[Question] Creating new maps?

[unknownone]

I've already shown that it's possible, just havn't had the time or patience to code the whole thing. The DMAP, Puzzle and Scene file structures are well known enough to make maps with nearly all the features of the existing ones. There's still a few missing parts though.

Basically, if anyone gets as far as actually creating their own map from scratch, it'll probably spark my interest enough to implement the whole thing. I'll make it all open source so people can see how it's done and continue it if I drop out.

A map is just an image, without all the objects on it. (Buildings, trees, bridges, running squirrels et cetera). The easy way to think about it is, anything that your hero will walk on top of is part of the map itself, and anthing that may appear in front of your hero on screen, is a seperate file added afterwards.

Maps are made up of square tiles of equal size. These are usually 256x256px tiles, but some maps use 128x128. If you want to create yourself a map in Photoshop, set your canvas size to a multiple of 256 when you begin. You may want to split a map into several sections and combine them afterwards, since it's slow working with such huge maps in Photoshop.

A tile in game that you walk on is a rhombus measuring 64x32px. One way to texture a tile might be to make a 45x45 square with normal orientation, create your texture, then rotate it 45ｧ and reduce the height to half. You might be able to do it with little loss of quality with a good shearing implementation. Otherwise, you could just paint textures directly onto the canvas, but you might lose some of the isometric look to it. (I'm no graphic artist, so you should know better than me). Terrain heights are I think, 2 pixels per height, and the max jump height is 10? (Need to confirm this...). Oh, I can provide the canvas template - a simple isometric tile grid for you to stick as a background in photoshop to work from.

@Zatoichi: The objects on a map like trees etc are held in .Scene files. The dmap itself sees these coordinates as walkable, or non walkable, doesn't really matter. At the bottom of a dmap file, all information about scenes and extras are held. All scenes have their own access data, which overrides that of the dmap when placed. There's a pretty neat trick you can do with the client, editing a certain value in memory (use CE, TS etc to do it), where you can bring up a scene debugging feature, where all scenes are given a border around the texture, and the "origin tile" is opaque green.


Anyway, I'm not coding anything more until I see a graphic of a map someone wants to implement.

[Zatoichi]

this was my work around, and basically how i came across alot of what i learned. The market in LOTF is dead, cofutures doesnt work either. it seems noone has mapped the animation of the stand setup proces to the NPC flag. So...since i specialize in the market, and spend 90 percent of my time there in game, i wanted to do something really nice to it, and populate it with buildings and NPC's, since i didnt plan on going public it seemed a way to keep a sense of the market for my guild. then i realized i would walk on the buildings. I did look real hard for directions on editing the dmap, but found only 2 viewers, yours and another persons. So then i though, ok, i will reskin over an area that is already defined as non walkable, which ruins the market idea, but opens up develping the area around GC and TGconductor in TC into a dock area, bustling with all the NPC's from the market +. I thought by putting the buildings in the water they would inherit the non walkable trait. Then problem became the tiles. TQ reused one water tile for all their water, and if a building gets into it - it will repeat. I tested this with a red "X" and it was everywhere. So now my work around is put doors and stuff on the already existing buildings, and populate the TC center with all the market NPC's. I am currently reskinning TC and i'll post a screenie below. unfortunatly i am also coding, debugging, lotsa copying and pasting XD, redoing the in game music (im a musician with a full studio) and more. anyway, here's what i got so far...



If you want a custom map, i could do it in less than a week, and i pick up that challenge! XD

TY btw for all the info you have posted in the past thru now on this.

[KraHen]

By full studio you mean a home studio or an actual studio? Although my studio is made up of my laptop and a bunch of software

[Zatoichi]

mostly the same for me, tho i do have a fair amount of hard gear as well. The music i've been adding is still asian, and all i've been doing is replacing the old tired soundtrack really, editing the material i've got to work with. i figured, since the whole thing is based off something that isnt mine, theres no rules, im grabbing everything from everywhere.

[flaMe~]

Rofl! Conquer techno remix. xDDDDD

On topic, this is something I am going to look into, once I have grasped a bit more of coding.

By the way, Zatoichi, I love your customized TC map, i believe it's better than the original by far. I would like to see it when it's finished, please?

[Zatoichi]

I'll be releasing a reworked client 5017. With as many changes as i can possibly make. As soon as TC is finished, i will release it, then update when sufficient other work is done to client. Was just taking a better look around at all the different parts that make up a map. It seems there is some illusion going on. The entire map seems to be drawn for alot of it, buildings and everything. But simply drawing the building would put it in game, and if you then marked that area as unable to be walked on, that would keep people from walking up on it, but at certain angles they need to walk behind it. Some of the objects in game are chunks of the building that allow that illusion to happen. its important since if i was to create a map under the assumption that everything is an object, then you basically only generate terrain. This is the technique for most RTS games, as early as AOEII for instance. but that wont necessarily work here. The things Unknownone said are rattling around in my head. i had given up making a custom map, now that he says its possible, i wanna do more than edit.

[flaMe~]

I'd encourage you to take a shot at creating.

Thanks for all your help you guys, I'm gonna tackle this in the future. +

[Zatoichi]

K, here's the map. This is my ninja promotion room. I have 2 ninja classes in my game. This map was based off of the grocery store map, and i could import it as is, and inherit the Dmap, but some areas will not be walkable, that should be. I would also like to create some objects to be dropped in, and that is what i am about to move to next, to see if i can create objects, and drop them into the map. I know it isnt a big beautiful work of art, but i wanted to start small, feel out the technique, and gradually move to bigger and better things, once i had a good foundation. Im hoping to hear from unknownone on this, but if he isnt available, than anyone who knows how to implement a custom map can drop a post and we'll see what we can get done. For the moment i'll just try to look at dropping in existing objects. I still have some touch up im doing, just thought i would release it and get the ball rolling.

Needs -

.Dmap

[flaMe~]

Looks sweet, how did you do it?

I'm not sure, but I think walkable areas are set in Map\ScenePart

The .Part files open in notepad...

have a look

[Zatoichi]

the walkable areas are set in DMap files, i've seen em opened up and they are in black and white, white for walkable, black for non. We almost got this in last night, am hoping we'll pick it up and be able to pull it off, and if so, we'd have a releasable map. Technically its totally useable as the new grocery map, i have populated it with objects in the same areas that the original map had items, so it wont seem as if you cant walk into an area where you should. I'll do more as well, especially if this comes in as a brand new area. And i think we could eventually see a brand new city. =D

[r.0ck]

Originally Posted by Zatoichi

the walkable areas are set in DMap files, i've seen em opened up and they are in black and white, white for walkable, black for non. We almost got this in last night, am hoping we'll pick it up and be able to pull it off, and if so, we'd have a releasable map. Technically its totally useable as the new grocery map, i have populated it with objects in the same areas that the original map had items, so it wont seem as if you cant walk into an area where you should. I'll do more as well, especially if this comes in as a brand new area. And i think we could eventually see a brand new city. =D

awesome..what did you use to create the map? like windows paint? photoshop?

[tao4229]

DMaps are a binary structure. You'd have to make a program to display it graphically/edit it graphically.

You can ask around for the structure if you want to make a program, unless someone you know has a program of the sort.

[Edit]
This is the PKArena.

[flaMe~]

Sexy, is that your program tao?

[BloofyGirl]

could u release it ?

[Zatoichi]

The map is finished. BIG thanks to Unknownone for the implementation of this map. This is a brand new area, not a reskin, it has its own DMap. I have a tool to edit the DMap and am stuggling to get my C# understanding up to par so i can utilize it. BTW thats my samurai class in the room XD. The map will be released but with with my client, once my rework of 5017 is finished, those of you using Hybrids bugless source will be able to use this client to log in on that source =) screenie below -