Hello RttR community!

I'm Davenv and I'm a long time The Settlers fan. I've been observing the RttR project and lurking on the forums for quite some time now and I'm very happy that it came into existance and is continuously developed. Ideas you came up with, eg. the new nation, new world types, new campaign, sparked an inspiration in me. I started creating maps but quickly found the s2edit quite crude.

Today I want to present to you the current state of what I have been working on for the last 5 months on my free time: a new The Settlers 2 and Return to the Roots world editor - S2Ed (working title)!


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S2Ed is being developed using the juicy C++11, Qt 5 and SFML 2.1, thus making it highly portable. (I have yet to create a serious application for OS other than Windows, but I look forward to porting S2Ed.) I took a different route than original creators and decided to implement the editor as a native GUI application. Thanks to this S2Ed is way more flexible and extensible.


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That gave me a lot of ideas for features that weren't implemented in the original.


Done features:

• Alpha blending for smooth animation.


• Animated water and lava under ice floe and lava rock terrain types.


• Togglable triangle grid marking borders between single triangles and map iterations.


• Dock widgets that you can freely move around! Unfortunetely there's a bug in Qt that made me disable floating docks until it gets fixed.


• Resizeable application window.


• Flexibility and extensibility!


• Missing objects, eg. the "water rock".

Work-in-progress features:

• Triangle-based tool for more precise terrain manipulation.


• Additional modes for height tool: equalize and set.


• More verbose height tool informing about selected vertices' altitudes and possibly positions.


• Huge settings dialog to customize S2Ed however you like it!


• Dynamic world size changing.

Planned features:

• New map format (RWD, Roots World) that could support: mission objects (MISxBOBS.LST), additional graphics and world types, mixing graphics tilesets, scripting, events, campaign creation, AI waypoints and anything else that we can come up with and what could also be implemented in RttR. Woo!


• Element mixer. A UI tool which would allow mixing same type world elements into one randomized element. Think about the original "bush" landscape element which would place random bushes. This tool would allow you to create and store your own mixes with selected probability for each element.


• World mirroring.


• History and undo, redo support!


• Multiple map scrolling settings to suit your fancy.


• Semi-transparent world element preview instead of generic icons on pointed-at vertices.


• World type conversion.


• Batch object type conversion.

Possible features:

• Selection tool and possibly copy, paste support. This one is tricky but could be useful. It might also be connected with mirroring, ie. mirroring a selection.

As you can probably see from the screenshots, it's not yet ready to be released. Possibilities are endless, but there are still some fundamental features missing: shading, smooth terrain borders, building information, minimap, shadows etc. There are icons missing and some values are not yet calculated. Also, since I'm learning about how The Settlers 2 work as I go, some ideas tend to prove inappropriate over time. That's why my next task is to refactor the code to fully grasp Qt 5 and C++11 qualities and get as clean and readable as possible when it's still early in the developement. The reason is my personal preference for the code to be not only functional but also neat... and the fact that I am going to open the source when enought features are done.


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I wish to release a beta version when S2Ed will be able to do all things that the original editor could do and the developement emphasis will shift to fixing bugs and working on cool new features. This means that all the major features have to be complete before public release.


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Now's the time I would like you, the comminuty, to suggest what would you like to see in future versions of S2Ed. I am devoted to this project and intend to work on it for a long time. I hope you will find this idea as exciting as I do. I would really love to create a tool that will be useful - and used! And to do that I need your, potential users', feedback. So feel free to throw your ideas at me. :)


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Last but not least, I want to thank people without whom this project would have taken way more time to start or wouldn't come into existance at all.

• RttR Team - thank you for creating Return to the Roots and sharing the source!


• Merri - thank you for all the useful data you stored on your website!


• Xaser - thank you for creating the s25edit, sharing its source and for the consultation early last year!


• The community - thank you for being active and giving me someone to create S2Ed for!

You guys are awesome! :)

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Hello! Thank you for your work! That World Editor is looking nice and 'clearer' to me. I can see some interesting ideas here, like for example that 'element mixer'. Keep up the good work :)

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Hey, Krugslayer. Thanks for the shout-out! It's nice to hear that your first impression is positive. There's still a lot to change and I hope it's for the better! Especially the interface which will have to be tested by more people than just me to reach a satisfactory level of usability.

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Wtf is this, we already have an editor, why do we need this?

Just kidding ;) I'm really really really impressed! I'd really like to test it right now and giving some ideas what me might also need. But yet, it looks awesome, can't say something else. When I saw that post I thought someone has problems installing the current RttR
editor but nope, this is just, well, I can't find words to describe what I'm thinking of this great piece of work! Keep it up can't
wait until I can test that editor! (Oh, and I could make another video ^.^)

Just great

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Hi, Spike. You really got me there at the first sentence! :)

Before I started working on S2Ed, I contacted Xaser to make sure he doesn't plan to continue extending his editor. If I recall correctly Xaser suggested that I should continue upon his work, but he expressed concerns regarding s25edit performance. But what was more important, I had a different vision for the editor. That's how the editor was born.

I'm happy that you like it! I will contact you when I feel S2Ed is in a proper state to not disgrace myself when used. :D I look forward to your suggestions!

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Lucky me, I was a bit afraid that you may stop reading after the first sentence while thinking "fuck this guy" :p

Zitat:

Yeah, I can totally understand that. And I also remember my "Tool" which is still bugged and can't achieve what you editor can so, I
will just wait for updates :>

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Wow that editor really looks awesome. So many options and such a nice and clean interface. I'd really like to see a usable version of
it real soon. So keep up the good work Nota!

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Wow. Nice work. You just made your way to cool people list in front of
Spikeone. Only Marcus(maqs) and quorzom in frobt of you! Are you on irc so I
don't have to speak Spikeone in future?

I am only player so no need to listen me, exept that spike part, but really
awesome work.

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Spike, I think that when it's ready we could reimplement some of your tools in S2Ed, eg. that BMP-to-SWD converter you wrote.

Quorzom, glad that you like it! I plan for the interface to get even prettier!

gefroy, err, I suppose that's some kind of joke since Spike did a lot of great things for RttR and I have yet to release a single thing. Nevertheless, thanks, I'm happy I can do it. :)

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We might bash a bit each other when there is time. Nothing serious.

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Wow, I'm really impressed! This looks amazing! I can't wait to try it out!
That's why I love this community!

~Flex

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I can only say...

"Wow, I'm really impressed! This looks amazing! I can't wait to try it out!
That's why I love this community!"

:P

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Flex, K4T, thanks! Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any feature requests.

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Wow, great work!

An interesting feature might be the integration of a LUA editor (e.g. as another "tab" under the main view of the map) for the corresponding level you're currently editing. But I'm not sure about the effort, but it probably does not make sense to write an entirely new editor, rather than searching for an existing LUA gui (using qt).

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Hey, thanks!

If we end up creating a new world format which would contain Lua scripts, an integrated text editor could come in handy. Especially with extensions that boost usability. Like for example "picking" a vertex from map with a single mouse click that would paste its reference (or: indices) right to the script.

On the other hand if it weren't for the extensions one could as well use Visual Studio, Sublime Text or even Notepad to write the scripts and then load them to the world editor before saving.

I'd say it depends on how much interaction possibilities would build up between scripting and editing the map. Because when there's none, I'd rather use a fully fledged and seasoned external text editor. We'll see about that. Anyhow, thanks for the suggestion!

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Having a visual information where events are triggered, what type they are and especially you could arrange them very well if you see
those on a map.
For now you have to keep in mind where an event is triggered and by what.

But I don't think that this is essential

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This is the dream! I can't believe I spent more than 200h with the old editor :D
This one will make it so much easier!

Will the maps look like the ingame ones eventually? The original editor doesn't show the heights and depth properly, that's so
annoying...

I'd really love to have all the textures available, too :)

Can't wait to see that editor in action!!!!!

THANKS & regards,
Sinth0

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This is amazing! Job well done! :D

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"C:/Gry/Settlers 2 GOLD/" Ciebie zdradziły ;) Nie krępuj się, jest nas tutaj więcej! Co do edytora, to zapowiada się świetnie. W szczególności Spike będzie uradowany. Mam nadzieję, że poza dłubaniem w kodzie (pomogę ze swoim C i Bash?) grasz trochę. Wpadaj częściej na IRC, mamy też swój (polaków) serwer głosowy.
Pozdrawiam!

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Spike, that gave me an idea to introduce something like a "scripting layer" where vertices and triangles could be explicitly marked to cause certain events. Also, clicking on a script-related object could take you to places where it is used in the script. I'm going to give it more thought later on.

Sintho, yes, I intend to make the editor display maps as they would look in-game, since this way it is easier to make mapping decisions. Most important features missing to achieve this are terrain shading and "gradient" borders. As for the altitude issue I plan to add some kind of label that would contain vertex position information. Not sure how this sould look like yet. I hope you will create a lot of great maps with S2Ed. :)

Currently I'm quite occupied with university related matters, but in the meantime I'm refactoring the code and discussing with the RttR team about possibilities regarding new world format.

Thanks for the encouraging words, Vesanus!

Tombus, dobre oko, ale też nie zamierzałem się ukrywać. :) Cieszę się, że edytor zasłużył na pochwałę. Aktualnie nie gram w Settlersów, bo nie wystarcza mi na to czasu. Jeśli chodzi o pomoc, to dziękuję i doceniam, ale plan zakłada, że edytor do czasu oddania go w ręce fanów będzie moim osobistym projektem, który pozwoli mi się uczyć i przy okazji wykonać coś praktycznego. Jak tylko będę miał więcej czasu, to wpadnę na IRC!

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Hi Nota, first of all many thanks for the amazing work! Even without "event-compatibility", it seems to be great (I still remember creating maps together with friends using the old s2edit that came with the gold edition...)

Concerning the idea of "seeing" the events as an extra layer in the editior , I was surprised a little about one part:

Zitat von Nota:

As far as I remember, events in the original game were only connected to vertices . If there aren't strong reasons otherwise, I guess events connected to vertices would be sufficient.

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Hello, CrazyL and thanks! I hope for it to become the standard Return to the Roots mapping utility when it reaches maturity one day.

Sorry if you got me wrong! What I meant is that even though the original game allows only vertices to be connected to events, since we are extending the original game, one could easily provide a list of vertices to select an area that could as well take a shape of a triangle. Since vertices are what the world really is build from and triangles are more like an abstraction, vertices are indeed sufficient.

On the other hand, since triangles are what is used for drawing world terrain, I intend to implement triangle-based tool interface to use in eg. terrain tool. Wouldn't it be so much better if we were able to change the texture of a specific single triangle? That's one of the crucial features missing in the original.

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Zitat:

Not sure if thats what you mean, but something like this is possible with the original editor.

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That's exactly what I meant. As far as I know it is possible but requires a couple of steps and the more diversified the terrain is the harder it gets to change just one triangle's type without ruining the surrounding ones. Or am I missing something here? :)

My mapping style causes me to do this quite frequently and at some point I just felt tired of constantly repeating multiple steps to change just a single triangle.

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From my point of view the most time consuming thing of the old editor is creating mountains, since they're not shown properly like
ingame. The textures haven't rly been a problem for me, though i usually value them highest regarding map design.

But I see the problem of the triangle thingy :D

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@Nota
You're not mistaken - that was really tiring... four steps to delete just one triangle of your coastline :P

- switching to a larger marker
- changing terrain to "sea"
- switching back to the smaller marker
- changing terrain back to "coastline"

I'm sure a "one triangle"-marker would be appreciated - though probably only for "fine-tuning" at the end.

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@Sintho, I'll be contacting you when it comes to mountain-correctness to ensure that I got it right. :)

@CrazyL, it's great for adorning maps with a lot of detail but in s2edit it sure gets tedious after a while. Also, a triangle-based tool could turn out to be useful for something else at some point.

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Cześć, jak idą prace? Stworzyłbym już jakąś mapkę ;)

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Any news on the editor? Still looking forward to it :)

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Last days I was making some maps - I'd totally like a key for switching from rsu to
usd triangles when in single point mode^^

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Hi,

is it planned to integrate the MAP-Editor into the normal game (like an additional menu point)?
Is it also planned to provide map editor updates via the normal update prog (s25update.exe)?

Thanks & Regards
Simon

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Sorry for a period of absence. I had some matters to attend to. Don't worry, slowly but steadily I'm still working on a refreshed version of the editor which will move it from prototype phase out to the public. There's still a lot of work to be done as I'm fully abstracting from obsolete ways The Settlers 2 handled data by building a modern layer upon it. I hope that thanks to this adding new tools, objects, terrain types, graphic sets etc. will be pretty easy. Besides, it's a lot of fun!

Simon, no, my editor is a fully standalone application that shares no code with RttR. There are no plans to integrate it into the game. As to the updates, mayhap. I'm not sure whether it's possible or not, but I suppose my editor could be bundled with the game when it becomes stable and usable enough for people to use comfortably.

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Hey, has there been any news on your editor recently? Would like to give it a go some time. :)

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Same, had to use a hex editor yesterday in order to set a harbor spot on buildable mountain as no editor can do so (yet) :(

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Hey there! Glad to know that somebody's still waiting. I don't have much time for the editor now, but I'm still working on it. I'm not planning to abandon the project, but it will need a lot more work to reach the level of quality I'm aiming at. I'm experimenting and learning a lot while I work on it, which doesn't help in regards to the development time.

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Why not put it on github and let others help you? No need for one alone to do this. Maybe other devs have some spare time to add features etc...
If you put it on Github, add some issues with the things you want to be done and milestones. So new devs know what to work on.

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Github: https://github.com/Flamefire

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I don't feel it's ripe enough to open the source yet. It's my personal project that I want to develop singlehandedly for the most part and freely experiment with. When I feel it's ready, I'll be sure to put it on GitHub.

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Hey, any news about it? i saw some screenshots and i like it, i thing there are more information about everything, it is near to
finish/ test to search bugs?
Where i can download it?

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Hey Davenv,
it has been almost a year since last News. Are you still working on the Editor? I'd be glad to test it soon =)

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