These are exiting times! Now that some long-standing missing pieces of the editor are implemented, we are finally able to release version 1.0 of the editor. The most significant additions are

• Fully configurable water and lighting settings.
• Support for the new terrain shaders that are now available in the game.

You can read more about how the new shaders work, along with some pictures, here: https://wiki.faforever.com/Development/Shaders/terrain-shaders

New Features

• Added support for new shaders recently added to the game (#47, #51, #60, #61, #65, #66, #68, #71)
  • Removed the TTerrainXp shader toggle in the Texture tab
  • Added a text box in the Map tab to input the shader name instead
  • Implemented the new shaders introduced in the latest game patch
  • Added buttons in Textures > Tools to generate the required textures for the new shaders. Under the hood this integrates the Neroxis Tool Suite, a CLI program written in Java. A Java environment is required, but if you have the FAF client installed, you can simply use that one.
  • Added an option to disable the map info texture in the upper slot (via the v button)
  • The specular color UI in the light settings now changes based on the selected shader
  • Many more UI improvements in the texture layer tab to better support different shaders
• Improved lighting settings (#52, #56, #71)
  • Changed sun angle terminology from RA and DA to Azimuth and Elevation Angle
  • Added environment texture path (This texture is only visible on reflections of units, not on the map)
  • Various other minor UI improvements
• Improved water settings (#52, #56, #71)
  • Removed water parameters that had no in-game effect
  • Added toggle to copy sun color and angle from light settings to get fitting sun reflections on the water
  • Added toggle for advanced water absorption (this will recalculate the light settings in the background)
    Advanced absorption behaves more like real-world light absorption, allowing deep water to visibly obscure units and terrain.
  • Added texture paths for water ramp and skycube
  • Added UI controls for ocean waves
  • Fixed water coloration bleeding onto shores
  • Various other minor UI improvements
• Improved default values when creating a new map (#59)
• Improved Resource Browser UI (#62)
  • Added alpha channel preview
  • Added mipmap previews at levels 2, 4, and 6
  • Display texture resolution
    These changes only affect the layer textures. The resource browser is still the same for decals and props.
• You can now import stratum masks in PNG format (#63)
• Made FAF directory configurable (#45)
  Previously, the editor assumed the FAF data directory was at a fixed location. It now supports custom paths, as configured in the FAF client.

Bugfixes

• Fixed the slope overlay (#54)
• Improved behaviour of input fields (#55)
  Basically all input fields were configured in a way that you had to press enter to assign the value. Confusingly, they did not actually assign the value when clicking away, but didn't discard the edits you made in the field either. So it was very hard to understand what was going on. Now all fields assign the value on pressing enter or when clicking elsewhere.
• Textures in the resource browser and the layer tab are not upside down anymore (#56, #62)
• Fixed multiline map description text breaking the scenario file (#67)
• Fixed issues with the linear brush option and rename it to Scale target to 0.5 to 1 range (#67)
• Fixed mipmap rendering (#71)
  When using textures of different resolutions in the Layers tab, they have to be all scaled to the same size internally because they are stored in an array texture. This scaling would lead to a recalculation of mipmaps, so the blurred mipmaps would not be visible anymore, leading to a different look than in the game. Mipmaps are now preserved properly.

Other

• Slider values are no longer clamped. You can now input any value in the text box above a slider. (#47)
• Default maximum of texture scale sliders is now 20 to make the sliders feasible to use (#51)
• Order textures alphabetically before creating the texture buttons for the resource browser (contributed by sting) (#49)
• Removed normal map check (#57)
  The "Can't assign albedo as normal map" check when assigning texture channelssometimes produced false positives and blocked adding special textures for advanced shaders.
• Remove the two buttons that you could use to generate a random heightmap. (#60)
  The used Neroxis version was way outdated and we don't allow uploading maps based on the map generator to the FAF map vault anyway.
• Improved version check behavior (#70)
• Terrain now retains more details when zoomed out, making it more consistent with the in-game view (#71)
• The editor should now pause rendering when it is in the background, reducing resource usage (#71)

You can download the editor here: https://github.com/FAForever/FAForeverMapEditor/releases/tag/v1.0
As there have been extensive changes, it is likely that some new bugs have surfaced. Please report them on the FAF forum or open an issue here in github.

With gratitude to all those who took the time to report issues with the release candidates, and a special thank you to kent-sole who showed me around in the Unity editor and answered my questions. Without him all this work would not have been possible.

Happy mapmaking!

BlackYps

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

The ctrl-k rule is just one part of a bigger problem. Its the enforcement of rules in games where no participant asked them to be enforced. I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.

I think it has been well established now that if someone uses exploits in a streamed game, even if everybody in the game is fine with it, the done harm is the spread of exploit knowledge, because the game was literally streamed to an audience. I think everything about this scenario has been said already. Is there any other case where external reports happened that led to a ban?

Hi Zebranog, I am the one that did the recent changes.

why did the old versions of the editor stop working?

They should still work. What is your issue?

the new versions of the editor at first glance are worse than the old ones, what has changed?

I had to rework basically all of the map rendering to fix some long-standing issues where the map looked different in the editor compared to the game. It appears that in this process some things broke.

for some reason they changed the color, it became more difficult to see some small holes on the map, the division into squares is also now not precise, for some reason they removed where the conditional mex is one square

I don't understand what this means.

the function where you check a box and get additional layers for texture has disappeared

Yes, that is part of the rework. There will be a release of the 1.0 version of the map editor in a few days. That will also feature a more extensive changelog and will fix the bug with the colors of the slope overlay.

(and a bunch of other little things that I'm too lazy to write )

Please don't be too lazy to report bugs. If nobody reports them, then they will stay forever.
I recommend that you wait some days for the release, try it out, and then report any bugs that have not been fixed already.

@IndexLibrorum said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

You describe the exact approach we currently use to cover non-participant reports. Because we cannot cover each hypothetical, we've consistently phrased it as "we do not generally accept reports from people not participating in the game". Even with this type of phrasing we already frequently get attempts at rule-lawyering (for this and similar rules), where people argue that "well, it's not exactly against the rules as written, so you can't ban me", which is why we have to resort to these more general phrasings. But the situation you describe is the exact protocol we now adhere to.

I feel that it would make sense to spell out the reasoning of rules more explicitly in the rule page. Currently we have the rules that explain what is allowed or forbidden and we have moderators stepping around specific questions by saying "we don't generally do X", but if we leave the discourse at that it keeps being frustrating for both sides. As a player you don't get a clearcut answer, only vague statements that don't help you to gauge when you risk a ban. As a moderator you don't want to be too broad with your statements because some smartass will abuse the statement and find behaviour that should be punished but that would be against the wording of the moderator.

If we instead spell out the reasonings and goals in the rule page, then it becomes clearer for everyone. We could add statements like "A report from a person not in the game will only be considered if it explains how the behaviour in the game is harmful for the community at large. Otherwise it will be discarded." This would also make it clearer what reasoning the mod team uses to interpret the rules.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

The fact that something is bannable in games where "no one asked" (as in: a closed community (like my example earlier), a 1v1 between 2 players and so on) is just crazy to me.

I think it's important to distinguish games that were streamed and games that were really private. I can get behind the idea of not wanting to have the knowledge spread how exploits work in detail. And on top of that, people will inevitably imitate what they see streamers do, especially if it's unusual stuff. They might not know that it is an exploit, do it in a game, get banned and then be pissed, because they perceive it was ok when the streamer did it.
So when the game is streamed it's really not a "no one asked" situation, because it has ripples into the wider community. The easy way out is to just not stream games where you want to do dumb shit that is against the rules.

I do agree though that it doesn't feel like a good situation that the current rules are that every game is considered public because a replay file exists. The answer that practically there is a really, really low chance of getting reported by someone not involved in the game, is not really satisfying in my opinion. Personally, I would say that games that were not streamed or remarkable in some other way (like being a tournament game) should not be reportable by external people. Or, better worded: there must be an identifiable harm, that the behaviour in this game did to the community (for example rating manipulation or spreading exploit knowledge in a stream), to make a report by an external person valid.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

Regarding @IndexLibrorum comment that a player is using FAF as a platform and must therefore follow there rules; yes I get that argument, and if that is actually the case, theres nothing to be done, but is that really what FAF wants do to? I think (as I said before) this is a bit of an overreach

Is this a misunderstanding? because I really can't follow.

if that is actually the case, theres nothing to be done

what do you mean? He stated that you can still change the rules, but as long as they are not changed yet, the rules are still in effect.
I also don't see how this is an overreach? This seems like the standard way of dealing with changing rules. So please, if this is not just a misunderstanding, please elaborate why you think this is the case.

I like the idea of having a "you have been banned, now what" page.
It's true that most of the information is already accessible, but the discussion shows that it's clearly not as well-known as it needs to be.
Currently, when you try to log in you see your ban duration and the reason for the ban. It's not immediately obvious how to proceed from there. If we link to a dedicated page we can compile all relevant information there. This should give people a clear path what their options for actions are now and should increase the trust that the system is well thought-out and working.
Information on that page should include:

• link to rule page
• link to explanation of the appeal process
• explain that appealing can still make sense even if the ban is very short, because your moderation history is taken into account in future reports
• explain that if people think there is an issue with the process, even after appealing, they can contact Giebmasse as the team lead or the board.
• explain why individual decisions should not be discussed in public and clarify that discussing rules in general and proposing changes is still possible in public, preferably the forum.

@Nuggets said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

To put it in clearer words: We, at least the people I know / interact with, feel like there is a huge lack of understanding as to how our "high" rated games go. I'm not trying to be elitist here, its just that (what we feel like) context is ignored or not understood.

It makes sense to me that the moderation team does not completely revert decisions if they correctly apply the existing rules. It seems that part of this problem is that maybe the rules are not suitable for some high rated games, or maybe these people would like to have different rules? In this case it makes the most sense to have a discussion about these rules.

It got removed because the shader that this biome uses got changed with the latest game release. It will be readded once the necessary changes in the map generator have been completed.

One of the points of matchmaker is that you can't fully customize your experience to create a competitive environment.
Regarding the "unwinnable situation": You already occupy a slot in your own team, so there are only two slots left that could be filled with people that contribute nothing to winning a game, compared to three slots on the enemy team. So statistically these players are on the enemy team 60% of the time and their existence is actually to your advantage. Provided that you yourself play decent of course.

@Dorset said in Another dumb idea from Dorset:

As I stated before I have noticed that so many ideas seem to stall within FAF and so maybe its time we have a look at the overall structure of how things are governed?

From my experience, most things stall because people have ideas, but there is nobody to implement the idea. Then there is also the case that someone has an idea and implements it, but it gets rejected by others that think it is a bad idea. It's hard to tell if things went well or not in this case, because if it really is a bad idea the community should indeed reject it. Of course most of the time the original guy will still think his idea was good and be frustrated that other people keep him from making the game better. It could also be the other way around, but there is not really a way of objectively evaluating this. We can't automatically conclude that there is a bureaucracy problem from these cases.
The game is already very good right now, so every change has the real risk of making the game overall worse. As Jagged Appliance said, someone has to say no sometimes.

A general problem with listening to community balance ideas more is that, from experience, most balance ideas are pretty bad. And there is a lot of them. Answering them all in detail will take an enormous amount of time from people that are experienced enough to accurately explain how viable each idea is. When you want to create a system with more community engagement you have to find some way of filtering that allows the people that know what they are doing to engage with the good ideas without being bogged down by endless overhead. Recently there was talk in the balance team about wanting to engage with the community more. But how this can work out in the long term is still an open question. I am not trying to discourage you Dorset, I am just trying to inform you what the hurdles are that need to be overcome. If you have good ideas how this could be achieved, then I think there are good chances you can find some open ears for them.

@JaggedAppliance what do you mean with the reclaim pausing feature you mentioned?

I agree with the others. Making a mod achieves what you want. The fact that we don't see many suggestions implemented for testing is not because there is no possibility to test things, but because nobody actually wants to implement it.

I'm just trying to understand what exactly people like or dislike about the feature because we have:

• the actual tombstones
• the marker on the map
• the text that informs about who the killer was
• the text being funny

It's not an all or nothing situation where we have to take or leave the whole package

Do we even need a wreck? There is a large black crater already. Isn't the utility of the feature the map marker and the message?

Could the people that want it as an option (I read that as "yes, but not in my games") please state why? This helps for a productive discussion to better understand what the controversial parts of the feature are

Good to hear that it's working now!

The actual deployment happend only just now. Can you report back after having played an additional ladder game?

Good news! There was indeed a bug in determining the number of placement games for players. I managed to fix the bug, so the fix should be deployed soon. Thank you for taking the time to reach out.

There is a Improved Graphics 2024 mod in the vault that changes a bunch of render settings. You can have a look there and modify the mod to your liking.
I also found a text file on my hard drive where I collected some explanations of some of the graphics settings. No guarantees on correctness as it is based on my understanding of the time and also some years old.

ConExecute("ren_DecalNormalLodCutoff 560")
ConExecute("ren_DecalAlbedoLodCutoff 560")
ConExecute("fog_DistanceFog off") -- map fog
ConExecute("efx_WaveCutoff 560")
ConExecute("UI_StrategicProjectileLOD 185") --standard 128, there is no apparent reason for changes
ConExecute("ren_ShorelineCutoff 560")
ConExecute("ren_SyncTerrainLOD 560")
ConExecute("cam_HighLOD 0.2") --sets the LOD value for the detail level “high” that can be selected in the menu
ConExecute("cam_MediumLOD 0.3") --sets the LOD value for the detail level “medium” that can be selected in the menu
ConExecute("cam_LowLOD 0.4") --sets the LOD value for the detail level “low” that can be selected in the menu
ConExecute("cam_DefaultLOD 0.2")
ConExecute("cam_SetLOD 0.2")
ConExecute("cam_DefaultMiniLOD 1.65")
ConExecute("ren_shadowsize 4096") --Resolution of the shadow map
ConExecute("ren_shadowLOD 400") --At what FocusDistance do we stop rendering shadows
ConExecute("cam_ShakeMult 0.1")
ConExecute("ren_IgnoreDecalLOD") --force render decals
ConExecute("ren_Meshdissolve 40") --double default value, individual value to be compared with LODMetric is defined in the blueprint exact function and interaction with ren_MeshdissolveCutoff unclear

SC_CameraScaleLOD 0 or 1 or 2 most likely determines which of the three LOD scales is used

LODMetric is the FocusDistance multiplied by cam_HighLOD, cam_MediumLOD or cam_LowLOD, measured at the respective location

Depending on FocusDistance, the strategic symbols are displayed (Standart 130, set in the blueprint)

I also think that working in a high quality ecosystem is way less hassle than trying to work around a somewhat broken and abandoned library. Even if it means learning a new language. And Go is not nieche. If we ask around we might even find someone experienced with Go in our community that you can ask Go-specific questions

@TheVVheelboy said in adjustable LOD cutoffs:

Also, could ask more technically inclined people if it's possible to edit this parts of lua yourself to see if it's possible to push the experimental graphics option even more by yourself.

Yes, you can call these two conexecutes from a ui mod as well. There are more settings possible. There are also mods that change a lot of them, but I forgot the name. I can look it up later, but if you search for "graphics" in the mod vault you might find it already