5
« on: July 02, 2010, 11:46:39 PM »
It's obvious people are still having trouble, my original topic is too goddamn old to edit and bump so I'm re-posting the topic and improving it. THIS SHOULD BE THE LAST TUTORIAL WE NEED. EVER.
Table of Contents
0. Getting Started
1. Moving the Camera in Mission Editor
2. Brushes and Sizes
3. Landscaping
4. Terrain Painter and Texture adding
5. Water
6. Sun and Sky
7. Interiors and Foliage
8. Naming map In-Game
9. Packaging it (by darerd)
What to Avoid
What you WANT to do
What's missing?
0. Getting Started
-Load up Bedroom. Hit F11. Not working? Close down Blockland, right click your shortcut and hit properties. Change ["C:\Program Files\Blockland\Blockland.exe"] to ["C:\Program Files\Blockland\Blockland.exe" -mod editor] without the brackets. Open up Blockland, load up Bedroom and hit F11, bravo, you've accomplished the ability to open the Mission Editor.
-This is by far the easiest step in the entire tutorial. F11. It boots up the Mission Editor, to edit a map, I recommend using Bedroom. When you hit F11 in the Bedroom map, hit Alt+Q while in Mission Editor mode to fly around. Click on the Bedroom and hit delete, do this for every object on the map but DO NOT DELETE YOURSELF. PERIOD.
-Once you delete everything, you should be standing in the middle of a giant shadow that you don't want. Hit Alt+L and the entire map will re-light itself, the shadow is gone. Once you finish deleting everything, you'll have already shaped and textured terrain but obviously, not made by yourself. Move onto 1 for camera controls.
1. Moving the Camera in Mission Editor
-This is simple enough, Move with W A S D, but to turn you will want to Hold down your right mouse button and then turn.
-You can also change the Camera speed under the Camera tab from Slowest to Fastest.
-Alt+Q = F8. Alt+W = F7. You'll be using this.
-But you can go under Camera and select one of the three options for your Camera(turd).
2. Brushes and Sizes
-First off go under the Window tab and select Terrain Editor, don't worry, we aren't moving onto making Terrain just yet.
-Now that you've done this, go under brushes, there are different sizes for your brushes, a circle brush and square brush.
-You will also notice Hard and Soft. Soft makes your edges blend with the rest of the Terrain while using selected texture. Hard will make whatever you click on become that texture.
-Familiarize yourself with these options then move onto 3 for landscaping.
3. Landscaping
-Assuming you're used to the camera controls and brushes, we'll move onto landscaping and I'm assuming you're using bedroom, so you've already got some hills.
-Making Mountains / Holes: Go under Action and select Adjust Height, now pick a brush size and pick Soft. Click on any surface and move the cursor up, you should have a round hill. Do the same somewhere else but move the cursor down and you should have a round hole. But avoid making round hills and holes, use more than one brush stroke to sculpt the terrain, also use different brush sizes.
-Making Smoother Terrain: This is something you will probably need to do after making mountains and holes, go under Action and select Smooth, run your brush over the land (Soft Brush) to smooth out the nasty spikes you make, no one like spikes. So once you smooth the terrain on all your hills and holes, you probably want to flatten things for Plateaus.
-Flattening Terrain: Go under Action and select Flatten, run your brush over the top of a mountain and it'll begin to flatten out just like a plateau would be. You have flattened it now.
-Setting Height: Using this puts whatever you run the brush over with back to the default terrain you started with, be careful with it, use it on really bad mistakes rather than on a good mountain or hole.
-Add Dirt: Similar to Adjust Height, only this will make your ground rise up into round hills, but you can move your brush around rather than have it stuck in one spot and only move it up and down.
-Excavate: Opposite of Add Dirt, similar to Adjust Height, only this will make your ground "dig a hole", but you can move your brush around rather than have it stuck in one spot and only move it up and down.
4. Terrain Painter and Texture adding
-I bet by now you are wondering "Why am I using one texture?" Well that's because none others are added, but that's where this content comes in. Go under Window and select "Terrain Texture Painter", you should have 6 slots on the right side with 1 texture and the others being empty.
-Adding textures: Click add and find a Texture in the menu. once you pick it grab your brush and click the ground, WOW The ground changed color! It looks greenish on the outside but normal on the in right? That's because you used a Soft Brush, now use the Hard brush. WOW! The Whole area around the Brush is just the TEXTURE! Amazing.
-After you finish painting your terrain we can move onto water, make sure your painting is good and be sure to use at least 3 textures or more.
5. Water
-This task is a bit more complicated then all the other tasks we've done so far. Go under Window and select World Editor Inspector. Click the + sign for a drop down of selections. Don't click anything just yet! Now click the Waterblock tab. Here you can do MANY things with the Water, make it Lava...Make it quicksand... But we're here to just make water
-If you are on Bedroom change the scale to be 2046 2046 100, your water should be high in the sky. To move it down into the holes select the blue line going UP, not the other two, and move your cursor down, once you get it into the Holes, go into it and you won't sink to the bottom. Now if you WANTED to sink to the bottom without floating back up, change the scale to 2046 2046 1. Find your water and move it back where you had it, now you will sink down.
-You know the basics about Water now. as you advance in using the Mission Editor you will know of even cooler functions to use.
6. Sun and Sky
-Well you are just about done other than that blasted sky and sun we've got here. No worries we'll soon fix that!
-The Skybox: This is located where the Waterbox is located. Open it, Go under "Fog" and you can change the Fog color and distance, the closer the fog, the more foggy the map is. your Fog can even go in the negative numbers. But don't go too far as it will look ugly. Change the Fog color to match what you envision...Sunset..Night..Daw n, you get the idea there.
-Changing the Sky: This is a bit more tricky as you have to open a folder outside of the game to find a sky. Go under C:\Program Files\Blockland\base\data\skies and you will find Skies in there. Right so you have a Default sky? Lets try a better sky. Open the Media tab in the Skybox. Change the "Sky_Blue2" only. Look in your folder for a sky. You will notice "Sky_Blue2" in there, Change the name to something else. Once you have done this hit Apply.(Hope you have been hitting Apply since Water) Good, you have a New Sky. Lets move onto Sun.
-The Sun: Located where the Waterbox and Skybox is, open it. Click "Misc" and you will have options for the Sun. Lets say you have a Night Sky right? You want the Minifigs and Builds to be darker aswell, change color to "0.100000 0.100000 0.100000 1.000000" Then change ambient to all 0 except for the last one which is 1.00000. Hit Apply, you should be Darker now, in addition you can change it back to 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 and 0.55 0.55 0.55 1.0, There is also two other things. Azimuth and Elevation, change the numbers and the Lighting moves around you.
7. Interiors and Foliage
-I won't teach you to make Interiors but I will tell you how to add such things. Go under Window and select World Editor Creator, DON'T CLICK A THING YET! For Foliage go under Static Shapes, then base, then data then Foliage
-You will have some trees. Find one in Blue Lettering and click it ONCE, Tada you made a Tree. You can move it around as explained in Water. You can Delete it by pushing "Delete" on your Keyboard as long as its Selected.
-For Interiors now.. Go under Interiors, then base, then data, then Interiors again and you'll have your interiors there, just like the trees, click on a BLUE name once and its added. Wow it sure is DARK! Well lets change that, Push ALT+L, you will probably lag a bit. After it finishes, the whole map is re-lit and your interiors are lighted! Ta-da.
8. Naming the Map In-Game
-This is a bit easy. Go under World Editor Inspector from the Window Dropdown menu, Select "MissionInfo - ScriptObject" Click Dynamic Fields, change "name" "desc0" and "desc1" and its done! But make sure Desc0 is Name: Mapnamehere and Desc1 is Author: Mynamehere and change name to Mapnamehere.
9. Packaging it(by darerd)
After you're done doing everything in Mission Editor, go ahead and press F11 to exit it, and take a screenshot that captures most of the view of the map or the most beautiful part. Make sure you aren't TOO FAR off the ground when you take it. Also try and get into a pretty high screen resolution when you do this, or it will be too small because this will be displayed as the loading screen for your map.
Go back into the mission editor and save it on to your desktop. Close Blockland now, and on your desktop you will find a .mis and .ter file. Put these into a folder named "Map_Mapnamehere".
Here is a list of things you will also need to put in this folder:
- Your latest screenshot, wheather it's edited or not, with the name "Map_Mapnamehere"
- Any interiors or foliage
- Any textures
+Skybox(es)
- A text file named "Mapnamehere", with contents:
Title: Mapnamehere
Author: Mynamehere
Any other descrption
- A text file named "namecheck", with content:
Map_Mapnamehere
- Any other things you included in the map.
Then, create a new .zip folder. Open it and the folder you put all of the stuff in. Highlight all of the contents of the normal folder, and drag it into the .zip folder. There should not be another folder inside of your .zip folder. If there is, the addon will be recognized as junk and will not be processed when you start Blockland.
You're almost there. That .zip folder should run as an add-on normally, but there's one more thing we need to do in order to prevent random crashing of server hosts when they are loading the datablocks. Copy/paste the .zip folder into your add-ons directory. Run blockland on that server and open mission editor. If you need to, you may have to re-polish some things in the map because of the different directory of textures, etc.. Re-save the map and re-package it. Then you're done.
What to Avoid
-Spiky and Round Terrain, no one likes it
-Sudden height changes, not everyone likes it
-Bad placement of trees or interiors
-One or Two Textures, use at least 3 or more
-Don't be a punk with the Water, Make it Nice
What you WANT to do
-Make a lovely landscape
-Make lots of area to roam in
-Good placement of trees and interiors
-4 Textures or more is good
-Water that is a pure beauty.
What's missing?
-Other stuff I'm too tired to think of right now.
This concludes the tutorial, if you still SOMEHOW have a problem, re-read this as you probably missed something, but if you read it thoroughly and have a problem, ask here and ignore trolls because they have nothing better to do other than piss you off and wait for you to respond so they can troll you more.
I realize the packaging maps category is missing, but I'm lazy right now. I'll edit this when someone makes one or if I make one.
Want to add a category? Name it, explain it, it gets in the main post if I approve.
Hope this helps you newbies make good maps. Enjoy.
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