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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Feature Requests : Editor enhancements (Interface and hotkeys)
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b0rsuk
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icon Editor enhancements (+1)  
1. I'm sick of repeteadly clicking on an Evil Eye to check what my eye see. Personally I would remove the necessity of clicking from entire game, not just editor. It's in the same vein as spiders, bumping into non-door obstacles (and losing a turn), randomness and invisibility. It should have no place in DROD. At least allow me to have eyes permanently on while I use editor, unless you want to promote buggy holds.

2.One day I was bored and started reading DROD documentation once again. I learned that by holding SHIFT I can place tar in such way that it won't be placed on walls.
This should be extended. If I place doors, holding shift should make it impossible to be placed under tar. Holding shift in general should prevent tar/doors from being spawned on tiles containing fuses, force arrows, orto squares, this kind of thing.
<H1>
3. Hotkeys ! I want hotkeys for specific dungeon elements and monsters. I'm sick of using mouse for that. It's terribly inefficient and consumes lots of time.
</H1>

HOTKEY SYSTEM FOR LEVEL EDITOR:

1 - switch to first tab (walls)
2 - switch to second tab (misc objects)
3 - switch to third tab (monsters)
-----
While in tab1 (walls)

W - switch selected object to Wall
C - switch to Crumbly Wall
Y - switch to Yellow Door. Press once again to select closed yellow door, and so on.
R - switch to Red Door
G - Green Door
B - Black Door
I - Pit
T - Trapdoor
4-0 - various floors
D - Staircase Down.
P - Staircse Up.
U - Tunnel.
H - Checkpoint
M - Master Wall (not that you need it often, but for the sake of completness)
S - Secret Wall
L - Blue Door
-------------
While in tab1 - misc objects

O - Orb.
A - Force Arrow.
B- Bomb
F - Fuse
T - Tar
U - Mud
S - Scroll
R - Orthogonal Square
C - Obstacle
M - Mimic (Mud is 3 letters so it's not that hard to guess U. Mimic is more problematic)
I - Invisibility (see ?)
D - Decoy
------------
While in tab3 (monsters)

R - Roach, of course !
Q - Roach Queen
E - Evil Eye
W - Wraithwing
S - Serpent. Spiders are faily useless except for secret rooms with characters and bombs. So Seep gets priority.
G - Goblin
O - Golem
P - SeeP
B - Brain
T - Rattlesnake
Y - foo Baby - yes, I know, obscure. Press again to switch between tar/mud.
M - foo Mother. Press again to toggle tar/mud.
H - Halph
A - Slayer.
U - Wubba.
D - Guard
I - Spider.
This tab was most problematic. No keys left for Beethro (except for K from Budkin, forget it) and Character. But you won't be using these regularly.
The keys may be a little hard to remember at first, but once you remember a few you'll be creating rooms much more effortlessly.I find myself spending too much time clicking between tabs and monsters. And if I misclick while placing fancy floors - horror !
IMPORTANT: tooltips should indicate which key is a hotkey for that particular element.

Comments ?

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09-29-2005 at 01:15 PM
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b0rsuk
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (0)  
Oh, one more thing. I use mousewheel for rotating objects. I completely forgot about that. But I still think it's worth - at least an option to enable somewhere in the settings.

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09-29-2005 at 01:25 PM
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Cascade
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (0)  
I think it was discussed that when in the editor, clicking a bomb should display the blast area of that bomb (and maybe other bombs it would trigger).

Maybe you should be able to toggle an eye's vision line on-off - no delayed fade. Also a way to display all eye's vision lines, too?

This is just in the editor of course. I actually quite like having to click eyes in the main game and have them fade again. Adds that cool "tiptoeing through a minefield" feeling.

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09-29-2005 at 02:03 PM
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AlefBet
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (+1)  
b0rsuk wrote:
It's in the same vein as spiders, bumping into non-door obstacles (and losing a turn), randomness and invisibility. It should have no place in DROD.
Well, randomness certainly has no place in DROD. But bumping into walls/pits are here to stay, and spiders are (IMHO) quite useful puzzle elements now (if used well -- which applies to most of the elements). And of course, invisibility is essential to many puzzles, including almost all of JtRH level 7. (Perhaps you meant a different kind of invisibility.)
2.One day I was bored and started reading DROD documentation once again. I learned that by holding SHIFT I can place tar in such way that it won't be placed on walls.

This should be extended. If I place doors, holding shift should make it impossible to be placed under tar.
I don't see much utility in this. Placing doors is usually a more careful operation than placing tar so I think it's unusual to lay a swath of doors in the aim of filling in the gaps of tar. Perhaps I could see it applying to walls, though.
Holding shift in general should prevent tar/doors from being spawned on tiles containing fuses, force arrows, orto squares, this kind of thing.
Well, you already can't place tar on any of those squares so it's only doors that this would affect. And as above, I don't see much utility in making door placement smarter since door placement is usually a more careful operation anyway. I especially don't know why you'd want to lay doors that don't go on ortho squares or fuses. This results in a door that I believe would typically be useless (blocking nothing).
3. Hotkeys ! I want hotkeys for specific dungeon elements and monsters. I'm sick of using mouse for that. It's terribly inefficient and consumes lots of time.
The big issue with some of your hotkeys is that "w" is used for rotating room elements. That means that key is right out. What makes it even worse, though, is that the rotation keys are remappable. For example, I actually use the D and F keys for rotation because I prefer to keep my hands on the home row. Remappable keys is going to make it harder to come up with hard shortcut keys like that. (Actually it's even worse than that, since the actual keys I use for rotation are "e" and "u", since I use the Dvorak keyboard layout.)

There is also a way to change elements now with the keyboard. If you click on a tool in a tab, the arrow keys can be used to move around the tab. Not as efficient as a single hotkey for every element, but it doesn't typically necessitate going to the mouse.

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09-29-2005 at 06:41 PM
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stigant
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (0)  
I use the Dvorak keyboard layout

Man, I'm pretty geeky, but I stand in awe of your geekness. I've always wanted to learn Dvorak, but fear that it would put my typing out of commission for too long to be worth it.

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09-29-2005 at 08:07 PM
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (0)  
You might want to check out this post, stigant. :)

Game on,

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09-29-2005 at 08:09 PM
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b0rsuk
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (-2)  
The big issue with some of your hotkeys is that "w" is used for rotating room elements. That means that key is right out. What makes it even worse, though, is that the rotation keys are remappable. For example, I actually use the D and F keys for rotation because I prefer to keep my hands on the home row. Remappable keys is going to make it harder to come up with hard shortcut keys like that. (Actually it's even worse than that, since the actual keys I use for rotation are "e" and "u", since I use the Dvorak keyboard layout.)

"big issue" ?
"even worse" ??
I thought that's precisely what encourages such system.
Ability to bind every single element to a key would be enough.
There is also a way to change elements now with the keyboard. If you click on a tool in a tab, the arrow keys can be used to move around the tab. Not as efficient as a single hotkey for every element, but it doesn't typically necessitate going to the mouse.
Oh please, there's no need for insults. I started this thread not because my mouse broke, but because it's possible to boost efficiency. DROD interface in general could use a lot of improvements, not just editor.

I never played a roguelike game which didn't have walk functionality. DROD doesn't have it to this day. As a result, twisty passages are very, very tedious.

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09-29-2005 at 08:36 PM
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eytanz
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (0)  
b0rsuk wrote:
I never played a roguelike game which didn't have walk functionality. DROD doesn't have it to this day. As a result, twisty passages are very, very tedious.

DROD is not a roguelike game. And this statement is a total non-sequiter, anyway.

I can see that you are frustrated with certain aspects of the DROD interface - I share some of your frustrations (though by no means all of them). I think you make good suggestions. But you're not making it any more likely that they get accepted by being so confrontational about them, nor is it helping that you keep confusing the issue by bringing in other issues that are not directly related to the previous one.

For what it's worth, I think that hotkeys for the editor would be very cool. I think that for a variety of reasons - the first being that most keys are remappable anyway, and the second being that every new version brings new features that make a fixed set of hotkeys less practicle - the best way to do it is to either allow assigment of each element of a hotkey, or to have a set of "quick keys" - say the numerals 1-10 - that can be mapped to editor elements.

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09-29-2005 at 08:42 PM
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b0rsuk wrote:
There is also a way to change elements now with the keyboard. If you click on a tool in a tab, the arrow keys can be used to move around the tab. Not as efficient as a single hotkey for every element, but it doesn't typically necessitate going to the mouse.
Oh please, there's no need for insults. I started this thread not because my mouse broke, but because it's possible to boost efficiency. DROD interface in general could use a lot of improvements, not just editor.
I fail to see an insult there. Calm down, please, don't look for trouble when there is none.

For what it's worth, in my opinion I think that being able to define "macros" like Eytan suggested might be the best way to go about it. One of my least favorite things about roguelikes is the number of commands that you have to memorize. It took me long enough to learn Ultimas which don't even use every letter, much less a roguelike's using every letter, symbol, and the shift or control toggles! There are enough objects, and will be enough new ones, to make it very prohibitive to have a keypress for each one, even if you set them yourself. I think having some customization is important though, so being able to, say, copy a section of room and then map that to a macro key would be very nice indeed.

Game on,


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09-29-2005 at 08:50 PM
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AlefBet
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b0rsuk wrote:
Oh please, there's no need for insults. I started this thread not because my mouse broke, but because it's possible to boost efficiency. DROD interface in general could use a lot of improvements, not just editor.
I'm sorry if you took what I said to be an insult. It was not intended that way. And I have no problem with people making suggestions for improving the interface; I was just pointing out some difficulties with your suggestion.
I never played a roguelike game which didn't have walk functionality. DROD doesn't have it to this day. As a result, twisty passages are very, very tedious.
Sounds interesting. I might be interested in such a feature if it were well done. I'm not sure what it has to do with this discussion, though.

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09-29-2005 at 08:52 PM
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b0rsuk
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I fail to see an insult there. Calm down, please, don't look for trouble when there is none.

No one who is halfway serious about efficiently using a keyboard would consider such way. It's just as useful as "screen keyboard" - or however it's called in english version of Windows. The utility which displays a keyboard on the screen and you can click on individual keys. It might have ocassional uses when your keyboard breaks, but efficiency ? Ugh.
I work in a place where anyone using mouse only would be pointed at and laughed - if not fired. Before you say that creating holds requires more thought and can't be done quickly... if you can switch elements back and forth, you can tinker with funny stuff more easily. This results in more inspiration.

(walk)
Sounds interesting. I might be interested in such a feature if it were well done. I'm not sure what it has to do with this discussion, though.

It has been suggested before, and for some reason postponed/ignored.
What does it have to do ?
- DROD interface could be better. We are not martyrs. Often you have to go back several rooms, and while it's not so annoying if you do it slowly (considering each move carefully), running quickly is inevitably painful.
Roguelike games are in many ways very similar to DROD - typically you get big/very big "board", I mean it's tile based they're very small compared to screen size. This means a lot of direction keys pressed.

I was disappointed to see that JTRH editor is mostly unchanged. Each time you place something different you have to interrupt what you're currently doing and perform several clicks. "Distracting" is an understatement. So they really made the new big hold using this editor ? I would start by improving editor, to make work more convenient. You can learn it in 2 minutes, but after that point you won't get any better. It won't let you, because there are no tricks to (learn to) work more efficiently.

The editor puts too much strain on mouse. I didn't notice it before, because I didn't use the editor before.

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09-29-2005 at 11:38 PM
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agaricus5
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b0rsuk wrote:
I work in a place where anyone using mouse only would be pointed at and laughed - if not fired. Before you say that creating holds requires more thought and can't be done quickly... if you can switch elements back and forth, you can tinker with funny stuff more easily. This results in more inspiration.
I agree that tab switching and object placement can be a bit of a tedious business if you just want to replace something with something else or build a certain arrangement of objects which would require a bit of switching (such as placing objects and monsters in a horde pattern). I don't agree, however, that it really makes much of an impact on creativity as such. Of course, you'd be able to get through more combinations of monsters and objects, but the time you'd save doing this will be negligible compared to the time you need to spend thinking about the actual puzzles you want to make and then ensuring they work (assuming, of course, if you want to do it seriously).

One thing I think that might be useful (which is a feature I've seen in other types of editor) is the ability to select two different objects or elements at once, using the left or right mouse buttons, and then be able to place either by clicking the appropriate button. If you need to delete in a hurry, the Undo (or Backspace) button could be used to clear the right button element, and return it to a delete tool. Re-instating the option to turn off "Safety Mode" (see DROD 1.6 Beta, Build 14, I think), in which you can drop objects that are mutually exclusive on top of each other to replace them directly, would also be highly useful, especially when doing things like replacing Pits with Walls, for example.

Edit: Also, the "Walk" functionality has already been suggested before. It's actually still on page 1 of the board, so it's quite recent.

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09-29-2005 at 11:57 PM
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eytanz
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b0rsuk wrote:
It has been suggested before, and for some reason postponed/ignored.

It's been neither. It was suggested relatively recently, as Agaricus pointed out. It wasn't commented on by any of the programmers, that's true, but that doesn't mean that they're not aware of it.

What did you expect to happen? That someone will make a new suggestion, the developers would come by and immediately post "That's a great idea!", and three days later there would be a patch? That's a totally unrealistic expectation. Suggestions are made, they are noted, and then some of them get implemented and some don't. Caravel has a policy not to confirm what features will be in the next version. Therefore, you can't learn anything from the silence.

So, again, I recommend patience. Keep making suggestions - they are all appreciated, whether or not they are implemented. But don't expect instant gratification, and don't get insulted if people misunderstand you or don't agree with you. Because all you are doing is making it more likely that people, including the developers, will just avoid your threads.

- DROD interface could be better.

True.

We are not martyrs.

You are also not forced to play DROD.

Roguelike games are in many ways very similar to DROD - typically you get big/very big "board", I mean it's tile based they're very small compared to screen size. This means a lot of direction keys pressed.

As an ex-developer of a roguelike game, I know for a fact that the situation is very different. Most Roguelike games have been around for longer than DROD - at least longer than DROD has been actively developed (Webfoot was around a long time but it just sat there). Roguelike games also benefit from a lot of cross-polination, and many of them have dozens of contributors. When I wanted features in Angband that didn't exist, I went and wrote them in myself.

If you'd write a "walk" patch for DROD and then no-one paid attention to it, then I'd understand your attitude. Until you do that (nothing stops you, the source code is publically available), please tone it down.

I was disappointed to see that JTRH editor is mostly unchanged. Each time you place something different you have to interrupt what you're currently doing and perform several clicks. "Distracting" is an understatement.

That's a good point, actually.

So they really made the new big hold using this editor ?

Yes. It wasn't even very difficult. Which is something you should keep in mind - a lot of people are using the editor right now and very few of them seem to be suffering as badly from its design as you are. Which isn't to say that there isn't room for improvement. There certainly is. But maintaining that it's too difficult to use effectively just contradicts the facts.

I would start by improving editor, to make work more convenient.

The editor is not the top thing on the dev team's priorities. That certainly doesn't mean it won't be improved, but DROD is a game with an editor, not an editor with a game.

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09-30-2005 at 01:10 AM
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b0rsuk
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eytanz wrote:

It's been neither. It was suggested relatively recently, as Agaricus pointed out. It wasn't commented on by any of the programmers, that's true, but that doesn't mean that they're not aware of it.

If by relatively recently you mean second half of 2003, then you're right. Three days isn't the same as over two years. I may be wrong, of course.
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=805&page=0#4522

We are not martyrs.
You are also not forced to play DROD.
Ah, sweet memories of Blizzard forums...
You are not forced to read my threads, as you said. Seems like I do have to include "and don't say I don't have to play it" clause. Now I have to say "Taste your own medicine".
As long as points made are good, it doesn't matter much if my threads are ignored by developers or not. Someone will pick them up (points) and continue.
Note to self:assuming too much is bad for health.

As an ex-developer of a roguelike game, I know for a fact that the situation is very different. Most Roguelike games have been around for longer than DROD - at least longer than DROD has been actively developed (Webfoot was around a long time but it just sat there). Roguelike games also benefit from a lot of cross-polination, and many of them have dozens of contributors. When I wanted features in Angband that didn't exist, I went and wrote them in myself.
So, it is good to reinvent the wheel ? It took them some time to come up with such feature. This feature has been around for years certainly, if not for decades.

Yes. It wasn't even very difficult. Which is something you should keep in mind - a lot of people are using the editor right now and very few of them seem to be suffering as badly from its design as you are. Which isn't to say that there isn't room for improvement. There certainly is. But maintaining that it's too difficult to use effectively just contradicts the facts.
Did anyone have a choice ? It's either this or no hold. People who come here are mostly ones who like DROD anyway. Few people come here and say they dumped the game because jthr level1 involves lots of bumping into obstacles and badly abuses the keypad. That's precisely what badly discouraged people don't do. You don't waste time to give feedback on a game which (so far) shows no promise for fun.
It's a bit like claiming that A is better than B because there was a poll on B's website that says that.
Depends on your definition of "effectively". How do you know we wouldn't get more holds if editor was more convenient (in long run!) to use ? (I hope usage of "we" doesn't offend you.)

To give you an example, there's a very cool opensource game called Trackballs. It's similar to Marble Madness or Spindizzy, and has nice 3D graphics.And it has an editor. Unfortunately, it's a bit buggy, and editor is fairly cumbersome to use. Keyboard only, and so on. How many contributed level sets are there ? Around five, none of them longer than several tracks. Most tracks can be completed in 5 minutes or less.

The editor is not the top thing on the dev team's priorities. That certainly doesn't mean it won't be improved, but DROD is a game with an editor, not an editor with a game.

It is known that DROD community makes a lot of holds. It was even used as marketing tool - so it can be safely said it's one of biggest highlights. How many people would play DROD now if there was only King Dugan's Dungeon to run around ? And no, no JTRHold - because it wouldn't probably be considered in first place. No market for it. The editor is what allowed it to survive. As such it seems fairly important to DROD.

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09-30-2005 at 08:49 AM
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b0rsuk wrote:
If by relatively recently you mean second half of 2003, then you're right. Three days isn't the same as over two years. I may be wrong, of course.

It was mentioned about a month ago in a thread called "walk to" functionality.
09-30-2005 at 09:53 AM
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b0rsuk wrote:
eytanz wrote:

It's been neither. It was suggested relatively recently, as Agaricus pointed out. It wasn't commented on by any of the programmers, that's true, but that doesn't mean that they're not aware of it.

If by relatively recently you mean second half of 2003, then you're right. Three days isn't the same as over two years. I may be wrong, of course.
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=805&page=0#4522

Ah, I forgot about that thread. And I'm guess you're right that that was ignored. But it came up again just a few weeks ago.

We are not martyrs.
You are also not forced to play DROD.
Ah, sweet memories of Blizzard forums...
You are not forced to read my threads, as you said. Seems like I do have to include "and don't say I don't have to play it" clause.

It's not quite the same thing. I'd normally never say it to a regular feature request. But if someone feels that DROD is so painful that he is martyred by it - well, then I have to question why he's playing it.

As an ex-developer of a roguelike game, I know for a fact that the situation is very different. Most Roguelike games have been around for longer than DROD - at least longer than DROD has been actively developed (Webfoot was around a long time but it just sat there). Roguelike games also benefit from a lot of cross-polination, and many of them have dozens of contributors. When I wanted features in Angband that didn't exist, I went and wrote them in myself.
So, it is good to reinvent the wheel ? It took them some time to come up with such feature. This feature has been around for years certainly, if not for decades.

What are you talking about here? I wasn't saying anything about reinventing the wheel. I can't see how your reply is related to anything I said above.

Yes. It wasn't even very difficult. Which is something you should keep in mind - a lot of people are using the editor right now and very few of them seem to be suffering as badly from its design as you are. Which isn't to say that there isn't room for improvement. There certainly is. But maintaining that it's too difficult to use effectively just contradicts the facts.
Did anyone have a choice ? It's either this or no hold.

Of course there's a choice. Especially in the days in which JtRH was developed, because at the time the feature set wasn't closed yet and if I wanted an editor improvement I could have asked for it and gotten a far more immediate response than you can. That's one of the perks I got for volunteering hundreds of hours helping Caravel build a hold that they make money from and I don't.

Now, at the time I didn't feel like the editor strongly needed improvement. Neither did anyone else working on JtRH. That was our oversight, perhaps. But it still holds true in a way. I now feel that the editor can use improvement to be even better, but that it's nonetheless good as it is. That's clearly a different opinion than you have.

I'm snipping the rest of your post for the simple reason that I agree with it.

I want you to understand something - I'm rather irritated by your style, and I'm responding in an irritated manner, but you and I basically agree on what needs to be done, though not entirely on why. Part of my point earlier that got lost in my post was that you are writing in a way that hurts your cause. I'm not a programmer, but I am on the TCB dev team and have a more direct line of communication to the programmers than you do. Alefbet is a programmer. Both of us repsonded that we agree in principle but that the exact implementation you suggest isn't going to work. You responded to both our replies rather negatively. How do you expect to convince anyone like that?

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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-30-2005 02:00 PM]
09-30-2005 at 01:59 PM
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eytanz
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (+1)  
Oh, and one more thing.

The question about people having a choice extends to people now and not just those of us who were making JtRH. Surprisingly, people now also have a choice. They could do exactly what you is doing - ask for improvements. And it's worth noting that there are dozens of people building holds in DROD 1.6 and 2.0, and only very few requests for editor improvements. Definitely very few people who argue that improvements are necessary rather than just welcome.

That suggests to me that maybe, overall, my view is closer to the general view than yours is. I could be wrong. Maybe everyone is suffering silently. If so, everyone - please cease doing that. Let your voice be heard. Otherwise, I think I (and probably others) will be justified in thinking that, while the general ideas expressed by you may be good, your position as champion of the DROD Editor Martyrs may be overstated.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-30-2005 03:19 PM]
09-30-2005 at 03:15 PM
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Mattcrampy
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (+1)  
Try reading b0rsuk's posts in a Russian Mafia accent. Cracks me up.

I don't quite understand why you're being so hostile here, b0rsuk. The editor's not exactly hard to use - I mean, I can manage it - and while interface improvements are always welcome, you should, as you actually say yourself, let the ideas stand for themselves. There's no one right way to do things (I don't think a hotkey for every monster is exactly the best approach, myself) but just examining the issue from as many angles as we can is by far the best way forward.

So, chill.

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09-30-2005 at 04:43 PM
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Banjooie
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Try reading b0rsuk's posts in a Russian Mafia accent. Cracks me up.

You have made this entire thread a billion times more entertaining, you know that?
09-30-2005 at 04:57 PM
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b0rsuk
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Try reading b0rsuk's posts in a Russian Mafia accent. Cracks me up.

The fact that Pitr (from userfriendly.org) is my favourite character is 100% coincidence. It's official.

By the way, don't hesitate to point out ANY grammar/spelling mistakes I make - I'll be attending english lessons again. Starting with sunday.

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[Last edited by b0rsuk at 09-30-2005 05:13 PM]
09-30-2005 at 05:10 PM
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Tim
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icon Re: Editor enhancements (+1)  
eytanz wrote:
Maybe everyone is suffering silently. If so, everyone - please cease doing that. Let your voice be heard.
Here's a list of things (from the top of my head, definitely incomplete) I really would like to see in a new version:

* See which room is required/secret from the main editor window by colour, without clicking on each room.
* List of entrances/exits and their descriptions.
* Stairs checking. Gives a warning when a set of stairs goes back to the same level (or ends the hold).
* Full import/export of all scripts, speech and scrolls. Scripts for copying characters, speech and scrolls for the english checker.
* I do not like how the floors are selected when walls are removed. I'm not sure how to put it, but it is very unintuitive. I know how it works, but I still feel I am clicking too many times to get the floor that I want.
* Putting a Beethro in a room where is already one, should be asked first if you are moving the old one. (This is different from AE...)
* Put a serpent head picture when a long monster is selected. (useful for rotation)
* Keys 1,2,3 for the "tabs". It is VERY distracting when you want to place a yellow door and an orb next to each other, that you need your mouse to go back all the way to the left.
* Ability to export demo while testing it in the editor.
* Add the picture of the character in the script screen. You can only change the character's orientation by using the mouse wheel in this screen.
* Ability to import/export/delete all demos from one hold. Restoring to every level before exporting is very time-consuming.

I'm not sure they are feature requests though, but I think most of them will make my playtesting and building a lot less frustrating...

-- Tim

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[Last edited by Tim at 10-01-2005 06:20 AM]
10-01-2005 at 01:05 AM
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agaricus5
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Tim wrote:
* See which room is required/secret from the main editor window by colour, without clicking on each room.
That sounds useful. Also, perhaps rooms with monsters could also appear red or something similar.
* List of entrances/exits and their descriptions.
I agree. That would make hold finalising much easier.
* Stairs checking. Gives a warning when a set of stairs goes back to the same level (or ends the hold).
I would say that might be better as an option that can be clicked on to activate it, rather than a constant (in-)editor feature.

Maybe what might be a bit more useful is if DROD actually goes on a tour of the hold and goes through each stair with you. You would also be given the opportunity to visit the entrance rooms if you so wish (just in case you've forgotten which is which), and can then ensure all stair destinations are correct.

* Putting a Beethro in a room where is already one, should be asked first if you are moving the old one. (This is different from AE...)
The difference is that in AE, you can only place one Beethro anyway, so it makes no difference if he can be dragged or not. I prefer the current system we have now, where clicking in an empty square creates a new start position.

* Ability to import/export/delete all demos from one hold. Restoring to every level before exporting is very time-consuming.
I definitely agree - especially in SS holds, where a full set of demos is required for submission, this would be very useful and time-saving.

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10-04-2005 at 10:34 PM
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Yellow_Mage
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* Stairs checking. Gives a warning when a set of stairs goes back to the same level (or ends the hold).

Well if by checking, the stairs are coloured red, then ya, you don't have toggle them on/off in option becuse it wouldn't be that intrusive.

I like all those features mentioned, especially export all demos, but there is one thing I would really like; an actual area selector (holding down Ctrl and selecting area with mouse) and a rotate keyboard command.

I want rotate so badly it hurts, even tho the rooms are 32,38. Some puzzles behave very differently just by changing it to a 90 degree, and I had to recreat rooms from scratch. There are mirror horizontal/vertical commands but no rotate. :(

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10-25-2005 at 03:55 PM
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