Part Six: Overview

In this section you will take a first look, a preview of your map.

6.0 Preview the Map

Using the windows shortcut ALT-TAB to switch between the game and desktop is how all the tweaking is done. Did you read the point in the Primer about downloading maps over WON when online? The 'restarting Cataclysm so it recognises the new folders added' bit? Well, the same process happens whenever you add a map folder into the Multiplayer folder, you wont see it listed in the game until you quit and then restart the game. But happily this does not apply to the folders contents, you can add empty folders containing nothing but a Level file and still have them listed when you start up the game, then add what you need to the folder, delete it, change it, swap it for another file etc, all while the game is running, ALT-TAB back into the game, reload the map, view your changes.

6.1 - Copy the relevant map folder to the Homeworld Multiplayer directory.

Now, copy your DSpiral2 folder into the Cataclysm/Multiplayer folder (if its not already there). Your DSpiral2 folder should contain the following files;

DSpiral2.level
Description.txt
Mothership_0.missphere
Mothership_1.missphere
Resource.missphere
03mediumrare.dist
04medium.dist
05mediumwell.dist
type0.dist
type2.dist
type3.dist
type4.dist

Make sure that it does, then away you go and start up Cataclysm.

6.2 - Load up the Map and take a look around.

In the Multiplayer/Skirmish Vs CPU/Set Up Game/Basic Options screen, your mission is listed as; ‘Downward Spiral (2 Players)’. Take note of the description box when you select your map, make sure all is well.

If you cant see your map listed then you have made a mistake somewhere, most likely in the naming, check that the folder name matches exactly (Case and Spelling!) the name of your map as written in the DSpiral2.level file, as I was saying here. Possibly, you never actually changed the map name itself in the *.level file and it may have been recognised but the game has it listed as something else, ie 'HWC Tutorial Map' or whatever. If you can see it then select it anyway, we can change everything later.

6.2.1 - You only have the map set up for two players at the moment so start up a 2-player game on your map.

Did it work? It should have, if not be sure to go through each stage of the tutorial checking you done everything right added everything I told you to, and remember; case and format. Case and format and Spelling. One spelling mistake pasting mistake (too many comma's? My favourite)or a mistake in the case of a filename whether its the actual file name or how its named in the level file will cause a crash.

6.2.2 - In the game, look around, marvel at your stellar work thus far. You should see two MS's 100km from each other, either side of the nebula that lies at the heart of the ‘Ferrous Faucets’ map.

6.2.3 - Pay attention that the background matches the light source (A minor yet important point. My original version of ‘Lughnassad’ had the lighting all mixed up and I only noticed after I had spent ages placing all the resources and stuff. I had to virtually rewrite the whole damned thing after that. Man, I was royally miffed).

6.2.4 - Are you happy with the music?

6.2.5 - Are the two players facing the right direction and are all the ships placed okay? (send off your scouts towards the CPU Mothership to check this, or, record the game then check the recording for it's disposition and facing, or restart the game and hope you get put in the other player starting position. I think recording is the best option though, its a good habit to get into, especially if you have 8 players to check).

6.2.6 - When you are finished quit out of the map, back to the main menu and press Alt-Tab to jump back to desktop, you will want to keep Cataclysm running from now on.

6.3 - Tweak the Map and take a look at the changes you make.

Okay, lets tweak a little bit. We’ll fool around with your description box and the light source. Remember you are now working from the files within the Cataclysm/Multiplayer Directory itself if you created your map elsewhere. Remember, don't touch the map folder itself! From here on only save/delete/rename/etc. the files this map folder contains.

6.3.1 - The Description box looks a little bunched up lets space out those lines of text a little. This is easily accomplished here by adding in two more lines beginning with ‘Description<tab>’ in the Description.txt file. Add these lines in the relevant places so your first few lines will look like this;

Description        Downward Spiral (2 Players)
Description
Description        WooHoo! My glorious HW:C map! Who's da man!???
Description
Description        Settings: Crates off.
Description        AUTHOR: Dylov (dy.lov@techemail.com)
Description        VERSION: 1.0 (January 11 2001)

You could if you so wish make the 'Downward Spiral' title Bold by adding the usual '&' (shift-7) in front of every letter, but note that if you do this, the game still regards the '&' as a space used and even though you cant see the '&', you will still see the effects it will have on long titles, you will find it wraps the line.

6.3.2 - If you were using the background supplied by /downslope\ here, you’ll have noticed that /downslope\ has set his light source as almost directly above and slightly more to the rear of your player 1 (mothership_0.missphere file) starting position, so you would want to move the background about a little to match up the star with the light source. In the level file you would need change the background line a little, we won't want to rotate it up/down (as /downslope\’s background is completely unforgiving for even a minor changes) but we would rotate the left/right (rotz) by a small amount though, say; 20°. (Remember that x=0° when we rotate the map, we are rotating it ‘anticlockwise’, by 20°).

The line would now look like this;

Background    Downslope, 20, 0

If you were following closely and used the background from mission17 here, then taking a look at the map we see we need to move the background down a little, however as soon as the background vertices (the pretty colours) reach an edge of the map they start to warp, so we wont be able to change it by much. I will demonstrate this warping here, rotate the background down 25° by changing the background roty in the line thusly;

Background    mission17, 0, -25

Restart your map. Pretty messy huh? Well what i do here is slightly change the background rotation in the level file, jump back in and check the results and repeat until I come up with the best looking rotation I need. In this case, after tweaking away I finally settled on a rotation of -7° so the final background line should look like this;

Background    mission17, 0, -7

6.3.3 - Still in the level file, lets look at the Overall map size. Select any of your ships and see how far out, away from the centre the ships can move. We can see that our 100km radius looks okay here, so we will leave it as it is. This may change later, but because we have drawn our map out we already have a good idea that this will be fine and compared to Ferrous Faucets, the 100km radius sits rather well.

6.3.5 - Away into Homeworld (ALT-TAB) and look at the results to these changes. Looks much better huh?

6.4 - Summary

Okay, so the map is working, the Ships are set up for players One and Two, the Game Settings, Background, Lighting, Universe Size and Sensor Manager settings are done. All that really remains is the resources and the extra players. And look how simple this has been so far! We're over halfway done so lets quickly push on and finish the two player map fully, by setting up our resources.

*Top Tip* - Learn to use the keyboard shortcuts, ie to start a 2 player skirmish press M for multiplayer, S for Skirmish vs CPU and S to start the games, the game remembers the last map it loaded up so a quick M,S,S key combo will have you in the game in seconds. Also quitting out the game, pressing Escape (Esc) to call up the menu, Q to quit the game, Y to agree to quit the game and Esc (or X) to get out of the game summary stats, again a quick Esc, Q, Y, Esc key combo will have you back in the main menu in a jiffy. You'll also have noticed by now that constantly jumping in and out of the same map after minor tweaks adds nothing to the load time, in fact the game usually starts before cat has time to choose a nice picture for you to look at while loading. It is indeed very quick, and that's why tweaking is so simple.

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