[SUG][EDITOR] Rulers in the Editor

[DireKrow]

In making levels, there's many, many times when I've had to stop building, place a few lemmings down and then load the level and try things to see if miner tunnels line up correctly with where I'm expecting them to come up, if builder bridges can reach over gaps I want them to reach over, whether or not lemmings will bonk their head or not while they're building, and so on. It'd really great if there was a way to gauge these sorts of things in the editor without having to load them game up and try them out manually.

So I propose the addition of some rulers to the editor. A splat ruler, a builder ruler, a miner builder, and so on. For the builder bridge, I'm imagining a semi-transparent representation of a completed bridge which you can just move around and line up however you want (either as a fake terrain piece, or bound to the cursor), with some indication of the height at which the builder would bonk their head on the ceiling too, if possible. For a miner, it'd not only show the 2:1 descent, but also the 'width' of the tunnel, so you can gauge how much terrain will be removed. Things like that.

Would there be interest?

[mantha16]

yes from me

[GigaLem]

IIRC, This idea is similar to the sketches we had in the old format, like sketches to measure out builders, miners and then some.
This is something I want back too

[WillLem]

+1

[Strato Incendus]

+1

Especially having a splat ruler in the editor would be really handy! So far - unless I'm using a very blocky style, like one from L2 where you can memorise how many of those blocks add up to splat height - I either have to playtest the level, go back, change things, test again - or start counting pixels, which is really tedious.

[namida]

As much as I'm mostly avoiding any heavy work on the editor, I can see this being particularly useful so I'd like to look at it.

Obviously, a splat ruler, and a general long horizontal / long vertical ruler, are desirable, as well as constructive / destructive skill templates. Anything else?

[mantha16]

as well as constructive / destructive skill templates. Anything else?

would that be like having a skill shadow in editor so you can see where bridges would reach etc if so that would be awesome, if not thenI'd like that.

and I know that maybe you dont want to change much but is there a way to make styles/backgrounds/objects/terrains/ sort alphabetically, I know some are but when stuff is added it doesnt necessarily go alphabetically which can make it hard to find something as the drop down menu not that easy to view.  like a filter or something we could apply to sort things?

[WillLem]

A quick riff list of ideas/requests. Totally understand if not all of these are accepted, just voicing them whilst the opportunity's here:

f) A "paste-in-place" option that works between different levels.

20) Customisable hotkeys.

L) More gentle scrolling (it's very easy to accidentally scroll wayyyy too far at the mo).

*) Allow pre/post text editor to automatically "fit" text into the displayable area.

\) Stop talismans from re-ordering themselves after editing.

%) Increase max width/height to 3000px.

H) Incorporate some sort of basic pack-compiling system into the editor. What I imagine is a drop-down menu for "Pack", where you'd then be able to select a user-created folder from "levels", or create a new folder if there isn't one there already. There'd also be drop-downs for "Rank" and "Level", so you can easily switch between levels from within the editor. A field for "Level Number" next to "Title" would also make sense for this as well. When it comes to making tweaks on a pack, this would be far preferable to pressing Ctrl+O and then navigating to the level pack manually for each level.

[namida]

Sketch support added in commit c161269.

I'll provide some basic ones, but I'm mostly going to leave it to the community to create the actual sketch graphics for the most part.