Part
Two: Overview
In this section
you will deal with the Description File: 'Description.txt'.
2.1
|
Copy
and Paste a Description.txt file into the Revelations2
folder. |
2.2
|
Set
up the Description header displaying the in-game name
and accompanying notes. |
2.3
|
Set
up the Colour the text in the description box will appear
in. |
2.4
|
Set
Default: 'Crates off'. |
2.5
|
Summary |
Quick Links Relevant
to this Chapter
|

2.0
The Description File
The
Description file (Description.txt) gives the description
of your map and allows you to tweak the options that are
available within the Homeworld game itself, in the Multiplayer\Skirmish
Vs CPU settings screen. With this file you set the default
options for the map, be it crates on, caps off, injections
on etc. This
file will be the same file copied into all the maps
Sub-Folders, there are no differences between any of them
( - they all must be identical) so this file only
needs to be changed once. There will never be more than
one per folder.

2.1
- Copy
and Paste a Description.txt file into the Revelations2 folder.
Open
up the Tutorial Map Files Folder (or indeed, any other map
folder in the homeworld/multiplayer folder), and find the
file called Description.txt. Highlight the file and
copy it (highlight it, press ctrl-c or right click on the
file and select copy), then paste a copy of this file into
your spanking new ‘Revelations2’ folder.

2.2
- Set
up the Description header displaying the in-game name and
accompanying notes.
OK,
open up this file and look at the first five lines beginning
with: 'Description<tab>'. While not touching 'Description'
or the tab space after it, rename the map to “Revelations
(2-6 Players)” and change the map description text to: “Hooray
me! My First Map! Am I not just the dogs bollocks!?” Leave
the line; ‘Settings: Crates off’. In the line below put
your own name and email in, below that change the date.
I
would really suggest you keep these last two lines in, everyone
likes to advertise who made the map and there is a fantastic
Homeworld community of map makers out there, all centred
on the relic boards, and who are always happy to help/be
helped. The version is important so folks can see at a glance
what version of a map they are using, especially if updates
are available (So far this has happened with ‘Haven’,
‘Deepspace’ and
‘Arachne’- all fine maps that had some initial teething problems).
OK
so now you have something looking like this:
Description
Revelations (2-6 Players)
Description
Hooray me! My First Map! Am I not just the dogs
bollocks?
Description
Settings: Crates off.
Description
AUTHOR: Dylov (dy.lov@techemail.com)
Description
VERSION: 1.0 (May 01 2000)
Of
course you will have a different name and date, but you
get the idea.
Now,
later on we will be copying this file into all the other
map folders, and I will be telling you that they all must
be identical. Well... this is not strictly true...
You should feel free to make changes to the default settings
as they will register in the game, but these lines we have
just covered (the header lines) abso-positively must
be identical in all the map folders, you mess up
the header and Homeworld goes in a big huff and refuses
to show any of them in the game when you select your
map. Anyway don't worry about this just now, this will all
be covered later, lets continue down the file and change
the default settings to fit our map.

2.3
- Set
Colour of you text in the Description box
The
Next three lines give the settings for the font and colour
in the description box, they are;
Font
Arial_b12.hff
Color
0, 180, 40
DropShadow Yes
Don't
change the font, or it will crash HW:C. Don't change 'Dropshadow'
either, I have no idea what it does, and you can set it
to "No" but I have never noticed any difference
and its probably best left well alone. You can change the
text colour, and it's probably best I leave you to play
around with it a bit yourself, until you come up with a
colour you like, just change the R/G/B values, (min=0, max=255),
remember don't touch the format, just the actual values.

2.4
- Set
Default: 'Crates off'.
From
Chapter 2.2 of the Primer (Default settings), we learned
that if
you want an option off, place a semicolon at the start of
each "type.flag" line, not the "type.flgNeeded"
line. If you want the option on, then remove the semicolon
from in front of it. On
your Description.txt file, scroll down until you come across
the two lines dealing with crates and switch the crates
off. Just follow the example I gave. Don't change anything
else, we will leave the rest of the settings as they are
for the moment.

2.5
- The
Last wee bit, and a Summary
The
last wee block deals with injections and starting RU defaults,
again the game defaults are all preset at the popular options
of 'NO Injections' and Maximum RU (ie 4000) beginning amounts.
We will ignore them as we want these starting amounts, they
are fine for us.
We
are finished with the Description file for the moment. Save
the and close the description.txt file and lets move on
to the Level file.
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