Map Editor. How to improve?

[[T3M]Gimatria]

Been playing around with the map editor for a bit. I know its Beta, so i'm not gonna whine. Instead im gonna say what i want to see in a next map editor update.

What I would want to see added:

Make entities, textures and everything with a scrollbar to the side searchable.
Make hotkeys for the buttons in the entity toolbar.
Make a 'level cliff' tool. For easy cliff making.
Make a preview box for entities or models you select.

What would you like to see added or improved?

[Yuichi]

Redjedis TD ofc.

More seriously an ability to rebind buttons would be nice.
If its not already possible.

[[ZA]Techies]

Undo and Redo button...

[[1o]Luke_Allstar]

undo and redo would be nice
and a preview box for models (like the textures) would also be nice
or at least make the paths of the models fit into the dropdownlist, you cant read the whole text with some models

[OneBadDude]

Is there a way to run in windowed mode?

[OMGWTF]

Is there a way to run in windowed mode?

hmm well the .bat file command is this:

start /B hon.exe -mod game;editor

you could try adding -window / -win / -windowed to that line

[Oloko]

Is there a way to run in windowed mode?

Open the console with CTRL+F8
Write: "vid_fullscreen false" without the quotes.
Restart the editor.

[thecsapprnt]

I was thinking about making a similar thread, but I think I'll post in yours

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From my experiences so far with the editor, these are the things that stood out to me:

• Tree placement - Trees are a huge part of these maps, especially those that are smaller than size 9. ( ie, Grimms ). However, the editor only allows you to ( as far as I ca tell ) place one tree at a time. It would be really great to use those area fill tools for trees.
• Entity attributes- The entity dialog has trigger links, but nothing else. All the icons along the top of the screen that allow you to alter the position/rotation/scaling of entities don't give any feedback on what the new values are. This makes it difficult to do precise alignment between, say, two buildings that need the same scaling. At the moment all you can do is guess - it would be nice to see some numbers.
• Water - Perhaps I'm the only one, but I assumed that the river in Caldvar used some sort of built-in water system, but it turns out the water is just a specially shaped static mesh. This makes adding water to maps annoying at best. A more generic water solution would be useful.
• Grid Lines - The map has a grid, but we can't see it. Lining things up is easier with a visible grid.
• Launch Game - There should be a command to start the game and autoload the map you are working on. Most modern level editors that I've worked with have this feature and it just makes testing that much smoother. Multi-player testing would be nice, but thats a topic for another thread.

I'm not going to comment on the scripting, as I'm okay at the moment for this being just a map editor - but I firmly believe that if it is just a map editor, it should be a great one.

However, what might be the most helpful at this point in time would be tutorials. We don't need anything fancy, but maybe a few video presentations on map editor basics from S2. Perhaps we can get a screencast of that TD we've heard about This would go a long way towards increasing interest and building the custom map community. If people are interested enough, they will deal with odd, quirky tools - if not, well....

I will probably think of more things as the week goes by, but thats all I've got at the moment. Been looking forward to this for a long time, so far so good.

[Exclu`Sive]

Open hon normally, options ->window mode then open the editor.bat (For window mode)

[[1o]Luke_Allstar]

Grid Lines - The map has a grid, but we can't see it. Lining things up is easier with a visible grid.

You can turn on the Grid in the top right menu (can't tell you exactly what the menu point is called because i'm not at home atm)
You can even set the Grid size differently.

The other points you made are good improvements (Mass Tree Placing, Launching Map Directly,..) and should be considered to be implemented

[[T3M]Gimatria]

[*]Water - Perhaps I'm the only one, but I assumed that the river in Caldvar used some sort of built-in water system, but it turns out the water is just a specially shaped static mesh. This makes adding water to maps annoying at best. A more generic water solution would be useful.

Good Point. I tried to add a river, but all i could find were river entities taken from the existing maps, with their predefined form. I would be so much easier do designate a certain texture or area as water.

[[1o]Luke_Allstar]

there is no such thing as water in HoN, like waterphysics or something
Technicaly speaking: The water (the river) in HoN is done with a diffusion map (if I remember that correctly, because i'm not 100% sure, but that's what i read somewhere, and it's an easy and nice way to fake water)
So to do water by yourself, you need to do some tricks i think

Implementing something like water physics wouldn't be worth the time for S2 i think.
And i don't think that you need water for custom maps that often, apart from doing a super water race with and

[thecsapprnt]

You can turn on the Grid in the top right menu (can't tell you exactly what the menu point is called because i'm not at home atm)
You can even set the Grid size differently.

Funny, I did see that menu, but it seemed to have no effect visually. There was a slider which did nothing as far as I could tell and an empty input (?) box that was also useless. If I'm being dumb then you are quite right, but I think its not working for me.

there is no such thing as water in HoN, like waterphysics or something
Technicaly speaking: The water (the river) in HoN is done with a diffusion map (if I remember that correctly, because i'm not 100% sure, but that's what i read somewhere, and it's an easy and nice way to fake water)
So to do water by yourself, you need to do some tricks i think

Implementing something like water physics wouldn't be worth the time for S2 i think.
And i don't think that you need water for custom maps that often, apart from doing a super water race with and

Oh, I understand. But I don't think for most of our maps that we need true physics for water. However, looking at the static water mesh in the editor, it appears to be flat shape with a special displacement texture mapped to it that makes it appear to ripple.

What I'm proposing is for that special texture to be available generally for all terrain - that way you could just 'paint' the water on instead of hoping their mesh fits in with your map, or trying to recreate one yourself. Its all a trick, sure, but if done right it should be a fairly quick and dirty one that produces reasonable results.

[Treslo]

Funny, I did see that menu, but it seemed to have no effect visually. There was a slider which did nothing as far as I could tell and an empty input (?) box that was also useless. If I'm being dumb then you are quite right, but I think its not working for me.

Grids work, resizing grids works. It might not always work, ala Beta.

• Custom Brushes - Since they're just white-based input maps, it shouldn't be hard to expand the variety some. Anyone know where they're stored?

[thecsapprnt]

Grids work, resizing grids works. It might not always work, ala Beta.

• Custom Brushes - Since they're just white-based input maps, it shouldn't be hard to expand the variety some. Anyone know where they're stored?

Good point about the whole beta thing

As for the brushes, they are in the editor folder, inside the resource packs. However, in one there are dds brushes and the other has tga brushes - not sure which is real and which is ui. Experimenting is required.

Hint: We may soon need a modman for the editor!

[[SGP]LonJAXsoN]

\

Hint: We may soon need a modman for the editor!

this

[Treslo]

Hmm well I believe you can create DDS, TGA is innately easy to achieve.

After I finish my final tonight, I'll see if I have any luck importing some custom ones.

For DDS support in photoshop (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/n...ure_tools.html).

For DDS support in Gimp (http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/). [Blame Wiki if this link doesn't work.]

[Treslo]

Adding the TGA doesn't seem to do anything. I haven't tried to "replace" an existing brush with my own source TGA yet, but will do so eventually.

Having trouble getting the DDS support for photoshop to work, anyone else able to get nVidia's plugin to work?

[[SGP]LonJAXsoN]

Make it so that any resources you added to a map don't get erased when you save any changes.

[Yuichi]

Adding the TGA doesn't seem to do anything. I haven't tried to "replace" an existing brush with my own source TGA yet, but will do so eventually.

Having trouble getting the DDS support for photoshop to work, anyone else able to get nVidia's plugin to work?

Im guessing that you are using 64 bit Windows.
If so then look at this.
Hope that helped.