Part
Three: Overview
In this section
you will deal with the Level File: 'Revelations2.level'.
3.1
|
Create
the level file. Copy and Paste any Level file into the
Revelations2 folder. Rename this file Revelations2.level. |
3.2
|
Change
the 'Multiplayer
Level:' tag, and the 'Info:' tag and add the name of
your map inside the square brackets. |
3.3
|
Check
the Missionsphere lines are the correct amount and pointing
to the right files. |
3.4
|
Change
the background and lighting. |
3.5
|
Change
the universal settings (Sensor manager settings and
the overall map size). |
3.6
|
Set
the ships that will be available on the map. |
3.7
|
Set
the default music. |
3.8
|
Part
Three Summary. |
Quick Links Relevant
to this Chapter
|

3.0
The Level File
The
Level file contains all the basic information about your
map. It contains the name and race of all the starting ship
files, the name of the resource file, the universe size,
the lighting type, the background type, the sensor manager
zoom sizes, the default song to be played and any ship restrictions.
There will never be more than one per folder and all will
contain only minor changes between folders of the same map.

3.1
- Create
the level file.
The best place to start with a *.Level file is with one
that already exists. Every map you Have has one. Every map
that you don't have has one too, you can trust me on this.
Happily, the Tutorial Map files folder has one too, and
more; it's snappily named: TutorialMap2.level. Pretty
damn snappy huh?
3.1.1
- From the Tutorial Map files folder and copy the
file called ‘TutorialMap2.level’ into your ‘Revelations2’
folder.
3.1.2 - Rename the file to:
‘Revelations2.level’ (always take care that when
you rename the *.level file to match the folder it resides
in, that you rename it EXACTLY
as the name of the folder is, remember when we talked about
CaSe?).

3.2
- Changing the
'Multiplayer Level:', 'Info:' and the map name.
Open
up this 'Revelations2.level' file.
Look now at the top six lines. These first six lines have
to retain their Format, so all you will change is the 'Multiplayer
Level:' tag, and the 'Info:' tag and the name of your map
inside the square brackets. Keep that fifth blank line,
(between the four header lines and the map name in the square
brackets) as well as the blank line immediately after the
map name in square brackets.
3.2.1
- Change the map name to ‘Revelations2’, (and see
that it matches the name of the folder in exactly! If the
folder is called 'revelations2' and you input 'Revelations2'
here then it will not work, it wont appear in the custom
map listing in the game, always remember that case matters).
Change the info tag to ‘Revelations (2-6)’, and change the
name in square brackets to ‘Revelations (2-6)’
So
now your header should look like this:
;
MissionMan script, Friday, Sep 3 1999, 12:15:09 PM
;
Copyright (c) 1998-99, Relic Entertainment Inc.
;
Multiplayer Level: Revelations2
;
Info: Revelations (2-6)
[Revelations (2-6)]
3.3
- Missionsphere
lines; correct amount and pointing to the right files.
Take
a look at the next three lines, these are three Mission
Sphere lines We see that these refer to a Resourcesphere
file entitled ‘ResourceSphere_1.missphere’ and two Mothership
files entitled ‘Mothership_0.missphere’ (for the first player),
‘Mothership_1.missphere’ (for the second player).
If
there are more than two lines dealing with Motherships files,
just delete them, if there are less than two (and I can't
envisage that happening but just in case) then just close
the file, go find another *.Level file from any map folder
ending in a '2', and using this file go back and do part
3.2 again. You need two. You have two? Cool, this
is fine, lets leave these as they are, we will eventually
be adding the files as named in these lines but for the
moment lets move on to the last chunk of lines in your level
file.

3.4
- Universal
Map Settings: background
and lighting source.
Okay
then, lets sort out the universal map settings of our map.
The first thing we want to do is decide on a background
and lighting source for the map. Our Revelations2.level
file has currently got lighting file ‘ez05’ and background
file ‘ez05’ set. These correspond to lighting file ez05.hsf
and background file ez05.btg (the Lighting and Background
from single player mission Five), which are found within
the homeworld.big file if you’d care to go looking with
the ‘BIG viewer’.
3.4.1 - We are going to change
these, not to another single player map file, but to a brand
new one as supplied to us by the inimitable /Downslope\.
In the Tutorial Map files folder there are two files that
I want you to copy into your Revelations2 folder they are
‘downslope.hsf’ and ‘Downslope.btg’.
3.4.2
- For these lines, change ‘ez05’ to ‘downslope’ for
the Lighting line and ‘Downslope’ for the Background line.
In the Background line, change the rotz from 180 degrees
to 0 degrees.

3.5
- Universal
Map Settings: Sensor
Manager parameters.
Next
we have the Sensor Manager parameters to deal with.
3.5.1
- Leave the first three lines alone (the smDepthCueRadius,
smDepthCueStartRadius and the smCircleBorder).
The Zoom Max and Zoom Min we will leave also,
these are fine for our needs, and we are not making a huge
map.
3.5.2
- We will however reduce the size of our map though,
change the next three parameters regarding the Universe
size (radius) to 150000 (150km). Do this for all three lines
(smUniverseSizeX, smUniverseSizeZ and smUniverseSizeY).
For each axis we are setting radius to 150km, therefore
this will make the map a big cube 300km in length, width
and breadth.
These
lines should now look like this;
Lighting
downslope
Background
Downslope, 0, 0
smDepthCueRadius
50000
smDepthCueStartRadius
20000
smCircleBorder
90000
smZoomMax
500000
smZoomMin
30000
smInitialDistance
145000
smUniverseSizeX
150000
smUniverseSizeZ
150000
smUniverseSizeY
150000
3.6
- Ships
that will be available on the map.
Lets
sort out then what ships will be available and set the default
music for the map. At
the moment your Revelations2.level file excludes all alien
races bar the Kushan and Taiidan, we however want more,
we are going to add a moderately defended station on our
map, lets use the Traders Research Station for this.
3.6.1
- Below the line that says “ExcludeShips
Traders,All” we will add the station and its defence
by including it on our map using the “IncludeShips” command.
We want to add a ResearchStation and the Junk_Lgun
and Junk_Sgun. So we would add these three lines;
IncludeShips
Traders, ResearchStation
IncludeShips
Traders, Junk_Lgun
IncludeShips
Traders, Junk_Sgun
We
have not actively excluded the Kushan and Taiidan races
so they will be there, adding the lines; ‘Includeships
R1,All’ and ‘Includeships
R2,All’ is merely superfluous as both are default
races, but you’ll notice that LightDefenders, The SuperHeadshotAsteroid
and the TargetDrone have been excluded, this is fine as
these are rarely used and are a bit crap, leave them alone.

3.7
- Default
Music.
Lastly
we will set the default music for the map.
The
song number, is currently set at ‘0’, which is a sort of
default, lets change this to song 10. You can see a full
listing of the available music in the Primer Appendices,
changing this will not affect use of the '<' and '>'
keys when in the game to change the music.

3.8
- Summary
So
all our final lines in the Revelations2.level file will
look like this;
ExcludeShips
P1,All
ExcludeShips
P2,All
ExcludeShips
P3,All
ExcludeShips
Traders,All
IncludeShips
Traders, ResearchStation
IncludeShips
Traders, Junk_Lgun
IncludeShips
Traders, Junk_Sgun
ExcludeShips
R1,LightDefender
ExcludeShips
R2,LightDefender
ExcludeShips
R2,HeadShotAsteroid
ExcludeShips
R1,HeadShotAsteroid
ExcludeShips
R1,TargetDrone
ExcludeShips
R2,TargetDrone
ExcludeGasCloud
All
ExcludeDerelict
All
IncludeDerelict
Crate
SongNumber
10
And
that’s the level file done with for the moment. Save your
file and close it up. Pat yourself on the back and tell
yourself how brilliant you are, you are well on the way
now to completing your first map.
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