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
Code: Select all
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.