Scenario editor - What does it need?

[Father Beast]

I know orangesfwr has been talking about this in his "replayability" thread, but I believe this subject deserves a thread of its own.

I waxed eloquent on the subject in column #125, and I think it could be great. Imagine if the scenario editor has government, rules and terrain editing to the degree that you could turn it into mods of the original civ, civ2, or even alpha centauri. I'm not talking about including the original game unchanged, but making mods to duplicate the gameplay of those earlier games. Imagine playing the original civ1, but with the isometric viewpoint (or however they do it in civ3) and better graphics.
Imagine further, that to prove the power of their scenario editor, the game ships with the ability to play in civ1, civ2, AC, or ToT mode.
They probably won't do that, since they wouldn't get sales from AC or ToT anymore.

Now, I'm not a scenario designer, but I can see a little of the possibilities inherent in a REALLY GOOD scenario design system.
from you guys who do design mods and scenarios, what do you want?

[phunny pharmer]

How about an AI events editor? The civ2 one was pretty good, with the AI told to move specific units to specific places. However, the AI didn't always attack the intended target. Let's see something that ***forces*** the AI to move in a specific way...and let's see it implemented in some of the Firaxis scenarios, too

[Father Beast]

transplanting the talk from the replayability thread...

From Shadowstrike:
A scenario editor above and beyond the capabilities of the TOT tools and more sophisticated then the FW editiors would provide near infinate replayablity to Civ 3. A map editor, a rules editor, and a graphics editor would cover the bare basics. Advanced events would be extremely helpful (for example, a UNITKILLED trigger with a possibility of specifing a unit instead of a civilization as the attacker) Generally, if the program was polymorphic, replayability shoots up. For example, AIs learning how to counter ICSers, etc. (by the way, I got the idea from the advance Polymorphic Software (SMAC))

But then again, this would kill off significant potential for AI improvement in Civ 4, assuming they ever get around to making one, as the AI of most serious players would already exceed what the programmers had in mind...

[Father Beast]

I also talked about the importance of being able to edit the AI in column #125. it just opens up so much.
Shadowstrike, I think if we can just get an AI editor into civ3, that would be good enough for now. later, for civ4 (may we be so lucky) they can work on having a better one.

[CornMaster]

This is a topic that I'm very interested in because I love making scenarios.

One thing I would like to see is independent terrian. This would be like a crashed ship or wrecked town. It wouldn't be under grassland, plains, etc and could be assigned it's own values. Only one of this terrian would exist on the map (of course more if you wanted too). I do this now by using tundra in my maps and then changing the tundra graph, but this is not an easy way to do it.

A trigger system like the StarCraft editor has would be nice.

A better image editor would also be nice because I'm a horriable computer drawer and need all the help I can get.

Well I know there is more but I just can't remember them. Anyway.

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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If the great Emperors of Rome, Egypt and Greece were alive today, do you think they would prefer Coke or Pepsi?"
Administrator of the CornEmpire Forum

[Shadowstrike]

More events. I mean the TOT ones were good, but there was a lot that the scenario designer could not do. For example, he could not make cities appear, etc. More options will definately be useful (i.e. more flags, etc.)

Hope I didn't over use etc.

[Evil Capitalist]

1. A brush facility for irrigation and farmland on relevant squares (for those who write 20th century scenarios.
2. An improved events editor including:
-unit killing (as well as unit killed)
-add improvements in both cities and on terrain
3. A way to build units everywhere with no home city.
4. Better AI to represent historical leaders.

[Shadowstrike]

How about a sprite editor? It was very annoying that they didn't have one in TOT.

Rules.txt editors that didn't mess up the file would be good (how many times did you wind up with a civ whose leader was President?)

[Father Beast]

quote: Originally posted by Evil Capitalist on 08-10-2000 04:04 AM 1. A brush facility for irrigation and farmland on relevant squares (for those who write 20th century scenarios. 2. An improved events editor including: -unit killing (as well as unit killed) -add improvements in both cities and on terrain 3. A way to build units everywhere with no home city. 4. Better AI to represent historical leaders.

I don't know about 2 and 4, but I think 1 and 3 should be integral.
Irrigation and farmland on map making would be interesting as a factor in a scenario where, say, you were building on the ruins of a collapsed civilization. How about the option of putting pollution on squares?
While we're at it, can we control special resources and placement of shield grassland?
Hmmmn... how about pre-loading the goody huts, or some of them?
Having the ability to set NONE units owned by any civ should be able to be done. Can't we do that now?

[Shadowstrike]

#2 is very important. I had this wonderful unit idea backed by events all figured out before I realized the the UNITKILLED trigger didn't have a unit attacker.

Anyhow, you should be able to set the AI to act as it would have historically, so that it would improve scenario quality.

Easier hex editing... there's tons of things a better scenario editor could do.

[UltraSonix]

quote: A trigger system like the StarCraft editor has would be nice.

In fact, the WHOLE Civ3 editor should be based on the Starcraft one. Not only was the Starcraft trigger system good, it was also EASY to use.

And it goes without saying that I think the scenario editor whould be separated from the game itself (ie no cheat menu ). It was really cumbersome because while trying to design a scenario, I'll accidently continue the turn, spoiling all my hard work...

Here are some stuff I've said before on this issue:

quote: I was put off by the scenario editor being integrated with the actual game in Civ2 and SMAC - it's like putting IE with Windows, and we all saw what happened to that! Instead, a sophisticated and dedicated scenario editor should be available, with abilities such as copy-paste (eg drag a box and copy and paste a bunch of units that you've spent ages pefecting the hit points etc, so you don't have to redo the samething over and over again if you're designing an army. Same thing goes for copy paste of cities.)

quote: Also I think I mentioned somewhere else about a revised events.txt (is that why you brought it up?). Instead of like in Civ2 - where designing events was through a text editor only, Firaxis should not be ashamed to copy Starcraft's secnario editor's intuitive triggers-events design.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Evil Capitalist]

quote: Originally posted by Father Beast on 08-13-2000 05:02 PM Having the ability to set NONE units owned by any civ should be able to be done. Can't we do that now?

Yes, if it's near a friendly city by
shift+F1
select unit
shift+control+U
scroll down to change home city
click on none (mouse only)
repeat for the 100 odd units in the offensive.

This means you need two hands for the keyboard and another for the mouse, and the patience of a saint.
[This message has been edited by Evil Capitalist (edited August 14, 2000).]

[CornMaster]

quote: And it goes without saying that I think the scenario editor whould be separated from the game itself

I couldn't agree more. I hate the cheat menu and editor menu in the main Civ 2. It would be so much easier to have them seperate because then you can edit the scenario and save it. Load it up into Civ 3 play a few turns and just pop back into the editor again and fix the problems.

Also the map editor and scenario editor should be one in the same. Maybe you could choose at start-up whether you are drawing a map only or a map + scenario.

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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If the great Emperors of Rome, Egypt and Greece were alive today, do you think they would prefer Coke or Pepsi?"
Administrator of the CornEmpire Forum

Oooh, I've made three summaries already on my thoughts on this subject, so maybe I shouldn't reiterate everything I've already said. If you want to look at what I wrote, take a look at Column #99, The "Comprehensive Scenario Editor" suggestion for the Essential Civilisation 3 list, and about 75% of the stuff in the Customization/Scenario Editor section of the Firaxis Forums appendix of the List v. 2.

Suffice to say I agree with Ultrasonix that the StarCraft one is the best editor created to date. Yet where that had ease of use and a good trigger system, it wasn't really as powerful for the common user as the civ2-FW editor was. There was no changing unit graphics and attributes, terrain, names, techs... You know, the reason Civ2's editor was so fun to use.

Here are the points I'd most like to see in an editor, in order of importance (this is of course assuming that what's currently available for edit in civ2 remains intact, otherwise #1 would be keeping all of those things editable and easily acessable. I used to think this was obvious, yet SMAC was definately a step back.):

1. Ease of Use. It doesn't matter how powerful an editor is if most users never get to see any of it. What I'd like to see is an editor with a good click-n-drag interface, proper documentation, a tutorial and so on so that anyone can get right in there and start working.

2. A scripting language. Ever thought about why Mods for Quake (1/2/3 as well as Half-Life) and Unreal (and Tournament) seem to be the most popular? It's because these games have proper, proprietary scripting languages, similar to C (They are called QuakeC and UnrealScript respectively), that allows the user to manipulate ingame objects in whatever way she choses. Neither of them are horribly difficult, yet both are immensely powerful. If we could get such a powerful language in a Civ game, together with a really instructional help file or text file, it would do so much.

3. A better Macro Language/Trigger System. Counters, Other events, manipulation of all game objects from within the game with maintained ease of use.

4. Edit the stuff we cannot edit today, chiefly wonders, city improvements and special properties of techs. This could be done very easily if each wonder (or whatever) was described using strings of code from the macro language.

[UltraSonix]

What more need to be said - Mad Lord Snapcase has highlighted all the key points relating to a scenario editor. Hopefully when Civ3 comes out there'll be mods that actually feel like they are changing the game, not like the wishy-washy Civ2 mods. Maybe some day people'll buy Civ3 just to play the mods like Halflife/Counterstrike.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...