Tweaking the land type editor
Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 2:24 pm
Hi Everyone,
I've just made a little tweak to the parameters page in the land type editor, which hopefully should make it a bit easier to use. The new dialog looks like:
The old dialog can be seen here.
The main differences are:
Cheers,
Aaron.
PS: These changes only affect the user interface. The actual climates are unchanged, so there will be no compatibility issues.
I've just made a little tweak to the parameters page in the land type editor, which hopefully should make it a bit easier to use. The new dialog looks like:
The old dialog can be seen here.
The main differences are:
- You can edit the distribution parameters using slider bars. These are clamped to the range of -1...1, but you can manually enter values outside these ranges in the edit boxes if you really need to.
- The edit boxes are white with grey text for zero values, pale green for positive values, pale red for negative values, and bright red for invalid values. My thinking is that this makes it easier to tell at a glance which parameters are being used, and what their impact will be. For example, in the above image, curvature and salinity have no effect (white), whilst water decreases the score of the land type (red), and gradient and base score both increase the score (green). Does that make sense?
- The altitude range has been changed from four altitudes to two altitudes and two ramp ranges. This should be easier to use, but I'll still need to explain the meaning of the ramp ranges (later...). I may yet add check-boxes to enable/disable the alt ranges too.
- The noise settings are now hidden behind a button. This is partly because I ran out of dialog space, and partly because I hardly ever use noise settings in land types.
- The 'help!' button links right to the on-line userguide for the land type editor, which I'll update shortly.
Cheers,
Aaron.
PS: These changes only affect the user interface. The actual climates are unchanged, so there will be no compatibility issues.