First posted on the
Radakan Boards.
From WorldTool to MonkeyWorld3DWe discussed this, and a lot of us were of the opinion that WorldTool should be completely independent as a terrain editor, usable by anyone, so that we could promote and distribute it as its own stand-alone software. Then MW3D came along. We basically decided against the use of MW3D to begin with, due to its considerable lacks in ease-of-use (...). Then the developers approached us however, and as we got to know them better, we realized that they really wanted the exact same things as we did, they just really needed some actual game projects to put their software to use because MW3D had never really been tested and used by the kind of people & projects they had been aiming for all this time.
Radakan's main agenda with this collaboration is in two parts:
- Greatly enhance MW3D's userfriendlyness - We will be trying to aquire a level designer for creation of our game levels. An experienced level designer will be used to terraining software such as for instance CryEngine's Sandbox Editor, or Warcraft3's WorldEditor. Our challenge will be to make MW3D as straight-forward as possibly for anyone who's already familiar with the aforementinoed kind of terrain editors.
- Extend MW3D's capabilities as a terrain editor - Looking just at functionality and not at ease-of-use, MW3D is already on-par with WorldTool as far as terrain editing goes. We will make great efforts to help MW3D further advance on this field, with editors like WorldTool as solid reference.
As said earlier, MW3D wants the same things we do. As far as userfriendlyness goes though, they can and
should take it even further than just "developer-friendly". They should strive to make MW3D as accessible as possible by
any kind of game enthusiast, the same way the Wc3 World Editor allows any newbie with a mouse to create a first-time map in minutes. This goes beyond just improving the editor:
- Simple executable-file installs, easy-to-find through the website.
- Extensive documentation and tutorials.
- Autoupdates or at least a notification of new updates being out.
- Lots of demo-content to play with (free textures, models, GFX etc.)
- Moddable games - This is where projects like us come in. The amazing thing about the Wc3 WE is that there's already a complete game behind it. The WE's GUI gives the user a light start with some simple manipulations, easily advancing to complex coding, resulting in drastic modifications of the original Wc3 game. This is what makes playing around with terrain editors worth while.
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