If you want to try and make a map...

Working on new maps for Multiwinia? Discuss!

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The GoldFish
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If you want to try and make a map...

Postby The GoldFish » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:56 pm

At this stage, my utmost reccomendation is wait or the editor.

Since you already knew that and want to edit maps anyway, here's some heads up;

You're going to want Darwinia, as it's the best way of making your physical landscape and placing/rotating your buildings. If you don't have it, you could buy it, or you could cheat and make use of the of the fact that Multiwinia has basically everything Darwinia needs to start anyway except a bunch of sounds (multiwinia dats + 1.42 patch + empty txt file called sounds.txt in data\). You'll also need the mod system turned on, so once you've got a preferences.txt for Darwinia, add

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ModSystemEnabled = 1


(the blank line at the end of the file is important so make sure that there is one)

Create a new mod once you get ingame, which should enter you into the editor, then you can use F9 to turn the editor on and off.

You'll want to create a location called something along the lines of mp_mapname.txt - IV used mp_gametype_#p_#.txt, where #p was number of plyaers, and # is which map of the many maps they've created it is. You don't need to do this - the gametype and #p used in the map name aren't used at all, so it's best that you use something unique to you, like your handle, in the map name, along perhaps with the version, so something like TGFbattletidev1.txt. Why no underscores in that? Because usefully you can't type _s in in the editor.

Now you can create a map and place basic Darwinia buildings (like spawn points). As pointed out, for buildings you can't create in Darwinia because they don't exist, like Multiwinia zones, put simple placeholder buildings in instead, I suggest things like safe areas or population locks because these are unused, and also have radiuses which you can make use of to size up the zones you're going to replace them with later.

If you've never made a map for Darwinia, I suggest you follow some of the guides or play about a bit to get used to it. It's really quite easy once you can get the hang of it. My advice is to extract all of multiwinia's main.dat and look at all the preexisting levels, and work out how things work from there.

Anyway, make sure you place in cameras and starting units in the form of Darwinians, along with corresponding cameras named player#, which are the start camera positions for the relavent player. (Note that the teams start at 0)

Once you're done, pop into Darwinia to check all your spawn points work (after working out or reading about the spawnpointmaster, spawnlink, spawnpoint linking system on eg thenexgame)

If that's all sorted, navigate to your darwinia/mods/yourmod/levels folder and find your map. Create a new file in here called whatever you want, but ideally, mp_yourmapname.txt. Heres the structure you need to copy the data out of your map and mission file. You can find more multiwinia options data, in the files in main.dat (aka main.rar)

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MultiwiniaOptions_StartDefinition
   GameTypes   gametype
   PopulationCap   #### (should be less than 2000)
   DefenderPopulationCap   -1
   NumPlayers   #
   InvalidCrates   Armour or whatever
   Difficulty   basic
MultiwiniaOptions_EndDefinition

Landscape_StartDefinition
#Out of the map file!
Landscape_EndDefinition

LandscapeTiles_StartDefinition
#Out of the map file!
LandscapeTiles_EndDefinition

LandFlattenAreas_StartDefinition
#Out of the map file!
LandFlattenAreas_EndDefinition

Lights_StartDefinition
#Out of the map file!
Lights_EndDefinition

Buildings_StartDefinition
#Out of the map file!
Buildings_EndDefinition

CameraMounts_StartDefinition
#Out of the mission file!
CameraMounts_EndDefinition

CameraAnimations_StartDefinition
#will be empty
CameraAnimations_EndDefinition

InstantUnits_StartDefinition
#Out of the mission file!
InstantUnits_EndDefinition

PrimaryObjectives_StartDefinition
   NeverTrue
PrimaryObjectives_EndDefinition
#blank line


Now's the time to change your safe areas or whatever over to buildings like the MultiwiniaZone, which are the zones used for KOTH. Set their team to 255. In CTS, 255 multiwinia zones are statue spawns, and team 0-3 etc are the places to capture them, it seems. You'll also want to change the teams around for certain buildings - noe that, unmanned spawnpoints are on team -1/255, any spawnpoints on a team will start manned by DGs.

Then, if you haven't already, navigate to multiwinia/data/levels (You will have to create these directories!, and put your map in there. Being more clear, you want to match up with this;

somefolder/multiwinia.exe
somefolder/data/levels/mp_yourmap.txt

It should now appear in game with no thumbnail, no name, and no description. If you want to, you can make a thumbnail (400x300 bitmap of the same file name as your map, in data/thumbnails). Ingame name and description I would seriously give a miss for now, do I would put your map name/author details etc ON your thumbnail so that if you distribute your map, clients will know which map it is without having to worry about the actual name and description.

Anyway, you should now be able to play your map in game. Give it a go! If it crashes, you did something bad ;-;. If you want other people to be able to play with you on your map, they'll need your mp_yourmapname.txt and probably your thumbnail too. Zip these up and host them, or something, then they'll need to download it.

HOW TO NAME YOUR MAP FOR DISTRIBUTION:

There are a multitude of options in this regard and frankly, I am no the definitive source for this. Basic ideas are to include the gametype, number of players, mapname, author and version in the name of the file. Obviously there's so much information in there that it can tend to be confusing, so I SUGGEST that people use the following;

mp_[gametypeinitial][playercount]_[mapname][authorinitials]_[version].txt

resulting in (an example I used in another thread):

mp_k2_FacingWorldsNL_2.txt

or perhaps

mp_b3_battletideTGF_1.txt

or

mp_d4_battletide2TGF_1.txt (a sequal map to battletide, version 1!)

Once we have proper meta data fields for maps, like author and map name etc, this should look a lot better ingame, but this seems to be a good scheme to use to stop map collisions, as well as preserve data should your map be upgraded (some people may not like your updates) or someone else create a map by the same name. It should also alphabetically sort your map folder by gametype and then number of players.

Please post in this thread (or some other thread if someone makes one) any nuances you come across! It will hopefully help out other budding authors.
Last edited by The GoldFish on Sat Oct 04, 2008 12:20 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Postby hibbs » Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:45 am

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PopulationCap   #### (should be less than 2000)


actually i made a map with 4000 before and it worked fine.

edit:

also to make a multiwiniazone use a StaticShape in darwinia's editor then pull up the text file go down to the staticshape rename it to MultiwiniaZone and right before the none in that line there is a decimal. that controls the radius of the MutliwiniaZone 10.00 is a small one 100.00 medium.

or copy code after you make the staticshape so you have the cordnets of where you want it:



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MultiwiniaZone        <uniuqe id from static shape>     <x cordnets gotten from staticshape> <y cordnets gotten from staticshape>       10.00    1.00    0         <radius of MultiwiniaZone>  none
 
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Postby The GoldFish » Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:53 am

hibbs wrote:also to make a multiwiniazone use a StaticShape


It's a nice idea but this actually makes more work for you. It's easier (I think) to use a safe area and just change the text to multiwiniazone. The radius param matches directly, giving a direct correlation between what you see in Darwinia and the exact size in multiwinia. It'll safely ignore the extra safe area params (or you can just delete them). SafeAreas aren't used my multiwinia, so, you can just find/replace safe area with multiwiniazone, and leave otherwise as is, unless you need to modify the team.

Also, yes, of course it "works fine" to have a population cap of 4000, or 10000. But 2000 is the highest population cap you'll see in any level made by IV, and you should take the hint from the game designers that 2000 is pretty much at the safe performance cap.
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Postby hibbs » Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:14 pm

Also, yes, of course it "works fine" to have a population cap of 4000, or 10000. But 2000 is the highest population cap you'll see in any level made by IV, and you should take the hint from the game designers that 2000 is pretty much at the safe performance cap.


Well i guess it is safer at 2000, i've been making a new KOTH map and it having 4000 pop cap slowed things down.

It's a nice idea but this actually makes more work for you. It's easier (I think) to use a safe area and just change the text to multiwiniazone. The radius param matches directly, giving a direct correlation between what you see in Darwinia and the exact size in multiwinia. It'll safely ignore the extra safe area params (or you can just delete them). SafeAreas aren't used my multiwinia, so, you can just find/replace safe area with multiwiniazone, and leave otherwise as is, unless you need to modify the team.


well i was just looking for the best way to make a multiwiniazone. you didn't tell what to use to make one so i started looking. your way seems better though. :lol:
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Re: If you want to try and make a map...

Postby The GoldFish » Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:21 pm

The GoldFish wrote:Now you can create a map and place basic Darwinia buildings (like spawn points). As pointed out, for buildings you can't create in Darwinia because they don't exist, like Multiwinia zones, put simple placeholder buildings in instead, I suggest things like safe areas or population locks because these are unused, and also have radiuses which you can make use of to size up the zones you're going to replace them with later.

...

Now's the time to change your safe areas or whatever over to buildings like the MultiwiniaZone, which are the zones used for KOTH. Set their team to 255. In CTS, 255 multiwinia zones are statue spawns, and team 0-3 etc are the places to capture them, it seems. You'll also want to change the teams around for certain buildings - noe that, unmanned spawnpoints are on team -1/255, any spawnpoints on a team will start manned by DGs.


So yeah...

Go go team evil!
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Postby The GoldFish » Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:43 pm

I wouldn't usually double post, but, some people may have noticed earlier a 6 player assault map - this was my doing. It seems anything past 6 results in a crash, and the extra team slots are of little use.

Given the following (credit to Tricycle21);

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<Tricycle21> well I've found another interesting thing
<Tricycle21> team 4, 5 doesn't do 'team rotation'
<Tricycle21> team 0-3 exchanges places at the start of the game, but team 4 and 5 doesn't


This means that a 4 player assault map, with the attackers be team 0 1 2 3, and similar coop groups, you should be able to do 4 player coop (as RabidZombie was attempting earlier, hopefully this will help him get that ball rolling) vs futurewinians or evilwinians.

This should stop people joining as players that might control futurewinians/evilwinians; so far it appears that they can't be controlled, though lag was a major, major issue with 6 people.
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Postby deeCee. » Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:57 am

Sorry to sound stupid here but Multiwinia/data/levels? there are no folders like this in my multiwinia folder?
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Postby NukeLord » Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:04 am

deeCee. wrote:Sorry to sound stupid here but Multiwinia/data/levels? there are no folders like this in my multiwinia folder?
The GoldFish wrote:To be clear, you WILL HAVE TO MAKE THESE FOLDERS. A lot of people don't realise this immidietly, so I shall strive to be clear.
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Postby The GoldFish » Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:05 am

Don't worry, it's a common theme, and I always try to be clear (apparently this time I failed): You need to create the directories.
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!
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Postby deeCee. » Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:06 am

Ahhhh ok thnx. I actually sort of assumed that and did it, but the map I put in didnt show up...hmmm
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Postby Greendingbat » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:19 pm

Yeah, same thing happened to me
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
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Postby zach » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:41 pm

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    __
__/    \__
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Postby Adanufgail » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:35 pm

How do you make magical forests? I want to have a giant magical tree in the center of the level.
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Postby xander » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:57 pm

Adanufgail wrote:How do you make magical forests? I want to have a giant magical tree in the center of the level.

I'm pretty sure that magical forests can only be placed while playing -- either by popping out of a crate, or by being placed by a player.

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Postby Shwart!! » Fri Oct 10, 2008 11:15 pm

Trees can be set to any of the 3 types with a certain flag.
Set it in the map files.

Shwart!!

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