The Homeworld Map Makers Primer v2.1 FINAL

 
HW Tutorial 3.0 Level File

 

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.

 

Quick Links:

HW Primer:
Chapter Three - The Level File

Quick Jump to Relevant Areas in the Primer:
3.2 Missionsphere Lines
3.4 Background & Lighting Settings
3.6 Determining ships & resources to load

Quick Jump to Relevant Appendices:
Appendix A: Song listing

Appendix A: The Level File Parameters

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