Easier way to create new units and races

[Zachron]

A race profile consists solely of a descripion of what the race is in the following categories:

*Singlular, plural, and adjective form's of the race's creature or ethnic form,

*definitions of movement and resisance types for said race,

*default reesistances for said race(are used if a resistance rating is not defined),

*trait-sets available to that race,

*male and female names for said race.

Afterwards it's a matter of making a bunch of units of that race. That's the hard part, and the hard part of that is art and animation.

[thespaceinvader]

So how do you suggest making it easier?

[Zachron]

Eh, I don't. It's in my opinion hardly difficult at all, it just takes a small bit of determination. Making it "easier" would just mean that races could be put together by lazy people. Then there's the issue of it being incredibly difficult to create units and artwork for said races, especially if the designer of the race has little to no artistic talent. WML is user friendly compared to other markup languages. I don't see the point in making race creation that much easier. The creation of races is an effort that usually has more than one person and more than one week just coming up with a list of male and female names... So the difference in all the other aspects is a matter of a few hours vs. a few minutes (20 hours vs. 20 minutes perhaps), but the compiling of a list of names Is probably the most exhausting aspect(before you get to the art), and there is no way to make it any easier. (except perhaps to google names from earth cultures you're basing said race on)

In short, it's easy enough, and the only parts we can make easier are the easy parts anyway.

[thespaceinvader]

So your idea is...?

[Iris]

So his idea is that what the OP proposed is not as necessary as suggested.

[Gambit]

visual basic programs can save rich text in any file format (Such as .cfg) you could make boxes to fill in and what not for the different attributes. this would be a cake walk to make.

the big problem with your character generator idea isnt the attributes, its the art. some units have more animation than others. some less. some dont even have animation. then theres the timing of the frames, making sure the user doesnt point to an invalid image, BLAG!

im fairly certain i could make a program that handeled a SINGLE image for the unit and could create all the attributes and 2 attacks. but units without animation are fugly. i would be ashamed to be the reason for twice as many lazy half baked units floating around wesnoths addon server.

[Mabuse]

Here is a simple unit type WML generator.
If you think this is useful, I can add more attributes.

hey, this can be even useful

in any case it can be useful to make quick some new rwa data, guess i may use it.

[BroodKiller]

In short, it's easy enough, and the only parts we can make easier are the easy parts anyway.

This is really an interesting point...I was considering writing a kind of an editor to facilitate the process, but it seems that there is no big need for that, at least at the level of basic properties, since WML indeed is as straighforward as it gets. Also, those who can produce quality addons would barely benefit from it at all, while the count of the said "lazy half baked units" would quite probably skyrocket. The only field that seems to be able to profit from tool assistance is the art animation control, do I get it right?

[Zachron]

I'm not sayign the editor idea is in and of itself bad. If it had a unit editor, and tools for setting up animation frames, that would be wonderful, but, in all of this, the hardest part of all is not setting up the animation, but having the frames to put said animations actually exist. At times I wonder if it woudl be better to have stick figures than to have one well-drawn single-framed sprite... but that's a whole other can of worms.

[Iron_Force]

hmmmmm.... made myself a Era is a good idea... But, we can see a lot of Era, and no think "What era is the best" is more harder to think that.

Unit Editor is a greater idea

Needs know Programing to make a New era in the Add on or make us self a era i have a lot of Ideas, but i dont know make a era, and summit that in the add ons

[Velensk]

Realy you can figure out how to make things, just by looking at the code that does so.

Infact, in a way, the lack of a unit editor acts as a bit of a filter.

[dontano]

I prefer the old way of making units. A text editor by itself leaves more opportunities and liberty, rather than being forced to handle just a single image with no animation frames. No offense, but the editor could be improved, if there's a lot of request for it.
Cheers

[BroodKiller]

Well, text-based editing has one fundamental advantage over the GUI-based counterpart: it's much more versatile. If the data format undergoes a change (which happens more often than not in a project like Wesnoth), all you need to do is reflect the change in the source text, whereas in the latter case you may end up having to change the editor's GUI and recompile it alltogether. Of course, this can be remedied through a clever design based on dynamic format reading and interface configuration, but then again - this format has to be stored somewhere...in a text file, for example.

My point here is that if something works very well and there is little to no need to attempt to make it better (in terms of real improvements, not just optimizations), there is a risk that doing so is a waste of time. It may be that the best one could invent to improve on a text-based editing method is only...to make a dedicated text editor. WesnothPad anyone?

[foolius]

I don't think this one is a waste of time. I've created my own era, faction, and units. I do think it is a pain, for most normal users. It's not that it's really hard -- but that it could be easier.

I think what would be nice is a way for people who are playtesting new ideas for eras/factions/units, to be able to do it quickly, substituting old units and taking pieces from new ones. Yes, the artwork is the big one -- but even simply being able to quickly load in artwork from an existing (or even artwork from an old obsolete unit) would be great for testing. Maybe you grab the old 1.3 ghost artwork to test out your new spirit faction or something. Maybe the editor comes with a lot of old artwork so that you can quickly put in the unit's stats, and also select from a list of pictures.

If you don't want non-technical users to flood the system with half-baked ideas, then yes, I think avoiding this is a good strategy. But I think there is also something to be said for letting people's creativity go wild.

(And this suggestion goes many times over for a simple campaign and scenario editor. Just being able to connect maps, scenarios, between-scenario-cutscenes, and campaigns for non-technical people would be so, so, so great)

sigh

Ok and I want elephants to fly out of my butt. Thanks developers -- I know you've got a lot of things to do.

[Turuk]