STICKY: Dungeon Craft Editor Feature Requests

[ProphetSword]

Being able to edit while seeing what it looks like would be ideal, but you take what you can get.

Cool!  I'm not a programmer, so I've never used any of those languages.  I believe DC uses C++ with MFC graphics.  It appears to me that the editor only uses one font, and the engine only uses one font.  I have no idea what is needed to add another font or multiple fonts.  If we could swing it, I'd really like to have an editor that read the config file and adjusted to match it.

It really depends on how it was programmed, but adding different fonts shouldn't be too difficult.  I mean, you can easily do it in this text field, for example. 

[Paul R. Stevens]

Even 'easy' things take a lot of time.
If you folks were customers.....paying for
these features, we could hire more help and
get a lot of these 'easy' things done.  But
there is only one of me.  And, like you, I am
unable to put 18 hours a day into DC
development.

Right now I have just volunteered for about
a week's work (like 40 hours) in an attempt to
make it more possible for people to share their
efforts.  And this is certainly not the only task
that the project requires.  So priorities must
be determined and acted upon. 

Since there is only one of me, the way everyone
else can contribute is to learn to deal with some
of the idiosyncrasies of the editor and engine.
The time you spend diddling with text subtracts
from the amount of time I would have to spend
attempting to provide a better editor.  So your
time is really contributing to the project as a
whole.  I appreciate that.  The credits should
probably reflect this fact.

[Dinonykos]

As written earlier in the other thread, some of the editor windows, particularly the event-editor window, are very small. It would be great if they could be bigger, or resizable.

I also want to underline Steve's point concerning the auto-darkening. It would be better if only the walls were darkened. Alternatively, it would be cool to have daytime and nighttime walls...

I will probably have some more points when experimenting with the newest editor version.

[nologgie]

As written earlier in the other thread, some of the editor windows, particularly the event-editor window, are very small. It would be great if they could be bigger, or resizable.

Resizable would be nice to have.  (The editor res is resizable in Mode\ Editor Options, but it doesn't affect the event editor window, et al.)  I still use a CRT monitor at 800x600 res so I can play DOS games without DOSBox or VM stuff, so I hope it remains small enough to display on my desktop PC.  If I'm the only one I'll adjust, but I doubt it's just me.

[steve_mcdee]

Feature Request:

An option within the editor (Global Settings) to change the executable file name for the design. This can of course be done manually outside the editor but the important point is that "testing" the design from within the editor should launch the nominated executable file.

[manikus]

I don't really have anything to add to this conversation. But, as well as being on the Development team, I'm also the DC historian.
For those of you that don't know, Richard Turner started DC in 1999, when it's title was Unlimited Adventures Forever, or UAF - which is why we still use a UAFWin.exe and UAFWinEdit.exe
DC went open source on SourceForge.net in 2000 at which time it became officially known as Dungeon Craft. At the time, there was another project also called Unlimited Adventures Forever and they had apparently gotten the name first or were more active, or something, I'm not to clear on this point.

Why do I bring all of this up? In 2000, the code was being written and compiled with MS Visual Studio 6 using MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class) as the graphics base. There has not been an upgrade from MFC since then. Nor has the editor been rewritten since then (not counting necessary additions).
For the year 2000, this look totally rocked!
Paul is quite modest in my opinion, since the beginning, there were ever only two committed programmers writing the code - himself and Richard Turner, the creator of DC. There have been several others who have helped out, notably David Downing who made it possible for DC to operate in the higher resolutions.

Okay kids, that's enough for today's lesson.

[Nol Drek]

The "W", "B", "E", "Z", "P", and "S" buttons have 'hover' text that appears when you hold the cursor over them, which is how I first discovered their functions.

There seems to be enough available real estate on the screen to make those buttons say:

"Walls", "Backdrops", "Events", "Zones", "Entry Points", and "Starting Location".

Whether they are chosen from a ComboBox or are mutually exclusive Radio Buttons makes little difference to me. Buttons which one must mouse over to see their function are not user friendly. The buttons when you post in this forum clearly say "Post", "Preview", and "Spell Check".

Buttons always have text labels that make their functions clear, except in the Dungeon Craft Editor.

Aside from a few additions and Pass Through Walls being in the Editor Options submenu with some other useful things, it's pretty much identical to what Nol Drek asked for.

I realize that the menus at the top of the screen provide access to all the functions a designer needs when working with DC. But having:

"File", "Mode", "Global", "Level", "Database", "View", "Help"

in a tiny font is much less user-friendly and intuitive then FRUA's three big honking drop down menus:

"File", "Map", "Utilities"

[Paul R. Stevens]

 
 
 
But everything has a price.

[steve_mcdee]

Which I think must mean: we can change the buttons to words not letters, but let's leave the menus as they are. At least, that's what I'd do.

[manikus]

I think Paul meant that my soul was slowly being consumed by this.

Paul, any cosmetic changes, I can handle, but we'll see what they think of the price when I show them what I come up with.

Tom - this is your chance buddy to directly influence me on the 800x600 editor, which is right now 799x633 pixels on my XP system, and would be 799x600 not counting the Windows added title.
I hate using the 1024x768 res editor on my desktop, because it also is slightly too big, and I have to scroll down to see all the wall choices. I may fix that while I'm at it.

The price for bigger menus and buttons? smaller area view map size.

[nologgie]

There seems to be enough available real estate on the screen to make those buttons say:

"Walls", "Backdrops", "Events", "Zones", "Entry Points", and "Starting Location".

There is plenty of space, but I believe the buttons on the toolbar are icons handled by the MFC code.  They have the standard 'mouse over' balloons and the toolbar can be turned on or off in the View menu.  If someone here knows a way to make wide icons work in a toolbar we can have names.  Making a drop-down menu would enable words, but we already have drop-down menus, and I prefer buttons for shortcuts.  We could also change them to graphics like the Open and Save buttons.  Other options are to turn off the toolbar by default so new users will look at the menus first, or to delete the toolbar and build something different.

Note:  The menus don't look like FRUA's, but they do look like those µSoft has used on their programs for many years.  I think most users will be familiar with the look and function by now.

The "FILE, MAP, UTILITIES" mentioned are on the module editing page.  The DC editor does everything from one page so we'll need some of the menus from FRUA's front page and maybe one or more for things peculiar to DC.  View and Help go with the format.

Can the menu headings be set to bold?  That might help the appearance.

How about we make some mock-up screens showing how we'd like the editor to look and post them here?

[manikus]

Mock-ups are definitely what we need.
I started on one specifically for the Backdrop placement mode and will expand it as I find the time. I'm not going to go anywhere changing the editor's look at all until I know what I'm changing it to.

[Milos Gulan]

I like editor as it is now, I am not sure about the changing but it might be for better then again it might not. Anyway as long as it is for better I am for it but not that I know much about all that

[nologgie]

Big Honking Menu Headings
are possible in DC right now!

The bad news is:
-  It's done in windows "Display Properties / Appearance / Advanced / Menu" (Names may vary by OS edition).
-  It's done on a "by computer" basis.
-  It affects every program that uses Microsoft Foundation Class.

I'm still looking into the possibility of wide icons.

[manikus]

There is a bit of an issue with fonts in VStudio - I am not looking at it right now, so there might be a way to work around this, but I have been faced with global font options. Either everything is small or everything is big. I'm sure there must be a way to work around this.

Also, I am 90% positive that I can make wide buttons/icons work.