Remember the Civ Editor in Civ3?

[wotan321]

It was pretty great. You could choose your mod, then click on a tab for editing units, buildings, wonders, resources, technologies, civs.... change how they related to each other. Point and click.

So now we have Civ4, the most moddable Civ ever! Its just too bad I don't have time to go out and learn a couple new programming languages.

Wouldn't it be great if instead of some new civs and leaderheads in the upcoming Expansion, that Firaxis provided us with a point and click scenario editor? A point and click events editor! Sure, it would be complicated to program, but I hear Firaxis has a staff full of people who are trained programmers!

A scenario editor would allow users the ability to create tenfold the number of units, scenarios, civs, technologies, civics and mods than Firaxis ever could on their own. Of course, having made that point, I see why it wasn't included in the game, or why it probably won't be in the Expansion pack... if we can do all that ourselves, why would we pay Firaxis for an expansion pack?

Here's an idea.... the expansion pack should include the events and scenario editor, plus a huge amount of new art/animations. We could use those to create a cornucopia of mods. That really would be great.

I hear the Expansion pack will show off all the possiblities that the game has to offer in modding. I hope they will let us easily follow in their footsteps by giving us Non-programmers the tools to be just as creative.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

I agree. I'm sitting here with great plans for several scenarios, but I'm stuck with problems trying to create my first map, downloading programs, reading manuals etc.
I guess that I eventually, when I've learned programming, will enjoy Civ4-modding more, but a program such as you suggested would definatly give me a jumpstart.

 

[The Great Apple]

Learning xml is not "programming" to any serious degree. It's no harder then some of the text editing you had to do for Civ 3 mods.

The only hard thing is deciphering all the tags.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

I admit that xml doesn't seem to hard to learn, and I guess that once you know all you need to know (python, xml, etc) it will be easy to create, at least, a simple kind of mod. It's just that when you start from scratch, like I do, it's a lot to look into, and at this point I would prefere a "point-and-click" program like Wotan321 mentioned above.

 

[Gunner]

XML really is not programming. Believe me, its not. Just think of it as being an editor without some nice and shiny interface. XML editing is about as hard as setting up the pediaicons and civlopedia entries for Civ3. Actually, xml is probably easier because there are programs out there which can help you do the editing (as opposed to just being able to use notepad.)

 

[wotan321]

Yes, XML is more like scripting that programming, its not difficult. Python is a bit more involved but again, it probably wouldn't take a lot to learn.... but its very intimitidating when you know little about it, and I just don't have time. A user interface would be nice, and I know someone will build one eventually, I just hope its sooner than later cuz the vast majority of us won't take the time to learn python.

 

[IrishDragon]

yeah I think we need a new editor and a python update in the expansion because its too big to download

 

[I_batman]

Yes, XML is more like scripting that programming, its not difficult. Python is a bit more involved but again, it probably wouldn't take a lot to learn.... but its very intimitidating when you know little about it, and I just don't have time. A user interface would be nice, and I know someone will build one eventually, I just hope its sooner than later cuz the vast majority of us won't take the time to learn python.

Good luck on getting an editor.
I started building one in Python and wxPython (think of wxPython as the lanuguage that creates the GUI) about 3 months ago.
I have all but completely stopped working on one.
I am not that talented a programmer, but do have some skills.
And I was making little headway.
The GUI is a nightmare in itself, let alone the coding required to actually make the GUI's buttons useful.

Keep in mind, that to have the editor really useful, the editor will have to modify Python and C++ code, not just XML files. (eg: you want to have something autospawn a unit every x number of turns, that is done within the existing Python scripts, not XML, as far as I have figured out).
Having one script edit another script is dicey, at best. I have done this before with Perl, but Perl is much easier to work with than Python.

I told a couple Civ friends, who are superb Civ III scenario makers, that I would try to have a first draft out by late summer/early fall.
I think that is a dream now.

Now, you may be right, and a couple hot coders on this site may be quietly working on one, but no one that I have seen in the Customization thread has stepped up and said that are building a Civ III-like GUI based editor.
There are many versions of editors out there already, and I thought a month or two ago someone would take on the massive job or porting them all into one langauge and application.

Now, I just don't think anybody is that insane.

I hope I am wrong, and will likely meddle away on mine on rainy nights, but I think that the non-Firaxis coders capable of doing this are too busy building scenarios and mods to work on an editor.