Remove the "New Map"/"Load map" menu when launching the editor

[SirVer]

It is wrong that you can load a map from inside the editor and from outside - that is an anachronism from the times when starting the editor was super slow. I suggest removing the menu after clicking on "Editor" in the main menu and instead start the editor right away. A map can then be loaded using ctrl+l or the load map menu.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

> It is wrong that you can load a map from inside the editor and from outside

I don't think so. from my point of view: I never create a map in one session. With the new bahvior i have to use much more clicks to load a map i want to edit.

Oftener i want to edit an allways created map as i want to create a new map. f.e. adjust the map after testing in game. So for me the old behavior is more usefull.

See also: https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/1688/

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

I am setting this back to "Confirmed" so that this can be discussed.

[SirVer (sirver)]

The old behavior requires having a very similar UI implemented twice - the loading screen. Also it will make it harder to separate the Editor out of the main code into a separate binary which is desirable IMHO.

The new behavior requires two clicks more - click menu -> load map - which I see as a disadvantage too, but not a very big one. Do you think getting rid of the two clicks is worth the extra code and maintenance (honest question, as I am not a map maker)?

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>I don't think so. from my point of view: I never create a map in one session.
>Oftener i want to edit an allways created map as i want to create a new map.

Could you say a bit more about this use case / your usual workflow? I've thought about it and have a suggestion though don't know if this helps or makes things worse.

I would assume people usually work on the same map across multiple sessions, thus it would make sense if the editor remembers the last opened map and loads that automatically. (When opening the editor for the first time you get a new/blank map*). That will allow you to resume working where you left off and easy access to either loading a different map or creating a completely new one.

This feature would arguably be easier to add if the editor was a separate binary, but should still be possible inside Widelands I believe.

* Oh, and also as a fallback if you have (re)moved the file on disk or didn't save the new map you created last time. More edge cases?

[kaputtnik (franku)]

Sorry answering so late, i wasn't informed of the new posts here.

A newly created map never gets finished in one session, because you have to

1. Create a map
2. Test the map while Gameplay
3. Readjust the map

This a minimal usecase. Great maps are surely often be saved and reloaded, because great maps couldn't be created with terrains, hills, immovables in one session. It took a very long time.

> I would assume people usually work on the same map across multiple sessions, thus it would make sense if the editor remembers the last opened map and loads that automatically.

This would be one solution, but i think it could be confusing if someone want to create a new map and gets presented a map he has created years ago...

I don't understand why it should be wrong to load map from inside and outside the editor. Every program that displays files (f.e. text-file, calculation sheets, images) do that. Why shoud it be wrong in widelands?

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>This a minimal usecase.

That's what I assumed. I haven't really used the WL editor, but I've worked a bit in others and it was a very iterative workflow/process.

>This would be one solution, but i think it could be confusing if someone want to create a new map and gets presented a map he has created years ago...

Well, I see your point, though I am not sure what the best option would be for someone has not opened the editor for years. And I think this is an edge case which shouldn't make things harder for people who use the editor regularly.

I can see three main use cases when opening the editor (if there's more, please let me know):
1. I want to continue working on the same map.
2. I want to open a specific map to look at how something was done and/or work on a different map.
3. I want to create a new map.

Not sure how the usage is divided between 2 and 3, but I would assume 1 covers 90 % of the cases. Which is why it think it would make sense to make it the default.

> I don't understand why it should be wrong to load map from inside and outside the editor. Every program that displays files (f.e. text-file, calculation sheets, images) do that. Why shoud it be wrong in widelands?

It should be noted I don't know all the arguments behind this (SirVer touch a bit upon it in #3), and parts below is simply me thinking out loud.

At the moment, the editor is just another section of Widelands. Which means I don't really start the editor, I start Widelands and then navigate to it. So it could be argued that while the old loading screen was outside the editor, it wasn't outside the program. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume the example with the text editor is when you open a text file from the file browser, and it is opened in the preferred text editor. At the moment, this isn't really possible with the editor because it is contained as a part of the Widelands program*.

With the long-term plan to split out the editor as a stand-alone program things might become less confusing. Once this is done,it should be possible to set it up the editor as the default program for opening .wmf-files. (Don't know how that could be accomplished across platforms, but should be doable somehow. Also I don't think it could be used that way for maps stored as directories, so they would need to be packed into a single file to have a recognizable suffix.) Which means it should be possible to navigate to a map stored somewhere on the disk, open it and have it loaded in the editor. If the editor started by itself (i.e. without any files) it could default to a blank map like most text editors do, or to the previously openend one like IDEs do with projects.

I don't know how far into the future such a scenario would be though. (SirVer: with the `--editor` option in mind, how much work do you think it would be to split out the code behind that into a separate binary? Or would it be better to wait until the different modules are less tangled, and it would be easier to separate?)

* Well, you can sorta do it with the command-line option `--editor=some/directory/map`

PS. I just checked with Battle for Wesnoth which also has the editor available as a menu item, a...

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

One can never tell how long it will take us to code something, so it is worth looking into an interim solution until we can separate the editor.

Another point that was just raised in the forums was misclicks - accidentally starting the editor. With the extra screen we had, it used to be faster to return to the main screen.

If I remember right, what originally precipitated the idea to remove the extra screen were complaints about how the "New map" option behaved - it didn't let you change the size before the map was generated, and you couldn't have a random map instead. Since the long-term plan is to separate the editor, coding something to solve this problem isn't worth the developer time IMHO.

So, I think we have 3 options here while waiting for the editor to be separated:

1. Remember the last map and open it when the editor is started
2. Reinstate the old status quo with "New Map" without options, and "Load Map".
3. Keep things as they are now.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

Ok, i think i undersand the reasons now.

> If I remember right, what originally precipitated the idea to remove the extra screen were complaints about how the "New map" option behaved - it didn't let you change the size before the map was generated, and you couldn't have a random map instead.

Yes, you're right. This was an unlogic behavior.

> So, I think we have 3 options here while waiting for the editor to be separated:
>
> 1. Remember the last map and open it when the editor is started
> 2. Reinstate the old status quo with "New Map" without options, and "Load Map".

I am unsure about the "auto-load last map" solution. On one side it covers 90% of all usecases, like hjd says, on the other side i am "feeling" that this is not what i want. But it's just a feeling. Maybe other mapmakers write their opinions.

Don't know how much work it is to get a solution which is between this points: Just adding a window with two options:

Load the map you last edited?

1. Ok -> Load last edited map
2. No -> Start Editor like now

This window should only appear if a previous made map exists.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Apparently this has been implemented - I could not track down when. And nobody complained so far, so I guess it was not a big deal in the end. Closing.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Fixed in build19-rc1.