Updated Jan 23 2005

The Map Creator.

Now we need to load our tga files into the mission editor. The following pictures should show you the settings I used to make the River Raid map. River Raid was a fine map that was never released. It does show off the use of water on a map very well so it is a good example to use here.

Step 1: Geometry

Here you need to give your map a name.As large maps can support lots of smaller missions , your best choice of name would be something other than a name for 1 map (However if your only planning on using the terrain for 1 mission should use the same name). This map you`re about to create might actually have 6 missions made from it. So choose a name thats not going to actually matter as the file this will create will not be visible in the game anyway.

When naming maps its usually wise to stick to one word names or use the under score character instead of a space. My map name has a space in the name which is fine for normal maps but can mess up some NFM, NFO or NFX script lines later.

For my Stormy series of maps, I chose Stormy as the name of the terrain in the map creator. Stormywater is a mission that uses the stormy terrain you see. Now you should be able to see the connection, but you will still be wondering why. The problem with naming the terrain the same as your mission is simple. The mw4 and dep files will be named exactly the same, leading to badly installed maps overwriting these files and a flood of complaints suddenly being directed at the map maker. This avoids this problem and the complaints that would otherwise have followed. Players will always blame you the map maker before considering that they may have wrongly installed the map.

Select your height map

Now select your height map tga for the height map field.

Height scale

Height scale can be used to double or treble the height of your map. 1 means normal height. If your map is not as high as you wanted it to be, increasing this value will fix it. You can also make the value smaller by entering 0.5 for half the size.

Polycount.

Poly count can be used to increase the number of polygons the map creator will use to make your map. This can make hills look more natural and man made items look straighter. The value goes up to 3500 but 3000 is fine for most maps.

Smoothing pass

Use this to make hills more jagged or go for a more rolling look. Move the slider to the left makes jagged hills, move it to the right to make smooth rolling hills. This effects movement as smooth hills are easier to climb than jagged ones. This setting can be used to help cut the number of polygons needed to make hills.

Triangle Cap (quote from the offical docs)

This determines how the polygons (specified in Poly Count) will be distributed across the zone.

None - This will let the TCTd determine the best way to distribute the polygons. This is the quickest way of distribution, and may cause strange results in the terrain.

Local - This method will equally distribute the polygons over the 16 subsections of a zone. (Poly Count/16 per subsection)

Area - This method will distribute based on an area of 9 of the 16 subsections. Each area will have (9* (Poly Count/16)) polygons to be distributed across that area. This method allows for subsections that need more detail, by allowing a subsection in an area to have more polygons than the local amount (Poly Count/16). This is the suggested setting.

Final Pass

This removes white lines and other map faults from a map, this is normally turned on when you`re making the render of the map for the final time. I tend to always use it though, even for quick renders but when you just want to check of everything on the map looks right, its best to turn it off and re-render the map again later.

Use interest Data

If your height map contains an green channel you have painted on to highlight special areas of interest, tick this box. This enables that option. The green channel data is explained in how to make ramps section of this guide. See the Terrains page.

Step 2: Textures

Now we tell the program where our terrain & Detail textures are. Choose your Terrain and detail texture, for the boxes that require them.

Fade in and out

The fade in setting is the max distance the detail texture will be fully visible. You may want to set this to about 500, though the settings above produce good results. The fade out setting is the distance that the detail texture completely disappears at. Most map makers terrain textures are hopelessly bad and lack any kind of detail. If this is the case it might better to set the fade out distance to 1000 meters to hide your nasty terrain texture. Though this may cause a performance hit in the game

Detail Ratio:

The Detail Ratio means this detail texture will be applied 16 times to each 1x1 section. Again 16 is a nice figure and produces good results but sometimes reducing it will help prevent a tiling effect that some detail textures create. If your planning on using the multiple detail trick explained in later sections of this tutorial you will find your self having to hex editor 16 detail texture enters per section of the map. So you may want to reduce this number to 1 for some maps.

Step 3: Water (Optional)

If you want to use water on your maps here are the settings I use for my rivers.

I`ve found you can set the water as high as 9. The Ratio's work in a similar way to the other detail texture ratios and the water texture is the texture used on the surface of the water. The Detail texture is laid over as the surface to create a nice overall effect and the underwater texture has the same use of your terrain detail texture e.g its laid over the terrain texture in areas covered by water.

Be careful when you`re using water. Several terrain renders will need to be done to get your height for the river banks right or the water edges may look odd as tearing becomes more visible. Tearing is when the water and the river banks are almost the same height and cause a flicker effect.

Now click on Create map. and wait for it to finish before moving on to the next chapter.

Its at this point most makers consider their maps finished. Its at this point most makers find out the terrains not finished and simply cannot be bothered to go back and correct any mistakes. The VITAL part of the previous tutorial refers to lazy map makers not bothing to check their terrains and correct any errors or problems before moving on from here. So do not make that mistake, your maps problems will be visable to all and everybody will know you were too lazy to fix them if you do.