cardenaglo

1. Yes you have to basically go through the process before you can place any buildings on a map. I would think the reason for this is because of how each cell is broken up into a different file type once imported.  
 
1.1 you dont need to have it exactly. You could make a base image that's entirely just grass,  a veg image thats entirely black which would mean no vegetation, and a zombie image thats also black for no zombies. I wouldnt suggest it and would say if you want to work with a plain map to atleast get your roads done and make the veg map and spawn map black so you can detail those later however you wish. 

1.2 The only reason i see to having to set each room's walls and floors is because of the default selection but you could just make an empty room. 

1.3 there is not. i think theres like 40 or so walls you can choose, but probably like 10 are really exterior walls. 

1.4 you can, you can leave it empty.  But again to me seems counterproductive as then you have to go back to each room and give them their def. which can be a hassle. 

1.5 Assuming you're using an editor that has layers, it makes things pretty easy to edit, by simply removing the pixels on your street layer (or whatever youre editing).  you dont have to remake it, you simply edit it, save over the bmp and update the changed cells. 

1.6 from what ive seen it looks like itll be similar to foraging zones in that, the areas you mark have a chance at spawning cars. So like foraging zones, youll have to mark these "car zones" yourself. 

2.1 its random.

2.2 Yes, and good examples of this have been made. 

2.3 not sure what you mean, but just gonna go with no. 

2.4 im assuming it looks if the area the building on spawns zombies and then based on that spawns zombies to fill the floors accordingly (except the roof)
 
2.5 Im sure they could be made but none are currently implement aside from the stairs.

2.6 look at the room def thread or even the file itself to see what each room spawns. 

2.7 many have created different tiles, so potentially yes you just gotta ask the creators for it. 

 

Oooo, a new map to play on. I always like seeing your buildings too as they give me some inspiration with my own in how to layout the interiors!
How many cells does it add?

nice work! Looking good! I couldn't help, but notice that the far right continent looks like Altis. Straits also appears to be in the map as well. Lol.

Hello Everyone!

I've just released a new update for the mod adding a bit more land for you to explore.  In it you will find a new town, which is the updated town of Bridgewater. There's an abandoned factory and it's titular bridge which is a spawnpoint for players. However the town is not yet done. I'm still missing two buildings and i haven't fully populated the factory to be a settlement area for the town.

The main roads also now lead to the cities of Irin and Hickston, north and east respectively, but those cities are a bit off from release.  Over the next few days I will be working on the story and some planning. By planning what i mean is im going to start coloring in regions and naming stuff and also trying to see what type of POIs and cities im going to want to make. 

We're also working on a release schedule so that there's a new town every week or two. This isn't something set in stone so expect us to dance around those numbers if necessary. 

As always suggestions, comments and questions are welcomed! 

also for the nonsteam players the main topic has an alternative link to download the map at. sorry about the wait D:

Progress Update
Hello everyone!
For the past couple of days I've been working on different bits of lore and some radio messages you'll hear every now and then. I've also been working on region naming but came to the realization that it's be easier just to put what towns/cities you'll be spawning in. An example would be "Anabasis; Bridgewater; Irin; Hickston". Choosing this region you'd have a chance to spawn in any one of those four towns/cities. Some regions will be 2 towns others might be 6. Some regions will be much larger than some others.
I've also started work on Hickston. There's going to be lots of shops and apartment buildings and 2-3 stories tall houses. Lots of bars and cafes and restaurants many of which will.have housing above them. It will also have a bus depot for when vehicles come this could be a potential spot to get some vehicles early on. 
That's all for now! As always questions comments and suggestions are welcome.

Legit as I got on the forums just now I get a notification saying a minute ago you quoted me lol kinda weird
But that's a shame that you're not working on it anymore :/
Though I'd love to atleast put some of your hardwork to use 

How's the map coming along?

Progress Update
Hello Everyone! Im glad that everyone is enjoying the map on steam. I'll be making a non steam release in the next update. 
On to what ive been upto. Ive set up a mega account so that things can run smoother for the group helping me out. I've also laid out the plans of the order you'll likely start seeing towns not including the area im trying to finish up so that I can have a larger playable area. I'm close to finishing up bridgewater so i'm trying to push that out as soon as I can.
 
As always questions, comments and suggestions are always welcomed!

Progress Update
Hello Everyone! Im glad that everyone is enjoying the map on steam. I'll be making a non steam release in the next update. 
On to what ive been upto. Ive set up a mega account so that things can run smoother for the group helping me out. I've also laid out the plans of the order you'll likely start seeing towns not including the area im trying to finish up so that I can have a larger playable area. I'm close to finishing up bridgewater so i'm trying to push that out as soon as I can.
 
As always questions, comments and suggestions are always welcomed!

Not to mention there are sewer walls available in the tools so I'd say they're planning on adding them to the larger populated locations. 

Not to mention there are sewer walls available in the tools so I'd say they're planning on adding them to the larger populated locations. 

Well they did release a video of basements being playable and without needing to be teleported. So its actually not far off. This is actually what im waiting on to remove some of the bridges on my own map.

Here's a video cause I couldnt find the mondoid. 
 

So your apartment building perfectly fit into a slot in one of my poorer towns! It was as if it was meant to be. But on another note your buildings are great! I'll try to start releasing some of the ones I've made that way it doesnt feel like its just you lol

Well they did release a video of basements being playable and without needing to be teleported. So its actually not far off. This is actually what im waiting on to remove some of the bridges on my own map.

Here's a video cause I couldnt find the mondoid. 
 

Well they did release a video of basements being playable and without needing to be teleported. So its actually not far off. This is actually what im waiting on to remove some of the bridges on my own map.

Here's a video cause I couldnt find the mondoid. 
 

Oh my god that bus is beautiful!

Progress Update:

So I've created shells for a few more towns which are Melway, Hickston, and Merrill. Heres a bit about what to expect in each of these towns and where the main settlement area will be:

Melway
Melway is an industry type of town and will have access to larger docks and will have more warehouses. Thus for tools this should be amongst the first places you hit. In this town the place to fortify will likely be one of the smaller warehouses or a small boat. 

Hickston
Hickston is th second city in the area that im working on. It will have many tall office buildings, lots of construction and overall a balanced layout of buildings. The residential areas gravitate towards the center and the south portions of town and the business surround them on the east and west. To the north you'll find a large factory and some self storage units. In this city the place to hide is going to be on the roof top of one of the office buildings.

Merrill
Merill is a resort type of town. its where people go to relax and enjoy the great outdoors. you'll find restaurants, a couple of hotels and plenty of hobby shops. Many of the smaller buildings are houses while some are rentable cabins. You'll also find some timeshare houses which will be the identical aside from the furniture. In its outskirts you'll likely find camps with some remaining loot. In this location the main hotel at the entrance to the city will have the settlement located on its top two floors. 


Now i've been going on about settlements for the last couple of days and youre probably wondering what I mean. These are locations that will have lots of different resources for your disposal and provide refuge in an otherwise hostile environment.

Thats it for todays update. As always questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed! 

That would be furniture placement. I hate it. Lol
 
Because of the way I did things I have to do like 10 buildings a day that aren't reusable. 

Progress Update:

So I've created shells for a few more towns which are Melway, Hickston, and Merrill. Heres a bit about what to expect in each of these towns and where the main settlement area will be:

Melway
Melway is an industry type of town and will have access to larger docks and will have more warehouses. Thus for tools this should be amongst the first places you hit. In this town the place to fortify will likely be one of the smaller warehouses or a small boat. 

Hickston
Hickston is th second city in the area that im working on. It will have many tall office buildings, lots of construction and overall a balanced layout of buildings. The residential areas gravitate towards the center and the south portions of town and the business surround them on the east and west. To the north you'll find a large factory and some self storage units. In this city the place to hide is going to be on the roof top of one of the office buildings.

Merrill
Merill is a resort type of town. its where people go to relax and enjoy the great outdoors. you'll find restaurants, a couple of hotels and plenty of hobby shops. Many of the smaller buildings are houses while some are rentable cabins. You'll also find some timeshare houses which will be the identical aside from the furniture. In its outskirts you'll likely find camps with some remaining loot. In this location the main hotel at the entrance to the city will have the settlement located on its top two floors. 


Now i've been going on about settlements for the last couple of days and youre probably wondering what I mean. These are locations that will have lots of different resources for your disposal and provide refuge in an otherwise hostile environment.

Thats it for todays update. As always questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed! 

Progress updates: 
Yesterday my computer caught a virus and i was certain id get screwed. Thankfully though i managed to fix it and i've got two new locations for you all to see. 


 
Up north we have the city of Irin and towards the bottom right we have the new Bridgewater.  As you can see I'm making shells so that i have an idea of what the buildings will be like. Irin will also be the medical area for this portion of the map, thus it has the biggest hospital. it will also have a community college, hotel/motel, highschool and elementary school and many shops and restaurants along with large office buildings. This will be a teaser to the larger and more dangerous cities youll come by. In Bridgewater we'll have a factory and a few stores but it will largely be a residential area.

Basically what I'm planning for the next couple of weeks is create towns with shells, then make the actual buildings with furniture, followed by making and adding POI's and then having a small release.

Progress updates: 
Yesterday my computer caught a virus and i was certain id get screwed. Thankfully though i managed to fix it and i've got two new locations for you all to see. 


 
Up north we have the city of Irin and towards the bottom right we have the new Bridgewater.  As you can see I'm making shells so that i have an idea of what the buildings will be like. Irin will also be the medical area for this portion of the map, thus it has the biggest hospital. it will also have a community college, hotel/motel, highschool and elementary school and many shops and restaurants along with large office buildings. This will be a teaser to the larger and more dangerous cities youll come by. In Bridgewater we'll have a factory and a few stores but it will largely be a residential area.

Basically what I'm planning for the next couple of weeks is create towns with shells, then make the actual buildings with furniture, followed by making and adding POI's and then having a small release.

Hello Everyone! As you may have noticed big changes are coming for the map and I'd like to show you the progress of Anabasis and talk a little about what i'm up to. 



Anabasis is, as many know, the beginning of our story. Thus it will be one of the easier places to live in. The center of town was made with the idea that players would band together and fortify it (maybe like 50 wood log walls would be needed) and several factions could then lay claims to separate areas.  In the center you'll find a dorm like area above the bank, a furniture store, hardware store offices, the police station, convenience stores, pizzeria, a school, grocers, self storage, salon and clothing store. By now you've probably noticed the unfinished buildings. The lagest one will either be a hotel or apartments, the ones next to it are a sandwich shop and gas station. then the smaller ones towards the right are going to be small coast homes.  The rest of the area will likely be houses and a place to get train tickets to head out into the world and a cabin or two and a pier to fish in. 



I've also got the boat back in. It'll be a bit of a run to get to the city but you wont be without resources as the ship will have plenty. This would also make a good base if you can fix the front hull breaches. At the bottom left the road there will be leading to a train depot which will also be a good place to fortify due to its high walls but you'll have to clear all the zombies first. 



Here we have a large portion of the southern part of landmass. I want to populate this area with shells before I release, this way players can have an idea of whats to come. I might also release some of those cell lots for some of you to populate to your liking. Overall though there's a lot to work on and it'll be a long time before I finish it. 

As always comments, questions, and suggestions are welcomed!

Progress updates: 
Yesterday my computer caught a virus and i was certain id get screwed. Thankfully though i managed to fix it and i've got two new locations for you all to see. 


 
Up north we have the city of Irin and towards the bottom right we have the new Bridgewater.  As you can see I'm making shells so that i have an idea of what the buildings will be like. Irin will also be the medical area for this portion of the map, thus it has the biggest hospital. it will also have a community college, hotel/motel, highschool and elementary school and many shops and restaurants along with large office buildings. This will be a teaser to the larger and more dangerous cities youll come by. In Bridgewater we'll have a factory and a few stores but it will largely be a residential area.

Basically what I'm planning for the next couple of weeks is create towns with shells, then make the actual buildings with furniture, followed by making and adding POI's and then having a small release.

When I experiment with mapping I like to keep a master .pdn with every feature on its own layer. Not just each terrain type, but each feature. for instance I generate the forests as though nothing else is there. Then I have a seperate layer with planned building foundations, and another layer derived from it by an outline and distort to determin the vegetation around foundations that needs to be removed. 
This way I can make major changes to things like road layout without having to compleatly regenerate my veg map or fill in lots of gaps.
 
My basic rule is to seperate every operation into a new layer and only delete them if I absolutely know that I will not need them later.

Intro.

I’d like to start off by saying that the updated tools by the dev team have allowed many people to join the ranks of mappers. I’m one of those that joined in on this new boon of mappers but I saw that the tutorials only went over the process of map making but not really a way to quickly create the base images. Thus, my process here is going to go in depth on the process and it’s a process that will give out many uniquely shaped maps.

Tools:
Paint.Net is the only program we’ll be needing and it’s entirely free for use. This tutorial is being developed with Paint.Net in mind but that does not mean that you couldn’t follow this process in Photoshop or other similar tools.


Results
Now you’re probably wondering what type of results you’ll be getting. Thus, here is the map of Southern Gaia, the map I’ve been working on.


Step 1: Terrain Generation

Let’s start by making a brand-new file and for now let’s stick to 300x300 pixels. If you feel like you’ll feel comfortable making a new map, then go ahead and make a larger file however make sure that its in intervals of 300px. Each cell is 300x300 pixels thus if you want a 3x3 cell map then you’re going to want to make it 900x900 pixels.

We’ll want to set our colors to black and white if they’re not already before we continue.


Now we’ll want to render clouds next. To do this you’ll go to Effects, then Render and finally Clouds. You’ll then get a popup for scale and roughness, just hit Ok for now. We’ve now got clouds that are black, gray and white.



In this next step, we’re going to be treating black as water and white as land.
We’ll want to go to Adjustments and then Levels. This will help you create landmasses or a single landmass with water.   On the pop up screen that appears called levels adjustment you have two histograms. The left one, the input histogram, is the one we care about, the output histogram we can leave alone. The values will need to be the same. The higher the value the more white you’ll have and inversely the lower it is the more black you’ll have. Try to find a balance you like and if you cant find a perfect one just find a close enough match as you’ll be able to change it a little more manually. If you have black or white spots you don’t like just grab brush and clean them off.


Step Two: Terrain

We’ll be using the magic wand tool next. First select it and then at the top change the flood mode to global and tolerance to 0. The click on the black. Now all the black on your map should be selected. Change the flood mode back to contiguous and use the fill tool next and use the following color values for the correct blue: 0, 138, 255. Your black has now turned blue and you’ve got water done.

You’ll want to choose your coast color next. By this I mean the color you want the land around your water to be. I’m going to choose the color for sand as I prefer that to be around my own water but dirt and light grass work well too. Let’s fill in the color values for sand which are 210 200 160. Lets get our magic wand tool again and make sure that our flood mode is changed to global and select the white. Now we’ll replace the white with the sand.

At this point you should not have any white or black on your map. The only two colors should be the sand and water colors.

Let’s now return to our default colors, black and white and create a new layer. This layer will be temporary so let’s head back to our land and water layer. This time select your sand, make sure that the flood mode is still global, and then go back to our temporary layer. We’ll want to head up to Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian. The next popup window will ask what size radius you want. This will be how large you want your coast to be. For now let’s select 8. We should now have a slight blur going inland. Still using our magic wand tool select the portion of land that is not affected by the blurry rings. Now lets head back to previous water and sand layer and fill this new selection with a new color, 145 135 60 , which is used for light grass. We can now delete the temporary layer. Lets now select our new color and render clouds. This time we will not use levels, but rather posterize. A new screen will show up with three adjustments lines. Change the values to 3 and your image should have white, gray and black. No more than that. With that done select okay.

Using our magic wand friend, let’s select our white and replace that with the light grass color. Lets select the grey next and fill that with the new values of 117 117 47 which represents medium grass. Let’s then select our black and use the dark grass values, 90 100 35, to fill it in.

Congratulations, you now have the base image for your map. You can now follow RJ’s tutorial from here on out and place your dirt paths and roads to fit your wants and needs.