My first map tile! Help please!

[Latino210]

I just finished my first map tile! I will leave it there http://www.freefilehosting.net/badhouse1

It's a small shop-house, 2 stories high, 256 X 256. I started the house at level 2, I wish to add another tile with a similar house but with a hidden basement.
The house is based on those houses inhabited by Chinese immigrants in southern Europe. They buy a dilapidated garage, use the ground floor as storage and live in untold squalor on the second floor while selling groceries on the street.



I just cannot decipher the instructions on how to compile and test the map. Can anyone help?  I want to make an RMA with those tiles:
Narrow street with trash and roadblocks.
House with storage
Sightly better house
Empty house filled with trash and graffiti, a drug den
Empty house with a basement and some strange content (more about this later)

[Kildor]

Nice work, but there are some mistakes in your map.
Brushes at first level should have 1-level content flag. Bottom planes of brushes should have nodraw flag and texture. May be there are some more bugs, I`ll look into it some latter.

[H-Hour]

Hi Latino, looks good. Please let us know which part of the compiling instructions you are having trouble with so we can help.

I took a quick look and noticed that you have brushes set on level 2 OR level 3. The way our game maps work, brushes on level 2 should also be visible on Level 3, so that the player will see things like the exterior of the building and the street even if they are on level 3.

Also, depending on how you plan to set up the RMA, you may run into problems with shadows. You have built right up to the edge of the tile, but shadows can not be cast from one tile to another.

[Latino210]

brushes on level 2 should also be visible on Level 3, so that the player will see things like the exterior of the building and the street even if they are on level 3.

What a stupid mistake... I am going to correct it now.

You have built right up to the edge of the tile, but shadows can not be cast from one tile to another.

So, must I surround the house with a 32-wide stretch of open road? This way the house will be even smaller... Is the 256X256 size limit mandatory? Hell, RMA is crazy, I think I will make a big fixed map.

Brushes at first level should have 1-level content flag.

I want to start the house from the second level, do you think that I will need to make a big bedrock brush on the first level?



Thanks to anyone for the help! BTW, I noticed that I bungled the "garage doors". I am going to fix them.
 

[H-Hour]

Think of the 256x256 limit as a minimum grid size. You can have a single RMA tile that is 512x256, 1024x1024, etc. The minimum width or length of a RMA tile is 256, but not every tile must be 256x256.

Static maps are welcome as well. Not everything works well as a RMA and making a good, tactically interesting and visually cohesive RMA is quite difficult. I wouldn't recommend it for your first mapping work.

It's up to you whether or not you choose to put a bedrock brush on the first level. Some maps do this, some don't.

Feel free to attach your .map file to a forum post whenever you want some feedback. There are a lot of different things to take into account when mapping and if you share your work others can point out mistakes early before they are repeated too much.

[Latino210]

Seconded. I will build the houses one by one, then assemble them manually. I want to build some inner city low income housing, southern europe style. I corrected the mistakes in the badhouse map, garage doors are now useable, some lights have been added, the levelling error has been corrected.

I also added another house, smaller but better furnished. This one is inhabited by two affluent student flatmates.

Brushes at first level should have 1-level content flag. Bottom planes of brushes should have nodraw flag and texture

Why? I thought that the engine would not draw/render polygons hidden from view because are touching others... Are you talking about the bottom face of the lowest brush?

[Kildor]

> Are you talking about the bottom face of the lowest brush?
Yes.
And engine do not skip hidden brushes, only models.

[Kildor]

Again. Z-index starts from 0, so first level is 0-64. You set 2-4 levelflags for first level brushes, so they will not be shown. Also, in general you must set all levelflags (till for each exterior brushes.
Next — you must align actors by grid32.
Next Next — for windows (glasses) you should use correct textures, and flags, not nodraws.

[H-Hour]

Looking good. You will want to take a close look at this article on dimensions and make sure you are paying very close attention to how your map will line up on the grid.

All unit starting positions need to sit squarely within the 32x32 grid. Any brushes that extend more than 4 units into a 32x32 grid will make that grid tile un-walkable in-game.

The easiest way to catch problems is to compile and load the map in-game often. This is easier while your map is very small, since the compilation will go quickly.

A couple tips that might help you:

1. There is a useful "fit texture" button. Select the face of the asian artwork in your house and then go to the Surfaces tab. Click the "Fit Texture" button and the texture will automatically be rescaled to fit the brush face.

2. When you go to raise your map up 64 units so that the level 2 starts at 64 units high, you'll want to use the Lock Texture button. It's the bottom button on the left panel and it will prevent textures from moving around when you move the brushes.

3. A lot of your textures are scaled at 0.5. For some reason this is the default setting for UFORadint. But usually you will want textures scaled at 0.25 to 0.125 to not look too pixelated in game.

[Latino210]

Again. Z-index starts from 0, so first level is 0-64. You set 2-4 levelflags for first level brushes, so they will not be shown. Also, in general you must set all levelflags (till 8 ) for each exterior brushes.
Level 1 will be bedrock for houses and street, a basement for a couple of houses. Starting position for soldiers and civilians will be al level 2 
Next — you must align actors by grid32.
DONE
Next Next — for windows (glasses) you should use correct textures, and flags, not nodraws.
DONE. I made the windows by making square sections of walls, not with the tools. It looks neater and easier on the CPU

I made the chinese drawing look bad on purpose. I have already redone the texture scaling, thanks.

I still cannot compile the map. I am following the instruction verbatim. I open the DOS prompt, go in the game directory, type:
"ufo2map maps/yourmap.map"
with the name of my map

no effect. even running ufo2map.exe alone gives me no response. I use windows 64. Any hint?

And engine do not skip hidden brushes, only models.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Ok, I am starting to flag "nodraw" and all "nodraw" texture manually when possible. This will make the map easier to process, right?

[H-Hour]

I still cannot compile the map. I am following the instruction verbatim. I open the DOS prompt, go in the game directory, type:
"ufo2map maps/yourmap.map"
with the name of my map

no effect. even running ufo2map.exe alone gives me no response. I use windows 64. Any hint?

Make sure that yourmap.map is in /path-to-ufoai/base/maps/. If I run ufo2map.exe without any map (from command prompt) I get an error message:

Code: [Select]

c:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI\ufoai>ufo2map maps/doesntexist.map
---- ufo2map 1.2.5 ----
---- endianness initialization -----
found little endian system
path: 'maps/doesntexist.map'

---- filesystem initialization -----
Adding game dir: ./base
Adding game dir: C:\Users\NateW\AppData\Roaming\UFOAI/2.4-dev/base
using ./base for writing
...map: 'maps/doesntexist.map'
...bsp: 'maps/doesntexist.bsp'
Error: file 'maps/doesntexist.map' doesn't exist
Do you get any error when running? Give us more details when you have a problem. We need to know error messages, how you've got your files set up, etc. Otherwise we are just guessing.

This will make the map easier to process, right?

When you get compiling figured out, a lot of this can be done automatically with a -fix flag using ufo2map. I don't worry too much about nodraws until near the end of the development process.

[Latino210]

Believe me, no message ever. I run ufo2map and I get nothing.

[H-Hour]

Try the following:

Code: [Select]

ufo2map maps/badhouse1.map

[Mattn]

it's writing to stdout.txt or something like that on windows (the same dir you start the binary in).

[Latino210]

Try the following:

Code: [Select]

ufo2map maps/badhouse1.map

Nothing happens...

it's writing to stdout.txt or something like that on windows (the same dir you start the binary in).

I haven't the foggiest idea of what you are talking about....