Duck and Cover

My tip of the day is there's a config file in core\gui called def_style if you open this in notepad and change the line

color_windowFill = {Color(0,0,0)};

to something like

color_windowFill = {Color(25,25,25)};

the background colour of the tile selection window (and other selection windows) turns from black to dark grey (or whatever colour you choose) making it easier to see those really dark tiles like my black stencil signs, or small black floor tiles and Senor Deluxe's chain fence tiles etc.

You know we should really have a sticky with all the hints and tips to map making, that are spread across the forum, for easy reference.

Edited by MV to be Stickified. Carry on.

Cool, yeah it would be a great idea to make a sticky out of this.

Jimmyjay86 wrote:Cool, yeah it would be a great idea to make a sticky out of this.

I concur.

Man, that's one handy lil' trick there Req. Keep 'em comin'!

Edit: Heh, change misc_wallpaperTint from 0.9 to 0 and see what happens

My tip for today is when setting up speech files for a campaign, use generic speech nodes and node titles for floating speech as much as possible, for instance

warrior_float_1a = {} in the speech file

warrior_float1 in the level editor

then when you've imported your speech file into your first map and linked up the node titles to the floating text you can save them as a '.spe' file.*

Then in your next map you can load the spe file and then just add any nodes for your windowed text or any extra map specific floating text you might have. This saves a lot of work in setting up the speech for each map, especially for bunkers.

* In an early post Red mentioned setting up three subfolders, tilesets, clips and triggers under core\editor. If you did the .spe file will be saved in the triggers folder.

Cool tips, req.
Keep 'em coming.

Cheers,

Flamescreen

I set up a blank speech file, no dialogue just the headers and brackets for mission brief, debrief, 10 objectives and about 30 lines of floating speech. Imported it into a blank map and set up the nodes and saved as a .spe file. Now I have a template speech file and all I have to do is add the text and import both into whatever map I'm working on. The only link ups I need to do are the windowed speech and any speech events, it really cuts down the time for setting a speech file up.

Someone else's turn tomorrow to post a tip.

http://www.duckandcover.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2617

Didn't find anything about soeech files though...

Where does it usually appear? You only need to create those directories if you end up selecting a drive.

I can find out if there are more missing pretty easyly if you tell me what you need to do to save these files (I'm really out of the loop about FO:T editing right now...)

Nah it's alright Red all I was trying to say is the spe files will save directly into the triggers folder if you've got one set up, otherwise it takes you to the root directory when you click save.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows this one, but since I just... remembered it, I'll share:

To access elevation levels that are higher than 61 or lower than -18, simply hold the spacebar while you left-click and drag the elevation bar up or down.

It's good mentioning it since I knew about it, but forgot how it worked

Since no one else has posted a tip today, yet;

When using the entity editor and no sprite shows in the window left click in the image sprite selection box so that the sprite path is highlighted and then left click anywhere on the surrounding panel and the image shall appear.

Tip of the day: Back your stuff up every single day.

What's MV lost now?

Okay we've had the weekend off so let's get back to work with some more tips. Doesn't matter if they're old, let's try and get them all together in one place.

Tips of the day,

Right click on the level bar to hide a level (right click again to unhide).

Use Ctrl and page up/page down or Ctrl and Home/End to move tiles or actors to different levels. Useful in building ladders or stairs, or setting up wall decorations (lamps, posters, graffiti etc) and light entities. Also when setting out your buildings place the door cap as a place holder where you want the doorway to be and then go back later and use Ctrl & Page up to move the cap to the correct height. A lot easier than changing the level and then trying to line it up with the wall tiles.

requiem_for_a_starfury wrote:What's MV lost now?

Absoutely nothing because I heed my own advice

Tip of the Day: Don't map at 3 a.m.

Here's some advice and things I have discovered:

1. Don't play Fallout Tactics in Multiplayer

2. You can have multiple types of money, just have the original DisplayName for all your money types from the original money (scrips or BOS money). Just be sure to includes notes of each money type in the generic description. You can give each money type its own name with the custom name field.

3. Doing a large area of floor and want it to look great? Do a small section, then cut and paste. Make sure you use many different tiles when you do your first section, so that you can cut and paste different sections as your floor gets bigger. You can also cut and paste whole buildings by holding in the SHIFT key while selecting multiple layers. Then after you paste it, if its too close to the original, cut some things off and rearrange it! Or add something. Little things can make something look very different.

4. A. Hiddene areas. Female characters can fit in a single world unit. Well actually 3 verticle world units if they're standing, one if they're prone. Use this to hide stuff or be aware of it to prevent access to areas you don't want the player going to just yet. Make sure those walls are neatly fit together

B. Make invisible stairways and ladders. This will really stump the player and they may never find your little secrets.

C. Ethereal walls are even more fun! You know those broken walls? Perfect for ethereal. Know what's even more fun? Put a monster in your secret room! Deathclaw maybe? Or something worse?

5. Place a hidden C4 with a random number to detonate it somewhere and hint at its presence somehow. Maybe the player will guess it someway?

6. Many things can be a vehicle. Vehicles only fall when they are not broken. Vehicles can function as a container. Vehicles can be moved via triggers. Containers can not be moved via triggers. Vehicles are very useful with complex triggers.

7. When changing an items colors, don't forget the sliding bars underneath where you select the color, otherwise there will be no change in color.

8. Don't use spaces for speech file names (Ex: Jo Jo big monkey = {hey lookie! Me no speak cuz me name has space! Me also mess up other speech lines.. owie! }

9. Test sprites before using (by placing entities, that are using them, on the ground). This way you can tell if they're messed up or not (like those large green & red boxes of ammo I recently downloaded, in which case the sprite was WAY off in-game).

10. Disregard advice numbers 1 through 9, sign your paper and turn it in.... Just kidding! Remember those tricksy tests back when?

[TBC]-PaladinHeart wrote:3. Doing a large area of floor and want it to look great? Do a small section, then cut and paste. Make sure you use many different tiles when you do your first section, so that you can cut and paste different sections as your floor gets bigger.

If you select a floor tile and then hold down shift and select some more tiles then drag the bounding box to fill your floor area you'll get a more pleasant effect for your floors. Press numpad 6 or change the 'rid res' box to 6 at the top of the screen will snap the tiles to the grid as you lay them.

[TBC]-PaladinHeart wrote:You can also cut and paste whole buildings by holding in the SHIFT key while selecting multiple layers. Then after you paste it, if its too close to the original, cut some things off and rearrange it! Or add something. Little things can make something look very different.

Build your buildings in an empty map and then drag the selection box to encompass the building. Hold down ALT before you let go of the selection box and all the tiles in the building (on each level) will be highlighted. Do Ctrl C to copy the building and save it as a clip then you'll be able to import it into any map. Though make a note of the level of the highest tile as this will be the level you will need to import the clip at.

Also use a different style for the two outer walls (S & W) than for the North and East walls, this will give the impression that the building is more than... um... 2 dimensional? Oh you know what I mean. The Desert Stone tiles look great if you use the lighter, original concrete tile set for the internal walls or my darker wood tiles go nicely with the original wooden walls.

Edit If you're having trouble lining tiles up, for instance when editing the farside of a building, place the tile and while it's still selected, hold down Ctrl and use the arrow keys to move it around until you get it in the right position.

Edit Hmm this seems to have runout of steam fast. No body got anymore tips?

Well here's a couple

Clips. Got a building you like and want to use in another map but it's built with the wrong tiles (for that map). Make a clip of it and then open the clip file in a text editor, you can now change the path and tiles used. Just don't change the co-ordinates, and make sure that the path is valid and the you use the right tile name (don't forget just about everything in FOT is case sensitive). For many of the tiles you can just change the path from mountains\floor\sand to mountains\floor\dirt etc and for the most part the tiles follow the same naming conventions so if there's a floor_dirt_A_0_1_SW there's a very good chance you can just change the word dirt to sand or vice a versa. But there are some errors in the names so double check first. Also some of the wall tile sets are different dimensions so use a set that is the same as the original tiles used.

Then just load the clip and you'll have a new building.

Slopes. When building a hill using the large dirt slopes, either in the test tiles or ruined city floors, select several tiles (from the same direction) keeping shift held down, then set the grid res to 6 and line up your first tile with the top/bottom of your hill. Drag the selection box across the dimensions of the hill (if you've already built the top and bottom you want to stop one grid row away from the opposite side). Once you've let go of the bounding box the area you've selected will fill with tiles, go back and select the first tile which will be flashing red and delete and replace it. Now select one row at a time and holding down ctrl use page up/down to move the row up/down one level. Repeat this with each row going one level higher/lower each time until you reach the top/bottom of your hill. You should now have a perfect hill and you just need to add the corners (if needed) and any detail work.

One thing about using the bounding box selection and dragging to fill an area. The tiles will usually fill an area one row bigger than you selected, this will cause the first tile to flash red as it'll be duplicated and it also means if you are trying to fill an area between existing tiles you need to make your selection one row smaller than the area you want to fill. For floor tiles, pressing 6 will snap the tiles to the grid this will make it easier to fill an area more accurately. Line up your tile to the existing ones and then drag your selection box, if you want to extend your map south or west place your first tile in the top right hand corner of your area, for north and east start your selection in the bottom left hand corner. With the grid resolution set to 6 always drag away from existing tiles as this will help stop overlapping. If your existing floor isn't lined up with the grid, make your selection as close as possible and after you've filled the space (while the tiles are still highlighted) set the grid resolution back to 1 and then holding down Ctrl use the arrow or page up/down keys to line the tiles up.

Actually using the selection box to fill an area and then ctrl & pg-up/down or ctrl & the arrow keys to move tiles into position is also a great way to make staircases really quickly easily.

Tip of the Day:

Certain Races get no benefit from Armor. Examples include Large and Huge Raiders. If you have them equipped with one of their racial armors they will not get even the AC bonus, let alone DT/DR bonuses. Hence it's best to set these entities w/their Derived stats "fudged" to simulate their wearing of armor.

I've had this problem w/the current project, in which a Raider Leader -- who should have been very formidable to the low-level squad that was trying to take him down -- was taking obscene amounts of damage from 10mm Pistol hits...

Cheers,

OTB

P.S. I'm back. (No net access for the past 6 weeks. Got plenty of mapping and reading done, though.)

OnTheBounce wrote:Tip of the Day:

Certain Races get no benefit from Armor. Examples include Large and Huge Raiders. If you have them equipped with one of their racial armors they will not get even the AC bonus, let alone DT/DR bonuses. Hence it's best to set these entities w/their Derived stats "fudged" to simulate their wearing of armor.

Good to know. Also, it should be noted that Reavers can't equip any armor, even thier racial armor.

otb wrote:P.S. I'm back. (No net access for the past 6 weeks. Got plenty of mapping...

That's good to hear! Any ETA on some new, playable content?

bto wrote:...and reading done

I hear ya. In the last 3-4 weeks or so, I've read, in order, Steven King's The Skeleton Crew, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (2nd time I read it, actually. A classic must-read, btw), and Steven King's Firestarter. Just started reading James Patterson's Kiss the Girls, and after that, I'm going to read John Grisham's Runaway Jury, then probably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (another classic must-read). After that, dunno... any suggestions? I heard Starship Troopers was pretty good as a book (I liked the movie = I'll love the book).

Anyway, good to see you can lay off the crack long enough to get some damn work done!

Max-Violence wrote:Good to know. Also, it should be noted that Reavers can't equip any armor, even thier racial armor.

Yes they can, the standard Reaver Male and Female can wear their own armour (as well as environmental and Power IIRC) you've been playing with the Reaver Huge again ain't ya? I don't know why since it hasn't got a sprite and it appears to be unfinished.

M-V wrote: I hear ya. In the last 3-4 weeks or so, I've read, in order, Steven King's The Skeleton Crew, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (2nd time I read it, actually. A classic must-read, btw), and Steven King's Firestarter. Just started reading James Patterson's Kiss the Girls, and after that, I'm going to read John Grisham's Runaway Jury, then probably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (another classic must-read). After that, dunno... any suggestions? I heard Starship Troopers was pretty good as a book (I liked the movie = I'll love the book).

Taking this thread totally off topic, I didn't like runaway jury, wasn't as good IMHO as Grisham's early work, Starship Troopers is a great book, but if you loved the movie you might not like the book.

Max-Violence wrote:Good to know. Also, it should be noted that Reavers can't equip any armor, even thier racial armor.

I was wondering about them after what I've learned about Raiders and remembering that the Reaver General in Newton couldn't requip his armor once he'd taken it off.

I'll have to check into this more thoroughly since I want to have my version of the Reaver 'cruits have their race set properly.

Max-Violence wrote:That's good to hear! Any ETA on some new, playable content?

You've a one-track mind, young man...

Check the Projects thread for that one. I'm workin' on something you might not like, but it's getting near to completion.

Max-Violence wrote:After that, dunno... any [reading] suggestions? I heard Starship Troopers was pretty good as a book (I liked the movie = I'll love the book).

Yeah, pick up Starship Troopers, I can give you other suggestions on Heinlein, if you'd like, but when reading most of Heinlein's works if really does pay to have some idea of what was going on when the book was written since a lot of the conversations only comment on or allude to the issues rather than going in-depth. (Not an indictment, just a friendly warning.) For instance in Friday there's a one paragraph allusion to and argument against Asimov's Laws of Robotics. But unless you know what they are you'll miss the point. I can't comment on the movie since I (still) haven't seen it. I have it on good authority that Verhoeven butchered it pretty badly. (See the picture of the girl in the IOOI logo? She told me. )

Check out Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville. Have fun grappling with Melville's "Germanic sentence structure". You might also want to get a hold of The Damned Human Race by Mark Twain. Twain never fails to have me in stitches. It's a pity that most folks are only exposed to one of his works.

I'm about to crack Gravity's Rainbow. I'll let you know what I think of it. It's about a man whose erections attract V-2 rockets while he's stationed in London during WWII. Barred from a Pulitzer Prize due to obscenity... :oops:

Max-Violence wrote:Anyway, good to see you can lay off the crack long enough to get some damn work done!

More like "lay off the Net long enough to get some work done". (Hi, my name is OTB...and I'm a news junky...)