Dear developers,
I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for creating this post. As an experienced gaming modder with a passion for crafting large maps in Age of Empires 2 and 3, I have already built several maps, but I must say that the editor can be quite challenging to work with. Thank you for addressing these issues and striving to provide the community with a powerful tool that it can truly be.
Overall, the editor is good, but there are a few missing options and usability improvements, especially for modding beginners. Despite having a high-end system, I encountered three total crashes, spent over 10 hours debugging files, and invested more than 30 hours in just one map. The map I created is a high-resolution, maximum-sized map for 8 players, featuring two large water zones that separate the two sides and include tactical transitions. However, the biggest problem I faced was the lag. Whenever I tried to select an object, it felt like I had enough time to go grab a coffee due to the thousands of white 3D render lines that I couldn’t successfully disable. This made it nearly impossible to stack objects precisely. For instance, when I wanted to copy a forest and paste it slightly lower in a valley, pressing the paste button resulted in a mess of white lines, obscuring the actual objects. It became extremely challenging to align everything accurately with the terrain.
It would be incredibly helpful to have a feature that outlines the objects on the ground, as the “snap to ground” functionality doesn’t work well. This way, we could clearly see and position the objects. Additionally, for Lua scripting, it would be great to have an easier entry point, such as pre-made snippets that users can customize. This would encourage more people to utilize this fantastic feature, as it offers brilliant possibilities.
Another issue I encountered is that file updates between different components don’t always sync correctly. Texts like short descriptions don’t get updated anymore. If, at the beginning of a mod, I didn’t choose the perfect title or description text or made a simple typo, I couldn’t change it. However, the long description works fine. It would be helpful to have a text file in the mod’s folder that users can easily edit for these purposes. This brings me to the topic of minimaps. At a certain point in the map’s development, it became impossible to generate a playable minimap. When I updated the mod, everything looked great, but in the game, the minimap appeared in various shades of purple, and the upper right third was completely pink and non-transparent, rendering the entire map unplayable. Moreover, the program would crash whenever I opened the mod. The only solution was to rewrite all the files in a new mod. This happened to me twice, and I can’t imagine how many people might have given up in such situations.
Another aspect to consider is the thumbnail preview. Providing users with a small tool that allows them to drag and drop an image onto the map, add text, and press a button to create a beautiful preview image would be fantastic. Yes, using mod.png is also a solution, but it’s not intuitive for many users. Additionally, I encountered an issue where the map was saveable, but the entire project couldn’t be compiled using the “Build” button, as it was grayed out. Furthermore, I experienced a graphics bug that displayed the entire map in the colors that were used for the minimap, making everything indistinguishable. I had to adopt a backup strategy to constantly rewrite the files. It almost felt like hacking rather than modding.
I want to address a peculiar bug that I have encountered while working on my maps. In hidden forests, dead trees and some douglas firs are inexplicably displayed as red boxes in the game. This issue is extremely frustrating, as it requires individually testing each tree and scouring the entire map to locate and remove these erroneous objects. I spent a good two hours on this task alone, and even though I tried hiding them using the visibility option in the item list, the red boxes persisted. It was quite a time-consuming ordeal.
This is just one aspect of the numerous challenges I have faced. I believe it would greatly benefit the modding community to have an official introductory video showcasing the possibilities and potential of the modding tools. While the existing documentation is well-structured, it often falls short in providing comprehensive content, leaving users in the dark. Having a series of five videos that introduce different mechanics, such as the tooling for creating the basic layout or combining traditional drag-and-drop methods with the ability to add code to objects without having to learn programming for years, would be immensely valuable.
Furthermore, it would be a dream come true to have a terrain tool feature where I could select an area and have the objects automatically adjust to the underlying terrain when smoothing. Currently, it is a laborious process to manually readjust everything. Another feature I couldn’t find is a hybrid solution that allows me to click and generate the basic map using the terrain editor and then display the complete generated code in a separate window. It would be incredibly helpful to make certain adjustments directly in the code, while still benefiting from the convenience of the terrain tool. It would be great to have a button in the context menu of each object that allows me to jump directly to the corresponding code section.
Implementing these enhancements would make modding and map crafting much more accessible to a wider audience. Currently, it requires a significant amount of pain and understanding of the underlying structure, making the learning curve too steep, even for beginners. I eagerly look forward to engaging in further discussions and exchanging ideas.
Best regards,
JamanKarl
the map is finished it is called “DeepMind” and has already had over 600 views in 3 days, which makes me very proud and makes the pain worthwhile
here short photo documentation, have more but can post only one.
the purpel look bug
