[51]mapping Guide

The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping

The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping Written by Buddy13 and [LoN]Kamikaze

Table of Contents Foreword...............................................................................................................................................2 Walk through........................................................................................................................................3 Water Gather Points.............................................................................................................................7 Lighting................................................................................................................................................8 Sounds................................................................................................................................................10 Objects................................................................................................................................................11 Tagpoints............................................................................................................................................12 FAQ....................................................................................................................................................13

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The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping

Foreword This guide is a collection of tips that were posted on the original Battle Realms forums. The first collection was made by Buddy13. The original tips were published by Buddy13 and [LoN]Kamikaze on the same forums. This edition was put together by [LoN]Kamikaze from a web cache pointed out by Buddy13. The methods listed here are by no means the only way to do things. They are merely suggestions. Be told that this is mostly a collection of quotes from a message board. That means there have been no efforts to ensure proper grammar, spelling or language, even though I took the freedom to replace some slang with English words. Many of that which is written here was found out through hours of careful trial and error. Whoever wishes to make maps for the game Battle Realms, should read this guide and be wiser for it.

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The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping

Walk through Open WorldMaster and on the file menu, select "New", then choose the size and tileset you want. Begin by picturing in your head what you want. First thing you do, no matter how slow your computer is, is turn on the "Display Passability" option in the "Paths" tool menu (it is the button with an 'X' and a path next to it). The first step is elevation. Pick the "Raise Height" tool (the one with the pointy hill on it). Now raise areas that you want raised. You must let go of the mouse button for the passability to adjust to your changes. Now, select the "Smooth Height" tool (the one with the rounded hill on it). Smooth your high areas until they look natural. If you want units to be able to walk in these areas, continue smoothing till the red disappears. Click the "Paint Lakes" tool. In the left-hand column, set the Max Depth to 1 or 2 meters; This makes setting water points later a little easier. Usually the 9x9 tool is good enough for this. Paint lakes on your map wherever you want. Remember, You must keep lakes away from elevation changes, if you paint a lake on top of a hill, then pass the edge, the water will drop down to the lower level and you'll have a strange notch in your hill. Now, you'll notice that the water you have painted has very unnatural-looking edges. Again click on the "Smooth Height" tool. Use the softest brush available (the one with the most faded edges) and click and hold the mouse-button over the water. Be careful not to accidentally smooth out any nearby hills. If you let go of the mouse-button, the passability will recalculate. Once the lake is rounded enough for your tastes, move on. Now, move over to the "Paint Textures" tool (the one with the squares of different textures on it. First, paint stone on all areas which remain red. This gives a visual way to tell that your units cannot go there. Next, paint the Rice texture. Try to make sure that your rice is even for all players. Some people like to line the bottom of lakes with this texture. You can use it however you like. NOTE: Painting rice does not mean that you have to have rice there. Now, the Forest and Dirt (or wetlands or wastelands or whatever, depending on which tileset you've chosen) textures can be placed anywhere you want. It's entirely up to you. The Paint Color tool. This one is completely optional. This can be used for many purposes, but you don't need it. Now is where you make a choice. Do you want to add trees to all of your forest texture (if you painted any) or do you want to paint the trees in random areas. It 3/13

The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping looks best on the forest texture, but you can do it any way you wish. Open the "Paint Trees" tool. If you want to put trees on all of the forest textures that you painted, on the left, click on the button that says "Fill Forest Terrain". Otherwise, Paint trees where you want them by using the brushes just like textures or lakes or colours. You don't even have to paint them on a forest texture. Now, if you haven't painted rice texture under lakes, this part will be easy. Click on the "Paint Rice" tool. On the left, click on the "Fill Rice Terrain" button. If you have painted rice underwater, don't do that. Instead, paint the rice where you want it with the brushes. You don't even have to paint rice on a rice texture. NOTE: When painting rice, try to make sure that all intended players have roughly equal amounts of rice. Objects. The hardest thing for me to learn was to not overdo it with these fun objects. There are many to choose from (but no ruins hint hint, liquid), but not all have a good purpose. If you click on the effects folder, you will see a new list of objects that you can use. If you want to start simple, click on the "Butterfly.LFX" on the list. Now move your cursor to the viewing window. Click over the rice or lake (or wherever else you think you might see a butterfly). At first, you won't see anything. If you want to see your butterfly, click on the farthest-right button (the one with the gears on it). This will animate your world. NOTE: Don't do this if you have a really slow computer. Continue to place objects until you are satisfied. NOTE: There is a limit to how many object you can place in the maps, so don't overdo it. Now, Click on the Objects folder. Here you will see even more things to play with. Corpses and skeletons are good for setting up areas where you want to have a messy slaughter. To rotate the objects (for a more natural, non-repetitive look), left click the object (to select it), then hold the alt key while you left-click and hold the mouse button. Move your mouse around till you are satisfied with it's position. NOTE: Make sure that when you "left-click", that you're doing it in the Viewer section of the window, not the menu on the left. NOTE: The object called "Boulder 1" is the boulder which your units can push around. If you want Boulders on your map, this is where to get them Still in the objects folder, Forest Alert. This object is not really an object at all. This is how you make the birds startle when units run by. (it took me forever to figure this out) Be sure you only place them in areas with trees. And don't use too many of them on one map, they may slow down the gameplay. Static Objects folder. This is where to get more, natural-looking rocks. Place and rotate them the same way as you did with the corpses. NOTE: The waterfall included with this version of WorldMaster is the wrong one. Don't use it. Some people can get it to work, but it's difficult. If you must, 4/13

The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping download the patch which changes the Waterfall 1 into the correct waterfall. I don't know where to get this patch, so if anyone knows, post a link in this thread. Thanks. Tag Points. This is the button with the little flag on it. First thing's first. You must place "Team Start Points". To do this, select that from the menu on the left. Now, place as many start points as you want onto your map. (e.g. if you want a fourplayer map, place four start points). Creature Spawn Points. Select this from the menu and place at least one. Rightclick on it, either in the viewer portion of the window, or the list at the lower left area of the menu, and edit it. You must have at least one horse spawn point on the map before it can be saved. After you have placed the horses, you can place any animals you want. The only animals which affect gameplay are Wolves and Horses. Any animals other than this are unnecessary, so don't place too many. I like to place some fish in the water, and some frogs sometimes... And, if you want, place a lily-pad spawn point nearby (in the water) so the frogs have something to sit on, and believe me, they will sit on the lily pads. NOTE: The creatures called "reserve_..." (i can't read the whole thing, the dropdown menu is too narrow) all seem to me to be rats. Some may not be but I haven't seen any. Perhaps liquid could tell us what they are? Okay, now you can place "water gather points" You may do this one of two ways. You may place them manually or automatically. If you want to do it manually, stay in the same menu. If you don't want to do it manually, go to the paragraph after next. On the "tag points" menu, click the radio button (the circle-dot thing) for water gather points. When you place these, they won't appear on the list unless you want them to. (click on the checkbox at the bottom to make them appear on the list). Now, no matter where you place them, they will go to the nearest valid spot. You can see this by placing one on land, it has a white line going to the nearest water, and a smaller blue sphere in the water. This is your water gather point. Place as many as you want, but make sure that all players get at least one. If you have a lake that you don't want people getting water from (purely for aesthetics), then don't put any gather points in it. To set water gather points manually open the menu for "Paint Lakes" again. At the lower area of this menu, you will notice some Water Gather point info. Click the button which says "Generate Water Points" and blue spheres will appear in all the water on your map. Those are your water points. If there are not enough, change the slider on the menu to a higher density (all the way to the left) and hit the same button again. If you have a lake that you don't want people gathering water form (purely for aesthetics), then go back to the "Tag Point" menu, and click "Water Gather Points". Now left click any of the blue spheres in the lake you don't want them in. Hit delete. Repeat until all the water points are gone from this lake. NOTE: There is an easier way to delete them. Go to the upper-left corner of the lake, left-click and hold the mouse button, now drag your mouse to the lowerright. This will select all the Water Points in that area. Now just hit delete. Now you're done with water. 5/13

The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping The following steps are optional. The "Adjust Clouds" tool. This tool is only for aesthetic purposes as it has no effect on gameplay (I guess the rain kinda does). You can adjust the speed and direction of the clouds, by using the circle thing, and the first slider. You can adjust humidity. I like rain, so I set mine high. If you don't want rain, or you want it to rain all the time, adjust the humidity accordingly. NOTE: 80 percent humidity makes it rain. Sounds (the button with the ear). These are optional, but will add to your map's feel. There are many sounds to choose from. Choose ones that fit in with what you have created, like birds, crickets, wind, etc. NOTE: Keep your sounds volume to around 50 (to adjust this, right-click on the sound, either in the list or on the map), so as not to be really annoying. Lighting. (the one with a sphere and a light) You can set your map's light to one of four different preset lighting conditions, such as "Morning" or "Night". The default is Daytime, and if this is what you want, then you don't need to do anything. Click on "Load Preset" to pick one of the presets. I don't know if there is a way to customize these, but they are good enough. Go to the Edit menu, then click on "Level Settings..." Now you can change the color of the Fog of War (FOW). Save your map. Give it a clever name. If you noticed, when creating my maps, I go from left to right along the toolbar. This helps me to not leave out anything. I only go out of order when certain things are needed before other things. Now, as [LoN]Kamikaze said, placing water gather points manually, you can avoid the visual problems which occur when peasants gather water from the same point at the same time.

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Water Gather Points Many people have trouble with placing water gather points, so here is a post I made regarding that problem: Always turn "Show passability" on. No matter how slow your comp is. (even if you only use it while changing terrain and water) First, when you use the "Paint Lakes" tool, the default depth is 32 meters. That's way too damn deep. Set to less than 10 (even that is deep). If you want it to be really easy, set it to 1. Now, paint your lakes where you want them. Now, if your lake is only one meter deep, smoothing is easy. Just smooth the edges until they look good and natural. If your lake is deeper than that, smooth it until you see at least a little passability (no red) at the shoreline. Now, go back to the "Paint Lakes" tool. At the bottom, you will notice a slider and a couple of buttons. Slide the slider all the way to the right. Now hit the button that says "Generate Water Points". This is the easy way to get water points. (if you've set the water depth to 1 and you don't want troops to walk through the water in a particular area, go to passability, and "edit passability". Paint where you don't want them to walk.) Compare those two images:

The first one has generated WPs the other one manually placed WPs. The manual WPs make sure that peasants always walk to the closest source of water. Generated WPs are placed everywhere including useless places, but too distant from each other. All Liquid maps have manually placed WPs. I think they added the generate WPs button to make the editor more simple for beginners and lead to quick results. However you should take the time and delete all WPs and place them manually like in the first picture when your map is ready for release.

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Lighting Here is a list of all the lighting options. Everything in this post is based on my own experiences and tests. For better orientation I'll give every light a number. [-] Lights In Scene [D] Directional Light (I) [A] Ambient Light (II) [-] Terrain [D] Directional Light (III) [D] Directional Light (IV) Light I and light II only affect objects like units, trees, buildings and so on. Light III and IV affect the terrain.

Light I [Diffuse Color] Colour of the light applied to all objects, dependent from visibility and angle of the polys. [Ambient Color] A colour which is applied onto all objects, dependent from the angle, independent from the visibility. [Directional Light Position] Direction of the light source for all objects. Imagine the light source as sun or moon. TIP You can use the [Diffuse Color] setting and the [Ambient Color] setting for light fading effects. For example an evening setting would look good with [Diffuse Color] set to yellow and [Ambient Color] set to blue.

Light II [Diffuse Color] No effect. [Ambient Color] A colour which is applied to all objects, independent from angle and visibility. [Directional Light Position] No effect. [Range] Default is 0.25. Values above 1 don't differ from 1. This is the strength of the ambient light. 8/13

The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping TIP This is a constant light. It is applied on every poly of every object. Think of it as the minimum light applied to all objects. [Range] values close to 1 should be avoided. They give the map a sterile feel. Light III [Diffuse Color] Colour of the shadows on the terrain. [Ambient Color] No effect. [Directional Light Position] No effect. TIP Don't apply light colours to [Diffuse Color]. Maps without shadows look sterile and it makes orientation for the player difficult.

Light IV [Diffuse Color] Colour of the light, which shines on the terrain. Dependent from angle and visibility. [Ambient Color] No effect. [Directional Light Position] Direction of the light source for the terrain. TIP I recommend to play with [Directional Light Position] to get used to the effect. The angle strongly influences the daytime. Never forget to press l after changing a light setting and don't forget to update the tree shadows. Also don't forget that the weather influences the light, too.

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The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping

Sounds First of all, sounds add to the feel and atmosphere of a map. Whether you want it to be an eerie, dismal map or a bright, sunny map, sounds can help or hinder you. The first thing I consider when making a map is the ambient sound, that is, the sound I want people to hear always. Sometimes this can be some wind, a swamp loop, or just some crickets. The first thing I do is choose what sound I want everyone to hear. Click the button at the top with an ear on it to go to the sounds menu. Click the sound you want, then click on the map somewhere (it doesn't matter where for now). If you placed the sound somewhere near the centre of your view, you should be able to hear it. Right-click the sound. First, set the radii (min dist, and max dist) to 100 (the highest they will go). Now, zoom out so you can see your whole map (if you get half of the map going grey before you can see the whole map, you need to set the far clip plane to it's max. Do this by pushing Alt+P). Centre the sound to the middle of the map. Now put similar sounds around the map wherever you can see a gap. Remember, you don't need 100% coverage. Now, either on the map itself or the list to the lower left, right click each ambient sound and turn the volume down to somewhere between 30-45. Ambient sounds should always be quieter than main sounds. Now, do you have a river or a forest? Select some sounds that you feel are appropriate to the environment you created and place them near these areas. Each time you place a sound, adjust it's volume to around 50, this will prevent the sounds from being obnoxious. You don't really need to adjust the distance for these sounds, but you can if you want a greater area to hear the sounds. After you have placed your sounds, you are almost done. TIP: I never make the volume higher than 60%. Higher volumes disturb the player.

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The Ultimate Guide To Battle Realms Mapping

Objects Note: All objects can be scaled to different effect. Experiment with them to find out what is good. Listing all objects has now become impractical as not all people are guaranteed to have the same list. And doing a list of the NEW objects would take forever. So, I will just tell you this: Play with the objects to see what they are and what ones you like.

To scale an object Right-click the object. Most have three dimensions of scalability ( <x,y,z> ) but some only have a universal variable. X is left-right, Y is forward-backward, Z is updown. (I'm used to z being forward-backward... so this confused me for a while...) Most trees, to give the appearance of variation, should be rotated and scaled. Do not scale trees outside of this range: 0.75-1.5*z (you may go up to 1.75 if you have to) This is for realism. Most trees will look weird if they are outside of this range.

To rotate an object Hold the ALT button while LEFT-CLICKING on the object. Wherever you drag your mouse is where the front of the object will face. Some objects (stone head and stone man, specifically) are facing away from you when you place them and must be rotated to be seen properly.

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Tagpoints Team Start Point This should be obvious. Place these wherever you want players to start from. Place them relatively close to water and rice. Unfortunately, AI calculates path data towards the nearest rice or water gather point, not the shortest route. In other words, they will go to the nearest water, passing any other water on the way to it. Kinda dumb, but whatever. Just be careful.

Creature Spawn Point This is how you place animals on your maps. Horses are mandatory, the rest are optional. If you have high terrain, avoid using birds. Choose your animal from the list. I'm not sure what the "Reserve..." creatures are, I can't read the full name, but they seem to all be rats... Try 'em out to see.

Defensive Objective Point These are for AI only. You don't really need them (especially if you never play with AI), but they make the AI play better by telling the AI which locations are strategically important (such as high ground, choke points, etc.)

Water Gather Point This is where your peasants will walk to to gather water. The denser they are the better. This makes water gathering more efficient and realistic; peasants are less likely to pass through each other while gathering from the same point. The closer you place these points to the shore, the shorter the peasants' trips will be.

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FAQ Can you rotate effects as well as objects? I'm making a river go through my map, and I want to put some ripples in here, but whenever I try, they are perpendicular to the river... Yes, ALT+Left-click them, and drag the mouse around. Also, with underwater things, it's helpful to right click them, deactivate "Always on ground" and set the "height above ground" to 1. The water effect you see in game is created by moving the ground underneath the water, so some objects get obstructed when the ground moves.

I'm having trouble with my waterfall. I'm trying to make a river go through a base then off a hill, and then have the waterfall and then the river flow through the rest of the map. Whenever I try to put the waterfall on there, it's all out of place. I try to raise the land under it to make it look like it's on the ground but it raises too. Is there any good techniques to make a river? When I'm making a river, I click and click and click and it looks good but then I click again and the whole thing changes.....and makes it really really deep. If I hit ctrl Z(undo), it doesn't fix it. It stays deep but takes off the last segment of the river I just added. Any suggestions? The waterfall, right-click it, and deactivate "Always on ground" and then, in the box marked "height above ground" change it to -1 or -0.5 or whatever looks good. And the river thing, sometimes water will change its depth to adapt to a new height. You have to be careful to put your rivers on level ground, or they will force a new level... And, slap down a couple start points, some rice, some water points, and a horse spawn point, just so you can save.

Tell what fast way is there to make massively tall mountains. It takes me and my friends ages on a Pentium 3 - 600 MHz. Use the "Flatten Height" tool as Kamikaze said. But you really don't want massively tall mountains. Too high and the camera will look like it's having a spaz-attack.

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