Aww. I was gonna try hook it up to the native mod to have the whole map with Sequel Mod areas. But I respect your decision.
You can do that, or whatever else works for you. There's a flag in the mod's XML file that prevents opening the editor, and in case someone gets past there scripts will do their best to prevent further editor use. One of the reasons why i put this is in is to prevent cheating.
(i know myself, if i've been through a map 5 times and there's any way of taking a shortcut, i'll take it. i feel like i've kinda ruined sacrifice mod for myself this way back then. So that measure forces me to go through a map as intended, and when i don't get bored when playtesting then it's good enough.)
There are more reasons but i will not tell you those.
Anyway, so you can move the maps somewhere you have access (any mod skeleton will do), but entities will be blank, nodes will have no function, and none of the map/mod special things will work. But just for looking at how it's made, why not.
About your map suggestion:
I didn't intend to keep most of the original maps. Some are there because they have to (home area, open waters, krotite temple), but some are either too long, bland, or too repetitive so it's imo better to replace them with something new. Right now 23 map XML files are original (more or less modified), and it's likely it'll stay that way. (quick rundown: the 6 energy temple maps, 3 veil maps, mithalas + cathedral, top 2 open waters maps, the starting area things, Li's cave, one forest map.)
What do you think? The forest maps are the least varied ones, so i'd like to redo them or get rid of them. I've made another couple of 2 different forest-style maps ages ago, but not quite sure yet where i'll put those or how much expansion they need.
EDIT: But i will think about your idea. "Cold waters" sounds indeed interesting.
One last thing, because i like to be open about things i do:
I've been way more busy with life (and most importantly, PhD work) than i had imagined, so projects left and right went on hiatus (there wasn't really anything else i could do), including this. I do read the forum's RSS feed and saw every new post, but had my mind elsewhere and forgot to reply.
I'm trying to get a somewhat stable schedule established (at least XX hours work on the mod per week), wish me luck. It's good to work on something creative once in a while, hard scientific coding gets very dull after a while.
Right now i'm poking at some graphics files (attempting to finish some leftovers from a long time ago) but i'm kinda lost how to do this
In any case, and that applies to everyone reading this, if you have an idea for an suitable (under-) water creature (enemy, neutral, scenery, background, whatever) and you feel confident with gfx, feel free to send a draft or even usable tiles. If i have body part tiles i can animate & script the thing and incorporate it. Or try to animate it yourself for some fun
