I am working on a new map editor for the remasters

jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

I am in the process of writing new a map editor for the remasters.
Why am I doing this? The current options all have limitations. Lets look at those options:
1.The Petroglyph editor that is included with the remaster. Not the easiest to use. Has a number of bugs and missing items. Its basically impossible to extend if you add new things in a mod and want to place them on a map. No indication that Petroglyph plan to either open source their editor (nice as that would be) or to put any real work into improving it.

2.Edwin by westwood. VERY limited feature set. Doesn't seem to work when I try to run the exe from my Origin copy of the game (asks for a CD). Doesn't support the remasters (the new things the remasters need, the remaster graphics, things you add in mods etc). Red Alert only.

3.RAED. Also doesn't support the remaster stuff and also red alert only. Closed source and not extensible.

4.CCMAP. No remaster support, possibly limited features, TD only. Closed source and not extensible.

5.XCC Editor. No remaster support, not the easiest to use. Open source but the XCC codebase is a nightmare to work so its not even worth trying to modify or extend this. Also TD only.

6.The inbuilt scenario editor (that is included in the source drops) as part of a vanilla "direct replacement for the original exe" project. No remaster support, not necessarily designed for ease-of-use and subject to the limitations of the 25yo in-game UI code.

7.The inbuilt scenario editor as part of a more comprehensive upgrade to the codebase. Still suffers from limitations of the original 25yo source (unless you rewrite lots of it which takes effort and time).

and 8.The inbuilt scenario editor as part of a dll mod for the remaster itself. This is a non-starter, the dll doesn't get enough access to the GlyphX engine to even try it (and there are far too many things hardcoded in the GlyphX side to make this happen).

As for my new editor, its written in C++ using plain win32 for the UI, GDI+ for the graphics rendering, FreeImage for image loading, miniz for zip file handling and pugixml for XML parsing.

The code is available at https://github.com/jonwil/remasteredit and is licensed under the GPL3 (same license as the remaster source code which I am using bits of)

I am aiming to keep it clean and modern using all the latest C++ features that make sense to use without doing the things that can make programs super-complex.

The goal is to render things in the same way the engine renders them (e.g. team colors) and not hard-code things if they don't need to be hardcoded (reading directly from the meg files, xml files and other remaster files). Its hopefully going to be easy to modify and extend whilst having none of the limitations and bugs of the Petroglyph editor. (and being C++ it should also theoretically be faster than the C# Petroglyph used although just how much difference it makes these days I dont know)

Right now when you stick the editor in the remaster game folder and run it you can load a map (td or ra) and it will render the contents on screen (so far it renders map tile templates, smudges, overlays, terrain and buildings). You can also zoom in and out and scroll around.

Attached is a screenshot of what I have so far.

I an hoping there are other people out there who want to help out with this project (especially C++ programmers but also people who can e.g. help design the UI or provide feedback or otherwise be useful to the project)

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CCHyper · Defense Minister **Joined**: 07 Apr 2005

Nice work Jonwil, glad to see some progress!

jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

I just finished adding aircraft support.
This is now the first map editor (even if it can't actually edit anything yet) for TD/RA that can properly render the rotor blades on helicopters (none of the previous editors even tried to render the rotor blades)

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Banshee · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 3:40 am Post subject:

Great job so far. Keep it up! Smile

Nyerguds · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:47 am Post subject:

jonwil wrote:

I just finished adding aircraft support.
This is now the first map editor (even if it can't actually edit anything yet) for TD/RA that can properly render the rotor blades on helicopters (none of the previous editors even tried to render the rotor blades)

Just posting this here since I dunno which places you check most, but...

All map editors that have added aircraft to them are making a mistake; it has never been possible to place aircraft in maps. The section reading code exists, but doesn't work properly, and has always been disabled.

I enabled that once as experiment, and found out that aircraft spawn in mid-air, and that makes the game bug out and never properly mark the spawn cell as available for moving on it, creating a permanently impassable cell on the map.

All aircraft found landed in missions will have been reinforced by triggers on mission start.

I don't know about RA, but I suspect it's the same there.

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Gangster · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 10:51 am Post subject:

It would be nice to have it possible now with auto-script once placed on map Smile

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pchote · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 06 Feb 2015

Nyerguds wrote:

I enabled that once as experiment, and found out that aircraft spawn in mid-air, and that makes the game bug out and never properly mark the spawn cell as available for moving on it, creating a permanently impassable cell on the map.

I imagine that somebody in the community will eventually fix this bug in the original code. It makes good sense to have a map editor ready to take advantage of the feature once it is fixed.

Oofjay · Civilian **Joined**: 15 Jul 2020

Good stuff! An open-source, community made map editor is a good idea. I'm willing to help test and give feedback, if necessary, or perhaps contribute to the code.

I am having problem with opening a map though, when I load one in the new editor, it just crashes. I'm using GDI mission 14 as a random example (I've included it as an attachment).

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jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

You need both the .ini and the .bin files for a TD map if you want it to load properly.

Oofjay · Civilian **Joined**: 15 Jul 2020

Thanks, that did it.

jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

I have now finished implementing all the display logic. Vessels in red alert now render properly (including the correct turrets on the cruiser, gunboat and destroyer) as do vehicles (including all the different health states'/turret rotations of the GDI Gunboat, the special case colors for the Nod MCV and harvester and the spinning/animating bits on the Mobile HQ, Mobile Gap Generator, Mobile Radar Jammer and Tesla Tank) and infantry.

What I need now is some help from people who know UI/UX stuff and can come up with a good decent UI design (perhaps by pointing me at examples of good UI/UX in other map editors that I can then rip-off/replicate.

Mortecha · Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 3:10 am Post subject:

For UI dev, Godot is an interesting option and believe it or not good for broader application dev as well. However, you would have to embed your source inside it as native C++ addons then you can handle the events and UI with C#. As a byproduct, you make the application cross-platform without having to resort to using Qt, GTK, wxWidgets, etc etc.

jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

I have already settled on C++, win32 and GDI+ for the UI and graphics and will not be using C#, godot, .NET, winforms, WPF, QT, GTK, wxWidgets or any other UI toolkit.
And cross platform isn't even a thing I care about at this point since this is a map editor being built for a game that only runs on Windows.

Mortecha · Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 10:25 am Post subject:

Fair enough, I had these opinions years ago for tool creation strictly C++, Win32 etc. Good work so far though.

Nope, works fine outside of windows as well:P

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jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

well if the game works on your system via WINE or similar, my editor should be able to work via the same method.

jonwil · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 24 Jul 2005

It took a lot of work but now you can place templates in your map (and remove them and etc).
No save functionality yet but its still progress Smile

Nyerguds · Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:39 pm Post subject:

pchote wrote:

Nyerguds wrote:

I enabled that once as experiment, and found out that aircraft spawn in mid-air, and that makes the game bug out and never properly mark the spawn cell as available for moving on it, creating a permanently impassable cell on the map.

I imagine that somebody in the community will eventually fix this bug in the original code. It makes good sense to have a map editor ready to take advantage of the feature once it is fixed.

I disagree. If something like that is ever modded in, then it can always be reactivated in the editor, but leaving it in by default is just asking for users getting frustrated about a feature not working.

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chimas · Civilian **Joined**: 21 Mar 2021

Hi,
There's a long time I don't come here in PPM site and discovered some interesting things going on here. I find it interesting to have an editor that renders better because I have many maps to edit from the HUGE Collection and the fixes I made in the XCC era, now in the Remastered edition became flawed or "glitched" and I'll have to reedit them.

I hope you have the time to develop this project more frequently, I'll probably going to be the main customer. If you can forward your project to allow map editing and saving, sooner than other features it would be great. By that, I mean only interacting with the BIN file, although supported by the INI file.

If I'm asking too much, it's ok. Just a feedback.
Anyways, thanks for this project.

CircuitLord444 · Guest

Win32 for the UI? Ambitious, but perhaps a tad... cumbersome. You'll spend more time wrestling with window messages than actually innovating. Consider a cross-platform framework, something like Qt or wxWidgets. It'll save you headaches in the long run Cool

Nyerguds · Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2024 4:33 pm Post subject: Re: Map Editor for the Remasters

CircuitLord444 wrote:

Win32 for the UI? Ambitious, but perhaps a tad... cumbersome. You'll spend more time wrestling with window messages than actually innovating. Consider a cross-platform framework, something like Qt or wxWidgets. It'll save you headaches in the long run Cool

Cross-platform? For a Windows game? I don't see the point, really.

I don't think Jonwil is still working on this editor; the last commit to his repository was 4 years ago. I have since taken up the task of instead upgrading the map editor included in the remaster, or rather, Rampastring's fork of it, and that project (Mobius Map Editor) is still under active development to this day, with a new version on the horizon. This editor is capable of using either the remaster files, or the original classic files.

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