Part Three: Overview

In this section you will create and edit the Level File: 'DSpiral2.level'.

3.0 The Level File

The Level file contains all the basic information about your map. It contains the name and race of all the starting ship files, the name of the resource file, the universe size, the lighting type, the background type, the sensor manager zoom sizes, the default song to be played and any ship restrictions. There will never be more than one per folder and all will contain only minor changes between folders of the same map.

3.1 - Create the level file.

The best place to start with a *.Level file is with one that already exists. Every map you Have has one. Every map that you don't have has one too, you can trust me on this. Happily, the HWC Tutorial Map files folder has one too, and more; it's snappily named: HWCTutorialMap4.level. Pretty damned snappy huh?

3.1.1 - From the Tutorial Map files folder and copy the file called ‘HWCTutorialMap4.level’ into your ‘DSpiral2’ folder.

3.1.2 - Rename the file to: ‘DSpiral2.level’ (always take care that when you rename the *.level file to match the folder it resides in, that you rename it EXACTLY as the name of the folder is, remember when we talked about CaSe?).

3.2 - Changing the 'Multiplayer Level:', 'Info:' and the map name.

Open up this 'DSpiral2.level' file. Textpad is best for this. Look ye now at the top six lines. They look like this:

; MissionMan script, Friday, Sep 3 1999, 12:15:09 PM
; Copyright (c) 1998-99, Relic Entertainment Inc.
; Multiplayer Level: HWCTutorialMap4
; Info: HWC Tutorial Map (2-4)
                         
[HWC Tutorial Map (2-4)]

These first six lines have to retain this Format, so all you will change is the 'Multiplayer Level:' tag, and the 'Info:' tag and the name of your map inside the square brackets. Keep that fifth blank line, (between the four header lines and the map name in the square brackets) as well as the blank line immediately after the map name in square brackets. 

3.2.1 - Change the map name to ‘DSpiral2’, (and see that it matches the name of the folder in exactly! If the folder is called 'dspiral2' and you input 'DSpiral2' here then it will not work, it wont appear in the custom map listing in the game, always remember that case matters). Change the info tag to ‘Downward Spiral (2)’, and change the name in square brackets to ‘Downward Spiral (2)’ The name in the square brackets is what will appear in the game itself when you pull up the maps listing.

So now your header should look like this:

; MissionMan script, Friday, Sep 3 1999, 12:15:09 PM
; Copyright (c) 1998-99, Relic Entertainment Inc.
; Multiplayer Level: DSpiral2
; Info: Downward Spiral (2)
                         
[Downward Spiral (2)]

3.3 - Missionsphere lines; correct amount and pointing to the right files.

Take a look at the next five lines, these are all MissionSphere lines We see that these refer to a Resource MissionSphere file entitled ‘Resource.missphere’ and four Mothership files entitled ‘Mothership_0.missphere’ (for the first player), ‘Mothership_1.missphere’ (for the second player), ‘Mothership_2.missphere’ and ‘Mothership_3.missphere’. Take a guess at who the last two are for...

If there are more than two lines dealing with Motherships files, just delete them, if there are less than Two (and I can't envisage that happening but just in case) then just close the file, go find another *.Level file from any other working map folder', and using this file go back and do part 3.2 again. If you have four then this is cool, but we only need Two, so delete the lines dealing with ‘Mothership_2.missphere’ and ‘Mothership_3.missphere’.

Basically you only need One resource missionsphere line (for your resources) and Two Mothership missionspheres (for your two players as this will be a 2 player map to begin with). You have two? Cool, this is fine, lets leave these as they are, we will eventually be adding the files as named in these lines but for the moment lets move on to the last chunk of lines in your level file.

3.4 - Universal Map Settings: background and lighting source.

Okay then, lets sort out the universal map settings of our map. The first thing we want to do is decide on a background and lighting source for the map. Our DSpiral2.level file has currently got lighting file ‘mission03’ and background file ‘mission03’ set. These correspond to lighting file mission03.hsf and background file mission03.btg (the Lighting and Background from single player mission three would you believe), which are found within the Cataclysm.big file if you’d care to go looking with the ‘BIG viewer’. 

3.4.1 - We could change these to brand new backgrounds downloaded from the web and not to another single player map file, sadly we are just gonna use a single player map file (the one with the black hole (mission17).

If we wanted to add in a background of our own, to say, a brand new one as supplied to us by the inimitable /Downslope\ we could. Easily. And here's how:

In the Tutorial Map files folder there are two files that you could quite easily copy into your DSpiral2 folder they are ‘downslope.hsf’ and ‘Downslope.btg’. Then, simply name the background and lighting parameters exactly as the new maps are called (case remember!) i.e.; change ‘mission03’ to ‘downslope’ for the Lighting line and ‘Downslope’ for the Background line. And the game will load up that very background. As long as the background is present in the actual map folder and named correctly in the Level file, it will work fine.

3.4.2 - For these lines though, change ‘mission03’ to ‘mission17’ for the Lighting line and ‘mission17’ for the Background line. In the Background line, change the rotz from 200 degrees to 0 degrees. and keep the roty to 0 degrees.

3.5 - Universal Map Settings: Sensor Manager parameters.

Next we have the Sensor Manager parameters to deal with.

3.5.1 - Leave the first three lines alone (the smDepthCueRadius, smDepthCueStartRadius and the smCircleBorder). The Zoom Max and Zoom Min we will leave also, these are fine for our needs, and we are not making a huge map. 

3.5.2 - We will however reduce the size of our map though, change the next three parameters regarding the Universe size (radius) to 100000 (100km). Do this for all three lines (smUniverseSizeX, smUniverseSizeZ and smUniverseSizeY). For each axis we are setting radius to 100km, therefore this will make the map a big cube 200km in length, width and breadth.

These lines should now look like this;

Lighting    mission17
Background    mission17, 0, 0
smDepthCueRadius    50000
smDepthCueStartRadius    20000
smCircleBorder    90000
smZoomMax    500000
smZoomMin    30000
smInitialDistance    145000
smUniverseSizeX    100000
smUniverseSizeZ    100000
smUniverseSizeY    100000

3.6 - Ships and that will be available on the map.

Lets sort out then what ships will be available and set the default music for the map. At the moment your DSpiral2.level file excludes all alien races bar the Somtaaw and Beast, we however want more, we are going to add a moderately defended station on our map, lets use the Traders Research Station for this. The map already includes both crystal types and crates as well as the derelict Acolyte, which is in fact the Super Acolyte found in the final mission.

3.6.1 - Below the line that says “ExcludeShips    RACE_SECT,sMothershipEnginesLower” we will add the station and its defence by including it on our map using the “IncludeShips” command. We want to add a ResearchStation and the Junk_Lgun and Junk_Sgun. So we would add these three lines;

IncludeShips     RACE_TRADERS, ResearchStation
IncludeShips     RACE_TRADERS, Junk_Lgun
IncludeShips     RACE_TRADERS, Junk_Sgun

We have not actively excluded the Somtaaw and Beast races so they will be there, adding the lines; ‘Includeships    RACE_SECT,All’ and ‘Includeships    RACE_BEAST,All’ is merely superfluous as both are default races, but you’ll notice that the beast 'bSectMoShip', the Somtaaw 'sMothershipOreCanArmour', 'sMothershipLowerSpine' and the 'sMothershipEnginesLower' mothership parts have been excluded, this is fine as these are for the single player missions only and we could only possibly use them as debris, leave them alone.

3.7 - Default Music.

Lastly we will set the default music for the map.

The song number, is currently set at ‘0’, which is a sort of default, lets change this to song 10. The song can be any number between 0 and 17, changing this will not affect use of the '<' and '>' keys when in the game to change the music.

3.8 - Summary

So all our final lines in the DSpiral2.level file will look like this;

ExcludeShips    RACE_DERELICT,ALL
ExcludeShips    RACE_KUSHAN,ALL
ExcludeShips    RACE_TAIDAN,ALL
ExcludeShips    RACE_P1,ALL
ExcludeShips    RACE_TRADERS,ALL
ExcludeShips    RACE_BEAST,bSectMoShip
ExcludeShips    RACE_SECT,sMothershipOreCanArmour
ExcludeShips    RACE_SECT,sMothershipLowerSpine
ExcludeShips    RACE_SECT,sMothershipEnginesLower
IncludeShips    RACE_TRADERS, ResearchStation
IncludeShips    RACE_TRADERS, Junk_Lgun
IncludeShips    RACE_TRADERS, Junk_Sgun
IncludeShips    RACE_DERELICT,dCrystal0
IncludeShips    RACE_DERELICT,dCrystal1
IncludeShips    RACE_DERELICT,dCrate
IncludeShips    RACE_DERELICT,dAcolyte
LensFlare    ps-50-300mm-zoom
Songnumber     10

And that’s the level file done with for the moment. Save your file and close it up. Pat yourself on the back and tell yourself how brilliant you are, you are well on the way now to completing your first map.

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