Making railway tracks, poles fences and any other stuff that is long and needs aligment

[sztartur2]

Topic says it all....

I have a probklem of making a long line a tracks. I have examined other maps with tracks, and I know the following:
-You have to choose a color and tell MM that it is a railway.
-Then you have to put above pieces of 10,20,100 or 200m pieces of rail structures.

My problem is that I do not know how to align them properly.Since in MM you cannot make accurate placement of structures you only have scene editor where you can only set position in numbers. Such aligning takes horrible time and I hope there is a better way.

Please help me with this.

[junk2drive]

From our notes on Scene Editor hotkeys

a. New cursors
b. Better pan speeds based on the zoom level
c. Double click on an object now just selects it for manipulation, it doesn't zoom and center the object. To do than you must press "Z". This was done for long objects which you want to work with the ends on.
d. To move and object after it has been selected you must hold down CTRL and the left mouse button.
e. To paint the map you must hold down ALT and the left mouse button.
f. You can now manipulate all map objects in 6DOF. With an object selected

"a" moves it in the -X axis
"d" moves it in the +X axis
"w" moves it in the +Z axis
"s" moves it in the -Z axis
"Keypad+" moves it in the +Y axis
"Keypad-" moves it in the -Y axis
"Keypad Left (4)/Right(6)" roll axis
"Keypad Up (8)/Down(2)" pitch axis
"Keypad Ins (0)/period (Del) yaw axis.

You can now also hold down the control key whilst pressing any of these keys to perform microscopic movements for ultimate precision.

You can select and object, hold down the "c" key (clone) and the left click on another object so that the selected object clones the roll/pitch/yaw data from the first. This is helpful to adjust the alignment of objects you want to attach.

Hotkeys "[" and "]" now raise and lower the camera focus point. This is really helpful if what you want to align on one object to another is raised off the ground somewhat (ie powerlines).

[sztartur2]

OK I made my track line in scene editor. I put one 200m track in MM then built it and continued in scene editor. I cloned the track a lot of time and moved and adjusted and saved the work. After that i went back to MM and pressed the import changes from scene editor. a dialog quickly raised that import was successful, but the cloned structures did not appear in MM then I rebuilt and now in the scene edotor my track line has disappered.

I AM FRUSTRATED LIKE HELL [:@][:@][:@]

How on earth can i import objects made in scene editor?

what frustration is being saved with map height editing is paid back by the unfriendly editing of structures. Making track in any other game editor is a piece of cake here is a neightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BAH!

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

OK I made my track line in scene editor. I put one 200m track in MM then built it and continued in scene editor. I cloned the track a lot of time and moved and adjusted and saved the work. After that i went back to MM and pressed the import changes from scene editor. a dialog quickly raised that import was successful, but the cloned structures did not appear in MM then I rebuilt and now in the scene edotor my track line has disappered.

Putting in railway tracks and telephone lines are probably the most difficult part of map making. before the programmer incorporated the keyboard controls and micro controls into Scene Edit, I would spend a LOT of time getting telphone wires lined up. But with the new controls it's much improved, but still takes a fair bit of time and patience.

I just rechecked that the import option was working ok. I laid two sections of 10m track, alligned them in Scene Edit using the controls, then saved the file in Scene Edit. I used the save menu choice not the save as. If you use save as, make sure you save the correct file it will be in the Media\'Mapname' folder and filename is 'mapname'Scene.xml.

once it was saved, I closed the Scene Edit screen and then from the MM screen I imported the changes. then I immediately build the map again to save those imports.

Mobius has laid more track than any of us on the team I think, so he might have some other tips.

Thanks
rick

[sztartur2]

In the meantime I also figured out, the import works IF I first create ALLthe structures in MM. If you clone some of them in Scene editor they seem not to get imported back to MM.

I successfully built a long line of Tracks and poles near it.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

In the meantime I also figured out, the import works IF I first create ALLthe structures in MM. If you clone some of them in Scene editor they seem not to get imported back to MM.

I successfully built a long line of Tracks and poles near it.

I hadn't tried cloning in Scene Edit. But you are correct, you can't add structures in Scene Edit, they have to be added in MM and only then edited in Scene Edit.

It sounds like you've got it down though!

Great!

thanks
Rick

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

In the meantime I also figured out, the import works IF I first create ALLthe structures in MM. If you clone some of them in Scene editor they seem not to get imported back to MM.

I successfully built a long line of Tracks and poles near it.

One more thing you might have to do is flag those structures as Has Height. I'm not positive this is necessary, but you can test your map and make sure units can move over the tracks. If they can't, then in MM check the box for Has Height.

Thanks
rick

[sztartur2]

I have just started a final build for a 2kmX2km map. I have mostly done what I wanter except the fences which seem to be too short and require a lot of tediosu fiddling. I have created a very long fence bitmap but that causet scene editor not being able to open the map so I deleted all the fence structures.

One very bad thing is that it takes 4-5 hours to make a final build of a map!!! that is awfully lot I always start a final build before going to sleep...

The MM concept is brilliant... the implementation... not so much...

[sztartur2]

ORIGINAL: Rick

ORIGINAL: sztartur

In the meantime I also figured out, the import works IF I first create ALLthe structures in MM. If you clone some of them in Scene editor they seem not to get imported back to MM.

I successfully built a long line of Tracks and poles near it.

One more thing you might have to do is flag those structures as Has Height. I'm not positive this is necessary, but you can test your map and make sure units can move over the tracks. If they can't, then in MM check the box for Has Height.

Thanks
rick

I have by instict checket it . Not because of the units passing over but to tell that it needs also hight alignment...

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

I have just started a final build for a 2kmX2km map. I have mostly done what I wanter except the fences which seem to be too short and require a lot of tediosu fiddling. I have created a very long fence bitmap but that causet scene editor not being able to open the map so I deleted all the fence structures.

One very bad thing is that it takes 4-5 hours to make a final build of a map!!! that is awfully lot I always start a final build before going to sleep...

The MM concept is brilliant... the implementation... not so much...

Yes, fences are difficult as well. but they do add to the map flavor.

there are several steps involved in creating map objects that can be added to Map Maker and then used in Map Making. The bitmap is only used as a link to the structure model that is needed. You have to create the actual 3 dimensional structure for the object you want to add. Once that is done, you have to create several links to let Map maker know how to handle the object.

A few of the dev team have created models that have been imported into MM. If you are interested in doing that, post and they can probably provide better instructions on how to do it than I can.

And yes, the final build for a map can take a LONG time. though 4-5 hours does seem a lot. the last 2km map build I did took about 45 min I think. One thing to watch for is to make sure you code your autogens correctly so that MM does not need to draw woods color under each of the auto gen trees if they are already coded to go onto a woods terrain type.

MM is a fairly complex tool. make sure you go over the manual sections. But even with the manual, it is a pretty complex tool. But the things you are able to do with it are also pretty powerful. It's sometimes difficult to get the balance between simple tool and still have a powerful tool. Map Maker has evolved and really does save a LOT of time for creating some pretty complex maps.

Thanks
Rick

[sztartur2]

ORIGINAL: Rick

... One thing to watch for is to make sure you code your autogens correctly so that MM does not need to draw woods color under each of the auto gen trees if they are already coded to go onto a woods terrain type.

...

How can I do that?

EDIT.

Yup sometimes it helps to read the manual. Now it built in 40 minutes. I need to check whether the result is what I wanted. For the looks in scene editor it is the behavious I shall see in the game.
I omitted the fences for now all the rest is done.