could not find any suggestions for the following.

The ability to create a random force selection, like the original 'Harpoon' would be interesting. In that system, each unit was given a percentage factor to determine the liklihood of it appearing in the scenario. There were also alternate starting positions.

Rather than use percentages for individual units, I'd like to see a method of grouping units together, then designating alternate groups, with percentages applied to all groups. This would allow a scenario to be balanced most of the time, but provide for an occasional surprise.

nick · March 9, 2001

How about a full 3D editor?

I'm not suggesting BTS waste their time building one, but if they were to seperate the map into a different file and publish the file format, I'm sure it wouldn't be long before you had a host of 3rd party map editors.

Like the mods at present, I'm pretty sure it wasn't BTS's intention at first to have people altering the game BMPs, but we now have an entire community of people largely dedicated to altering the game in their own little way.

I'm sure that it would go the same way with terrain editors, some will be crap, and some will be good, but they can all only add to the game.

I hope that BTS wouldn't see this as treading on their toes, they're fine with the image mods after all, and they would still retain control over the engine and models. (though the ability to model your own objects would be nice )

[stupid idea]

And on the subject of mods, I can see a way to retain the interest of all those historical simulation geeks almost indefinitely: the ability to assign unit markings to vehicles. You'd have the entirety of 15 SS panzer divsions plus Grossdeutschland and the Afrika Korps within days of release. It's dead easy. All you need is ten bmps for the numbers plus a few assorted letters and a plane 0.0001 units above the vehicle's sides, and you're away.

[/stupid idea]

nick