MW:LL Map Making Questions!

[AlfalphaCat]

Ha, that is funny I am only using about 4 or 5 textures at the moment on my map.  I may add a few more after I get the base textures down, but really it is just a matter of texturing your texturing.  Use a low hardness to get a more realistic look.  Also just having a few different colors to the same textures will add to the look of your map.

Don't know about the water thing, but I think that is something you could do.  Maybe try just changing the water color first to see how it goes.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Ya that's the thing.  I don't know how to select the water or change it since it wasn't a layer I added.  It's just there.  EDIT: Apparently one of the material settings will allow me to manipulate the default ocean water.  I'll check it out when I get home.

How far away does the out of bounds line have to be from the physical edge of the map?

Wherever you want them to be.

Are Voxels the only way to make a cave or overhang?  Is that prohibitive to making a cave/canyon system or can it still be done relatively easily?

So far, really big caves are kind of hard to make.

Do I have to have a second PC running as a dedicated server in order to play test my map or can I just copy my files to the TSA levels folder and play from my PC?  Anyone have instructions on how to do this?

You can run a dedicated server from the same PC as you run crysiswars from.  An update on how to get your map onto a dedicated server and into the server selection list will be forthcoming.

When I paint a large area with the terrain brush I sometimes get these really huge obvious lines in the textures.  Will these go away with multiple layers of textures?

Yes these go away with more textures and if you vary the terrain height in those areas.

Man I am full of them today.

Do all the models and terrains automatically show up in the database view when I start -mod mwll or do I have to do any file renaming and unzipping to get them all? 

You need to go into the database view and select the HTML files.  Then you can go to the roll up bar and go to prefabs and find all the models and assets you want.

Is it possible with the editor to do a TOD that is 10 minutes of deep dusk and 20 minutes of afternoon light alternating?

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Zoinks I guess the info has dried up!

Supposedly you can change the default ocean opacity in the environments subsection of the rollup bar but my environments subsection is totally empty of options.  The variability between what's in the tutorials and what's on my computer is driving me bonkers.  It's so different.  Any ideas on how I can get my environments back? This ocean is far too dark for my liking.

Resolved in a later post.  Involved reinstalling the editor (perhaps without a CCC autoexec.cfg file in the directory.

Where do I find the .pak files that need unzipping?  I feel like I missing a lot of material to work with.

[Ghogiel]

Are Voxels the only way to make a cave or overhang?  Is that prohibitive to making a cave/canyon system or can it still be done relatively easily?

sort of.
but as with any game, If you can model and texture, You could just use regular geometry to build a cave entrance and it's interior. If you look at any game that has a cave environment, it's likely done with good 'ol meshes and put together like any and every interior in those games are.
So I suppose you could sneak those in by cutting into the terrain if you wanted
I have experience in making several game environments, organic and industrial, tiling and other wise, and a great cave set up is not the easiest thing to do well.  You kinda need to have some good modelling and texturing under your belt to tackle that, ie Not really a very beginner friendly environment imo

Could be a hell of a lot of work depending on the complexity of the cave system you want.

[Sesambrot]

Cool thanks.  Is there anyway to change the opacity of the starting ocean water or otherwise manipulate it aside from just the depth/height?

1. be carefull with textures, you can use a lot of them on your map, but as far as I know you shouldn't use more than 8 different textures on a single terraintile because that might break the texturing and you'd have to retexture the whole map.
happened to me a while back, not 100% sure about that tho, but better safe than sorry...

2. The Water of the ocean can be altered by selecting the terrain tab in the rollup-bar (where the layer painter is) and hit the "environment"-button.
there's a list of parameters which can be used to change a couple of global things on your map, including parameters for the oceans texture, fogcolor, fogdensity, waveheight/-speed/-direction, etc.

Supposedly you can change the default ocean opacity in the environments subsection of the rollup bar but my environments subsection is totally empty of options.  The variability between what's in the tutorials and what's on my computer is driving me bonkers.  It's so different.  Any ideas on how I can get my environments back? This ocean is far too dark for my liking.

I suppose it's obvious how to change the color of the ocean, if it's too dark/bright use the fogdensity, and fogcolormultiplier to adjust it.
for the density I recommend to use values between 1 and 0, same goes for the colormultiplier since higher values will make the water look glowy, and unable to see anything for the density.

I wonder why ppl instantly want to mess around with the paks in order to make things worse...
You shouldn't touch any of them unless you know what you're doing...

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Rollup Bar => Terrain => Environment is empty.  I don't have any parameters under environment.  Meh.  And yes it's expanded.  Has anyone run into this?

All the options under Clouds is grayed out as well.  I feel like I missing some options here.  I'm using the X64 Sandbox 2 Editor Development Version released with the SDK.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

How do you get the material editor to save the diffuse color?  When I reload the map it changes it to the defaults.

UPDATE: Material Editor materials will reset to the default settings when you exit and restart the editor.  There are ways around this like writing down your changes or creating new materials files.  The only thing you can change and save is the color in the rollupbar.

[AlfalphaCat]

How do you get the material editor to save the diffuse color?  When I reload the map it changes it to the defaults.

The filter color?  I just have the one, and I just wrote down the hue, sat, and lum values.  Have to input them when I use that particular texture.

If you see a lock symbol next to a material in the database, I believe that means you can't change that, but you can copy it and make a new one, setting up the parameters as you wish.  I try not to mess with that stuff too much though, so someone else might know a little better than I.

[Sesambrot]

First screen regarding what the environment tab should look like;
second how to set a color for a texturelayer.
that's for terrain...

you shouldn't alter the materials directly, since that will effect any object that has the material attached to it, even on other maps.
so if you wanna use an altered version of a material for an object copy it and modify the copy instead of the original.
gotta set up the mtl-file for it manually tho, the material-editor can't do it for you unfortunately...

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[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Yeah I have nothing like that under environment.  I wonder if I have a bad installation.  Does anyone know what the name of the file is that stores the parameters for environment?  I really really want a more transparent ocean for this map.  The default settings are just too dark.

Ok I didn't realize that about the material editor. I'll just use the defaults for my first map unless I write down values and I'll figure out how to create new material files later on.  I did know how to change the diffuse layer and I have been doing that with good success.

Just to confirm, most people are using 4096x4096 at 2m correct?  I feel like my map is a good deal bigger than the maps we have in rotation for some reason.

[Aidan]

Just to confirm, most people are using 4096x4096 at 2m correct?

The map size depends on you. What is the purpose of your map? Public open re-spawn servers, league re-spawn, league no re-spawn, arena style game play. The one thing I would suggest is, go no larger than 4096 x 2.

[«اك§» Trooper_Thorn]

I have dl'd sandbox and Geo control 2 demo I am going to start futzing around with this. where do I get the prefabs and does this include the ability to do contructs of my own?

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I wouldn't do any file manipulation to start with.  Starting the editor in MWLL mode should get you access to a solid repository of assets and map building files.  I would just start learning the editor with what's available by default and then if you can't find what you are looking for add stuff later on.

[Cygma]

HOW TO: Getting MWLL into the Editor

[«اك§» Trooper_Thorn]

HOW TO: Getting MWLL into the Editor

I am new at this please simplify, I have the editor installed in bin 64 of crysis wars simply How do I attach MWLL mod to it or the other way around? or do I set up a shortcut to the desktop? I have geo control 2 on a desktop link