Discussion Robust Coding

I must say there is something extremely satisfying about ending the day with a robust system in place.

i have been working hard on the user interactivity of my map editor, creating optimal ways to grab and know data groups, while managing mouse click methods to make isometric level design fluent and perfect every time. Ensuring Left and right mouse click perform the exact opposite of eachother, makes crafting terrain a pleasant and Intuitive breeze, even if you wanted like a narrow walkway on the edge of a pyramid or some specific wild looking formation of ground. The mouse clicks must have at the tip of their fingers all of the required data to make the performance of the system absolutely child’s play. I mean literal child’s play. Addictive to create with, not buggy, not frustrating, not too complicated, not too technical. Where accidents can be undone by doing the exact opposite of what was done to them. Where beautiful landscapes can be hand crafted. Where the map tool provides no bugs of itself to cause abandon of work for the user. Building a robust system is important not only for terrain system, map editor and programmer or user experience but for how the data systems can also then later scales, for such the convenience of its usage in other systems like path finding.
Having a robust, strong dependable system with open data. There nothing will beat the joy of obtaining such system.

 

That's the best! Though personally I'm satisfied with having an API that fulfills that. UX is way more tricky to get right, and often requires talking users out of preconceived notions on how things should or could work.

 

I do love the feeling of creating something that feels inituitive and easy to use. Be it code API or user interface. I am a huge fan of "right-click to cancel or close" ever since first experiencing it in Endless Legend, and later in other games.

 

Is nice when the complexity of everything needed can be boiled down to two buttons, a shift key and whether you clicked once or twice.

Building a map editor you see how well unity terrain system is made, but problems I have with it are is you cannot adapt it. Everytime I make a good mountain or something I think oh yeah then my next mountain is like :/ then I’m like crafting mountains out of splat brushes and it looks nice and stuff but. When you need stuff that it doesn’t provide, or you want to work more specifically as opposed to broad prototyping the challenge is to make something user friendly. And less wild. I found Unity system clunky. And last I worked with it I couldn’t paint it or elevate it at run time and maintain good performance.