Part
Eight: Overview
In this section
you will edit the local player resources and add a huge
cloud of dust motes and dustclouds in the centre of the
map.
8.1
|
Edit
the ‘ResourceSphere_1.missphere’
local player
resourcesphere lines. |
8.2
|
Edit
the
local player
resourcesphere lines by using cylinders to make a better
'Sphere'. |
8.3
|
Create
a
huge central dust cloud from dust motes and dustclouds. |
8.4
|
Part
Eight Summary. |
Quick Links Relevant
to this Chapter
|

8.0
Tweaking Resources
We
are going to make each of our local player resource spheres
as dense as possible. We are going to add a second sphere
in exactly the same place as the last, but to retain (or
even enhance) the spherical nature of these starting spheres
we are going to reduce the size of both spheres, making
one smaller than the other as well.

8.1
- Edit
the ‘ResourceSphere_1.missphere’
local player resourcesphere
lines.
Copy
both resource lines in the ResourceSphere_1.missphere,
paste them directly underneath. For each cluster we want
a sphere with radius and diameter to 6000,12000 and the
second as 8000,16000;
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Sphere,Asteroid.dist,20,6000.4,12000.8,0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Sphere,Asteroid.dist,20,8000.4,16000.8,
0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Sphere,Asteroid.dist,20,6000.4,12000.8,0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Sphere,Asteroid.dist,20,8000.4,16000.8,
0.0,0.0,2048,1
Take
a look at them in the game. Nice and dense, dense enough
to hid our opponent in, but they don’t look very spherical
do they not? Well there is a property that can address this;
the shell property and we could feasibly add a shell, which
seem to retain their shape better for the larger spheres.
But, were not going to do that, instead we are going to
use a better method first devised by TAKER, we are going
to use two cylinders at 45°
angles to one another. These changes can be simply done
by cutting and pasting, (in fact if you havent already realised
90% of making maps is cutting and pasting), I will take
you through it;

8.2
- Edit
the
local player resourcesphere
lines by using cylinders to make a better 'Sphere'.
Each
player is going to start in an asteroid cluster composed
of six lines of resources.
8.2.1
- Copy
and paste each until you have 6 lines with co-ordinates
‘0,50000,0’ and six of ‘0,-50000,0’ (posx,posy,posz).
8.2.2
- Next
rename the layout to ‘Cylinder’ for them all.
8.2.3
- The
first two lines in each cluster we want to have numResources value of 16, radius and length of 6000 and 12000 respectively,
8.2.4
- For
the second line only, change the roty and rotz to
45.
8.2.5
- The
next two lines (lines 3 and 4 from each sextuplet) again
will have numResources of 16 but this time we want the cylinder
to be slightly larger, set the radius and length to 8000
and 16000 respectively.
8.2.6
- For
the second 8000 line only, (line 4) change
the roty and rotz to 45.
8.2.7
- The
last two lines of each cluster will be there purely for
aesthetic reasons and will be composed entirely of dust
motes, the distribution file for this is called Tiny.dist.
If you open it up and take a look you will see it is composed
of 15 asteroid0’s only.
You
know what your doing now yes? For these lines, rename the
distribution to ‘Tiny.dist’, change the numResources to
30, radius to 10000, length to 20000 and change the roty
and rotz to 45 for the last line.
Your
lines should look like this when you’re finished;
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,6000.4,12000.8,0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,6000.4,12000.8,45.0,45.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,8000.4,16000.8,0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,8000.4,16000.8,45.0,45.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Tiny.dist,30,10000.4,20000.8,0.0,0.0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Tiny.dist,30,10000.4,20000.8,45.0,45.0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,6000.4,12000.8,0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,6000.4,12000.8,45.0,45.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,8000.4,16000.8,0.0,0.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Asteroid.dist,16,8000.4,16000.8,45.0,45.0,2048,1
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Tiny.dist,30,10000.4,20000.8,0.0,0.0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0.0,-50000.0,0.0,Cylinder,Tiny.dist,30,10000.4,20000.8,45.0,45.0,?,?
Take
a look at the results in Homeworld, a lot, lot better huh?

8.3
- Create
a
huge central dust cloud from dust motes and dustclouds.
Ok,
we will now finish of the 2 player map by adding in a central
region of asteroids with its CPU defended station to make
it a dangerous place to go.
The
central sphere will be a huge cluster of dust in an overlarge
ball, this time we will follow Hellhawk666’s example on
how to create these and retain large spherical shapes.
8.3.1
- First
lets add a DustCloud sphere in the centre to hide our Station
in. Copy a resource line and rename the ‘Resources
Asteroid’ to ‘Resources
DustCloud’.
8.3.2
- We
want this cloud in the centre of our map so posx,posy,posz
will be 0,0,0.
Next
rename the layout back to ‘Sphere’. The Distribution of
the file will be ‘DustCloud.dist’ because we have named
the resourcetype (the first parameter in the line) as ‘DustCloud’.
Drop the resourceNum to ‘16’, we don’t need it too dense.
The radius and diameter change to ‘3000’ and ‘6000’ respectively.
We have no need for any axial tilt so set them to ‘0’ and
we don’t want them to regenerate so lets make sure that
the properties all are set at ‘?’.
8.3.3
- Copy
this line and in the second line we will make a slightly
larger sphere, all we need to change in our second line
is the radius and diameter, change them to ‘10000’ and ‘20000’.
The
last thing you need to do is make sure you have the relevant
distribution file in your Revelations2 folder, so just make
sure you really do have 'DustCloud.dist' in there,
if not it can be found in the Tutorial Map files folder.
8.3.4
- Next;
the dust ball that will comprise our central region. Ok
you know what you are doing with this so rather than talk
you through it all I will explain what I
did:
I
created 12 spheres all centred on the dead centre of the
map at co-ordinates 0,0,0, then I made sure they were all
spheres of Tiny.dist distribution with a resourceNum
of 250, this whopping number was needed because the
spheres are so big. I made the radius for each sphere slightly
larger than the one before it and to retain the spherical
shape I made the last 6 spheres shells using property ‘2’.Here
they are in full;
Resources
DustCloud,0,0,0,Sphere,DustCloud.dist,16,3000,6000,0,0,?,?
Resources
DustCloud,0,0,0,Sphere,DustCloud.dist,16,10000,20000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,10000,20000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,12000,24000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,14000,28000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,16000,32000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,18000,36000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,19000,38000,0,0,?,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,20000,40000,0,0,2,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,22000,45000,0,0,2,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,24000,50000,0,0,2,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,25000,50000,0,0,2,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,26000,52000,0,0,2,?
Resources
Asteroid,0,0,0,Sphere,Tiny.dist,250,27000,54000,0,0,2,?

8.4
- Summary
So
how did I come up with the numbers, sizes etc? Sheer experimentation
my dear reader, you can happily access and modify every
file that makes up a map, Alt-tabbing between Homeworld
and desktop is a doddle and you only need to reload the
actual game (as opposed to Homeworld loading up your map)
when you change something that causes a fatal error, or
you add a new folder in.
Working in small increments and constantly checking and
tweaking is what its all about.
So
that’s the resources completed for our 2 player (1v1) map.
I created these by jumping in and out of Homeworld and tweaking
them until I was happy. Go take a look at them for yourself
in Homeworld. All that remains to add is our station and
its defending weaponry, the large and small guns found in
the singleplayer junkyard mission ‘The
Karos Graveyard’. Everything you need is here, there
is nothing stopping you going and doing it for yourself
but fear not, I will talk you through the addition of CPU
controlled ships in Multiplayer missions.
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