Off-line Ring editor?
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 4:33 pm
**EDIT** As I suspected, even breathing on the ring file will get you killed/banned/excommunicated. Badly! Ah well, it was an interesting thought experiment...Perhaps Ryzom will consider making a tool based on these ideas? Maybe not.
Several people have suggested the idea of an off-line editor for Ring scenarios. I have two questions regarding this:
The disadvantages?
Ultimately though, I'm really not sure the effort to create an editor would be worthwhile; it is just an idea that I am ruminating on. I am aware that I've just scratched the surface with my pros and cons list above. Certainly, it does seem to be a lot of work to re-invent the wheel, especially if the Ring devs have any any remote posibility of creating such a tool (or indeed, of improving the current tool, which is more likely).
(My resume, in case you think this is entirely pie-in-the-sky (Though from this, you may still have your doubts): 12 months commercial C++/C# experience (though currently unemployed); Developed a Javascript interpreter as a major academic project at University).
**EDIT** Oh, and I don't consider this a task worth starting until the current insecurity is resolved, before anyone reminds me of that ;P
Several people have suggested the idea of an off-line editor for Ring scenarios. I have two questions regarding this:
- Is one even being considered, even as a remote possibility, by the Ring devs?
- If it weren't being considered, and should someone develop their own off-line editor, for personal or public use, then would it be considered "hacking the game", thus presumably leading to an account ban?
- You wouldn't be tying up a SoR account just to edit things.
- You could edit on any machine, even one on which does not, or could not, run Saga of Ryzom, e.g. A laptop which was not connected to the Internet.
- You could incorporate a more advanced text-editor with integrated spell-checker (Please! A spell-checker!).
- You could change an npc/creatures's level after its creation, possibly even changing its type too.
- You could change manual/automatic seasons mode.
- You could change the order of acts.
- You could see all events at once.
- Make copies of events and non-NPC entities.
- You could have more than one window open at a time.
- Allow simple scripts to be written, which would then be parsed and converted into the "accessible" components (Personally, as a coder, I find text editing a lot faster than the "accessible" drag-and-drop/menu-driven approach).
- You could produce a more easily navigable/linked tree structure for a scenario, e.g.
- +Entities
- +Creatures
- +Fred
- -Properties
- -Sequences
- +Events
- WHEN Fred.is_targetted
AND Dialog: Fred.is_not_running
THEN Dialog: Fred.start() - WHEN Fred.is_killed
THEN Fred's Killer Guard Yubo.spawn()
- WHEN Fred.is_targetted
- +Fred's Killer Guard Yubo
- +Properties
- Autospawned: No
- -Sequences
- +Events
- WHEN Fred.is_killed
THEN Fred's Killer Guard Yubo.spawn()
- WHEN Fred.is_killed
- +Properties
- +Fred
- +Dialogs
- -Dialog: Fred
- +Creatures
- -Objects
- -Events
- +Entities
The disadvantages?
- You'd still need to make most of the scenario in the on-line editor. This would be for completing/changing/updating scenarios only.
- Testing would be impossible. Even an official off-line editor would need to incorporate a lot of the server code to achieve this, which is unlikely to happen (though I expect that an official off-line editor could show you your scenario, even if it couldn't run it for testing).
- No map, so new objects/entities probably couldn't be added (but could be changed). Well, this isn't strictly true, since the XY coordinates of all items would be known - one just wouldn't know the maximum extent of the map or its features. One could, for example, allow new Dialog entities to be placed "near" to an NPC without a lot of trouble.
- High probability for mistakes entering the file, especially if file-format is backwards engineered...but, if the Ring has been developed properly, it should find these errors and refuse to run the file, rather than producing a crash (on loading or during play). Limitation on what editing features were provided would seriously reduce this risk.
- Anyone could edit a file, even if they lack the requisite Knowledge of Atys. They couldn't create a new one though.
Ultimately though, I'm really not sure the effort to create an editor would be worthwhile; it is just an idea that I am ruminating on. I am aware that I've just scratched the surface with my pros and cons list above. Certainly, it does seem to be a lot of work to re-invent the wheel, especially if the Ring devs have any any remote posibility of creating such a tool (or indeed, of improving the current tool, which is more likely).
(My resume, in case you think this is entirely pie-in-the-sky (Though from this, you may still have your doubts): 12 months commercial C++/C# experience (though currently unemployed); Developed a Javascript interpreter as a major academic project at University).
**EDIT** Oh, and I don't consider this a task worth starting until the current insecurity is resolved, before anyone reminds me of that ;P