Map Making: Feature Placer

Feature Placer

At this point, it is very strongly recommended that you go download "Spring Features" ( http://springfiles.com/spring/tools/spring-features ) and place it in your games folder. Spring features is an archive that contains all the map features ever made for spring mapping. The total number is somewhere around 500 features, so it will give you quite a bit of power when it comes time to spice up your map.

Feature placer is available for use in two different games currently. Gundam RTS and Evolution RTS. It is worth noting that Gundam RTS limits itself to a much smaller feature set, so that the current time it is recommended that you use feature placer in Evolution RTS. It should also be mentioned that you could simply call Spring Features as a dependency (which you will do anyway) in your map which will allow you access to all the features in Spring Features, however, Evolution RTS has some random spawners specifically targeting towards foliage in Spring Features that is not currently in Gundam RTS.

Eventually, Feature Placer will be it's own independent module, but currently, it is only available via Evolution RTS or Gundam RTS.

Using Feature Placer

If you use Evolution RTS for feature placer, once ingame be sure to disable the "Integral Menu" widget (f11 - Widget Menu), as the menu does not support paging.

You will need to go into the multiplayer lobby (one that supports modoptions and hosing your own games). Create a new game (not using a relay slave). In the modoptions set the game type to "Featureplacer" and add a NullAI.

When the game starts up you will be presented with a tree that is sparkling green. Select it and you will have the option to build an entire host of features. There are also placement options on the menu such as "Jitter" and "Clustering", etc. Set these as desired.

Exporting the Feature List

Once you have placed all the features on your map and are ready to export the placement, press F11 to bring up the widget menu, and select "Dump All Units Features". Click it 3 times. At this point, before exiting the game, alt+tab out to your spring install folder and look for a file called dumpedunitsfeatures.txt to make sure that the file was written properly. Once you have verified this, you may go ahead and close the game.

Adding the Feature List to your map

Open dumpedunitsfeatures.txt in a text editor and copy the entire contents. Then navigate to

mapcontainer.sdd/mapconfig/featureplacer/set.lua

Open up set.lua in a text editor, and paste the contents of dumpedunitsfeatures.txt into it. Be sure to remove any entries in the unitlist or buildinglist sections.