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Topic: 2025/3/6 Update

I added "full screen" windows this week, and started on an art picker for map editing.
Slowly but surely I'll be improving this over the next few weeks.

March 6, 2025:
Started on the map editor. For now, just the art picker is working. (It does not yet allow the selection of variants.)

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Re: 2025/3/6 Update

Yay map editor time!

My wish list for the map editor:
- Support for undo/redo.
- Being able to select a tile type from the game (kind of like an eyedropper tool).
- Being able to see and modify monster spawns on the map itself with like a radius around it for the wander region.
- Select bits of map and paste it elsewhere. Bonus points for being able to "rotate" bits. Even more bonus points for being able to save them as templates for common things (like the walls/gates around Valour).
- Auto shore/transitioning between floor tiles, floor/dirt/water etc.
- Being able to spray various trees/plants on an area.
- A better way to find tiles in the long list. Some kind of grouping/labeling to make tiles easier to find.
- Would be sweet if we can have some terrain height variations.
- Something for automatically mapping tunnels through caves/mines. Like an "excavation" mode where you dig out tunnels and it automatically maps the walls for you.

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Re: 2025/3/6 Update

Also, having multiple "states" of a section of map and the ability to switch between them through scripted events would be nice. Like when monsters are invading a town during a raid, the walls could switch to a somewhat crumbled state and add a bunch of fires everywhere.

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Re: 2025/3/6 Update

"Excavation mode" you mention... This is an interesting idea. Would this differ from auto-tiling walls, then? How would it know which wall to use? Just endpoints?

"Multiple states"... This is an interesting idea. It might make editing a bit confusing, though. How would you display it when someone is just scrolling around the map editing here and there? I do like the idea. The server would have to reparse the entire sector, since much of its data is stored per-sector, but that wouldn't be wild. "What do doors and traps do at the switch?" is a question, especially if they could be added/removed by the edit.

Terrain height is something I have planned but it will need a new map format first. Who knows how long this will all take.

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Re: 2025/3/6 Update

Re: "Excavation Mode" - Despite it being two decades ago, I distinctly remember the pain of trying to edit the hidden tunnel through the mountain on my map. Took a ton of testing to make sure there weren't ways to escape the tunnel and get loose into the insides of the mountain.