What would you implement in your own perfect level editor bearing in mind that we want it to be as easy to use as possible to create the best possible content for a game (an rpg in my case) in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of hassle. Hey all, I'm realising more and more that a lot of game design ideas are worth nothing if they cannot be effectively managed in an editor of some description. In the recent thread regarding blacksmiths for instance, it was suggested by Garmichael

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Then, each blank NPC entered into the game editor would have a list of information and variables and data. This would include their physical make up, their personalities, their jobs, all that shit i mentioned ealier.

Now this is a good example to illustrate my point. This quote was regarding giving NPCs a list of things such as knowing where his home was, what jobs he does at what time of day, etc. Now this is a great idea in theory and great to see that it has been considered for actual implementation, rather than simply on an abstract level. I think though, that in a real level editor, adding such a huge amount of information for every single NPC that you place into your level would be very tedious, and probably require a heck of a lot of extra memory to store all the information. Now, I¡¦m not trying to trash the idea so much as use it to just explain the point of the thread, which is this¡K. What would you implement in your own perfect level editor bearing in mind that we want it to be as easy to use as possible to create the best possible content for a game (an rpg in my case) in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of hassle. Personally, my own editor allows you to paint textures onto the terrain with nice transitions. You can place objects by simply choosing a category of objects you¡¦d like to place and either selecting an object or having the object auto select for you. You can raise and lower terrain by simply selecting the edit heightmap tool and holding down the left mouse button, then moving the mouse up or down to raise or lower the terrain. That¡¦s about it so far, but it all works in a very intuitive manner and produces nice looking results extremely quickly. So I guess you cold say that this thread is to get some further ideas, but really it¡¦s more because I¡¦d just be interested in hearing others thoughts on the subject. Cheers, Steve

The obvious thing to do if you're going to have so much detail is to randomly generate as much of it as possible. For physical attributes, a guassian distribution would generally work. For choosing a home, it could pick a random house not already taken within X units distance or even a house taken by a person of approximately the same age of opposite gender. Younger NPCs could automatically be given parents by selecting a house already occupied by one or two adults with less than X other young NPCs in it.

Essentially, you'd have the editor randomly generate areas using some kind of scripting system, and the person's job would just be to sort through all the data and make changes to fit their ideas.

The process would consist of the editor's developers creating parameterized scripts for various types of areas (either whole towns, or maybe block by block, etc).
Then, the person creating a map would choose a script, set the parameters, and click 'generate'. Next, the person would be able to move people around marry and divorce people, etc until the area was what the person wanted. Maybe they'd need to try some different parameters, or even the same ones to get a simmilar but different area, or maybe they'd just take it the way it came out the first time.

The point is, there is no reason for a person to have to deal with trivial information that can be automatically generated in a workable way.