Old ideas

Got a cool idea that should be in R'n'D? Let's hear it!

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Tomi
Posts: 339
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:37 pm
Location: Slovakia

Old ideas

Post by Tomi »

I'm not sure what's the proper etiquette in this situation: should I revive *very* old threads, or create new ones? I decided to create one thread that lists them.
Anyway, I digress. There are several ideas that were left unimplemented, and possibly forgotten. (But I can't be sure about that, and if this thread doesn't have a purpose, please tell me.)

For now, these are all ideas proposed by me, because I remember those most. ;-) If I find more interesting ones, I may add them here. If others do, I encourage them to add them as well.

1. Extended change target - replace always
Sometimes you need to destroy an indestructible object. Can be useful for "loaders" like Game Inside, Zelda I/II, and The World Maker.
This feature can be implemented very easily: CP_WHEN_DESTRUCTIBLE is in the RnD codebase three times in total. @Holger: I may even write a patch myself if you want :-) . I suspect this wasn't implemented simply because Holger didn't notice the original thread.

2. A scrollbar for editor tabbed screens (only mentioned in the original topic)
Some other features were rejected because there's not enough space on the "change" tab. Yes, there are cases when it's not worth the effort, but come on, we can't reject every "change"-related feature in the future because there's not enough space in the editor! A scrollbar would help.
Also, it would mean that "config 1" and "config 2" could be merged, which is IMHO a good thing. The split between the two is arbitrary and confusing.
Of course, this can wait. I'm sure there are much more important features to focus on, and until this is really needed, it isn't really needed. :-)

3. A condition, "player presses drop key on element" (original topic discussed other ideas at the begining)
I think I probably wasn't able to explain this properly before. I'll try again.
Zelda II uses the snap key ("action key") for various interesting things that don't have anything to do with actually snapping objects. What if something similar could be done with the drop key? I propose a condition "player presses drop key on me", which fires when the player presses the drop key while standing on something, and "player presses drop key on element X". (These are analogous similarly to "pressed by player" and "player presses X", "touched by player" and "player touches X", etc.)
Another example: In "Edit Inside" from rnd_jue, when you want to "edit inside", the procedure is like this: you snap the field where you want to place the object, emptying it, and use "drop" on the empty field to place it. (If you don't understand, play it.) On the other hand, consider this:
element changes to (my CE score) when:
- player presses drop key on me
To place an element on a map field, you simply move there and press "drop". (The example assumes "my CE score" contains the code of the currently selected element.) That would be much simpler that what we have now.
There are many other uses (for some examples, see the original topic). The "player snaps element X" feature, which was proposed alongside this one, was already implemented in 3.2.0, and we can see how useful it was. So why not this one?

Thank you for your time. Maybe I'm making too many too long posts in a too little timeframe...
Zomis
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Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2004 1:27 pm
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Re: Old ideas

Post by Zomis »

I like the idea of this thread. I've had the ambition to do so myself, see this thread but sooner or later, I've stopped updating it. The above thread hasn't been updated for more than two years. :(
Tomi wrote:I suspect this wasn't implemented simply because Holger didn't notice the original thread.
I suspect this hasn't been implemented because Holger finds it not logical to replace something indestructible. I am of the opinion though that level designers, being the ones that has 100% control over their levels, should have the possibility to both create something indestructible, and also destroying that indestructible thing again.
Has anyone tried a CE being indestructible and that changes to empty space (or something destructible) on a specific condition by the way? Anyways, I still think that the idea Tomi mentions is the best one, and I believe it isn't too complicated to implement.
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