Hello All! This is ZealoTT's Map making tutorial, your guide to making a map for Savage: The Battle for Newerth!
Programs i will be using during this tutorial are:Adobe Photoshop CS2*
Graveyard.bat
Winrar
*Any photoshop version will do, they all generally have the same system. You could even do this on Adobe/Macromedia Fireworks if you have that program instead of photoshop.
Index.
I. Photoshop Work
II. Graveyard Work
III. Winrar Work
IV. Minimap Work
I. Photoshop work
Ok lets get started.
Open up your Adobe Photoshop CS2. Click File, New, and set up the box that comes up on screen, like so:
Now that youve done that, click OK and you should have a big blank canvas. Now draw a Dark, Close to black or even black square in the middle of the canvas, like so.
Something to know for now, Black represents the lowest possible terrain, and white represents the highest possible terrain.
Now, to make a perfectly symetrical map (which is good in some maps, in others not), you start by getting the Eraser tool and erase the areas you want/dont want to be hills like so. For a symetrical map do half of it, for a non perfectly symetrical map do the whole thing.
This is what you should be doing for a symetrical map.
Something to remember while making a map. A good map has several routes (not just one way like asura or omega), does not have weird and whacky npcs in the oddest of places, and props are put in strategic positions. i think the best example of this is the map anvale.
So, now you have half of your map shape. Now, using the square cutout tool, select the half of your map you have started to erase. Once it is selected, make sure it is on the right layer, and Go Edit , Copy (Or cntrl + C).
Now simply Go Edit, Paste (or Cntrl + V). It will appear on a new layer. (For those who dont know, a layer is like an onion, DEFINITELY NOT AN OGRE. You can draw on the top layer, then take it off and draw on the second layer, and then put the top layer back on and ect.) Go back to the layer with the starting drawing, and delete the big big blackish rectangle. Go back to the other layer with your pasted half of the image, and Press Cntrl + T. This is called a Free Transform. It allows you to rotate and resize the image to your liking. Simply Grab one of the side boxes and drag it, as if to flip the image. You now have 2 sides to the picture. Resize and flip the image until it gets to your liking and matches the other half. Align it up so all entrances match, and then go to your layers menu, and right click, merge all.
Ok, now you have a completed drawing. Draw some dots on each corner. The reason for this is, sometimes Graveyard will only start drawing at the first colour that isnt white. So, this will stop it from not creating the white hills outside the ground. Your drawing should look kinda like this (but with a different map shape of course
)
This is what your savage folder should look like currently.
A file is in there called Graveyard.bat. We're going to be using it soon, but not yet. You can see there a "Graveyard" folder. Your going to want to save it there. When you go to save it inside the Graveyard folder, go to the dropdown arrow below where you type the file name. This dropdown arrow changes what file type it is saved as. Save it as a .png file.
When you have clicked Save, it will come up with a box that asks if you want it to be interlaced. Click Interlaced and then click OK. We're now ready to start modelling our map
II. Graveyard.bat work.
Double click on Graveyard.bat to run it. It will run almost the exact same as savage at the start, and then it will come up looking towards the mid-top of eden2. Bring down console (using the Tilde (~) key). Before we go further, there is something to know. There are several different map sizes, and all are good for different style maps. Here are the ones you should know.
blank32 (32x32) -- Mini_xp sized map
blank64 (64x64) -- Eden2 sized map
blank96 (96x96) -- Crossroads sized map
blank128 (128x128) -- 2castles sized map
Something else to know about map sizes, 32x32 and 128x128 (and bigger) are all quite buggy. You can fall through the ground in places and ect unless they are VERY well made (2castes is a good example of a well made 128 map). Yes, when i say 128 (and bigger) i mean that there are bigger sized maps, but they are buggy. im quite sure the biggest you can get is 512.
Anyway, So. for the tutorial, ill be making a 64x64 map. In console, type the following code in this order.
world blank64
gfx_fog 0
gfx_farclip 1000000So here is what it should look like.
So What did all that do?
"world" command changes the map, so world blank64 makes it so the world is changing to blank64.
gfx_fog is the setting for fog, so gfx_fog 0 removes the fog, and gfx_fog 1 adds fog back in.
gfx_farclip is the setting for the world draw distance. This is to save your fps. It doesnt render anything past the farclip, which is essentially a wave of white. Putting the farclip back this far allows you to see all of your map. REMEMBER your map must have fog and a decent farclip to be put on newerth.com, so remember to change the farclip to something reasonable before you are finished (something between 2000 and 3500).
So now, you should have a big white plate. Type the following code into console.
centerThis will take you to the middle of your map. Now you are ready to be able to see what is going on in the map. Remove console by once again pressing the tilde key. There are a bunch of menus up top. i will briefly go through what each means.
Deform -- Deforms the terrain
Paint -- Used for making colours and shades, NOT textures
Texture -- Used for making textures
Object -- Inserts an entity (object)
Environment -- Changes the hue and colour of the textures, fog and sky
Utilities -- Quicksave, lightmap ect.
Occluders -- Adds occluders
Undo -- Self explanitory
Quit -- Certainly not a hax button.
Click on the Texture button. You will see that there are 3 layers. Something ELSE to know (
), layer 3 is bugged. the trouble with layer 3 is that when you paint with it straight away, if you press Undo or Save it, it will all dissapear and you will be left with
nothing where it once was. There is a way to fix this: Paint on Layer 1. Then paint anything (even just a little spludge anywhere), and then paint on your layer 2. Then when you go back later to paint on layer 3, it wont go borked
. For the first time mapper reading this, you probably will be thinking "wtf" about what i just said, but youll understand it soon
Dont worry your pretty little head about it.
Anyway, so click on layer 1.
It should come up with the Text "Canyon Wall". Click on Canyon Wall, a bunch of other types of textures should appear. For this tutorial, im going to go to Tiledgrassroads and pick the first grass texture there. NOTE: The grass textures in the menu "grass" are not that good looking!! It is far better to use tiledgrassroads grass. When you click on the tiledgrassroads, you have to click on the box with the texture in it to change it. If you just go to paint it straight out, without actually clicking on that box and selecting a texture, it will not paint anything. So make sure you actually choose your texture. Below where the textures are, you will see a box with different sized circles. For this step, i suggest you use the biggest circle and paint all over your map with your grass texture, or whatever texture you are using for your map. Paint it all over. It should now look like the picture up there
.
Now we go into inserting your picture. Bring down console, and type the following code into it.
le_terrain_mergestrength 800
merge_terrain /tutorial2.pngNOTE: You must change /tutorial2.png to whatever you named your file when you drew it in photoshop.
Heres a picture of what it should look like.
Now, what did that code do?
le_terrain_mergestrength command changes the height of the white part on the map, and depending on how high that number is, depends on how high the white will be. So, this means 800 sets it to the highest you can use the Flatten tool to, which is 800. You can change this number to whatever you want. 800 is just a basic and good number to use.
merge_terrain merges the picture with the terrain.
Something to know. After you enter that code, type in to console: center. Look at your map and ask yourself -- is my map around the right way? The thing with the heightmap extractor is that it will sometimes merge the image the wrong way around, like its upside down or w/e. You can 2 one of two things. You can a) leave it and decide you like it better upsidedown, or b) you can go back to photoshop, flip the image so it will merge the correct way, and then go back and do the Graveyard part again. Ive chosen to just keep going.
So you now have a map that looks something like this.
Now we texture the hills. Go to your layer 3 and use that layer to paint your hills. Im deciding to use a Canyon Wall texture. For this step. dont use the biggest brush, just a brush that you deem suitable to get it done right.
Once you have completed texturing the hills, it should look something like this:
So now we move onto deforming the terrain, so it has bumps and small hills. Click on the deform tool. You will be presented with a few menus, Raise/lower, Flatten, smooth and cut. I reccommend using flatten for most of the map making process. Click on flatten, and you will have a few bars. the one on the right of the word "flatten" is the height that the terrain will flatten to. The one below the word flatten determines how fast the terrain will go up and down. So, im going to set mine to 270 for now, and now i will raise the terrain to my liking. Proceed to raise terrain to your own liking.
Now that youve done that, we can add in objects.
The first thing you want to do is put in the Command_centers. These are your Strongholds/Lairs. The first one you place down will be the human base, and the second is beast base. I know they both look like strongholds, but the second one you place is classified as lair. The command_center props are found in the "Reference Objects" Tab.
Now lets add in some mines....(i know mine are blue
i had the bluestone mine mod at the time i originally made the tute.)
Firstly, with objects, place all your props you want to use first, like so. (by props i refer to the "props" menu).
NOTE: GOOD MAPS DO NOT HAVE WEIRD AND WHACKY PROPS! I know you might be thinking about placing weird and whacky props like COMPLETELY OVERSIZED RUINS_TOWERS (WOA NO WAI!), but good maps DO NOT have random props everywhere. They are strategically placed to help teams work with their surroundings.
Now its time to add nature. Select the Trees menu in the Objects section. Choose trees that are suiting to the terrain style and give the map a nice look and feel. Now. Currently, i am the awesomeness person. in my first map to get on servers, my map had 1000+ Trees. BEAT THAT!
seriously though, dont put alot of trees in. It can make the map look ugly, and can give too much cover. Heres what ive done for this tutorial map.
Now add NPCs like you did for other objects.
OK, here is the boring part of the whole thing. Occluders *sigh*. They are the most boring part, and YES, it MUST BE DONE!! Basically, Occluders are placed in the hills in the mountains, and nothing behind the occluder is rendered (to save your FPS). Heres what i mean in basic terms. Occluders are big pink boxes. Basically, all they do is sit in the mountains youve just placed, and anything on the other side as you look at the mountains doesnt load. Because it doesnt load, you dont get a "screen lag", "chug" or as it is known best, "FPS Lag".
Occluders have the same basic controls as placing an object, but they have 4 corners which can be dragged out to fit a close shape to the mountain, kinda like so:
You have to place occluders in every mountain in the map (not including the outside hills).
Now we can restore the fog and farclip as we are nearing the end of the map making stuff.
Type the code in that picture into yours.
gfx_fog 1
gfx_farclip 2700
gfx_clouds 7
writeworld (yourmapnamehere)For farclip, pick a suitable number between 2000 and 3500.
III. Winrar Work (optional)
Now we are doing a Day/Night cycle.
Go into your Savage/Game/world folder. Find your map that you made. Right click, Open with: winRAR.
It should come up with a winrar window with 2 folders:
... (just goes up a level in browsing)
world
Click on the world folder. Now it will have the ... folder and a folder with the same map name as yours. Go into it. You will see a bunch of files. Now find eden2 in your Savage/game/world directory. Do the same thing that you did to your one. Now, in the eden folder, CNTRL + Click every item with the word "tod" in it. the list in the Eden folder is:
0.tod
1040.tod
1270.tod
210.tod
440.tod
720.tod
tod.cfg
Copy them all to your map's winrar window thingy. You now have a day/night cycle in your map.
You have now completed the "physical" part of map making. All there is left to do is the remainder of "Visual work", which is making a minimap. Before you start, if you want to make a good minimap, youll want to download these 2 things.
NOTE: This tutorial exceeds 20000 characters, so the minimap tutorial will be included in another thread.
IV. Minimap Making (do the clicky)
I hope that this tutorial and the minimapping tutorial have helped you. All feedback is welcome and thank you for reading this.
Happy Mapping,
-->ZealoTT
