posted May 19, 2001 15:36

I found below from a minor 1-page Civ-3 update at Gamespot:

quote: At the end of the demonstration, Firaxis also said it plans to ship a robust level editor with the game, which will give you much more freedom in the types of maps you can create.

Any ideas what this means, exactly? Level-editor? Not Scenario-editor or map-editor. Are they talking about 3D height-levels on the map, or what? Any ideas?

	posted May 19, 2001 16:02

"Level-editor" is industry-speak for "scenario editor" when applied to FPS games and so on. The use of it here is just a clumsy journalist's fumble, as is the "12000 terrain types".

	posted May 19, 2001 16:59

quote: Originally posted by Snapcase on 05-19-2001 04:02 PM "Level-editor" is industry-speak for "scenario editor" when applied to FPS games and so on. The use of it here is just a clumsy journalist's fumble, as is the "12000 terrain types".

Hmm! Your explanation sounds probable. I guess you are right. Anyway, even if one skip the 3D-landscape idea:

quote: ,which will give you much more freedom in the types of maps you can create.

My underlining. Amongst many other things, I guess it means that you are free to pin-point where resources shall appear in several layers. I also hope that it means that they have implemented one of my favourite ideas:

Allowing scenario/map-creators to manually dotting the map with ideal potential AI-city locations. These potential AI-city locations are invisible for the scenario-player, but the AI can ONLY found its cities on these pre-designated spots. Any AI-civ can start-out randomly from any spot, and spread out to other pre-designated spots in any direction - no limitations. But thanks to above, the AI doesnt have to be bothered with calculating optimal city-locations during the game - this have already been taken care for by the map-creator. This leads to ideally spaced out AI-cities, and therefore more efficient AI land-area exploitation.
Perhaps the scenario-creator also can choose if the human player should follow these pre-designated spots as well. IF so, the settler-unit is unavailable as a free-moving unit. The human player builds the corespondent amount of shields anyway and loses 2 pop-points, but the new city pops up later, on places pre-designated by the scenario-creator. This allows ultimate historical scenario-control. Above is of course optional - but it would be really nice if the scenario-creator had this type of geographical city-founding expansion-control - at least then it comes to AI-cives in historically accurate scenarios.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

	posted May 19, 2001 17:52

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 05:14 PM Certainly a number of articles have mentioned it in the terrain context.

Its strange that the guy talks about "freedom in the types of maps you can create". Even if he used jumbled-up industry-jargon (as Snapcase suggests), one would at least think that he should be consequently jumbled: "freedom in the types of levels [meaning scenarios] you can create". But he isnt: he talks specifically about MAPS. Oh well, I guess we all just have to wait and see then.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]