Map Maker Beta ...

[rickier65]

OK- I'm pretty slow, but have finished the MM part of the Piepsk map. I will load this into Scene Edit to finalize the building structures though. that way I can face them the way I want and make sure they show up where I want them.

Slow going, but without MM I think I would have given up way before now. I dont think I would have been able to sort through the texturing options if I hand't had MM to make it simple to try different things.

Thanks,

Rick

[RyanCrierie]

Here are some skyboxes I shot. Are they good enough for mapmaker?

[rickier65]

I'm working with MM 0.9d. I finished my work with MM, and loaded the piepskScene and map.bmp into Scene edit to make final placements of the randomly generated houses for my map.

I found myself "losing" houses after pressing the "G" key for grounding the structure.

Usually after I didn this, I would simply quit Scen without saving, but after the fourth of fifth time it occurred to me to look "under" the map. And there was my house. I could get it back to the surface by changing the "y" parameter in the position data, but if I pressed the "G" key again, it would move it back to below the map.

Not sure what's happening here. I rechecked the map data, and I'm trying to ground the house to an area that I thought had a elev. of 49.6. But chaning the y value to about 20 still puts the house well above ground - though I'm not sure of the relationship between the y value and the elev.

In any event - not sure if its a MM issue, a SCENE issue, or just user problem. But as I said, this is about 4th or 5th time out of only getting about 3 structures successfully repositioned.

So I'm going pretty slow.

Thanks,
Rick

[rickier65]

Well, I decided to load the map back into MM (I thought I read I couldn't do that - but I did anyway). I did some smoothing on the road, and then decided to check the level on the structure bases. found a little bit I could level a little better. (mainly was just trying to find something to do to impact topography.

I saved, (and yes, the work I had done in scen edit to the structures was gone), but went back into Scene, and was able to use "G" to ground my structures and they no longer "fell" though the mesh. Not sure what was happening, but someting you might need to watch for.

You can note that the sympton is for the structure (or whatever) "disapears" when you press "G" to ground it. (check under the map).

Thanks
Rick

[rickier65]

I've finished the map building part of the Piepsk map. I ended up going in and out of sceneedit a few time to make some tweaks to the terrain (mainly for flattening where the buildings were.

I think based on this experience (limited - I know) that I would not use MM to randomly place building. I do think I'd use it to place specific bldgings though using the tools for orienting the bldgs.

Also, I would make sure that those places where you place structures are actually level, using the leveling tool in MM. Will save a lot of back and forth.

Map Maker makes the textures and woods placement really easy - but if you have a specific terrain and bldg layout you're trying to map - it does still take some patience (I'm sure Mraah and Stridor would be able to do it in much much less time than me).

In any event - I think now I should create a template for this map, then create the specific order of battle for Piepsk (the orignal project based on the Suad leader scenario of same name).

Screnn shot is of the center of twon looking from the church. (center part of the Squad leader mapboard number 3)



Thanks!
Rick

[Mobius]

Is there something missing from betaA to beta D?  I was working with beta A then realized that I didn't have the latest version.  I installed beta d and now I'm getting script errors.
I guess I'll go back to beta a.
 

[spellir74]

(By my original post here 'Nothng' I didn't mean matrix wasn't responding quick enough. My 'Nothing' comment was simply a bad-choice place holder.)

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

Is there something missing from betaA to beta D?  I was working with beta A then realized that I didn't have the latest version.  I installed beta d and now I'm getting script errors.
I guess I'll go back to beta a.

There were a few things added. One thing I think that was added was the ability to move textures up and down. Makes it easy to see effect of texture order on final look. Think there were few other things as well. (I kinda lose track of what was added when - probably the readme would show though).

I was able to run the beta d on my system, though I had trouble with beta C. Make sure your file wasn't flagged as "blocked". that gave me trouble with one of the versions.

Rick

[spellir74]

Where did Stridor go?

It's like he fell off the edge of the earth.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: spellir74

Where did Stridor go?

It's like he fell off the edge of the earth.

I hope he's taking a well earned break - he was hitting it pretty heavy for while. At least I hope it's just a break. And it's spring in his part of the world I think - a good time to take a break!

Rick

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: spellir74
Where did Stridor go?
It's like he fell off the edge of the earth.

Considering he lives on the underside of the Earth one wrong step and off he goes. [X(]

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

What is the underlying terrain type for the fields? Plowed fields? Shouldn't there be a difference between a bare plowed field and a grain field?

[invernomuto]

I am trying to create a test map, I followed the tutorial but when I create a map I get: "invalid property value" error and nothing happen. Any hints?
Another question: should I use the AI map color for forests, light forests and roads OR can I use any color I like and than associate it to the texture with MM?

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: invernomuto
Another question: should I use the AI map color for forests, light forests and roads OR can I use any color I like and than associate it to the texture with MM?

As one who is just starting out I would advise to use the key colors. I have an invalid color somewhere on my map and get a warning message. I couldn't find the where abouts of this invalid color so I had to start over.

[rickier65]

Make sure that when you load your map into MM, while it's reading the AI map, DONT do anything to the window. I think I recall Stridor saying if another window popped up wihle it was interpretting the map, it would get a fals reading (or something like that).

What version of MM are you using? there was one of the versions where I couldn't get rid of an invalid color, Stridor finally found them and got rid of them. But that hasn't happened since I started using using the latest version , 0.9d I think.

Also, if there's any interest, I did take Stridors Tutorial and converted it to a Doc and a PDF format to make it easier to reference while I was working on a Piepsk map. It's in three parts because it's pretty large.

Rick

[Mobius]

I'm using MM(a) as MM(d) gives me a script error.
I couldn't find what is probably a rogue pixel so I did a new bmp map. What I am finding is that everytime I reload the map into MM the textures seem to change. Somehow they get out of order.

[Stridor]

I suggest you reinstall version 0.9d as it fixed many problems and supported colour mapping to allow many more than the standard colours for multiple autogen and texture passes (see last post in the newest map tutorial thread.) If 0.9a works 0.9d should also work as there are no activeX changes between them. I think Rick had a similar problem which he fixed by reinstalling. The only script exception I know about is if you try and use 0.9d to load maps map with an earlier version (eg 0.9a).

[Mobius]

I've tried installing 0.09d several times and it gets script errors.

[Stridor]

Ok can you be more specific, what error and doing what?

[Mobius]

Clicking on the program to start it I get an Internet Explorer Script Error.
Line 2
Char 1
Error: Invalid character
Code 0

The url is the file path.

Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?

If I say yes I get this again.

WAIT! I'm running 0.8a. I'll have to locate something between 0.9d and what I'm running.

I guess I can't upgrade from 0.8a to 0.09d. 0.9a must be somewhere.