Mapdev:Tutorial Intermediate

Beginners Tutorial Stage 2

This beginners tutorial is aimed at getting you from nothing, to something simple, from which you can then extend by looking through the more detailed technical documentation.

What you will need

• An image editor, such as GIMP or Adobe Photoshop, etc
• 7zip
• MapConvNG
• A copy of the map we used in the first tutorial
• This archive which contains a couple of things you will need.(features)

There are a multitude of other tools you can use to make maps, however for the purposes of this beginners tutorial, these are the only ones you will need. Check the tools section for more information.

Download example

• Here is a link to the map from the first tutorial to continue on with
• Here's a link to this finished tutorial

Map Features

1. Unzip the additional stuff archive into your working directory
2. copy the folders into your map.sdd directory
3. edit the set.lua file to contain references to the map features

FIXME, i understand that this is completely uneconomical, and will put here some links to material on how to place features in a more timely/robust fashion.

• link to a mapfeatures features archive page which describes how to use the mapfeatures archive in your maps.
• link to featureplacer howto page

Example

chuck some lua in here for lolz	(picture of resulting game terrain )
Example set.lua text	Ingame Result

Specular Color

small description of specular highlights.

Example

(picture of specular map)	(picture of resulting game terrain )
Example Specular Map	In Game Result

Detail Splatting

detail texture splatting adds a lot of fine detail onto the map.

1. Collect 4 detail textures that you would like to have your terrain multiplied by
2. Paint 4 greyscale images of where to splat each detail.
3. Combine the 4 detail textures into an RGBA image,

Example

(picture of all 4 detail textures)	(picture of combined result )
Four detail textures	Combined Result

4. Combine the 4 splat maps into an RGBA image

Example

(picture of all 4 detail distribution maps)	(picture of combined result )
Four distribution maps	Combined Result

Edit mapinfo.lua

• tweak splat scales and multipliers

Splat Scales Illustrated

This shows the size of the detail images at different scale sizes.

Lighting

could be fun to explain

Examples

(Code goes here)	(example image goes here)
(Code goes here)	(example image goes here)
(Code goes here)	(example image goes here)
Example lighting variables	In game result

Finalizing

continue to this page to compile and archive your map for play

I want more

This concludes the Beginners tutorial, there are loads more things you can do with maps so have a look through the documentation and think out of the box (show pictures of novel concepts, like bridges, scripted terrain, map borders etc.