Comment/correct me if I am wrong.First map.
You should have mission editor working by now. First thing's first, download the flatlands map. This map is used for all your editing. In mission editor. The base texture can easily be changed as well as many other things.
Use the various tools to sculpt your map such as the adjusting height tool. Stay inside the invisible box though. The box determines your map and what to loop. Notice how slopes repeats itself? it is just the same box repeating. This is how your map will work.
To apply textures, go to window - terrain texture painter. You can change them to whatever. Only use textures in default maps or ones located in your zip (I will explain later). Using random textures from non default maps will result in errors for the people who do not have the map your textures are from.
When done doing that, go into window- mission editor inspector and expand missiongroup - simgroup. Select missioninfo- scriptObject. Leave class and superclass alone but change the name to whatever your map's name it going to be. Savename is the name when you save bricks. A slate edit's savename will be slate, since all slate loads will work with it and it won't take up space in your map saves list. After doing that, hit apply and then hit file - save mission as. Make the target folder add-ons. Save it as yourmapname.mis
Then close out of blockland and go into your add-ons folder and find yourmapname.mis and yourmapname.ter
Create a new folder on your desktop and copypaste them into it. That folder can contain custom textures that you want, such as a new rocky ground or something. Open up notepad and enter this
Title: Yourmapnamehere
Author: Your name
Description: General map description.Fill all that in. Then save it as yourmapname.txt
So far in your folder you should have
- Yourmapname.mis
- Yourmapname.ter
- Yourmapname.txt
Copy and paste it all into a new zip. Name the zip Map_Yourmapname
Now paste the zip into your add-ons folder. The map should work now. Run it. Now I will tell you how to add those custom textures. To use them, go into terrain texture painter and change/add a texture. The texture location will be
Add-ons/Map_Yourmapname/Yourtexturenamehere.png
Your map should look done. Take a picture of it, this picture will be important.
Then save it as Yourmapname.mis and save it in add-ons. Take the new Yourmapname.mis and Yourmapname.ter from add-ons and put it in your zip.
now go find the screenshot in your screenshots folder and rename it Yourmapname.png
Make sure it is scaled 800x600
Then paste it into the zip.
Your zip should now contain
- Yourmapname.mis
- Yourmapname.ter
- Yourmapname.png
- Yourmapname.txt
This SHOULD be all you need. have fun with your new map.
HeightmapsThis tutorial will teach you about heightmaps. This is a heightmap
Heightmaps use color to determine terrain height (I think). Darkness is lower. So you can see there is a river.
In your blockland folder, there should be a folder called editor. Inside that folder, make a new folder called Heightscripts. That will be the folder where heightmaps are saved.
Take the image I gave you and scale it using paint.net to a 256x256 png. Then save it in the heightscripts folder. Then open up blockland and go to a map like flatlands. I prefer flatlands since it is perfect and non buggy. run the mission editor. Go to window - terrain terraform editor. Edit the bitmap operator and choose your heightmap. Then hit edit - relight scene. Now continue on as you would making a normal map.
Use
this to make your own heightmaps. Unzip it and run ter_g.exe. You can generate a random terrain or make your own with the tools. When done, save it as a .bmp
Then be sure to resize it to a 256x256 png.
Interiors.
What are interiors?
Interiors are things such as the kitchen and bedroom, as well as the buildings in various GSF city maps.
Interiors can be created in almost any program, though they would have to be "converted" to be able to be used in blockland. The programs I suggest for making interiors are
Torque Constructor and Valve's
Hammer. Using hammer is far easier and less buggy, but requires a source game, and file conversion.
more coming soon...
