CM Normandy Editor

[LongLeftFlank]

Steve, have you ever responded one way or another to the copy-paste tiles request? Is it feasible? How difficult?

It would be a gigantic timesaver for map designers, and allow a new community of "model railroader" modders to flourish.

Imagine a library of Norman churches, or an authentic ready made farmstead based on period photos for a designer to plop down, with all its flav objects (including cows, natch :-) ). A huge time saver, even if the designer then had to tweak elevations manually. And a realism adder.

[Hawk]

I admit to having just fiddled a bit with the editor. My biggest problem was getting elevation done, as I didn't find the current way intuitive. It would be so much easier if I could do this in the 3D view, e.g. just select "Raise" or "Lower" and click on the terrain. If fact, everything would be easier to do directly in 3D!

[Battlefront.com]

Steve, have you ever responded one way or another to the copy-paste tiles request? Is it feasible? How difficult?

It would be a gigantic timesaver for map designers, and allow a new community of "model railroader" modders to flourish.

Imagine a library of Norman churches, or an authentic ready made farmstead based on period photos for a designer to plop down, with all its flav objects (including cows, natch :-) ). A huge time saver, even if the designer then had to tweak elevations manually. And a realism adder.

Yup, that's what we would like to do as part of the MegaTile concept. Until then, it's not really feasible because the code isn't designed to deal with two maps at once, which is effectively what is necessary for this to happen.

I admit to having just fiddled a bit with the editor. My biggest problem was getting elevation done, as I didn't find the current way intuitive. It would be so much easier if I could do this in the 3D view, e.g. just select "Raise" or "Lower" and click on the terrain. If fact, everything would be easier to do directly in 3D!

It would be much easier from the user's perspective, not from the coding perspective Doing things on the fly in 3D is very difficult because the system has to figure out how to make A turn into B and to do it quickly. With the 2D/3D method there is no need for this because when it goes to 3D it has what it needs right from the start and it doesn't get modified.

Changing facing of things like Flavor Objects and customizing buildings is pretty straight forward and, obviously, viable to manipulate in 3D. It's things like changing terrain types and the underlying mesh that are really problematic.

Again, we could spend a year or two coding up an amazing Editor that gives people most of what they want. And it would be awesome!! But then you'd be without any new game features for 1-2 years and we would have to recover our development costs by charging $45 for the Editor as a stand alone application.

We feel that's not in everybody's best interests so we're not going to do that. Instead we're going to keep doing what we did since CMBO... maintain a fully functional, reasonably easy Editor for those who wish to use it and to not charge for it. It will improve over time, but it will never be a development priority for us.

Steve

[Lt Belenko]

I admit to having just fiddled a bit with the editor. My biggest problem was getting elevation done, as I didn't find the current way intuitive. It would be so much easier if I could do this in the 3D view, e.g. just select "Raise" or "Lower" and click on the terrain. If fact, everything would be easier to do directly in 3D!

This sounds like the rraise/lower Bulldozer function in the old Sim City game.

[John Kettler]

Steve,

Here's an example of what could ultimately be possible in terms of items in the new games. I think this is what LongLeftFlank's alluding to.

German WW II POW Camp

http://www.ianztrainz.com.au/project5.htm

Bridges

http://www.ianztrainz.com.au/download.htm

Road & Vehicles

http://www.ianztrainz.com.au/download4.htm

Wide variety of resources for the integrated modeling system

http://www.railserve.com/Computers/Trainz/

Regards,

John Kettler

[MikeyD]

Y'know. I've suffered for weeks laboring over a 'serous' map. I've also whipped up a 'fun' map in a single sitting that more enjoyable to play and just as believeable as my labored-over monstrosity! I do get the feeling that we designers sometimes grossly over-think our maps, making map-making seem much more difficult than it really is. Nobody's going to notice that you set out trash can flavor objects because the battle takes place on a Tuesday, and in Aadra Tuesday is trash pickup day. That's just trying too hard.

[LuckyDog]

Two suggestions/requests:

1. Could we have an option to see both red and blue on the map when deploying?

2. If altering the terrain elevation is impossible - could we add flavour objects in the 3D editor please?

[MikeyD]

1.) A new feature of the last patch is the "Scenario author test" option in the skill level menu. The game plays with FOW rules but the player sees both sides go through their paces. It doesn't show you the enemy at setup then turn it off for gameplay. But you always could quit out and restart in regular play mode keeping what you saw in mind.

[LuckyDog]

1.) A new feature of the last patch is the "Scenario author test" option in the skill level menu. The game plays with FOW rules but the player sees both sides go through their paces. It doesn't show you the enemy at setup then turn it off for gameplay. But you always could quit out and restart in regular play mode keeping what you saw in mind.

Thanks - I'll check it out! Last time I managed to place the Syrians on top of the Brits. Quite a mad result...