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Author Topic: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain  (Read 9237 times)

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« on: December 08, 2019, 09:11:36 pm »
By popular request, I have written a little guide for making X-Com maps. It's in the attachment.

It is very much in progress, it's pretty laconic and I haven't covered making new tilesets yet, but it should be quite instructive to beginners.

Remember kids: making maps is just a few simple rules and otherwise all fun!
« Last Edit: May 03, 2021, 04:12:56 pm by Solarius Scorch »

misterx

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2019, 04:15:13 pm »
Please make it a sicky one!

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2019, 05:39:33 pm »
Please make it a sicky one!

Done.

Edit by Meridian: removed two offtopic posts (by misterx and by me)
« Last Edit: December 16, 2019, 10:42:42 am by Meridian »

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2019, 01:33:23 am »
Please update the steps to show MapView 2 as soon as possible, and push MapView 2 up to the top. Maybe even get rid of MapView 1 instructions. Veteran modders such as you or I are likely more experienced with MapView 1, so we might not have switched over yet. But we want our new people to start it out the right way!

Offline kevL

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2019, 06:40:32 am »
An important distinction between 1 & 2 is that I chose to stop calling terrains "tilesets".

What Mv1 calls a "tile" is a "part" or "tilepart" in Mv2. A "tile" in Mv2 is a square (actually a 3d isometric cuboid) on the battlefield. That is, in Mv2, a tile is a combination of up to four tileparts.

In Mv2, a "tileset" is called a "terrain" (because they're in the TERRAIN directory) and the grouping of terrains that are allocated to a Map are called a "terrainset". A "tileset" in Mv2 is the data that's in a Mapfile + its terrainset.


This change wasn't simply a flight of fancy. It saved me from going bonkers while recoding Mapview. As far as I can tell, tileparts were originally called "tiles" because they appear as sprites that are laid out in a tiled table. But that's not what they are with respect to a battlefield or battlefield block; they are, rather, tileparts that appear in tileslots* to give the end result: a tileset.

in Mv1: A tile is an MCD record + its sprite(s)
in Mv2: A part is an MCD record + its sprite(s)


The other, biggest difference between Mv1 and 2 is that Mv2 stores its maptree data in YAML files. This change is incompatible with Mv1, hence the "2". Users of Mv2 should never have to fritter around with config files (unless they want to ofc).

Other than above, Solar's Manual looks like an excellent guide ... although, be warned, advanced mapmapking can get extremely detailed and intricate ... one could write a book ...


*sometimes called "quadrants" in the code*
*not actually quadrants, but it's okay since there are no quadrants in Mapview*
*large units do have quadrants*
*but the only reference to them in Mapview is as the "Large" unit type*

*all this is why i'll never write a guide to mapmaking btw

[image: https://abstrusegoose.com/]

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #5 on: September 09, 2020, 02:19:30 pm »
Guys, I am not familiar with MapView 2 and therefore can't write anything about it. Feel free to contribute, anyone.

EDIT:
I have updated the manual to include MapView 2.

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #6 on: September 09, 2020, 10:12:55 pm »
Excellent! Looking great! Thanks for adding it! With any luck, I may be able to get myself into Mapview 2; thanks to this new guide, that transition will likely be a lot easier! =)

Offline kevL

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2020, 01:31:33 am »
@Reaver if you need help converting Mv1 metadata (the Maptree list) to Mv2 get in touch ..... conversions can be a bit edgie.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2020, 02:09:45 pm »
I have modfied the initial post to update the download link.

Offline gaffer

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2020, 04:40:18 am »
Very helpful, thank you!

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Lasers & Legos: How to Make X-Com Terrain
« Reply #10 on: May 03, 2021, 04:13:35 pm »
The link keeps getting broken for one reason or another, so I just attached the manual in the opening post. It's not like it changes a lot...