some basic information about creating maps from scratch.
I've just spent 5 days building a new city landscape from scratch and have probably found a pretty good approach in terms of what to do when, plus with Jake's help, I finally figured out how to move static objects up and down... it was one of those duh-moments, but hey, it will bring you sewers under the streets :arrow:
The map was supposed to be a city with some bombing damage similar to mission 12 map in the single player campaign.
I chose City as the texture base set and started with the black void only inhabited by our dummy soldier.
The key choice to make at that point was what to place first? Streets? Buildings? alternate? I chose buildings, leaving good sized gaps for roads where I felt like running some sort of road. You have to have a sense for how much space you will need for the road and sidewalk, plus it helps to have a rough idea about what the city should look like (where are the tall buildings, the lower ones, park, etc). I also made sure I worked somewhat into both directions from the dummy soldier starting point, as that will make it easier at the end to create the zone that will be shown in the minimap. IF you keep it square and just grow equally in all directions, you will only have to increase one digit in each value in zones.xml. I didn't quite get it that nicely, plus my area is more rectangular, yet it was still the easiest map so far to adjust my red box for the minimap zone shot.
Placing objects - F1 gives you basic help in the editor and tells you most things. Right button places object. If there's an obstruction, it won't unless you keep the button pressed for 2 seconds and "force" the static object to be placed. Don't overlap textures, but in some cases you have to do this for things like the highway overpass, which will work fine, but then the editor won't want to put roads or grass under it. Right click nice and long and it will do it!
To rotate the object, you need to click the mouse wheel button - each click rotates a static 90 degrees counter clockwise. Delete key comes in handy after each incorrect placement, then rotate again and drop the object with the right button until you get it to line up properly.
Some maps need you to place buildings, roads and walls at various altitudes. The maps that use custom terrain and the historic city static set, as well as sewers require that you move the plane up or down. The cursor/arrow keys on your keyboard do that! Each click is up or down 5 meters. There is no in-between option.
some static objects in the editor have alternate versions - see the possible pulldown menu on the bottom left of your screen. some buildings have normal and damaged versions, others come with alternate textures or slight 3D changes to make them look unique. That enlarges the number of unique looking objects quite a bit and allows you to build more realistic maps.
when you're done with roads and buildings, it's time to put "props" on the map. Those are things like garbage cans, light poles, traffic lights, walls, fences, trees, flower beds, bushes, etc - There's a LOT of stuff here to do. To save time, I usually pick one group of props or a single one and go all over the map to place it where I want it to occur, rather than to work on one corner of the map at a time, swapping props in the editor for each small area to complete them. You may want to do this at first, especially to learn what all these props on your list are, as the naming is not necessarily intuitive. You won't find a "tree" anywhere under the letter T - you need to look for flowerbed_tree or shanty_tree or street_tree or palm_tree... many other objects are named even less descriptive.
The biggest thing about placing props is to get them to snap to surfaces and not to overlap things like fences. You get the proper elevation with the "N" key - it changes the placement mode to "planar" and trees suddenly won't float in mid air, etc. However, sometimes you may want to place something at an odd elevation, for example in order to rotate it to lay it on it's side without half-burying it in the ground. Then you use the normal mode (toggle with N key again to turn off planar mode). To change that insertion elevation (the little green sphere tells you where it's gonna go) use the PageUp and PageDown keys. Tedious, but you don't use that mode very often. Just place and check, delete if not where you want it. I used this trick to get some fuel tanks below the map surface so that my C4 explosions are bigger and better than normal...
I reserve military type props for later in the build process, as I don't really have a clue where to set up a 50 cal until I get into the AI process. Sandbags are one of those things, but since you need them on the map for rendering the light maps properly, you gotta decide before you render where to place those. On my most recent map I forgot about sandbags and rendered 22 hours to get the map done - now I'd have to do this again to add sand bags. Guess I'll just add ammo crates for cover on the .50s instead, as those don't need light maps rendered (those are the little tricks you learn after you've made a dozen maps)
Once you feel like most of your props are in place, you can start loading up the roads with vehicles. You find those on the "Dynamic" menu. The vehicles that can actually move in the game are something I place with the AI later in the process. Right click on map and click again to drop the thing once you hovered it and rotated it (cursor keys) to the position you want to place it.
Sound is another important element - place those once the landscape is pretty much all set. There are a few cues you need to know and type into the "cue" field correctly when placing them: birds, crickets, foliage, frogs, etc - I don't have a complete list, but if somebody wants it I can post those I know).
Sky environment - think day or night map, then pick a sky and memorize the mission it came from, since on map export, you should match the sky with the "cube" for the light source of that arrangement.
AI graph - gotta put that on the map. Wait until you are certain you will not change any props or even statics, because you'll end up with a bad graph. Make the world work first, render the lightmaps and walk around in the map before you begin wiht the AI stuff. Remember your vehicle AI graph has to be a single graph - cannot be broken into more than one connected network! If you place a barrier on a road that has an AI graph on it, it will break it in most cases, so do the barriers before you do AI graphs. You may change your mind about some barriers once you realize they seriously reduce your vehicle range on most maps.