Need advice for my first map

[curseofnight]

So yesterday(or the day before???) I started building "mapnogud.map" - my first map for SW! So far I've got 85 sectors, 453 walls, and 4 sprites, yay!

The basic idea is Lo Wang lands on a tropical island and has to fight his way through some caves to a ruined temple complex and defeat the serpent demon that dwells in the boss room... And perhaps discover a few secret areas along the way! =)

I plan to have have some new art and music aswell.

I don't plan to have any rotating sectors, RoR or anything fancy, but I still need a bit of advice:

1st) Which ART tile would be most appropriate to modify? Currently I'm working with a tiles 022 I made. I wanted to use a tiles 023 but editart wouldn't recognize it, which sucks! Number 23 is lucky! - this first one isn't a big deal really....

2nd) Which textures would best suit an "ocean horizon" and "underwater" view. For the horizon I found nothing good and all the underwater stuff has a wall in the background. Basically, I'd like for the player to be look off into the distance at the map's starting area - and hop in the water to find some goodies. It's an island so this seems important!

Hopefully someone can help can help. If I have anymore questions I'll post 'em!

[Ninjakitty]

"I don't plan to have any rotating sectors, RoR or anything fancy"
ROFL First map I made had all that crazy stuff :3 (except for rotating sectors, IDK where one would make sense )

1st) ANY TILE as long as you know you won't be needing it

2nd) Not sure, but you could definitely add your own. Maybe look at some of the sky boxes (sky cylinders...?) and see if anything there will work

[curseofnight]

Sounds like you went all out, right out the gate! The most complex sector I'm planning (so far) is the underwater part at the start.

About the tiles...
That's what I figured. I keep using my modded tiles 022. Although, that hornets' gotta go....

About the textures...
I don't think there's anything in the default tiles that I can use for what I want. I found some stuff on-line that *might* work, but haven't seen it in-game yet.

[curseofnight]

Another question: Where the F*** is my palm tree! Do you have to make a *dummy* animation to asign to replace sprites with models? I'm guessing you do but I'm drunk so I didn't - I think I just answered my own question....

[curseofnight]

My piranha isn't showing up either! He's 250 polys of badly animated and terribly textured awesomeness but all I see is the default fish! I'm cramming 20+ swimming frames into 3-4: is that the problem? Do I have to assign one single frame per art tile?

[curseofnight]

Update: defs are compiling properly to no result so thats tells me the problem is on my end. Still haven't tried the 'one frame of animation per tile' idea I had earlier but that seems like like the cure.... Will test when I'm less drunk or perhaps sooner.

Edit: By 'my end' I mean animation definition - syntax isn't an error - I'm putting the proper values in their respective places in the user.def, etc.

...don't know if that makes sense...

[Robman]

Editart angers me, bafed(build art file editor) needs java installed but is "the sh*t" for doing what you're after and more.(In files/links section)
You can add more tiles at the end of 21 but you can make a 22 etc, there comes a point when SW won't accept anymore tiles though, tiles035 or something.

You'll have to learn how to make the "bounding box" to get sectors to move around and other neat things.
Have a look at my build tutorial video #1 where I make the sector follow a track with the rocket launcher on it.

Hitags 500-596: SECT_SO_BOUNDING

Bounding sprites for sector objects. Every sector object needs
bounding sprites, one in the upper left corner (BOUND_SO_UPPER)
and one in the lower right corner (BOUND_SO_LOWER). These two
sprites form the opposing points of an imaginary rectangle that
must encompass the entire sector object, plus any sprites you
want to move with it (like a gun barrel.) You are allowed to
have a maximum of 20 sector objects in a level. The
BOUND_SO_UPPER sprite hitag of a sector object is calculated as
500 + (5 * sector object #). The BOUND_SO_LOWER sprite hitag of
a sector object is calculated as 501 + (5 * sector object #).
So, sector object 0 uses BOUND_SO_UPPER 500 and BOUND_SO_LOWER
501. Sector object 1 uses BOUND_SO_UPPER 505 and BOUND_SO_LOWER
506. This goes up in increments of 5 all the way to sector
object 19, which uses BOUND_SO_UPPER 595 and BOUND_SO_LOWER 596.
EXAMPLES: EC, ED, EE, EF, FA, FB, and FC in EXAMPLE.MAP

When you build your first bounding box of the map, use 500 and 501 for the first "so bounding" set of st1 tags and then the next bounding box you make in the same map would have tags of 505, 506... keep increasing by 5 for each new set. It's easy once you know it. The example image I put up has a bounding box and sector rotate in it. to make the sector constantly rotate at whatever speed I set it to.

If you begin building them(bounding boxes) and have more questions, ask then.

As for a horizon, just make the outer walls of the ocean very far away if you can to avoid seeing the walls at the end and angle the sky down to meet the ocean. Section it off with invisible but blocked walls so the player can't go all the way out there if you like. Or you just make an outer sector, parallax the ceiling of it and lower it all the way down.

Something like my crappy example here:

or add a tile of a nice setting sun or something too.

[Ninjakitty]

Aug 23, 2017 12:30:03 GMT -5 curseofnight said:

Another question: Where the F*** is my palm tree! Do you have to make a *dummy* animation to asign to replace sprites with models? I'm guessing you do but I'm drunk so I didn't - I think I just answered my own question....

My advice: Don't get drunk 
I think there's a tiles.Dat or something that tells the game which tiles belong to an animation and stuff. Or, it could be stored in the .ART files. Either way, it'd probably not easy to change which tiles are frames of animations, so you shoul probably use the ones you were given.

[Robman]

Aug 23, 2017 18:09:07 GMT -5 Ninjakitty said:

Aug 23, 2017 12:30:03 GMT -5 curseofnight said:

Another question: Where the F*** is my palm tree! Do you have to make a *dummy* animation to asign to replace sprites with models? I'm guessing you do but I'm drunk so I didn't - I think I just answered my own question....

My advice: Don't get drunk 
I think there's a tiles.Dat or something that tells the game which tiles belong to an animation and stuff. Or, it could be stored in the .ART files. Either way, it'd probably not easy to change which tiles are frames of animations, so you shoul probably use the ones you were given.

With bafed it's easy to setup animations.

[curseofnight]

Aug 23, 2017 18:09:07 GMT -5 Ninjakitty said:

[quote author="curseofnight" source="/post/2012/thread" timestamp="1503509

My advice: Don't get drunk 


[/quote]


This is is the best advice ever! I just woke up and my head is killing me....

I meant creating a *dummy* animation in the model, btw, not the art tile. Like an 'idle' animation with a single frame for my palm tree. When I compiled that model I didn't attach any bones/joints etc., didn't think I'd need them since the 'palm tree sprite' in SW isn't animated. However, I'm thinking now I do need at least a single frame of animation to properly assign the model to the sprite in the Def file. I kept getting a error everytime I tried to use my palm tree Def and I think this was the reason.

When I said above that 'Defs are compiling correctly', I wasn't refering to this model's Def or even Shadow Warrior actually, lol. I was trying to replace the pistol in Duke3d - (since jfduke, jfsw, swp, eDuke32, are all based on commom code, so I figured if I could get a model to appear in one, by taking the same/similar steps, I could get a different model to appear in another) - In that particular case my pistol's Def file loaded into both jfduke and eDuke32 error free, however Duke still had his regular pistol and my pistol model was AWOL. Once again however, like my piranha I made for SW, I was cramming LOT of animation frames into a very small number of tiles. (My pistol's 'idle' animation alone is pushing 100)

So I took the shotgun.md3 from the Duke HRP and loaded it into N's MD3 viewer/compiler and sure as sh*t it's only got about 8 frames of animation. I then checked the HRP Def files, found the shotgun def lines and each particular frame is assigned to a particular tile which confirmed what I suspected before which in turn pissed me off because I realised that my piranha has to be reanimated so I turned off my PC, got wasted, and passed out.

I could be completely wrong about all of that! If I am, please let me know.

Anyway, I think I'm going leave the models alone for now. And Busch Ice, lol.

@ Rob

Now I wanna put rotating sector somewhere! But where... Also, I'll download that program in a mintue and try it out later. =)

[Ninjakitty]

I believe it all depends on the way you define it.

Here's an animation that plays on a monster's walking frames:

anim { frame0 "walk1" frame1 "walk2" fps 12 flags 0 } // Walk

  frame { name "walk1" tile0 4096 tile1 4115 }

it plays between frames 4096 and 4115. The frame of the model's animation is not dependent on which frame the sprite is on, it just plays when the sprite is between 4096 and 4115.




Here's how you define a model that DOES rely on which frame the sprite is on:

  frame { name "idle" tile 2540 }

  frame { name "active1" tile 2541 }

  frame { name "active2" tile 2542 }

  frame { name "active3" tile 2543 }

  frame { name "active4" tile 2544 }

  frame { name "active5" tile 2545 }

  frame { name "active6" tile 2546 }
(so, yah, I'd recommend making an idle frame for your tree)

[curseofnight]

Ah ok, thanks for the info. =) I'll take another crack at it next week sometime.

I plan to focus on trying to fix up my map over the weekend - it looks lol stupid, haha.

[Robman]

It's pretty rare to see a first map that is outstanding, so don't feel bad.
Crawl before you walk type thing and even then, baby steps