Scenario creator program?

[Charles555va]

Id pay at least 60 dollars for the completed version of Battle for Wesnoth so long as it has a decent scenario builder. I used to make alot of maps for starcraft, warcraft, and other games, which had extra units, triggers, sounds, and available upgrades already in there to use if you wanted. I checked the "create" section and got extremely pissed at the poor explanation of creating scenarios. First! START AT THE BEGINNING, - write each fricking step out, seriously (i didnt see one mentition of word pad/text editors but there were so many links it brings me to my next comment). DONT SPAMM A BUNCH OF LINKS ON RELATED TOPICS-there is a ridiculous amount of jumping around and going back and forth...someone had a case of ADHD writing the create section. BTW I dont wanna hear how versitile the wml is...everything that anyone has done with it, could be done, by me, with the starcraft map editor in 1/1000th the time, except maybe add non hard coded new units in. All angriness and concerns for balance issues aside, I love this game and really respect the people contributing their time. I guess today had brought me back to getting tutoring in advanced calculus with a math major that solves a problem in two steps, which does me no good because i dont know the 10 steps he did in his head.

[zookeeper]

If someone wrote a good tutorial on how to learn and do things with WML then that'd be great. So far no one has, probably for the same reasons you won't. The current messy state is not intentional.

Oh, and if someone wrote a good scenario editor then that'd be fine too. I'm not sure how good a job campgen does as I've never tried it.

[appleide]

I am almost done with a WML-editor though. It should be pretty good, though it is for Mac only. After I finish it I should be _able_ to churn out scenarios every week or so (though I could get lazy ).

[gotrek860]

Charles555va, who got your panties in a knot?
I actually didn't know anything about WML a couple of weeks ago, still I'm learning and enjoying it, and the tutorial available is really easy to navigate.
If you can't go through the trouble of reading it, you probably won't go through the trouble of making a proper campaign....

[tsr]

Id pay at least 60 dollars for ... a decent scenario builder

Ok, so get together with other people that would like to pay for such a feature, write up a good spec and pay someone to create it.

If you can't do it yourself, and the main devs don't seem interested in doing it the above is your most reasonable option.

/tsr

[irrevenant]

Oh, and if someone wrote a good scenario editor then that'd be fine too. I'm not sure how good a job campgen does as I've never tried it.

Moderate. It's a lot easier than hacking WML but it's pretty confusing once you get into advanced functionality like adding pseudo-unit moves.

Mind you, given that it's still (IIRC) at v0.27 that's pretty good...

[Aethaeryn]

I found campgen pretty confusing - it was actually easier for me to learn some basic WML than to get campgen to work right.

[cool evil]

WML is somewhat harder than HTML because there is no decent software around that can replace the hard task of basically doing it on wordpad/notepad. Adobe dreamweaver and Microsoft frontpage is just a few of the well known html editing/designing software.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Bah, I do it from scratch for HTML. Good ol' text editing.

[AI]

frontpage is complete horror for well-formed html though, as are most graphical html-editors.

[irrevenant]

I found campgen pretty confusing - it was actually easier for me to learn some basic WML than to get campgen to work right.

This probably depends a lot on how programming-minded you are. Someone with even basic experience programming will probably find it easier to wade into the WML (though I find some of it quite counter-intuitive), but without those basic skills you'll generally find WML to be incomprehensible gibberish and campgen is a lot easier.

I actually suspect Campgen is designed a little too much with WML in mind. Particularly in managing events it sometimes seems like a direct interface to the WML when it might be better off using a more abstract interface that could be converted to WML.

Mind you, this is vague recollection based on the time I used Campgen a year or so back, so don't give it too much weight. And like I said, Campgen is still in an early version.

[Dveman115]

WML is somewhat harder than HTML because there is no decent software around that can replace the hard task of basically doing it on wordpad/notepad. Adobe dreamweaver and Microsoft frontpage is just a few of the well known html editing/designing software.

HTML? Where did that come from? WML is only good for one thing, wesnoth. We have some syntax highlighting programs, and DB0 made a auto-insert thing, so what you said is not entirely true. But if it means that much to you, then go and code and wml IDE.

Eh.

[shevegen]

The problem is WML. XML is and can never be a language for humans. Ok, simple XML is acceptable but XML always has a tendency to get more and more complicated.

What I would propose is design a SIMPLE GUI client for campaigns/scenarios with all events etc.., and from this point on decide what and how the language would need/require to.

I have given up to use WML, but I may write my own wrapper towards it in ruby (and a human readable domain specific language to it), but ultimately my biggest problem is lack of time to do the research. Time is really the biggest problem, I guess if i invest some hours I could do this easily.

BTW I consider myself quite good at coding now, but I would never want to code in a non-human readable overly verbose language. I think WML itself violates the spirit of keeping something simple - I think it could be made simpler.

Take unit data itself. This could be written in yaml.
Take event logic. This could be written in a pseudo language.

if event_happens
do_something

Why the need to use those horrible < tags at all?
Btw dont take this rant too serious. I like to rant, I just want people to really consider why WML is actually used and why its so difficult to use or fix things.

[appleide]

Code: Select all

if event_happens 
do_something 

Why the need to use those horrible < tags at all? 
Btw dont take this rant too serious. I like to rant, I just want people to really consider why WML is actually used and why its so difficult to use or fix things.

That example can easily be translated to:

Code: Select all

[event]
trigger
[do_something]
[/do_something]
[/event]

Yes I know, a lot of typing. =)

[Dave]

Take unit data itself. This could be written in yaml.

I think that YAML is actually significantly more complicated than WML for a casual user who is familiar with neither.. YAML has a reasonably strict syntax, and all sorts of rules about types and when you have to put things in quotes.

What's wrong with WML by comparison? Just that you have to use square brackets? Is that your objection?

Take event logic. This could be written in a pseudo language.

As soon as a computer has to parse a language, it is, by definition, no longer a pseudo-language.

What you'd have done is created a programming language. We have plenty of feedback from users of WML that they don't want it to become like a programming language, because they feel programming languages are too confusing.

David