Editor User-friendly?

[St!gar]

Quick question: I was wondering what the editor in Elven Legacy is like? I've read in a Norwegian review that the editor allegedly was simple enough that a generally inexperienced player like myself should be able to make decent maps and missions with relative ease, and I was wondering if this is true?

Also, some additional questions: Is there any documentation for use of the editor? And is it in English? The reviewer said something to the effect that he found it a great help to view sample maps made by the developers... does that mean the editor includes a kind of walkthrough? That'd be great.

Thanks in advance.

[coreyh2]

I can talk about the Fantasy Wars editor. Its very easy to use.

Terrain editing is very easy. A map is made of 2d hex tiles. A compiler is run to generate the 3d terrain. All the connections between normal terrain is done automatically. Its easy to create a beautiful land in no time at all. The only hard part of terrain editing is manually connecting the larger city fortress tiles. I had to look up how they were they were put together in the existing game maps. All of the maps from the campaign can be opened and you can see how they put things together.

Putting down units is also very easy. Its takes a little while to learn how to set their AI however. There isn't really any documentation and terms they use are hard to interpret. I figured it out pretty easily after looking at the campaign maps. Setting up the AI consists of setting up groups of units and how they behave. Mostly its just the choice between them defending a area or attacking any seen units.

Elven Legacy is supposed to have a branching dialog. I don't know how that is set up yet. Fantasy Wars just had linear dialog. The only hard part was figuring out what name to use for the regular units icons. I had to look up the names in a folder.

All the coding/setting up AI is done in triggers. Its not actual code just logical statements where you fill in blanks. A map with triggers similar to a campaign map is very easy to do. Some of the terms were a little hard to understand but after I looked at the game maps it wasn't that hard. Its possible to make errors so you still have to test things. Its programming although a very simple kind.

At least in Fantasy Wars there wasn't any support for cutscenes. There are actual cutscenes in the game. There just isn't any way to make them in the editor. I just told the story through dialog.

Overall its very easy. While the strategy to beat a map can be hard to figure out the actual game is simple. Its very easy to use the editor create a land and tell a story.

On the negative side the community is small. If you want a lot of people to play your maps it isn't the best choice. There aren't many english player made maps for fantasy wars. The community seemed larger in Russia.

[asadexes]

We need a multiplayer serious support!!!

[St!gar]

Thank you, coreyh2, for your long and helpful post. It was more than I could ever have hoped for; good stuff.

There isn't really any documentation and terms they use are hard to interpret.

Is there any documentation of any kind included in the editor at all, or did you have to guess it all by yourself? Is it in English?

When you do the enemy AI, how much do you have to script for a simple "pitched battle" -type mission? Is it enough to give it simple guidelines, (e.g. "Defend this City"; "Prioritize killing the hero"), or do you need to guide its every decition by hand?

[coreyh2]

http://alexmars.com/FW_editor_guide1.htm

Here is a guide that I used.

There are some old forum posts about map making also.

There wasn't any Fantasy Wars map editor official documentation. The map editor is in English. A little bit of it is badly translated. The game itself doesn't have that problem. I have no idea how Elven Legacy editor will be as far as the translation and documentation goes. I assume it will still be easy to use.

Setting up the AI is just setting modes. It isn't like scripting actual AI. The AI makes most of the tactical decisions on its own. Like attacking heroes first. If you don't tell units to defend areas it tends to group together in the best terrain possible and attack once you get in range. You can change the modes after something happens. Like moving troops to the first city attacked. The troops might attack something in the middle or not go if there is a lot of water in the way. Most of the campaign just has have some enemies defending cites or special sites and some troops that move to reinforce things. The AI doesn't seem to know about your position until it sees you.

I don't know what Elven Legacy has changed.

The only triggers you'd need for a chess type pitched battle would be for victory situations and when the different sides could place units. All of that could be copied from existing maps. You wouldn't need to set anything in the AI. If you wanted to units to move from somewhere else on the map, appear on the map, or defend something you'd have to make triggers for that.

[St!gar]

Thanks a lot!