Forums » Impact Engine » Ideas for Weltmeister?

What are the features you want to see in future versions of Weltmeiser?

One thing that's definitely on my list is copy and pasting of areas of a map. I already have some ideas how to implement this usability wise. Also I don't think it'll be too complicated technically.

What else do you miss?

More like an idea for the engine: I don't know if this is feasible, but maybe integrate ads into the game. As a user I don't like ads at all, but somehow these games have to be funded. So maybe it would be possible to add banners directly to the level background? Not static ones but dynamic ads (google ads). Other ads beside the game I don't see because of banner blindness.

Basically it would mean the integration of dynamic resources from another website. Might be useful for other purposes as well.

Another thing: Network support. Maybe you design a NodeJS module using Socket.IO so you could implement multi player games over a webserver?

I would love it if Weltmeiser worked on the iPad. It mostly works already. I can load levels and make layers, but I can't actually pick tiles or place them in the level. It seems like all you would need is to set the viewport so it won't scroll around and make a button to bring up the tile palette.

I've had great success drawing sprites on my iPad with the app called "Sprite Something" and it would be grand if I could make levels on the iPad too. That app has an export to Flixel and FlashPunk. It would be great if you could contact the developer and ask him/her to add export for Impact as well. I'm happy to send them an email too.

Thanks for making an awesome framework and tool!
-josh

A Node.js implementation with multiplayer support would be great. Too bad web sockets are not turned on by default in the browsers. Might have to do long polling or something like that. I could see that being a huge feature in impact.js.

I would love to see a feature that imported Tiled Map Editor TMX files (XML based) into the level editor. This would greatly help in porting existing projects over to Impact easier.

* Better response to keyboard input on Save and Load dialogs
* Clicking 'Save' could save the file with the current filename instead of bringing up a dialog. Maybe if you hold Cmd/Ctrl, the button text could change to "Save As" and it would bring up a dialog box.
* Make the canvas tag respond to 2 finger swipes (Mac only?)

* Refreshing page loads the previously loaded level

* Allow photoshop style click and then shift click to draw a whole line of tiles. (http://artist.tizag.com/photoshopTutorial/photoshoppenciltool.php)

* Allow right click to bring up tileset/entities instead of pressing space.

* Allow for multiple "brush" sizes when setting down tiles
* Allow for the ability to "Fill" tiles (So you can draw a border + one click to fill in center)

Some map editors let you pick a rectangular region of the map itself, or of the tile palette and then use that as a brush. This is handy because it works as a copy & paste as well as for cases where you have a multi-tile object, like a large tree, in your tile sheet.

I personally agree with the idea of adding the foreground layer as a default layer in WeltMeister as posted in one of the other forums. It seems to me that this change would allow for much more dynamic level designs. Also a default property to modify the level of parallax would be great.

The ability to select and drop multiple tiles at once - e.g. I have a tree that is made up of 4 32x32px tiles. It would be great if I could group them together so anytime I chose any of those separate tiles it would drop the entire tree.

Quote from therocco
The ability to select and drop multiple tiles at once - e.g. I have a tree that is made up of 4 32x32px tiles. It would be great if I could group them together so anytime I chose any of those separate tiles it would drop the entire tree.

Couldn't you just create a separate tileset and layer for your trees, and any other items that have the same dimensions and just set the tilesize to 16 (or whatever fits it best)?

I could use more meta-data of two kinds.

1. Hint entities. I have lifts and place them at their initial positions. I'd then like to place other "lift stops" and "lift travel caps" to indicate places where the lift will stop and when the lift has reached the end of its travel. Ogmo editor claims to have this, but I never used it.

2. User-defined properties on entities and tiles.

Quote from StefanVOtt
Couldn't you just create a separate tileset and layer for your trees, and any other items that have the same dimensions and just set the tilesize to 16 (or whatever fits it best)?

Yes but the topic of the thread is to suggest features to make Weltmeister a better map editor tool and the ability the select and drop multiple tiles at a time is a basic feature in many tile based map editing tools I have played with throughout the years including the open source Tiled map editor. ;)

Quote from therocco
Yes but the topic of the thread is to suggest features to make Weltmeister a better map editor tool and the ability the select and drop multiple tiles at a time is a basic feature in many tile based map editing tools I have played with throughout the years including the open source Tiled map editor. ;)

Sounds good to me then. :)

Ability to create an entity (including code) when one doesn't exist.
Clone level map.
Foreground layer.
Trigger templates.

Every now and then I like to open up the generated .js file to check something. If the output is significantly complex it can be a large file and without any line breaks some editors effectively lock up. Would be it be alright to have the generation put a line break in sensible points? Even if it was a couple of thousand characters it would be probably be fine.

After using Weltmeister for a few days now my #1 request is a Fill tool.
Manually filling in large area is getting very tedious.

* Tile numbers instead of pixels along the top and left of the editable area.
* grid lines that repeat every x tiles
* mini view of entire map with a scrolling viewport, so you can see what part of your map you're currently working on (similar to the one in Photoshop)

* icons to better indicate if a layer is visible or hidden. The toggle is hard to remember; right now it seems like you 'enable' that mini checkbox to hide a layer, which seems counter-intuitive.

The circular dependency message isn't always accurate.
* a more descriptive error if one of the JS files loaded contain syntax errors.
* specific error if you accidentally re-define an existing module (if you copy-paste an entity, for instance)

1. Ability to proram default entitie's properties set. Now there is only pos.x and pos.y. I have entities which have 3 or four properties like its health, color, etc. I have to remember the properties names or check them in the source code. I want to give the level creation task to someone else without JS knowledge. I want it to be simple for him, so when he adds an entity - he already can see which properties he can manipulate.
2. My entity list is getting bigger and I'm starting to wonder will the entity list will wrap to the second column :) I have limited y pixels on my monitor hehe.
3. I have many tilemaps in single files and sometimes they can't fit the screen when pressing space, I have to scale the whole editor down. It'd be nice to check when the space is pressed if the tilemap fits the screen.

Sorry for the slow development in the last few days. I'm still busy with some other work that I hopefully will have finished some time soon.

I just pushed some changes to the git repository that allows you to "copy/paste" areas of a map or tileset in Weltmeister. Here's how it works: hold SHIFT and MOUSE1 to select an area in a map or from the tile selection. This selection will become your new "brush" with which you can paint anywhere in a map, just like normal.

I also added an option to pretty print the levels when saving from Weltmeister. The option is in the lib/weltmeister/config.js (project.prettyPrint). It is disabled by default.

Please tell me what you think of the brush selecting stuff. It might still be buggy, so please have backups of your files :)

That new brush mode is fantastic. Super helpful!

I'm pretty new to Impact, but I've got some ideas for Weltmeister.

- A toggle-able grid overlay.
- An easier way to set a zoom amount and entity grid number
- A Save and Save As... Button. Chances are if i click save I don't want to rename it.
- Keys to be more customisable. Would be great if i could press E to set the brush to blank and B back to it's previous tile (ala photoshop)

I'll let you know if i think of anything else.

I've been working on some CSS tweaks for the Weltmeister too. A bit more CSS3-like :)

EDIT: Would also be rad to see...
- Custom cursor support (thinking of adding this myself tonight)

I've just found a tiny "bug" in the Weltmeister too. If you hold down your 'drag' key and click it paints the tile. It's very easy to not notice this. So maybe having drag require you click whilst holding the key is a little fix? Would be like Photoshops pan tool. :)

I'd like the editor canvas to be able to use the full available size, instead of having to declare fixed values, like with this example.

* Quick save the level

@alexz - Just put window.innerHeight and window.innerWidth in the respective boxes :P you might need to make it window.innerWidth - 150 to get the sidebar looking right though.

I'd like the ability to rotate entities at an angle.