Map Editor Technical Demo

[The Final Rune]

Bored to tears at the mundane waste of time watching TV was last night I decided to dust off the RPGM2 and put a little work in on my Gunslinger game. As I have lost 99.8% of my interest in making this game I just went to finalizing some scripting stuff so that I could walk through the maps I'd made previously. And as I labored away I figured I'd go ahead and just wrap it all up to show some of the new map editor techniques I put into use when making this game.

So, I attached all the various dungeon and city maps via warps, set up impressive camera angles, and finished tweaking my maps into a short technical demo to show the new designs.

Included are the following:

• The Small Town - A simple community set across a small valley stream, featuring rope bridges, water-wheels, and a curious farm. Its peaceful, serene and takes advantage of all 12 units of land height!
  
  
• The Misty Mountain Pass - Danger awaits the weary traveler with weak footing in this narrow cliff edge pathway though the mist filled mountain peaks. Watch out for collapsed bridges and misty dead ends!
  
  
• The Big City - If homes were built out of the map editor itself then this non-bustling city (I never made up any inhabitants) would represent it. Explore the barren streets of city built on stone!
  
  
• The Coastal Beaches - Relax in the soft breeze of the ocean winds along this gorgeous stretch of sand. Explore the docks and climb aboard the seaworthy Caravels. Sorry, no departures are scheduled at this time!
  
  
• The Dark Forest - Dare to enter the labyrinth of trees where the foliage is so thick not even the sun can penetrate is foreboding darkness. Twisting maze paths canceled due to technical limitations.
  
  
• The Cinder Trail - Burnt pathways of molten ash taunt you on this twisted trip though an active lava field. Old remnants of the now defunct coal mine litter the narrow ashen paths.

Disclaimer!!!

This demo is designed to show off the ideas I was working on for creating an entirely map editor based game. Almost all of the maps in the demo are incomplete and rather flat since they were first try designs. Non-the-less I'm sure you'll find them interesting at least. As a service to you the gamer I've left it un-password protected so you can dive in and see how I put it all together. Just test play to explore.

So, there you have it! Just click this link and transport yourself to my little fantasy world. Explore and enjoy.

As always if you have any questions or can't decipher how to create these types of maps yourself, simply ask and you shall receive.

Long Nights & Endless Dreams,
- The Final Rune

[The Final Rune]

Update!!! as of 1:00pm central time I have gone and updated the Technical Demo to include a more maze like Dark Forest and added direction stones to guide you at the entrance and exit of every area. Just examine the stones with triangle and check your HUD compass to confirm your direction.

Get the updated version by clicking here!

If you are so inclined try out both to compare the differences in the Dark Forest map.

[thetruecoolness]

Wow man, this is impressive. The dark forest and the beach are my favorite so far. The beach is just so detailed, and some of the ideas will be helpful for a couple of my cities when I make them. But making the forest dark was really nice. The broken rope bridge looks cool too.

Only thing I noticed is that in the moutain pass part the fog covers the HP display and the compass (another nice addition), same with the dark forest. But great job.

[Deleted]

God, I'll have to check this out. I suck with the map editor again. Have you made a volcano dungeon yet?

[Rodak]

I downloaded it last night and meant to play with it today, but my vacation has been cut short and I must go back to work today instead of next week!! Oh well... I'll still have some vacation days for later in the year. Revel in having Summers off all you young'uns! I got two days. One day really, 'cuz one of them was July 4th.

I'll post some comments as soon as I get a good look at the demo.

From what TheTrueCoolness said, It'll be worth seeing. I like the idea of a compass. It's too bad the concept could not be applied to the on screen Map.

[NASH7777]

Played it last night and truly enjoyed seeing the environments. They were all really well done and my only complaint would be that like in the Forest and Mt. a lot of stuff got in the way of the camera. and it was kinda annoying to have to keep facing it as I walked so I wouldn't be looking into the Mt. but otherwise good job!

[The Final Rune]

I'd forgotten about making a lava dungeon. I've been toying with it and I'll go ahead and throw in a lava dungeon when I can, and I'll also move the HUD to either go down the screen or run it across the bottom.

Bonus - in the Big City map you can reach the area you can't see buy walking through the middle of the fence.

I think in the future, creating maps and allowing you all to view them works better than typing up revisions to my guide. I'll keep doing both, but for now on I'll release new demos with new stuff instead of trying to keep it for the guide.

Also, I've updated the second save link with new edit. As I was playing through the demo I noticed that the direction stones for the mist mountains and the small town were reversed, and the viewing angle in the mist mountains was too low and the surrounding environment proved to be a problem.

[The Final Rune]

Well, here it is!

Technical Demo ver. 3 featuring a Lava Dungeon I call Cinder Trail. Check my orginal post for details.

[doyleman]

I'll check it out later *just Dled it*

[Kumo Shinagi]

TFR, very nice maps my friend! You have a real gift at this! I also liked your HUD system. If you don't mind, I would like to use that system in one of my games, is that alright?

[The Final Rune]

Go for it!

My demo's are not password protected because I want evreyone to take a look at the inside.

Feel free to use whatever you find useful! ;D

[Deleted]

Oh man! Thank you SO much for making a volcano dungeon! I'll check it out today!

[thetruecoolness]

Also looking through the stuff I found the VFX for your gun which was really cool, and realistic. I would have never imagined the Aura could be used in that way. So I took that idea and made a sniper rifle, since that is one of my characters secondary weapons. I will have to check out this 3rd version as I just looked at the first.

[NASH7777]

Yeah you can virtually create anything in the Visual Effects editor. I just wish they would have made it easier and had given us the basic geometric shapes and we could add texture and color and transparency and size distortion. And basically with that objects would be limitless.

[Deleted]

I looked at it and I am fascinated. I could tell you made the volcano quicker, but thank you very much for doing so: it showed me what textures I should use and how I should set it up. I see that you've become quite skilled with Object Placement and VFX too, and that showed here big time. The gun visual effects was incredible. I've seen other ones from other people before, but yours looked real, and very good and detailed. I think what helped me the most was (God, why didn't I think of that?) the way you used the stairs B left/right with the Bridge Chain left/right and the Log Bridge to make it look like it was fortified. That will help me -immensely- down the road in a lot of places, so thank you very much. How you made the city (and city interior) blew me away; it's crazy how you used the map editor to make buildings. Using the goofy-looking hero/etc. models as toys was also very clever and cool. The HUD was cool too. I'd thought for a long time the map showed an N on it, but that's only when editing. I don't know what I'll do for that yet, but at least the custom camera system should help out. Also, the fade on the music inbetween maps was very good, and your music selection was superb and really set a mood for the various places.

[Dungeon Warden]

I just played your little tech demo. Very impressive. Everything looked very professional. The forest and misty mountains really had a creepy feel to them.

I thought the volcano level could have used some steam vents and black smoke to give a real volcanic feel to it. As it was, it was too "clean" to feel dangerous. Otherwise, nicely done.

I discovered the maps after I played through the demo, and I'm glad I did. Much of the claustrophobia would have been lost if I used a map to find my way.

[Rodak]

I walked through your demo and was impressed. I liked the winding ledge and broken bridges in the misty crevice and the town was well constructed.

I like a slightly higher camera angle and (a little higher on the distance) in open areas, but it was still fun.

The Dark Forest was my favorite. That is an example of when a lower camera angle really works!

Well done. Is this the environment set for Pandoras Box?

I hope so. It'd be a shame to "waste" all that work without a game to go with it.

Peace.

[Deleted]

I've been working on my Volcano dungeon and I'm done with the Map part and working on the events now, but I have a question...

What would you (or anyone) recommend using as a pathway between two parts of a cave? I was thinking maybe a black texture on the walls... (thank you to whomever, sorry if you mention this in the faq and I forgot it)

[The Final Rune]

williamkirk said:

What would you (or anyone) recommend using as a pathway between two parts of a cave?

Well, that would depend on the type of cave and the camera views you are using. The first thing I can think of is to do this.

• 1.) Set ground height to 0
  
• 2.) Set water height -1 or more below ground height
  
• 3.) Set all textures except ground and small slope to the color black
  
• 4.) Create the land pieces as fixed (=) height with a 100 peak at 2-3 full units high

Done like this you'll get the effect that the land is surrounded in darkness. Also, this style would work well at any positive camera angle.

Another way I would consider doing this is to make it like the path ways in my volcano dungeon.

• 1.) Prepare as above, except set ground height to +3
  
• 2.) Cut into the land by making a 0 -1/16 fixed height (=) land piece with drop of 100

This would place you in a path set into the darkness. For a more engrossing effect, set the steep slope to a cave wall looking texture, set the ground texture to black and set another texture to use as your floor texture.

Another variation of the above method would be to set ground height to 0, and set water height to -6. Then create the land pieces the same way, but play around with the drop and slope setting to get slanted walls. This would also make navigating the path easier.

I hope this helps.


EDIT: This is something I never considered. I always thought of my dungeons as one path, and if it went to another map then to simply continue the style onto the next one. However, your idea has given me an idea at to how to transition to and from the world map and dungeon maps. Extra textures could be used to show how at one end of the tunnel/pathway you come from a grassy plain into steamy volcano. I'm, gonna go rework my volcano dungeon and add in at least one example of a cave pathway. Keep those ideas coming people!

[Deleted]

Okay, thank you very much! I'll print that out and try it later today and come back and post. I think the pathway of darkness will look good. ;D

[Deleted]

I tried what you said and got it to work well. I couldn't change the steep slope to black because it was part of a bigger map, but I know what you mean by it and it would work very well doing that. People can see it in my next demo. Thank you very much FTR!

[The Final Rune]

Who is FTR?

[Dungeon Warden]

I'm sure he ment to say TFR, as in The Final Rune Some people's children