Step by step tutorial to making command map, heightmaps , deploymasks ect.

[gamma]

Before I get started I want you all to know the simplest way of figuring out something by your self. For me that was deploymasks and command maps. The etqw map that comes with the sdk. Located in the sdk folder it is a fully functional map that has all the resources you need to figure out something all on your own, without anyones help. But that may take hours or even days and that’s the reason I wrote this tutorial. It took me several days to figure out how to make masks and deployables work and hopefully this tutorial will turn that into an hour or two for other newbies.

General notes:
By <savepath> I mean the save path you selected when you installed the sdk. Mine is C:\……\My Documents\idsoftware

You will need to change your caulk hull from textures\common\caulk to textures\editor\noimpactcaulk

Every time we make a change to your map you will need to compile to see the results
. When you make a change to your materials you will need type reloaddecls into the console to see the result

Level shot.

This is probably the simplest part of the tutorial to follow, there is not much involved at all.

1. make adjustments
Load your map from the sdk. Type g_showhud 0 to get rid of the hud, net_clientlagometer 0 to get rid of the lagometer and com_showfps 0. this is just to get a clear screen for your level shot. You may also want to make further adjustment to your config to get a clear shot.

Info may be found here http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.p...g_A_Screenshot

2. take the screenshot.
Like it says in the wiki you can make a screenshot come out in different resolutions with a bind. “Bind f11 “screenshot 512 512 8” would be a good start. You wil have to resize it after but if you don’t want the trouble “Bind f11 “screenshot 256 256 8” so no editing is required. If you took the screenshot with the resolution of 512*512 well then you will need to resize in your preferred image editing program. Imo it might make it look slightly better but not worth the effort. Now place the screenshot in the directory <savepath>\base\levelshots\ <yourmap>.tga.

3.Make the material.
You may now notice that when you load your map the level shot is red. That is because you haven’t made a material. Create or edit a file called <yourmap>.mtr . you can use any text editor but be carefull the file name isn’t “<yourmap>.mtr” but that its called <yourmap> and it’s a mtr file. Now place the file in the directory <savepath>\base\materials\<yourmap>.mtr . now add this to it

 material levelshots/<yourmap> { 
	 sort gui
	{
		blend blend
		vertexColor
		map nopicmip clamp	"levelshots/<yourmap>"
	}
}

Now the next time you load up your map you should have a level shot in the top corner.

continued..........

edit: my levelshot displayed below

[gamma]

Command map

****Doesn’t include OBB*****
info about command maps:http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.p...ne_commandmap#

be wary some info may be outdated.

Open the etqw map in sdk\etqw.world as it will prove helpfull

1. In your map place a Playzone_commandmap entity by right clicking on a 2d window playzone>playzone_commandmap or by copy and pasting one from the etqw map(note: it is one of the brushes with trigger texture above the map). When the Playzone_commanmap is pasted press shift + O to update its origins so you wont get errors about an entity leaking. Place it across the area that you want it to cover(note: when you take the mapshot, next step, it will only take a photo of you terrain so if you have buildings outside of your terrain you will have to go through a procedure to make a full command map, I will explain that at the step 4.

Now enter/change the following key/values

Mtr_commandmap               commandmaps\<yourmap>.tga
Priority                                  1

2. take a mapshot
Load your map up from the sdk. Open the console and type “mapshot mapshot1.tga 1024 0” this will produce a mapshot of your terrain. Take this mapshot and rename it to <yourmap>.tga and save it in the directory <savepath>\base\commandmaps\<yourmap>.tga..
The retail mapshots are 512*512 but they don’t necessarily have to be that size it is just a guideline

edit: as posted by mop at the end of the page you may get misaligned mapshots if you run at high resolutions and/or widescreen.

Originally Posted by MoP

Basically, before running mapshot, set your video mode to 640x480 (r_mode 3 in the console) and set the aspect ratio to 4:3 (r_aspectratio 0 in the console)... then do a vid_restart command to accept those, or use the graphics settings menu to set them up.

Then do your mapshot and it should come out ok.

3. make a material.
Open the material file, <savepath>\base\materials\<yourmap>.mtr . and add this to it.

 #include <materials/commandmaps.include>
material commandmaps/<yourmap>
{
	templates/game/maps/cmMap( "commandmaps/<yourmap>.tga" )
}

4.Only follow this step if you have buildings outside you terrain.

This is what I done to make my command map work even though I have building outside my terrain, there may be other ways of doing it.
Note: willl only work if your terrain is less than 32k*32k

Make a new terrain, it can be completely flat just don’t let it go over your buildings. Make sure that it goes beyond the bounds of your buildings .Place a brush underneath your buildings and texture it sothere is a contrast between the colours of your roof tops and the background. Now make a new mapshot. Open your preferred image editing program and crop it so that you can only see your buildings and the brush beneath. Resize all your images to an appropriate size and then copy then all onto one canvas and save.(you may need to use a texture if there is a blank part on your image. Ie. they don’t fit together properly, one could be 512*512 and another could be 256*256. if so place a sand ,rock ,grass or whatever is suitable to your terrain as a background and then place the ordinal images on top. (sorry about this part it was hard to explain)

continued .........

edit: my old and new commandmap displayed below.

[gamma]

Height maps. And deploy mask
(note deploymaks have to be 128*128)

1. place a playzone_path_and_heightmap entity by right clicking or copying from the etqw map(remember to update its origins by pressing shift + O. Resize the brush so that it completely covers your terrain and buildings, and enter the following key/value

        name                                      <yourmap>_playzone_path_and_heightmap
        heightmap                                heightmaps/<yourmap>.tga
        hm_heightmap                         heightmaps/<yourmap>
        path_vehicle_magog_npc        <yourmap>_vehicle_magog_npc

2 .create a .def

Create a file called <yourmap>.def and place it in the directory <savepath>\base\def\maps\<yourmap>.def open the file and add the following

 #include "def/pathfinder.include"


heightMap heightmaps/<yourmap> {
	heightMap "heightmaps/<yourmap>.tga"
}

deployMask masks/<yourmap>/mcp {
	mask		"masks/<yourmap>/mcp.tga"
}

deployMask masks/<yourmap>/default {
	mask		"masks/<yourmap>/default.tga"
}

deployMask masks/<yourmap>/mcp_route {
	mask		"masks/<yourmap>/mcp_route.tga"
}

deployMask masks/<yourmap>/playzone {
	mask	"masks/<yourmap>/playzone.tga"
}

stringMap pathfinder_<yourmap> {

          _pathfinder_default( "<yourmap>", 20 )
	"playzone_0"			"<yourmap>_playzone_path_and_heightmap"
	"resolution_x_playzone_0"	"1280"
	"resolution_y_playzone_0"	"1280"
		
	"mg_resolution_x_playzone_0"	"1280"
	"mg_resolution_y_playzone_0"	"1280"
}

3.start the sdk and type “maskgen pathfiner_<yourmap>” don’t load your map because it can cause crashes to occur. The maskgen will output two files, the heightmap that you can leave alone and a tga in imagedump\maskgen\ , place this in your masks folder and rename it to default.tga. this will be your mask to control where deployables can deployed. For some people this may come out completely white or black and I happened to be one of those people. What I did was make my own in paint. Just by looking at a mapshot and judging where to black out. When I loaded it up I could begin to make refinements. Its time consuming and can be annoying but you got to do it. Now close the sdk as it could freeze.

4.get the path for the magog
Open the sdk and type pathfinder pathfinder_<yourmap> and when it finishes it should output a file called paths. Rename this to <yourmap>_paths.def and place it in <savepath>\base\def\<yourmap>\<yourmap>_paths.de f

5.create the mcp masks and playzone mask.

For the playzone mask I got a white tga and renamed it to playzone.tga and placed it in my <savepath>\base\masks folder. the playzone is the area the player can go without taking damage. completly white being no limits.

**Skip this part if you don’t have an mcp escort mission in your map.**
You need to make two mcp masks. One for the route and one for the deployzone.
You have to make these your self by painting on a black tga. There is no easy way to do it, it is all trial and error keep refining until you get a what you want.

When you have them made them rename the mcp deploy marker to mcp.tga and the route to mcp_route.tga and place them in the folder <savepath>\base\masks\<yourmap>\

6. add the playzones

Add a playzone_play entity to your map and give it the following key/value

name       <yourmap>_playzone_play
dm_playzone     masks/<yourmap>/playzone

more info about playzones:http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.p...one_commandmap

be wary some info might be outdated.

Add a playzone_deploy to your map. Add the following key/values

name                            <yourmap>_playzone_deploy
dm_default                  masks/<yourmap>/default
dm_mcp                      masks/<yourmap>/mcp
dm_mcp_route            masks/<yourmap>/mcp_route
zone_vehicle_route     1

7. add territories
Add a deployzone. And give ot the following key.vaules

Name                    “<the name you want>(for an outpost call it outpost_deployzone)”
Mtr_territory        “the location of the territory outline” eg commandmaps/etqwmap_territory_01
Start_team             “the team it belongs to at the beginning of the map”
Target_playzone    “territory_size_thing”

Now add a trigger multiple and name it “territory_size_thing”. place it above your playzones. connect your territorys to this entity.

Now add as many territories as you like. A basic map should have a gdf base territory, strogg base territory and a few inbetween that can be captured by completing objectives.



And there ya have it. Compile and fire off some artillery.

Any mistakes, things I left out, things that need better description or your just need some more help just leave post and ill be glad to fix/help.

edit: my deploymask attached below

[LighT_Sh4v0r]

Wow, good stuff in there. Don't have the time to go through all of it, but it looks very neat. This is certainly gonna help others out.

[hozz]

Very nice, will read in detail now ... and maybe finally cope these deployables (not that i tried it)!

edit:
commandmaps:
* i needed this at the start of my material, it would not work otherwise

#include <materials/commandmaps.include>

(the cMap template is in there)

* you can resize the playzone_commandmap entity as you want! (if you changed it, only a full compile will make the change, entity only does not work). Also i had to caulk it otherwise it would be visible.

Very interesting map, more about it pleeeease

[gamma]

Originally Posted by hozz

Very nice, will read in detail now ... and maybe finally cope these deployables (not that i tried it)!

edit:
commandmaps:
* i needed this at the start of my material, it would not work otherwise

#include <materials/commandmaps.include>

(the cMap template is in there)

*

ah yes thank you edited in now. i just copyed straight from my materials never thought about the include.

about the caulk, you can just texture it with trigger. but guess theres no differnce

[hozz]

Ok it had the default orange texture for me which would not become invisible

You could also provide links to the modwiki for the parts of your tutorial to give additional information (mainly the respective articles of the "advanced map tutorial" e.g. this for the commandmap part: http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.p..._a_command_map and http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.p...one_commandmap [some things are wrong in modwiki point them out!])

[[TFA]Violator]

Nice tutorials Gamma. The deployzone stuff makes my head spin btw you can reload materials without restarting the sdk with the command

reloaddecls

[gamma]

Originally Posted by [TFA]Violator

Nice tutorials Gamma. The deployzone stuff makes my head spin btw you can reload materials without restarting the sdk with the command

reloaddecls

thank you, edited in. who ever thought the person who wrote the tutorial could learn from it

[World]

First of all, I appreciate the tutorials. Second of all, this is ridiculously complicated. I'm constantly amazed by how obfuscated this whole mapping process is.

I'm trying to get a commandmap working. To begin with, the mapshot came out at a size and alignment entirely differing from my playzone_commandmap entity, and when viewed in game it's miscolored. The actual image is colored correctly, but the ingame version is screenshotted below. The icon waypoints obviously don't match up, either. I've read through the other mapshot related threads, and those who had this problem haven't followed up with solutions, so I'm wondering if it's ever been solved.



Any thoughts?

Edit: Looking more closely at the image, it seems like the icons are aligned correctly with the playzone_commandmap entity, so that's good, at least -- it's just the image that's inexplicably off and miscolored.

[Scrupus]

Yes - open the commandmap in photoshop and remove the alphachannel. Bugged me for a long time, don't understand why I get them but always have to remove them after a mapshot.

But not sure about the icons, maybe the size of the commandmap trigger?

btw great tutorial Gamma

[hozz]

World, your commandmap is invisible/transparent where it seems black (so you see the background whatever it is - press "n" during play to see it.

This is due to some layers of the .tga not showing, i had this too (anything besides terrain would be translucent) - to fix it, open the commandmap in a image editing program and re-save it (worked for me with GIMP) - then the colors are right (all information in one layer).

About the wrong alignment, could be it is as you have no terrain model. Worst case you have to make a simple terrain only for the mapshot

If that morally helps you: i made a mapshot of your map the day it came out (just for curiosity) and it had the same mis-alignment

(also you need to FULL compile before a change of the playzone_commandmap will be noticed)

[World]

Alright, thanks hozz and Scrupus. I should have figured it was something like that, but I couldn't reason why the game would save the tga with unnecessary channels. :P

Very interesting possibility about the terrain model, hozz, I'll work down that path and see if it resolves things. Thanks!

[World]

Some new troubles. The map I'm working on has no terrain, perhaps that's why these tools aren't working? All I'm trying to do is enable airstrikes, and I assume it's mask related.

Originally Posted by gamme

3.start the sdk and type “maskgen pathfiner_<yourmap>” don’t load your map because it can cause crashes to occur. The maskgen will output two files, the heightmap that you can leave alone and a tga in imagedump\maskgen\ ...

Following the tutorial to this point and executing the maskgen pathfinder_mapname command will not generate any images. Again, this map has no terrain. Does maskgen only generate for terrain and not for structures? The response is essentially "No Collision Model Found." Same basic thing for the Magog mask. Moving on...

Originally Posted by gamma

5.create the mcp masks and playzone mask.

For the playzone mask I got a white tag rename it to playzone.tga and placed it in my <savepath>\base\masks folder. Im not entirely sure what it dose but its what the etqw map has, so I just copied that.

How do I create the playzone mask? Is there a command I've missed somewhere around here? Since the map won't load with a playzone_play entity pointing to an invalid path, I assume there is an actual image I should be creating.

So to sum up: Is my lack of terrain causing these maskgen problems? Are masks the way to go about enabling airstrikes? That's actually the only thing I need to accomplish at this point.

Edit: To update, the "No collision model" error stemmed from my map directory location. Once I copied the files to the path used in this tutorial, the collision model could be loaded. Of course, that just led to about 50 other problems.

What I really want to know: are masks the key to getting working airstrikes? I just don't want to burn out troubleshooting this ridiculousness for days only to find that it doesn't do the only thing I need it to do.

[gamma]

Originally Posted by World

Some new troubles. The map I'm working on has no terrain, perhaps that's why these tools aren't working? All I'm trying to do is enable airstrikes, and I assume it's mask related.

Following the tutorial to this point and executing the maskgen pathfinder_mapname command will not generate any images. Again, this map has no terrain. Does maskgen only generate for terrain and not for structures? The response is essentially "No Collision Model Found." Same basic thing for the Magog mask. Moving on...

maskgen should output the files with once there is a playzone_path_and_heightmap entity with the proper key/values. but since i only done it with a terrain im not sure if it will work without one. i will follow the tutorial now word for word without a terrain and see does it turn up any results

Originally Posted by World

What I really want to know: are masks the key to getting working airstrikes? I just don't want to burn out troubleshooting this ridiculousness for days only to find that it doesn't do the only thing I need it to do.

air strikes should work if you change your caulk texture from caulk to noimpactcaulk and add a portal under your terrain.

quote from the wiki

You may find that bullet and impact effects don't show up in-game. This is due to an oddity of the ETQW engine that requires there is at least one portal in the level. You can fix this by adding a simple portal to one end of the hallway. To find out how to do this, see the Portal Basics page (you should be able to place a portal, now you know how to create and texture brushes!)

link : http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.p...ple_Second_Map

edit:spotted a mistake in the tutorial. for the .def location it should be <savepath>\base\def\maps\<yourmap>.def instead of what i had <savepath>\base\def\<yourmap>\<yourmap>.def

sorry for the mistake

[MoP]

By the way, when doing Mapshot, make sure you are NOT running in a widescreen aspect ratio and high resolution; in fact running at 640x480 in 4:3 aspect produces the most reliable results.

World, I suspect this may be what caused your commandmap misalignment - do you run in widescreen mode, at a fairly high resolution?

Basically, before running mapshot, set your video mode to 640x480 (r_mode 3 in the console) and set the aspect ratio to 4:3 (r_aspectratio 0 in the console)... then do a vid_restart command to accept those, or use the graphics settings menu to set them up.

Then do your mapshot and it should come out ok.

[World]

Originally Posted by gamma

air strikes should work if you change your caulk texture from caulk to noimpactcaulk and add a portal under your terrain.

Yeah, it's strange; my hull is noimpactcaulk and I have an outdoor portal set up correctly, but I still can't get any airstrikes to work on the platforms in the Sky map. I think I might just chalk it up to no-terrain-weirdness and call it a day. It's probably better without airstrikes, and I prefer to work with interiors, anyway!

And now that you mention it, MoP, I can't believe I didn't try that until now. You'd think that after changing to 640x480 at 4:3 for every envmap and levelshot it would have occured to me to do the same for a mapshot! The result is the same, though, oddly. There are no brushes that the mapshot image edges are touching; they seem perfectly arbitrary. I was able to crop the image down well enough to fit closely enough ingame, but the culprit of the malfunction remains at large.

[gamma]

Originally Posted by MoP

By the way, when doing Mapshot, make sure you are NOT running in a widescreen aspect ratio and high resolution; in fact running at 640x480 in 4:3 aspect produces the most reliable results.

World, I suspect this may be what caused your commandmap misalignment - do you run in widescreen mode, at a fairly high resolution?

Basically, before running mapshot, set your video mode to 640x480 (r_mode 3 in the console) and set the aspect ratio to 4:3 (r_aspectratio 0 in the console)... then do a vid_restart command to accept those, or use the graphics settings menu to set them up.

Then do your mapshot and it should come out ok.

wouldnt have thought that will update now.

[hozz]

Everything MoP said is in the modwiki mapshot article

[hozz]

Trying to finally have deployables...

I just did the 3rd Tutorial (heightmap and deploymasks), and in step 3 it outputs a purely white heightmap.
Then the pathfinder gives me errors, probably due to this.
Meh ...

My playzone_xxx entities have trigger texture.... maybe that is the problem?

My caulk hull is noimpactcaulk, and i moved any entities hovering over the terrain (playzone_path_and_hm, playzone_commandmap) under the terrain, which changed that the formerly pure black heightmap is now pure white.

Any ideas?

[gamma]

what i did was put the playzone_path_and_heightmap around the whole terrain, then put all the others above it like in the etqwmap. all my playzones are all textured with trigger so that couldnt be the cause.

my guess is that it is in the wrong place or not covering everything. my first go at it didnt turn out a heightmap and resizing and changing the location a few times did the trick. im still not sure why it dosnt work sometimes.

[hozz]

Hmm that makes sense! Only the area covered by pz_path_and_hm is considered in the heightmap.....

Thanks, will try it now.

[Scrupus]

Originally Posted by hozz

Hmm that makes sense! Only the area covered by pz_path_and_hm is considered in the heightmap.....

Thanks, will try it now.

Just as a sidenote, I stuggled a lot with the deployables stuff until I centered the terrainmodel and everything around origin 0,0 - after that it worked smoothly. Still get a white default.tga (that's another story...) but at least the deployables started to work properly.

[hozz]

Thank god .. ahem thank blender my terrain is centered

White default tga is fine, you have to hard-work-and-hairloss-paint it anyway...

[hozz]

I made my pz_path_and_heightmap around my terrain, and that solved the problem with the white heightmap.
Now i have a heightmap which looks very white, but is a heightmap

Questions:
*Does the z-dimension of the deployzone entities (territory brushes) matter? If yes, how are you supposed to build them? (right now they're hovering in the sky, i've seen they stand on the surface in etqwmap)
* the trigger_multiple has no special K/V (only the name) is that really correct?

Problem:

Originally Posted by console

ERROR: sdDeployMaskInstance::Init Invalid Deploy Mask ' masks/reservoir/playzone'

and my map won't load.
I did use a white .tga (the white.tga from the SD megatexture source images) and used it in 512x512 (original) and 128x128(resized).
Then i just deleted it.
Then i tried the playzone.tga from the etqwmap folder.
All 4 times this error.

Update: i deleted the playzone_play and the playzone in the .def ..... now the map loads.

Medkits/Stroyent cells do not work (these need the playzone i guess ???).
Supply crate drop (not use), Violator/Airstrike work.

Deployables do not work, but i'm just recompiling with my territory brushes not hovering over the terrain, but intersecting it like the deployzone thing...

Update2:
Ok, deployables did work all the time, i just don't see the wireframe before i deployed, and the wireframe after i deployed is not exactly on the terrain (a little higher).
Once they arrived, they fall to ground and work.

So: how to fix wireframes, and how to make a working playzone_play (it seems to be independent of the rest)?

Update 3:
I noticed the pathfinder (part 4 of gamma's tut) created a reservoir_playzone_56467465.tga in my imagedump/pathfinder folder... what is this good for?
Also the little deploy squares do not show (my deploymask[default.tga] is pure white).