Window Size
Do not change the shape of the window to unorthodox sizes, because you might get some nasty
artifacts. As opposed to the game client, the map editor was made that way so you can resize
the window, but don't abuse it.
Saving Maps:
The maps should be in a top directory inside the directory you have the game.
That is, if your game directory is c:\el then the maps should be in c:\el\maps or
c:\el\my_maps and NOT in c:\whatever or c:\el\my_maps\maps_backup .
Do _NOT_ modify the system maps. The system maps are stored in the \maps directory. If you modify those maps, Bad Things will happen! If you want to play with them, make a copy first, and play only with that copy. Preferably, put those copies in a new directory.
Distances:
The coordinates used in EL are in meters. If you don't know the metric system, learn it. It is
the international standard after all.
The smallest coordinate (for walkability) is 50 CM. Each height tile step goes up 20cm. Each ground tile is 3 meters.
Toolbar:
As you can see in the menu, there are a few modes:
1st- ground tile mode.
2nd- 2D objects mode.
3rd- 3D objects mode.
4th- Particle mode.
5th- lights mode.
6th- height map mode.
7th- settings button.
8th- "Select" object/tile/light/height under mouse.
9th- clone object.
10th- New object.
11th- Kill button.
12th- Save Map.
13th- Load Map.
14th- New map.
Special 2D objects settings:
-Hold down CTRL while placing 2D objects to RANDOMLY ROTATE and alternate the heights of the objects. This
is extremly useful when you need to place many 2d objects near or around each other. It is not a fool-proof
way to prevent "flickering" however, so you still have to manually check that by rotating the camera slowly(shift+home/end).
Special 3D objects settings:
-Ctrl+b -press this to bring up a window with categories of objects to select from. You can view the objects as thumbnails, making it a lot easier to use than the normal file browser.
-Pressing the 'B' key, while having a selected object, will make that object BLENDED with the
background. It makes it kind of glow and can be cool to use on things such as crystals. You can press
the number keys 1, 2, 3 to increase the Red, Green, or Blue values of the blended object. Holding down ALT
while pressing 1, 2, or 3 DECREASES the RGB values.
-Pressing L will make the object be Self Lit. This is usually usefull for things such as light
sources. However, note that the Self Lit objects will NOT become self lit in the daytime, only
in the evening-night-morning.
With the number keys 1, 2, and 3 you can change (increase) the R, G and respectively B intensity of that self lit
object. Notice that, by default, RGB=0, so the object is very dark. By holding down ALT
while pressing 1,2 and 3, you DECREASE the intensity of that color.
Notice that no changes will be visible at day time, so make it night first. Night means around
minute 0 or so.
-Press and hold CTRL down while placing objects will make the 3d object duplicate or "stick" to your mouse
like in the 2d object mode.
-Press ctrl+w to set some random rotatation and height settings for 3d objects. This is useful when you
need to place many default objects like trees, plants, grass, etc. You can enable the rotation for each
axis individually, or a combination or all of them at once. The height you can set the min/max values to as well. To move angles/numbers faster you can use ctrl+leftclick(100 increment) and alt+leftclick(10).
Light Mode:
-The Lights can be only rised/lowered, with Ins/Del (keep shift pressed for accuracy).
-Lights are represented as colored cubes. The lights are visible only at night, they are turned
off at daytime (except if the map is set as a Dungeon).
-You can increase the lights intensity by pressing 1,2, and 3, and decrease it with Alt+1, 2 or 3.
-The intensity range is from 0 to 5.
-The range of each lights is 30 meters (a height tile is half a meter, a normal tile is 3
meters). It is IMPORTANT that at any place in the game there won't be more than 7 visible lights
at a time. Otherwise, there will be some nasty artifacts.
Also, try to avoid as much as possible setting a light intensity over 3. That is, try NOT to
have any of the R G B components above 3.
**Very important note- in this game, you can walk on diagonal tiles. As shown in the picture. So if you're making a fence, that you don't want someone to walk through, and the fence is set on tiles diagonally, you must make it so there are no "walkable height tile corners" touching each other!
General: ALL objects MUST be placed at least 1 full ground tile away from the very edges of the map! This is because you cannot fully view those objects(they get cut off at the edge). Important objects should be placed even further inside the map.
--BAD picture:Objects are placed too close to edge of map! We will NOT accept any map like this!!
--GOOD picture:Objects are placed far enough inside the edge of the map to be seen and not cut off. It is ok to put objects used as BORDERS at the edge of the map, such as these huge rocks which are
the "mountains", or a very thick layer of trees or some other things are ok too.
**note, I left the green tiles at the edge of the map here so you can easily see what i’m talking about. For your real in game map however, you’ll delete those tiles so you will only see black there. You also need to make ALL those deleted areas UNWALKABLE.
Trees: rotate them to get as much a variety as possbile. And don't get too carried away with placing LOTS of trees with leaves, or plants near water, or in general. Why is this? Because the leaves have a transparency on them, and it makes the game slower, we don't want it to be too slow. So watch your FPS. Of course if you have a fast machine, then it will be no problem for you, but keep in mind the people that don't.
Also...when placing the trees USE THE GRID!!!(G on the keyboard). You need this so that you can accurately place objects for the height map. For instance, with "tree1", this tree only takes up one tile on the grid. So you place it in the center of that tile. Otherwise if you just place them randomly, you'll have a lot of work later on when placing the height map, because you'll have to center the trees, etc. (I know it is, it happened to me, that's why using the grid is NECESSARY, unless you like to make more work for youself)
Houses & Buildings: They must be placed on the height map with some added space(as shown in the pictures) or the characters will be able to partially walk into the houses/buildings.
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2D Edges, Spots of grass/dirt/etc
(and some 3D objects): -You MUST alternate the height when you overlap the 2D/3D objects!!: grass edges, dirt, leaves, etc... or flickering will happen. They are by default at .00 Do not place them higher than .03, as it's really not needed (Do this by holding down the shift key+Ins or Del to move the objects up and down with one cm increments)
Wateredges:when you put the water edges in place, they must be .23 below ground level. Except for "wateredge1.e3d" which you should put at .24 (just use the delete key to make them go to .20, then shift+delete to get that accurate .23cm level).
Also, at times a few edges might not line up properly. You can just place a rock, or some
tall grass over the area to conceal it. But try to make them line up as good as possible.
We don't want to see 3 million rocks all over the edges.
Roads: must be placed .01 or .02 above ground. Alternate when you overlap them, or
flickering will happen.
Hedgemaze:if you want to make a maze, you MUST place the hedge .01 above
ground(just one step), or there will be some nasty flickering when you turn the camera slowly.
**To see "flickering" between objects on the map, just rotate the camera slowly by holding the shift key as you rotate. Or, when you have an object selected(for instance a road), you can move it with your mouse over other roads, and if you see weird flickering, that means it's at the same height as the other road(and you have to make it 1cm lower, or higher to not have the flickering).
Particle keys:
Ctrl+p open particle editor
--On ANY + or - button you can:
-Click with mouse alone go up increments of 0.01
-Click with mouse AND hold down shift: increments of 0.10
-Click with mouse AND hold down ctrl: increments of 1.0
Shift + Right click on Particle mode icon will turn on/off the black boxes
Light keys:
ins/delete-(same as functions as mentioned above)
1, 2, 3 -increase RGB values
alt+ 1/2/3 -decrease RGB values
Height Map keys:
Tab-shows the Height in "3d" mode
ctrl- puts down 9 squares instead of one.(while you have a square selected)
alt- puts down 49 squares
Tile mode keys:
*you CANNOT rotate, or adjust the height of a tile
Putting many tiles down at once: first, select a tile you want to put down. Then, without deselecting that tile, go into the minimap mode. Then hold down the right mouse button, and you can "draw" the tiles. This also works in the regular map mode.
Here are the TOTAL areas(the house itself plus the "buffer zone") that the house insides take up on the map:
Houses 1-5,10,11,14,15,16,18,house9_small, room1, and Treehouses*......6x6 GT
Houses 9,17, and the Temple.......7x7
Houses 12,13......7x6
Building1, house9_big .....8x8
hallway1.....5x7
*With the treehouses, the "roots" will go outside the 2x2 area. However you can't walk in those roots anyway, so you're not missing anything.
NEXT... part 2 of making "house insides"
Basically, you will be writing your own .def files for all the maps you make. This will explain to you how get a start on it.
You need a way to enter the inside of the house that you made. There is some information that you need to take down WHILE you are placing your houses & their insides. You can do it afterwards, but in my opinion, it's much easier if you take notes while you are making your map.
1.Object ID -every object has it's own unique ID number, that you can see in the editor.
2.The coordinates of where a character will stand to enter your house(one or two tiles away from the door).
*You need these for BOTH insides AND outsides of your houses!
Example:these are the "notes" I took for doing the startmap:
Startmap
1.Tavern-72
x=65-67 y=132
i Tavern-107(door5.e3d)
x=20-21 y=12-13
2.house5-97
x=89 y=104-107
i house5-109(door3.e3d)
x=53-54 y=48-49
3.house4-73
x=163 y=96-99
i house4-110(door2.e3d)
x=57-58 y=13-14
4.house2-192
x=121 y=128-131
i house2-108(door1.e3d)
x=17-19 y=54-55
Ok.. I start with the Outside of the house. First I label which house I'm doing(so I can keep track). Then right after it I put it's object ID number(72 for Tavern, 97 for house5, etc). Underneath that are the coordinates. Use the height map tiles squares to get the minimum & maximum X and Y values for the area you want to stand in to be able to enter the house(just think of the coordinates in the two corners for a square or rectangle). Next line I wrote "i" for "inside of house", then the name of the house object so I can keep track and won't get confused as to what is what later on(as you might need to go back and edit things). Then, instead of using the ID for the "insidehouse" object, you have to place a door(a seperate object) over the door that's already on the houseinside. It's VERY important that you make sure that the seperate door be in FRONT of the other one. If you don't put it properly, then you won't be able to get outside. A way to double check this is to use the clone tool on the object. If you clone the door you just put there, then it's good. If you clone the house, then it's placed wrong.
If you want to make an Inn, it's a little more tricky. Basically, if you want to go to another room inside of a building, you have to use a seperate object for the door(which I already explained above). Below is an example of a tavern/inn I did with 4 rooms. You start it out the same(outside/inside of tavern & coordinates). Then..you have another door(door1.e3d, or staircase1.e3d) that leads to another room(in this case the hallway upstairs). Then, when you get into the hallway there are 5 doors. Four lead to rooms, the fifth back to the staircase in the main tavern room.
Tavern-546
x= 83-84 y=686-688
i tavern-0
x=22-24 y=13
staircase-4
x=13 y=34
Hallway(door)-74
x=13 y=62-63
door1-75
x=19-20 y=64
Room1-79
x=16-18 y=91
door2-76
x=25-26 y=64
Room2-84
x=17-19 y=28
door3-77
x=25-26 y=61
Room3-92
x=16-18 y=171
door4-78
x=19-20 y=61
Room4-97
x=17-19 y=207
There is a lot more to the .def files than just what I've shown you here. But this will give you a start. Just write the information in a .txt file. Later, I'll give you more things to look out for.
If you need example or are confused with how to do this, look at the maps I've done BEFORE you ask any questions. You should be able to figure it all out from that. But if you really need help, then just post it on the forums.
***I think I covered everything here, but if you have any problems, post it on the forums.