1. Introduction
Welcome to the map making topic, this forum is for suggesting ideas for, discussing, displaying and testing map making stuff. We are going to try to keep the rules to a minimum here because rules suck but I will get onto that later. Your mods are The_StarWarz_Dude, Tangaroa and Okram, we will sit around and help people and close topics that turn into spamfests or flamewars. There is a Mapping channel on irc called #mapping.
2. Tutorial
2.1 Link to Annihilator tutorial
2.2 Placing tiles and editing the heightmap
Other people might not do this and their maps will be just as good this but when I make maps i try not to use the same tiles next to each other and I try to use irregular shapes in the map to make it look natural. I might draw a picture first but I wont always stick to the picture, the archipelago tileset needs a bit of heightmap editing if you are going to have islands close to each other. To make big changes to the height map start with interval 16, then for finer ones onto to 8, then 4 then 2 or 1. Usually using 1 or 2 isn’t really necessary as the changes are hardly noticeable.
2.3 Placing features
Metal should not be placed using the randomly place feature tool, it should be placed by hand.
Trees on the other hand are usually easier to place using the randomly place feature tool, for thinly placing them it is best to use TAE but for densely placing them or placing them between certain height ranges use annihilator, both can be used for placing other features but TAE will render spire like features on the minimap.
2.4 Experimenting
Please experiment with the programs if you don’t know how to do something or at least look through the menus before asking. It is a good way to learn how to use programs.
2.5 Tileset making
It is possible to make tilesets using Annihilator by using the edit selections tool and the copy to pallete tool. Basically select an area, copy to pallete, use the edit selections tool if needed and save using export HPI tileset.
3. When to use TAE and Annihilator and problems they have
TAE and Annihilator have a number of problems with them, Annihilator has a number of small problems and programed in nuisances, TAE has several major problems, some of which seem to disappear in win 2k and XP.
3.1 TAE
You should use TAE for rendering the minimap, accurately placing start positions and thinly randomly placing features, TAE is not to be trusted, save regularly.
- TAE has a very severe memory leakage issue and will crash win 95, 98 and probably ME
- It takes ridiculously long to load
- The lasso button doesn’t work when randomly placing features
- other problems?
3.2 Annihilator
You should use Annihilator for placing the tiles and some of the features, it can be unstable so saving regularly could be a good idea.
- Annihilator registers itself as the default viewer for HPI files every bloody time you open it
- It doesn’t properly remove features that are deleted, the features are still needed to use the map
- There is some problem with the compress map with maps larger than 30 by 30
- The density options for the randomly placing features do next to nothing.
- There is no lasso tool
- There are some problems with rendering the minimap
- It appears to act oddly after a while and needs to be closed and re-opened.
- other problems?
4. “Rules”
Rules suck, so we wont have specific rules as such, just a couple guidelines.
- Please don’t come in here and ask for some map to be made and sent to some email address, the map might be made but as little effort as possible will be put into it and it will suck.
- Please don’t flame people too much if they are newbies, just teach them, if they say that their map is awesome and it sucks, feel free to say so as long as you give good reasons, but please be polite.
- If someone criticises your work and doesn’t give suggestions on how to fix it, then ignore the criticism, criticism is only good if it give suggestions on how to improve.
- Basically all this amounts to is act in a civilised manner
(okram and tswd, can you please add in anything that you feel is missing.)