Sophie: xconq-7.5.0-1.20050612.5mdv2009.1 i586

xconq-7.5.0-1.20050612.5mdv2009.1.i586.rpm

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<!-- This HTML file has been created by texi2html 1.39
     from ./hacking.texi on 12 June 2005 -->

<TITLE>Hacking Xconq - Game Designer Tools</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Go to the <A HREF="hacking_1.html">first</A>, <A HREF="hacking_22.html">previous</A>, <A HREF="hacking_24.html">next</A>, <A HREF="hacking_35.html">last</A> section, <A HREF="hacking_toc.html">table of contents</A>.
<HR>


<H2><A NAME="SEC25" HREF="hacking_toc.html#SEC25">Game Designer Tools</A></H2>

<P>
An interface is not required to provide any sort of online designing
tools, or even to provide a way to enable the special design privileges.
Nevertheless, minimal tools can be very helpful, and you will often find
that they are helpful in debugging the rest of the interface, since you
can use them to construct test cases at any time.

</P>
<P>
A basic set of design tools should include a way to enable and disable
designing for at least one side, a command to create units of a given
type, and some sort of tool to set the terrain type at a given location.
A full set would include "painting" tools for all area layers,
including geographical features, materials, weather, side views, and so
forth - about a dozen in all.

</P>
<P>
A least one level of undo for designer actions is very desirable,
although it may be hard to implement.  A useful rule for layers is to
save a layer's previous state at the beginning of each painting or other
modification action, when the mouse button first goes down.

</P>
<P>
The designer will often want to save only the part of the game being
worked on, for instance only the units or only the terrain.  The "save
game" action should give designers a choice about what to save.  For
units particularly, the designer should be able to save only some
properties of units.  The most basic properties are type, location,
side, and name/number.  The unit id should not be saved by default, but
should have its own option (not clear why).

</P>
<P>
Note that because game modules are textual and can be moved easily from
one system to another, it is entirely possible to use one <I>Xconq</I>
(perhaps on a Mac) to design games to be played on a Unix box under X11,
or vice versa.  This means that the interface should always save the
designer's work as an ordinary text file if possible, so as not to
require any further manipulation.

</P>
<P>
Likewise, any image design tools should have some sort of option to save
as text, so that the imagery for a game design can be used on every
platform that the design can.

</P>

<HR>
Go to the <A HREF="hacking_1.html">first</A>, <A HREF="hacking_22.html">previous</A>, <A HREF="hacking_24.html">next</A>, <A HREF="hacking_35.html">last</A> section, <A HREF="hacking_toc.html">table of contents</A>.
</BODY>
</HTML>