It havent been much updates here lately, but we are still working in silence
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
I have been focusing on the mapeditor for beta3, which will be a big upgrade from the previous mapeditor.
The goal for the new mapeditor is simplicity. We are now using extra layers to draw the borders of all terrain, so it will be much easier to build. No need to worry about top-left-corner terrain-tile etc. So every terraintype only has one button for it in the editor.
As for roads I have implemented "smartroads" functionality. The same way as other terrain, there is only 1 roadbutton to use in the editor, and then the editor will calculate if it should be a turn, a straight road or a crossroad and place the correct tile.
To get a variety of terrain we are using 2 diffrent technicues.
First is the random tile: When placing a tile, the mapeditor will randomly pick one of a set of tiles for that terraintype, each defined with its own probability, so some can be more rare than others.
And secondly we use "bigtile"-functionality. The mapeditor tries to figure out if it is a big field of the terraintype you are placing, and will then replace tiles with a bigtile. The bigtiles are special tiles that are built from several small tiles (like 3x3 or 4x4) which will give us the possibility to create more variety in the terrain, like big mountains etc...
The water and shore placement follow the simplicty goal also, when placing a watertile it will automatically calculate what shores to place around it to make it fit. The same goes for placing land-terrain on water. These calculations are a bit heavy though, so using chrome is probably recommended.
Still to do on the mapeditor is:
The placement of bridges (on water), which will be placed using the same road-technicue.
Placement of Anchors
Startingcity positions (random or the placed by the mapeditor)
Cityproductions etc
Finalize-procedure