So I’ve basically finished the big work on implementing and supporting items.

Now I’m looking into general editing interfaces.  First thing on the list:  a traditional “Tycoon game” view of the world.  Here’s a shot:

This is a static, forced down-angle view, but the user can rotate the view.  The user uses WASD to move the camera left/right and forward/backward, without changing altitude.  The mouse wheel changes altitude.

There are a couple problems with this.  One is that there are some important things which are pretty small, and so are difficult to select from this sort of view.  Quest Givers, for example, were designed to be seen from in front, not from above.

Another problem is that all these trees really block a lot of things from view.  And once there are more tall, wide objects in the game world, this overhead view will be even worse for visibility.  I’m still arguing with myself over whether this sort of editing view is a good idea.

But one thing I really do like about it is that this is the kind of view I’d need in order to do a seamless zoom from “whole world” down to a close-up view, the way that I was able to do in the earlier games.  And I really do want to support that.

Also, this sort of view is basically the worst-case scenario for my shadowing system.  So that would need a bit of re-thinking to make the shadows nicer from this perspective.

So more thinking required.  Not sure whether moving this direction would be a good or a bad idea.  (Either way, there’ll still be the ability to walk around in the world from a first-person perspective.  The question is really about whether it’s easier to do world editing from this enforced down-angle view, with no graveship in the way)