 Mechstorm's Complete Map Making Tutorial or MCM for Short. Covering Mechwarrior4, Mechwarrior4:BK and Mechwarrior4:Mercs. If you have any questions feel free to drop by our Mechstorm Editor/Scripting help Forum after you have registered on our forums. |
Checking your terrain for faults.One part of map making most map makers forget until
they turn up for a Mechstorm night and find all their work on their
map will have to be scrapped because of one fault on map is the terrain.
Map makers normally check the look of the map is ok before moving on
to the mission building but they really should check out all the terrain
themselves before doing that. This chapter will tell you what to look
for and what to use to spot it. It is the easiest beta test you will
ever run but it makes the biggest difference.
Step 1: Create a basic mission.We start off by placing a simple mission on the map, this basically means selecting new from the editor menu, choose your terrain and give the mission a name. Then save it off and load it in to the instant action area of Mechwarrior 4. Step 2: Finding those problems.If you followed my advice when creating your height map, one of the problems people face at this point won't exist. The black border around the edge of the height map helps prevent rogue polygons. If you didn't add a black border to your height map then you will have check for these nasty rogue polygons now. Run all the way around the edge of your terrain. If you spot anything odd, its probably a rogue poly. To fix it, go back to chapter one and read the height map section again, Now we check movement, starting with a cougar with jump jets we run all over the map to make sure any area that a mech should be able to move through can be moved through. You have to keep your eyes open for areas that larger mechs may not be able to pass through whilst you're doing this. Next, you take a larger mech and check these areas. You must make a choice at this point, does the fact that a diashi cannot pass one point of your map really matter. If it does, then you need to fix your height map to make sure it can. Step 3: WaterIf your map has water on it, you must check the banks do not have a shimmering effect where the land meets the water. If it has, then you have a tearing problem. You fix this on your height map by making the banks steeper. Remember to check that all mechs can get in and out of the water. Step 4: FootstepsNow it's time to fix a problem that still exists in the editor today. We will fix the footstep sounds for our map. The next part is a quote from the Devteams own docs on how to make a material map. They explain it pretty well so i won't repeat their work. Devteam Docs (Quoted in part) A Material map defines what effect plays when a ‘Mech walks on or a weapon hits the ground, also, it defines what kind of footfall sound is played when the ‘Mech walks overtop of the terrain. There are material map files in the \content\maps\mapname folder that are named AA.material AB.material etc. These are actually indexed 8 bit .raw files that have been renamed. All you have to do is create the correct content, name the files correctly and rebuild the resources for that map. After creating a new map, the map’s texture information is put
in: \Content\Textures\Maps\<Mapname> Create the .raw files by…
6. Done. The material that will be associated with the terrain will be determined by the position of the color swatch you use on the table. Note: The first color will be Material type 0 Color swatch based on position equals the following material: Materials 19 through 23 can only be used with MechWarrior4: Black Knight 19 Light Mineral Material Step 5: Fixing the shadows on your mission.Because you ran your terrain test mentioned above you will now have a mission in contents/missions under a directory named after your mission. For example heres the path to my Grandcanyon mission files directory. mechwarrior4\content\Missions\GrandCanyon The file we're interested in is named after your map, in my case its grandcanyon.lights and can be found in the directory listed above. My Grandcanyon map has the following lines in it. [ambient_light0000] [infinite_light0001] If you look at the Direction= lines, one will have all zeros and the other will have numbers similar to mine. You need to paste the one with numbers like mine over the one containing all zeros. This will fix your shadow problem. Step 6: Advanced usage of the Mini map & detail texture.Your mini map and even your detail texture can be changed after your map has been rendered. You can use the same method to change either as long as the changed file remains in the same format as the original fine. You must also keep the same file name. To do so go in to your... mechwarrior4\content\textures\Maps\GrandCanyon directory, you will see (for my map its grandcanyon) your detail texture is in there, you can edit it as described in Chapter one and replace this file. The changes will be visible on your map next time you load the editor. Also in that directory is a tga file named after your map. If you view it, you will notice its your mini map. Now if you're one of those map makers that ignored my advice in chapter one and did not put much effort into making your terrain interesting, you can now repaint your mini map so at least that looks good, even if your own map is as boring as hell. Some mechstorm map makers like to add a grid system to the mini map to make teamplayer better on their maps. As long as you don't change the file format or file name, you can do this easily. Step 7: Finishing offTime to get the editor to register the changes we have made. Go into mechwarrior4\resource\maps & mechwarrior4\resource\usermissions and delete all the map files for your current map, you can leave the NFO file if you wish. This will not delete your map, it merely removes the compiled versions of your map. Now load the mission back in to the editor and save your map again. All of the changes we have made will now be visible on the new map. Aren't you glad you read the terrain faults chapter now :)
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