Siege Editor Preview

by Farmgirl

For the life of me, I’ve never wanted to be a gardener. But each time I pick up a game editor I always end up creating gardens. Take Zoo Tycoon for instance. Instead of building a nice little zoo for my paying customers to enjoy, I ended up creating a garden!

Two Thursdays ago, I had the pleasure of taking a trip down to GPG (3 hour drive) to spend some time with the lovely Siege Editor. Keep in mind that I really have no previous experience with any type of game editing tools except for Zoo Tycoon — if you call that a game editing tool.

I arrived at GPG and was greeted by a good looking gentleman, Jason Moerbe who is the Test Lead. Right off the bat, Jason proceeded to give me a tour of the GPG offices, upstairs and downstairs. While touring I noticed there were other DS fans participating in this round of Siege Editor testing as well. There were a couple of the Circle of Elders folks, and Vidguy (MS PR Dood), a local Vancouverite. Scott “Bobum” Davis from PDS was expected to arrive later that afternoon.

Ten minutes later, I was plugging away on computer 12. Jason had mentioned that there was a tutorial (not finalized version of the tutorial) and recommended that I go through that first to learn the basics, which I did. The tutorial covered areas such as nodes and destination doors, lighting effects, elevation, placement of creatures and objects, and triggers.

The tutorial had users create a farmhouse, and from the house you build a farm, a chicken coop, hills to surround the farm. We then had to place objects within the house, place triggers (what would happen if someone walked to the door of the barn), and then add lighting to give it the final touches. Finally we got to place some nasty Krugs. It was a very simple tutorial but I believe it’s a tutorial that everyone should go through at least once if you’re to work with the Siege Editor. Because the documentation of the tutorial was not finalized yet, I had a bit of help from another Jason (one of the testers), he showed me how to change the size of objects by simply changing the numbers in the placement setting size option of an object, which made each and every object unique and different.

Just my luck! On the day that I arrived at GPG, there was a big party! So off to the party I go! It was actually the DS launch party (even though it was a bit past launch of the game). The restaurant was about a ten minute walk, so Guttyr (Darren Baker Community Coordinator-he left the party early to go pick up Scott from the airport), Vidguy and I waltzed over to the Marina Cantina. It was a full house! Wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, MS representatives were all there. Everyone made their thank you speeches (once again, many of what was said at the launch party will remain unprinted) and we had lunch. After lunch it was time for the ceremonious mule bashing. Chris Lye (DS Product Manager) had picked up a packmule piñata filled with candies (ten pounds of candy I think) along with a huge two handed broadsword. Chris T, Jake, and a few others had a try at whacking the mule, all without success. Bert “Sleepy” Bingham was the man who brought the packmule to its’ death by chopped its head off!

Shortly after the beheading, Bobum showed up. “Nice to meet you Scott!” Guttyr had picked up Scott (you big baby! could have taken a cab!) and they managed to grab some of the leftover grub. After lunch everyone went back to the office, and we were all on the computers once again. I finished the tutorial that night. And started to work on “My Garden”. It was well into the wee hours of the night. I glanced behind me, Eric Tams was playing the Warlords Battlecry demo with Bert.

Later on that night, Vidguy, Scott and Guttyr joined Eric Tams in playing some games. They ended up downloading the SoFII demo and played till 12am in the morning. Next morning when I returned Eric told me that he has stayed till 2:00am playing TA with Scott. Guttyr told me that he and Scott had stayed till 3:00am!

Ok back to the SE. I wanted to see if I could finish my garden (had to leave in the afternoon). Working with the SE today seemed a lot easier. After going through the tutorial the day before, I felt as if I was just connecting pieces of a puzzle together. The source door connects with this destination door (doors are the numbers assigned to a piece of the tile, pick a source door number (example 2), tell it to match it up with destination door number 3, and voila, you’ve joined up 2 pieces of the puzzle). Terrain tiles come in many sizes such as 4×8, 8×8, if one doesn’t fit try the next one, Once again it’s like working with a jig saw puzzle.

After figuring out the puzzle, the next part of construction was as easy as pie — plotting my objects onto the land. In DS there are so many objects to choose from, flowers (potted, singular or group size, type, style, indoor and outdoor), wells, benches, fountains, statues, sculptures, bushes, trees (there has got to be over 100 different types of them), water (waterfall, ponds, rivers and streams), buildings (barns, tents, castles, and workshops), bridges and of course the enemy plus many many more. To place an object, simply select it, and click to place on any area on the map. To change the size and look of the tree, use the object placement setting I spoke about earlier.

The SE allows you to view your work in all directions, up, down left and right — 360 degrees so you can get the just of what you are working on, and the outcome of your work. It’s like your playing the game except your actually building it.

Bird’s Eye-view Eye Level Worm’s Eye-view

I avoid this next part of construction, lighting till the very end, because you don’t see the actual effect of lighting till you test out your creation in a game of DS. Creating lightingwas simple as well. It’s a two step process which consisted of selecting and changing numbers. When you think you’re finished with lighting, click the “on/off vortex lighting button” to see if the lighting effect is coming from the right direction. Once again, I can’t stress enough that the DS SE is so simple to use. I’m sure the five year old in the house could use it as well. That’s how easy it is to use.

By this time, my garden was getting close to where I had envisioned it. It was time to give it a test run. What I mean is to actually load up the garden in a game of DS. When I loaded it, my character started off at the exact point where I stated the starting location would be in my map.

Simply by moving this red dot which states the starting point for a character, the character would start off where I instructed it to start off. The red dot can be moved anywhere and everywhere on the map, easily.

After my stroll in the garden, I noticed that it needed some touch ups. To make changes to an existing map, all I had to do was re-open the file that I was working on in the SE, make the changes I needed, save the file and then re-launched a game with my garden again.

It was such rewarding experience to actually see something which I had created appear before my eyes. To take a visual that I had in my mind and recreate it using a program that I would never have thought I could use, is simply amazing. This program looks so complex but, in reality, is so simple. Just goes to show, never judge a book by its cover.

Thanks to the folks over at GPG and MS for bringing us DS and creating such a wonderful, simple and easy tool for everyone to use.

Below are actual in-game shots of my garden.