Easy to use Civ Editor

[searcheagle]

One thing that has annoyed me in civ is the difficulty of the in Senerio editor. The editor, while in many aspects it is simple to use, is difficult with respect to the use of media integration.

For example, to incorporate a simple icon into the game requires modifying 3 or 4 text documents and numerous modifications elsewhere. The same thing applies to audio, video, and sound files.

Here is my suggestion:

Create Icon, Audio, and Video libraries.

In the Icon library, user could add any icon they desired. After this unit was added, it could be used for any senerio. Stats have not been assigned.

To add an icon, there would be an option to browse for a file. Paint, jpg, and other common formats would be supported. The computer take care of setting all the necessary adjustments.

Similar things would be done to the other libraries as well.

Finally, to combine this into a unit would be done in a nice graphical interface.

This would be done a format such as this:

Unit Name: Harrier Jump Jet
Icon: Locate an appropriate picture in the library.
Audio-Attack:
Audio-Destruction:
Audio-moving:
Movie-Attack:
Movie-Destruction:
Movie-moving:

This could be done on numerous levels. It would make the editor easier and I dont think it would be too difficult to do. You shouldn't have to know programming to use the editor.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Excellent suggestion, although I am afraid that in making everything editable through Python they may not make editing easy.

An actual good Editor may have to wait for an expansion. (but here's hoping I'm wrong and that your ideas are included in an actual good Editor)

 

[Milan's Warrior]

I totally agree with the first poster on the fact that the edit needs MAJOR improvement in usability

 

[Rohili]

Like, totally. I have never added any new units before due to the fear of having to sift through multiple folders addding units, sounds, animations and whatnot, and screwing up my civ3 files in the end.

There should also be a automatic civilopedia update function, which can help you update the basic unit functions, such as blitzing, radar, etc. Currently it only updates stat valuse atuomatically, if I'm not wrong. It would be cool if it automatically added a line into the civilopedia, for example, "This unit can attack multiple times in a row and retreat blah blah blah", if you gave the unit the ability to blitz in the civilopedia.

 

[rhialto]

Yes, something like an intelligent sentence constructor that basically describes the unit's special abilities in natural language. This would be in addition to any human-edited paragraph of description.

 

[searcheagle]

I happy to see all the agreement. I figured that this would get blasted by all of the hardcore moders becuase I find the editor difficult. Fortunately, that has not happened yet.

Unit Abilities:

The ability to create new unit abilities, through the use of bonuses and disadvantages, could create tactics. Give such a unit a disadvantage over other units, armor, etc. Although I don't think it could be done easily through a "natural" language system. However, I do think units could be assigned characters which are highly flexible.

I don't think, but am not a programmer, that natural human language will work for computers.

For example,
x% defence/attack advantage against y class/individual unit.
x% armor advantage over y
Ability to carry: x, y, z, etc
ability to be carried by x, y, z, etc

and people can come up with many different options.

 

[Commander Bello]

I absolutely agree with the initial idea.
If such an editor would be properly set up, this would even make the life of the developers easier. And, as Civ4 has been announced to be almost completely moddable, there should at least be a chance that we finally will get a good editor for our money.

 

[rhialto]

@searcheagle

I think you grabbed the wrong end of the stick with my natural language point. What I meant was that the unit abilities would be defined as usual, but then in the civilopedia, a natural language system would interpret the unit ability flags to create a natural language description of what the unit can do.

This way, the map editing guy can worry about describing the background and history of the unit in the text description, and doesn't need to re-write the stats verbosely.