Mapping Guide - v.0.2

[marfiuss]

wow thanks for your dedication !

[kaizokuroof]

Delete me

Edited December 24, 2022 by kaizokuroof

[Onkeen]

Thank's for the guide ! It's really awesome

[spyjack]

Hmmm, I'm probably just missing something very simple but...

I can't add my files, it wont let me add my starting map, I don't have my vegetation map yet but I'm just trying to add the initial one first with he roads and such, I made it in paint.net, I have saved it as a bmp and a png but it will not let me add it to my cells, any idea why this wont work? help would be much appreciated. Otherwise, great job on the guide!

[Thuztor]

You need the vegetation map, if you want to use your landscape map in the editor.

[GhostlyAssassin]

My vegetation map doesn't get applied after doing the BMP to TMX thing. Did everything exactly as in the video :/

[ZimTown]

is there a tutorial anywhere on how to edit the existing map, personally I don't want to make a whole new map I am not that artistic but I can certainly make the current map better for my friends and I.

Thanks

[Suomiboi]

is there a tutorial anywhere on how to edit the existing map, personally I don't want to make a whole new map I am not that artistic but I can certainly make the current map better for my friends and I.

Thanks

You can only add to the existing map or replace a whole cell from it. You can't edit any existing cells. Although there are the vegetation and ground bmp maps of the area (although I don't know if they're the final versions... which I doubt) which you could use as a template to try and mimic the existing buildings etc. So in other words you'd have to do a whole map that mimics the vanilla map in the areas you want to change. This of course means that there are no tutorials to it.

 

It goes a bit more complicated this way so I'd start with following this tutorial (and Thuztor's video series) and maybe just making a few small maps to get into grips with the tools and then try doing something more "advanced" like that.

 

The reason why the map isn't given out as is, is to allow Mash keep some of her artistic rights to it and to encourage new additions to the map instead of tons of overhauls.

[Thuztor]

As Suomiboi said, if you add for example your own building on a vanilla cell, every vanilla building on this cells will be gone. Also if you change just one cell and convert the whole vanilla map.
Search for empty cells to fill, if you want the vanilla buildings on your map.
After placing it or them on one or some cells, you only need to convert this edited cells, so the vanilla cells/buildings will be persist.

[ZimTown]

Thanks guys, I have spent almost 24 hours fighting with the tools grinding out my own map and now can see the answer to my own question and in turn am just going with making my own, my first attempt was a map 100*100 cells but it seems the editor runs into memory problems and I have managed to get it all going with a 50*50 maps. The question I come to now is that I have begun making my building iterations and saving them as .TBX and there used worldEd to place them inworld but when I load up ingame they are nothing but a shadow where the building should be, and all the long grass goes black and I find patches of appliances all over the place, example below

 

[ZimTown]

anybody?

[BaC0nz]

This guide is great so far. Its really helpful. I have run into an issue however.

When I insert my vegetation map I get "unknown colors" and nothing happens. I made my maps in Photoshop. I made sure to turn off anti-aliasing before I started. I don't know what the problem is. I used the pencil and brush tool to draw the maps. I also made sure to use the colors listed in this guide. I added them all to a custom swatch set. Another question I have is about the converted grass types. I'm unsure how's those work. Would you mind clearing that up? 

 

Thanks!

[Suomiboi]

-snip-

 

The unkown colors you most likely have to find and replace individually. They're probably just changed by 1 or 2 color points (or whatever they are) and that causes the error. GIMP does that quite a lot also and I've found no other solution than to double check every tile the error gives you. In my experience, it's the brush tool that somewhat fucks things up.

 

The grass works so that the grass color in the veg map is dependant on the bmp/png map. ie. if you have green grass in the png map and you put the grass in the veg map, you get green tall grass. Or if you have light grass in png and grass in veg you get light tall grass. But, if you use for example the "lot of grass and trees", the tall grass will always be green and not be dependant on the ground beneath it.

 

In other words, png map defines the ground tile's color and the veg defines which kind of grass/trees you want to put on top of it. This way you don't have to match the light tall grass with the light grass tiles every time you make a lighter patch and want fitting grass.

 

EDIT: Ooh, and welcome to the forums! We're always glad to see new people around here!! (clyde)

[BaC0nz]

 

-snip-

 

The unkown colors you most likely have to find and replace individually. They're probably just changed by 1 or 2 color points (or whatever they are) and that causes the error. GIMP does that quite a lot also and I've found no other solution than to double check every tile the error gives you. In my experience, it's the brush tool that somewhat fucks things up.

 

The grass works so that the grass color in the veg map is dependant on the bmp/png map. ie. if you have green grass in the png map and you put the grass in the veg map, you get green tall grass. Or if you have light grass in png and grass in veg you get light tall grass. But, if you use for example the "lot of grass and trees", the tall grass will always be green and not be dependant on the ground beneath it.

 

In other words, png map defines the ground tile's color and the veg defines which kind of grass/trees you want to put on top of it. This way you don't have to match the light tall grass with the light grass tiles every time you make a lighter patch and want fitting grass.

 

EDIT: Ooh, and welcome to the forums! We're always glad to see new people around here!! (clyde)

 

Thanks for the help. I think my Photoshop is screwed up. I'm going to download paint.net and see if that fixes the issue.

 

As for the converted grass types, the landscape.bmp sets the ground color while the blah_veg.bmp places the actual grass type. I think I understand it now.    

[Suomiboi]

Thanks for the help. I think my Photoshop is screwed up. I'm going to download paint.net and see if that fixes the issue.

 

As for the converted grass types, the landscape.bmp sets the ground color while the blah_veg.bmp places the actual grass type. I think I understand it now.    

 

Yea, exactly like you said. just remember to name both the bmp and _veg with the same name eg. blah.bmp and blah_veg.bmp or landscape.bmp and landscape_veg.bmp.

 

And you're welcome.

[BaC0nz]

Well I downloaded paint.net and I keep running into the same issue. I made sure to disable anti-aliasing. I have no clue what to do!

[Suomiboi]

When you're using the brush, are you using the gradial brush that softens the edges or are you using something like the spray paint function from Microsoft paint(with the pixely looking edges) ? Because the soft brush produce wrong colors.

Also if you can post the bmp and veg maps along with a screenshot/list of the error message, I might be able to take a look at it in the evening when I get back home from work.

[Sarthen]

i get map and everything done... im stuck at the part of generating my lots... I don't know what file to use for my zombie spawns and if I do use a file its 0 for everything when I added buildings and ect.... in world ed.... I just need some help... 

[CzarUltra]

thanks this is very helpful

[Mail6400]

Thanks Thuztor. This is the most helpful guide for mapping out at the moment!

[Thuztor]

Also thanks!

I wish, I would have more time to edit and expand this guide.

I wish, I would have more time in general for all the stuff I would like to do.

[Atoxwarrior]

Also thanks!

I wish, I would have more time to edit and expand this guide.

I wish, I would have more time in general for all the stuff I would like to do.

I hope someday if you can update the guide, your work helped me a lot thanks.

[blackteapie]

Is the guide still updating?

Really hoping to read the "creating and implementation of your own textures" part.

[JellyRoll Jerry]

I am having trouble with BMP to TMX. I get an error saying that I have incorrect colors but the RGB value in the error, the .bmp, and the guide are all matching. The RGB values I am having trouble with are RGB=0,138,255 and RGB=117,117,47. The error says that I have many pixels with unknown colors (x,y=278,158 x,y=279,158 x,y=280,158...) but only two unknown RGB values.

[EUDOXIO]

You need to use all the right RGB values on the bmp, if you are using programs like photoshop to edit the bmp, take care with the "shadows" than some pencils do on the edges of the lines.

 

Sometime ago i did some palette files so you only can use the right colors, can find it in this post