Improving the world editor

[aaronflippo(Flippfly)]

Hey modders! Hopefully by now you've had a chance to play with the world editor and have formulated some thoughts on some improvements you'd like to see.

So, what's the feature you just can't live without? What's the game event that would let you do something even more amazing? What's the annoying thing about the world that makes you want to punch a wall?

Give us your thoughts!

[Rokin]

So glad to hear you will continue working on the world editor! I ultimately really enjoyed working in the editor, once I got how it works and figured out some tricks. So I think it's simple enough, but maybe not much intuitive. That said, I have a few concrete complaints/suggestions.

I had to constantly change ambient and sky colors for editing objects, because they would be the same color in the Objects editor. So shapes were recognizable. Maybe background in the Objects editor can be another color?

I'm not sure if I just didn't figure out how, but can we scale objects over time? It seems to me that the game easily handles large objects, just not many of them.

Copying patterns.

Renaming objects (so we don't lose them on Patterns).

I also didn't really figure out what is the specific difference between all Materials.

I have no idea what variables for conditions can be. The only one I'm aware of is "region".

And easier UI would (of course) always be more useful, especially in Events, where parts sometimes go out of the screen.

I hope that's not too much and that you will find it useful. I'm also very looking forward for more updates

[Greasy Goblin]

This game is amazing. you all are awesome! Here are my suggestions:

-Event:Camera Zoom in/out
-Ability to make events execute upon object's impact/space overlap with player/objects. would be great for creating creatures/entities that 'die' or respond to being bumped etc.
-Simpler means of executing event at the beginning of the game, such as Execute command before region, etc.
-Personal library of custom objects to use in-between maps
-Improved materials; make materials identifiable and usable... I find this confusing sometimes.

And my most mandatory one:
-Event: Maintain orientation. This would be useful for attaching things, such as add-on engines, to the player ship or other objects that turn and rotate when the player does.
Thanks!

[Bombraker (Midas)]

-Create a "are you sure Y/N" message when clicking the Delete Pattern button. (I lost some work accidently clicking that button)
-Duplicate Patterns option would be nice :)
-Set workshop picture option :)

[Max]

I'm so glad to see you are still interested in devloping the World creator :) It's already very nice and gives a lot of freedom to the modder but here is some things I would have loved to be able to do while making Kings Way :)

-Ability to duplicate paterns and objects without having to go into the XML file and manualy copy-paste the code :S
-Ability to change X,Y and Z offsets and rotations value of children objects with keyboard keys. In the current state of the Editor, when you want to make more complexe objects than just the primitives, it's some kind of try and miss processus. You have to enter the values manually and then adjust them multiple times, entering each time an improved number value until you are satisfied. It gets boring and tedious really fast :/
So a system where you could increase and decrease the value of these by only pressing some keyboard shortcuts would make it far easier and faster. Pressing shift with these keyboard shortcuts could increase or decrease the value by 10 instead of 1.
-Making the list of children objects scrollable so we can add up to 99 children (only 9 or 10 is possible currently) instead of having to create a new object and attach an uncomplete structure to an empty parent and continue to add children this way which is not intuitive and a little bit more complicated than it could be.
-Working author name and thumbnail picture.
-Reduce the size of the delete buttons for the children objects and as BOMBRAKER suggested, add a "Sure? Y/N" message when you press the delete button of a patern.
-Improve the zoom in the object editor. When the object gets bigger, it takes an exponential amount of scrolling to zoom in and out. I found a way to be able to zoom in and out by deviding the scale of the general structure by 10 and then putting it back to 1 when I was finnihsed but it's not really intuitive :/
-Ability to deplace the camera in the object editor preview just like in the patern editor preview, with the middle mouse button. I oftenly found myself not being able to center the camera on details I wanted to see on the structures :/
-Ability to rotate the patern preview camera in any direction just like in the object editor preview :P
-Having more information about the conditions for event triggers (I couldn't find anything). It would open so much possibility to be able to use these trigger conditions :)
-Ability to use variables that we can increment or decrement and then use these with the trigger conditions. For example, I would love to be able to trigger an event if the player would have gone through a specific patern X times. (I don't know if it's very clear sorry :P )

Well, that's all that comes to my mind currently :P
Thank you so much for caring about your community!
I'm really looking forward to see some improvement to the Simplex World Creator :)
Good luck!

[aaronflippo(Flippfly)]

Awesome, stuff, thanks!

[Qweggy]

Great to know you are working on the editor.
I would like to see improvements to the events, maybe a slightly simpler way to tieing events together, i would love to add explosions and camera shakes to all my meteors but i just can't get my head around it. I am getting around it and will work it out, its just taking me a little time.

Just one more a new Pre-shape for a tunnel just something simple which i can do with 3 block types but it will just kill a little time if they was a pre-shape for a tunnel, so i could focus more on level design and not try to tie 3 blocks perfectly as i am one for perfection and any little holes in the walls and i don't like it.

Thanks for taking in the community's needs, way to many companies don't think about their audiences. Its great what you are doing here. Thanks a bunch! and take it easy!

[garfelo]

The ability to click and drag objects, or use arrow keys as said above. Having to enter offset values is the only thing I'd consider to be a pain about the editor.

Also on patterns, having a grid visible to line up objects would be a nice addition.