Ryandor.com

My latest thoughts regarding map editing revolves around the limitations of Dragon. As most everyone knows, Dragon can be very limited when it comes certain aspects. Namely, tweaks you do on the map are lost if you have to re-run the map through Dragon.

I'm currently working on a set of techniques to hopefully make up for this drawback.

One well known technique is the Fix file that you can sue with Dragon. Although I'm sure most map makers do not utilize it, due to the bug that it has. I have been successfully using this technique for many months without a problem, and I encourage people to learn about it and use it. It does make a lot more things possible. There is a post in the FAQ's about how it work if you are interested.

Another technique technique I am working on is the use of MapConvert (one of Eikon's tools) to place things in the map that Dragon may not be able to. MapConvert has the advantage of being able to define relatively easily, the equivelent of the colortable in Dragon, plus the ability to selectively choose what parts of the map you draw on. The downside is it doesn't do any translations (however, Eikon has another tool designed for it). The real power of it is in using it in combination with Dragon. These two program complement each other greatly.

As RoseThorn made notice of, another tool called DragonSCPCleaner fills another gap in the process by being able to automatically modify what statics DragonSP places.

By the time I get all this in place, there will be practically no manual tweaking required for any map creation. While WorldForge is an excellent tool for map editing, there really will be no reason to use it.

Of course all of this makes a bit more preperation work before and during the map making process, but it can be worth it in the long run as having to go back and fix something mulitple times can be more of a time waster than anything else.

Everything I've talked about will be covered in my new tutorial that I've started. If you've been thinking about starting a new map, then the best advice I can say at this point is if you can put it off a couple months until I finish the tutorial, all the better, as the face of map making is going to be changing for the better.

After the tutorial is finished, I'm going to revisit my mod. It will mainly be fixes of the problems I've encountered in the past. However, it will have a couple new features, and I'll be creating options for different configurations. One notable option with be cave floors. Currently optimized for caves under mountains, I'll be including the option of not placing statics cave tiles, as these interfere with caves in dungeons.

The only drawback to all this is for those already on the road, or have already completed maps that they want to edit. Unfortunetly, there's not as much of an incentive for those people to go back and essentially start from scratch to recreate the Fix file, and other files required for this process. But after the tutorial is finished, I'll be addressing that problem too.

That sounds like wonderfull news, Ryandor.

Although i am one of those people that are way too far into the current map i have been making to start it over, or even put it off for a couple months.. I plan on making at least one more map for the shard we are building to replace Ilishnar. And possibly one after that, to take the place of that "Tram/Fell" style facet. I have always felt that 2 of the same worlds in a different "facet" was a waste.

If there is any kind of help I can offer, testing stuff or whatever, concider it done.

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Forget what you know, know what you forget.

It's a shame we did our map without your mod and without a fixfile and before all this stuff Sounds like it woulda saved us tons of time. Great news for everyone else though