How to make your own maps.

[Aggelakis]

Is there a thread somewhere that has ANY information about the work to make a compatible server?  I know TonyV said not long ago that they don't have a progress bar because they don't know what all is required, but something that says "Hey, we got this component to work today" would be nice.

Is any of this based on SEGS or a new implementation?  Anyone know who is working on it in case we can lend a hand?

Thanks!

It's not public. It can't be public or NCsoft could start tampering.

AFAIK, SEGS has nothing to do with any Titan effort. SEGS is one dude.

[Hotaru]

Here are some more map pieces.

A variety of wooden, chainlink, and slat fences:


Wrought iron fences, as seen around Atlas Park and various graveyards:


Mausolea, putting the "crypt" into "Cryptic":


And continuing in that vein, tons of graves:



Here are the ruined road pieces, darker and grittier versions of the normal streets that Sparky shot:

[Tyger]

How did I miss this? Another awesome workaround. Pity there's no easy trick to get the in-game editor working like with ICON.

[mmccreadie]

Thanks! Leandro, Codewalker and the other pigg divers/programmers deserve all the praise. I'm just using all the goodies that they've been giving us.

May I ask, are the domes seperate objects, or are they whole skyscraper with the Z set way below the ground plate?  If it's the former what are the names please?

[Sparky]

May I ask, are the domes seperate objects, or are they whole skyscraper with the Z set way below the ground plate?  If it's the former what are the names please?

Yeah they're just skyscrapers. The solid domes are deco7 and the clear ones are deco_skyscraper_07.

[mmccreadie]

Yeah they're just skyscrapers. The solid domes are deco7 and the clear ones are deco_skyscraper_07.

Cheers Mark, might have to steal your deco_skyscraper_6 design instead then as there's a surfeit of objects to cop-opt into Silver Age space stations!

[Script kitty]

I'm interested in helping catalog map pieces. whats your process Hotaru? I'm digging for the pieces under geobin/object_library but they are all .bin and .bounds files how can I physically view theses?

[Hotaru]

Script Kitty, I started out by using a Pigg Viewer to look at Defnames in the Bin file. Use Pigg Viewer to extract that, and then you can look thru the file with Notepad or a similar utility. Be warned--it's still a mess. Generally, anything with a leading underscore, like _stairsbrickbldg would be just a sub-piece of a larger model. Usually those pieces are found around the same section of the file as the pieces they construct (which won't have a leading underscore). If there's something in particular you're looking for, you can try searching the document. You may need to try a few different words or abbreviations: Kings, KR, etc for King's Row.

After I get the name of a few promising-sounding parts, I then put them in a blank map as Leo explained, using the white sky scene file (see Leo's post for more directions). After I've shot a bunch of different pieces, I put them together in Photoshop (where I usually end up scaling them down to a manageable size).

Be aware some pieces might not be viewable from all angles--many building textures are one sided, and if your camera is positioned inside the building, you might not see anything. Unhooking the camera is usually a good idea, and if you need the new camera coordinates to shoot other models of a similar size/shape, just fire up Cameraman to give you the numbers.

Let me know if you need any other help with this.

[Script kitty]

Thank you Hotaru! I was able to start cataloging thanks to your last post, the code really is a mess. I have always wanted to make my own army surplus store.

(Weapons, Army Surplus Props)

[malonkey1]

Jeezy creezy. This is AMAZING. I only wish there was a more visual way to make maps than this. Perhaps one of the supernerds could hack something together. Please?

[Arachnion]

Jeezy creezy. This is AMAZING. I only wish there was a more visual way to make maps than this. Perhaps one of the supernerds could hack something together. Please?

There *is* a fully functional Map Editor built into the client.

However, it requires an active server to work.

Without a server, the only way to make your own maps is as this thread says.

If there was enough interest maybe, sure, someone might whip up a "new" Map Editor, but...

The only person I can see on a project like that would be Codewalker, who I believe IMO, would rather focus his work on Icon.

My two cents.

[Tyger]

There *is* a fully functional Map Editor built into the client.

However, it requires an active server to work.

Without a server, the only way to make your own maps is as this thread says.

If there was enough interest maybe, sure, someone might whip up a "new" Map Editor, but...

The only person I can see on a project like that would be Codewalker, who I believe IMO, would rather focus his work on Icon.

My two cents.

I think Codewalker (or another programmer here) mentioned that the work involved to make a server for just the map editor would be better spent making a fully functional server to bring the entire game to live since it would be effectively accomplishing the same task.

[Premmy]

As easily as any map editor we'd write ourselves. There is always going to be a learning curve to it.

Edit: I suppose that if you only wanted something really basic to build a city map like in Sim City, that wouldn't be very hard to do, but there wouldn't be a lot of variation in the maps either. It'd get boring.

I kind of feel like a separately functioning map editor has as much value to any future efforts as a separate costume, power, and mission editor(hint hint) in that it just gives more people more access and maybe helps the people working on this stuff to better grasp it(though I'm mostly talking out my backside and in complete ignorance on that front) "layman friendly" systems like this are definitely secondary to actual server stuff(P.S. please keep me informed in whatever way is appropriate about all that) but if anyone can do that, I'd seriously encourage them to go for it.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Such an editor would require its' creator to handle the model and texture formats first. *shrug*

[Torroes.Prime]

Yes, with dev mode enabled and firing up the map editor in a demo playback, most stuff doesn't work, but one thing that does is the "clientsave" functionality. That will save a map into text form.

Is it possible that we could do that? Or that someone would be kind enough to provide me instructions so I can do it? Having that base to work from would be phenomenally useful for the Fan Comics I'm attempting to assemble.

[srmalloy]

Just a heads-up, if you're making maps that you want to be able to use in-game eventually, you need to group things in Defs.

Using Refs for object library pieces directly is okay for demo playback, but there are certain client-server interactions that will get very upset with you if you have a million top-level Refs, so it's best to keep them to a minimum. Also, as you found, certain object library pieces doesn't work from a Ref (offhand I think it's ones that use a single geo directly rather than wrapping it in a group).

In general, most of the existing maps have all of the world geometry grouped into a Def called "Geometry", and then have subgroups inside of that for chunks of the map. They also have other top-level layers for various things like spawn points, badges, etc. There are a few exceptions, mostly for geometry that can be hidden or shown dynamically, like the Ski Chalet.

Def names also have to be unique with respect to the object library (which is everything in defnames.bin), but they don't have to be unique across individual maps, as those maps are never loaded at the same time.

From looking at the structure, it sounds as if the client uses the Def groups to manage loading and visibility of chunks of the map, so you don't want to, say, have all your ground for the whole map as a single Def unless it's a small map, and you want to use the Defs to break up a map to increase the rendering efficiency.

[Sakura Tenshi]

does anyone know about the mansion model used for things like the midnight mansion in the night ward or the halloween even?

[Zombie Man]

does anyone know about the mansion model used for things like the midnight mansion in the night ward or the halloween even?

maps/Missions/Unique/Halloween2011/Halloween2011.txt

[Crimson-Oriole]

I thought about starting up a new topic, but I feel my questions will be right at home here, so I didn't 

Anyway, I have been delving into the pigg files the last few weeks just perusing and seeing what I can find.  Well, I was curious, so I tried to edit some buildings in Steel Canyon in an attempt to replace the old textures with the upgraded textures, and I think I broke something.  I tried to load the map by entering the path name (from the data folder) into ICON.  Which brings up my questions:

1)  Can any edits only be viewed in a demo or is it possible to load an edited map into ICON if you change the path?

2)  When attempting to build a map from scratch or edit a pre-existing map, how to you delete/replace specific items and not break it?

3)  When looking at the pigg files how do you separate out what specific pieces you wish to use?  (For example, if you look at the specific file Zig_Subchamber.bin (found in geomv2.pigg under geobin/object_library/Villain_Lairs/Zig_Subchamber) you get:

CrypticS>Parse6Files1Dobject_library/Villain_Lairs/Zig_Subchamber/Zig_Subchamber.rootnamesNO>object_library/Villain_Lairs/Zig_Subchamber/Zig_Subchamber.txtl_Zig_Vault_Hall_Zig_Vault_Halll_Zig_Vault_Entry_Zig_Vault_Entryl_Zig_Vault_Chamber_Zig_Vault_Chamberdzig_temp_lightzig_temp_lightd_zig_column_zig_column\
_zig_light
_zig_light\
_zig_glass
_zig_glassd
Zig_Grate_Flr
Zig_Grate_FlrlPandoras_Box_StandPandoras_Box_StanddPandora_BoxPandora_Boxl_zig_glass_reflect_zig_glass_reflect\   zig_light   zig_light

Now, say I want to just drop a Pandora's box underneath the Atlas statue, how would I go about separating out the individual pieces I would need and what would be the appropriate syntax to use to get this to show-up in-game?

[Crimson-Oriole]

And question 4...

Why can I not get that model of the shuttle to show up in ICON?