Design Articles - How to?

[Soty]

Until I can find a better way to host our design articles, we can post them here. For your article, please give us the respective category i.e.:

- Map Design
- Trigger Systems (check out our Wolf's lair for advanced trigger systems)
- Modding (Textures, Models, HEX, other)
- Eye Candy
- Story Creating
- other



Table of Contents:

1 - a guide on elevation files
2 - a guide on the grid method
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Author: Soty
Category: Map Design

How to create Elevation files using the second link

Go to www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/gdas/gd_designagrid.html

01- select ETOPO2 2-minute Global Relief Ver 2 from the Grid Database dropdown list.
02- Type your grid ID e.g. Europe
03- Insert your coordinates.
04- Select your gridsize (1,2,4,10 minutes) this does influence the quality of your map and the file size.
05- Take down the number of longitude cells and the number of latitude cells. Place them in a new .txt file with only a space in between. E.g. 2104(space)2581
06- In the grid format section select Binary Raster Format and No header
07- Click on the advanced(more fields) tab
08- In the cell parameters select 2-byte integers and whole meters from the two dropdown lists
09- Click on submit.
10- Retrieve grid (=download the files)
11- Extract the (your gridname).bin from the folder
12- Rename it to (yourgridname).dat
13- Place the .dat and .txt file with the longitude and latitude values in your data/scenarios/elevation maps directory. If it does not exist, create it.
14- Go to the editor and play around with the values in order to get the desired map.
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[glow=red 2,300]Soty's Grid Method:[/glow]

Introduction :
This method is based on the raster principle you might know from your art classes at school.
Using this technique, it is possible to transfer maps from one sheet of
paper to another. Or, like in this case, from a sheet of paper to Empire Earth.

Who uses this method?
All those who:
• can not use elevation files (for whatever reason)
• do not want to use elevation files (yes, this rare species exists)
• want to plan and create fictional maps
• want to create areas too small for elevation files
• every designer...

Instructions
The grid method can be split into the following steps:
1) Getting a map
• Get an atlas or a map of the desired location.
• or draw a fictional one yourself.

2) Constructing the grid
• Choose an appropriate scale. (e.g.: 1cm=10 tiles in game)

• Choose the area you want to have in game and place your grid on the map you got in step 1. (Either draw it directly on your printed map, or place the grid on a transparency and place it on your atlas)


3) Creating the grid in the editor
• Launch the scenario editor.
• Activate the grid reference pressing "T" (press "T" 18 times to deactivate the grid reference)
• Create a blank map with the dimensions that match to your concept. (I.e. if the grid on your hard-copy map has 10x16 tiles choose for example a 100x160 map size)
• Transfer your grid to Empire Earth using barbed wire.

4) Designing the scenario
• When the wire raster is done, start copying your map from the original to your grid-map in Empire Earth.
• Having transferred important shapes (shores, mountains, cities, etc.), remove the barbed wire and finish your map.


NOTES:
This method can be used in any game

Disadvantage of the grid method
• very time consuming



Soty

[Deado10]

Author: Deado10
Category: Map Design

Map design is possibly the most influential part of any campaign or scenario, the player needs to believe that they are set in the region you describe to them (if following a geographical story) or you need to immerse them in a detailed and inviting map if you are basing your story on fiction.

There are several key points that all developers must account for during map construction, these are:
- Shapes
- Elevation
- Texture
- Placement

Il begin with Shapes, which refers to the body of the map, obviously this is going to be redundant if you are having an entirely ground based map (refer to Elevation), however if not, the easiest way to build a ground/water/space map is to first create a very very very blunt outline of your island or country etc.(i suggest using the smallest tile for elevation) this can usually be done by creating a blob. Yep, just a simple blob on your map. Next you need to fill it, once youve filled your blob in its time to start sculpting it, just pick a point and work your way around, cutting sections out or adding more land, try and use sharp juts occasionally or spheres as they provide a definition to your body. Once your happy with your island(s) our country/seaside, you should add a thin strip around it of about either -3,-4 or -5 elevation just to give the idea that your body doesnt just appear sharply out of the water, rather it rises slowly.

Next up is the elevation of the map, an entirely flat map or even a map with reasonably sized flat areas is very boring, and adding some ranging depths and heights can almost create an entirely new perspective, it also helps when transitioning textures as it draws attention away from the texture boundaries. It is important that everything is elevated, even oceans, whilst people may not notice, it provides alot of definition to the minimap when you also work on your ocean. The ocean can be elevated by picking the smalled brush size once again. I prefer to use a -10 elevation for the ocean base and elevate with a mix of -7 and -5. you can start by just drawing random lines in a -5, go squiggly, go crazy, it doesnt matter, try not to cover to much though, were just texturing with elevation, not changing the majorityt of the elevation. Next you can use the -7 brush and go crazy again, make sure you occasionally go over your -5 squiggles/lines aswell so they dont seem so rigid. this mix of elevations will help provide detail and will look great when textured. (you may also like to add some random drops (-12 or -13) just throw a random click in here and there with the smallest brush. As for the mainland, i prefer to elevate it after i have textured it and gone through placement. You may also add cliffs as you please, a cluster of small cliffs creates a great 'rocky offshore' just dont go overboard. you may also like to add cliffs around your island shores, leaving gaps between them for beaches.

Next we have texture. Every map needs a good combination of textures to keep it interesting, if your not using enough players will often find it boring and if you are usuing a reasonably sized map they can often get bored as the same texture makes walking feel like its going on for ages. Its also important however that you dont over do the texture. You want to keep the base texture (be it grass or sand or snow etc.) at atleast 60%+ of the visible terrain, otherwise its going to start to look like a mess. SO next, where do you add these other textures? well a good place to start is trees, i understand we havnt covered placement yet but i will continue anyways, when placing trees you generally want to add a texture beneath them, like rough grass. for mines you should try and use patchy grass or whatever you think suits your map, it is also important to mix it up on the ground a bit, if your using a desert, try mixing sand and beach, or sand and some mars dunes, for snow, there is the obvious snow and ice combo, grass could be grass and long grass, whatever you fell comfortable with, you can also add patches of other textures around aswell just to add to it all. When creating paths from any non path material (ie a form of pavement) try and space it apart, have sections of your path covered in grass, and dont make your paths straight, have them winding and disjointed, this way the player can feel the realism. When texturing a city it is good to leave grass patches or areas lying around for msot epochs before the great wars, pavements or brick paths are great to use aswell, try not to make them the focus of the city though, people are interested in the placement of objects, if your ground is drawing too much attention in a city or village then you need to town it down, its an accompaniment, not the main attraction, keep that stuff for outside your cities. Texturing the ocean is also very important to add detail to the minimap and the Line of sight of the player, as a suggestion, keep the ocean as underwater terrain and then run over it with 'rock 1' and 'rock 2' in the same fasion that you did with your ocean elevation, just go all over the place and cut accross eachother, you may also add other textures like beach or pebbles if you like.

Finally the placement. TREES are amazing for drawing attention, or adding to a storyline, a good scenario wont group trees together like the random map generator does, that stuff is for mining, not for detail. It is important that you spread trees out, 3 over here, 1 there, a little group of 6 or 7 here( in a random formation) just spread them out and youll be fine, at this point you might also like to run over the areas with 'ambients forest' or add your own ferns with the unit placer, whatever you want. Next is population centres. for any kind of village or unimportant city (ie not the capitol city) you may want to make it look rustic or unimportant, by this i mean not confuse the player in making them think this is the centre of the story line, but on the same hand you dont want to leave it looking like a dump. to do this you need to balance some randomisation, dont build in lines, spread things apart, put a few houses here and some over there, a building over here, and etc etc. by spreading things out and not making it dense it allows the player to feel like he/she is in an area of unimportance, but still feeling impressed, i should also note that granarys are ugly as all hell, if your going to add farming, place your granary and spread your farms out randomly, group them together and put them on wierd alignings, but dont have the standard 3x3 granary unless you really have to. As for your city, feel free to make it look civilised, have your streets of houses, your industrial and commerical sectors, your military outposts, make it look like the player has reached the pinnacle of civilised society. It is important that you spread your citizens and children throughout the city, aswell as a military presence, especially around your key buildings, ie capitol, gates, military bases etc. this adds to the realism. Finally Gaia, make sure you place your animals appropriately with the region or biome that they are in, dont go adding horses to a snow biome, youre only embarrising yourself. you should also combine your gaia with you structures, try adding a few skeletons, some flies, and some wolves together, looks great. Also noted that you shouldnt be afraid to mix epochs, variety in housing is good (mixing bronze and dark etc.) aswell as units and some other buildings, keep it interesting. Also dont forget to add scenery ('world unit') hot springs, logs, lightpoles, flags, rocks etc. im going to stop rambling on this section now considering i said 'Finally' a few points ago...

The attatchment is a small island map that you may wish to view to understand some of the techniques described

And thus we conclude my Design article, i hope you can take away a few points and tips here and there to keep your maps interesting and your players engaged, best of luck in your future designs,

Deado

[Soty]

Could everybody think about eye candy techniques for the following:

- Graveyards
- Jungle
- Rain forest
- Mid east settlements/ towns
- Tundra
- etc.

[Shieldwolf]

I was thinking that it is really high time for us to make a compilation of all the knowledge that we know about the scenario editor, and post it in a similar way like they have done in AOK Heaven:

aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/aokcgi/display.cgi?action=ct&f=4,37500,0,30

I kept on delaying my own articles. Just too damn lazy writing these days. *shakes head* I do promise that I will work on them. *fingers-crossed*

What do you think? The AOKH-like FAQ can be done right?

[Deado10]

Okay so ive set up a small scenario with a few common scenery types that you can take a look at, ive also used triggers for effects so youll need to run this one as a scenario, not just check it in the editor. anyways its just take control of the observation balloon and fly along the path.
The map includes:
- War field/Graveyard
- Rainforest/Jungle
- Desert
- Snowy/Blizzard
- Alien Planet
The alien planet one i expect some criticism, even i find it very hard to get a martian feeling with the editor, i just dont think the space terrain does any justice, but anyways thats my opinion (it also removes all water??) anyways i tried to go for a vast empty mars feel with a tiny colony.

Anyways i hope you enjoy and this is what you were after Soty.

...I say anyways a lot...

[Soty]

@shieldy: Why dont we create an EE FAQ/ Design wiki. I think there are several templates for wikis out there.

@ deado: Nice, but not quite what my intention is. We all know how to design the basic terrains. I was rather looking for something like this article:

[Shieldwolf]

Jul 31, 2012 18:02:59 GMT Soty said:

@shieldy: Why dont we create an EE FAQ/ Design wiki. I think there are several templates for wikis out there.

i like that idea, in the sense that the linking would be very easy to diverse topics and such, but i myself doesn't have experience with wikis. also (although i know we can have the option of locking the wiki), we should be able to preserve the accuracy and design of the content, while at the same time, welcoming contributors.

[Soty]

who's the wiki master here? anyone have experience?

[Mr.UNleash]

I have some experience, but not much.

[Halfaya]

I have a far bit of experience, mostly editing. I could probably easily set up an ee wiki on wikia?

[Halfaya]

Well, there is already one on wikia but it's terrible, no work done to it, whatsoever.

[Soty]

New challenge for all of you:

Space scenarios can be great fun. Space only exists in AoC though. So, how could we create space terrain on regular EE without modding?

Post you demo scen here and we will write an article on: "Space on regular EE"

PS: I already have some ideas on that (obviously)

[scutarilegion]

The best idea I can come up with is to have water, paint the terrain under it with black, and have naval ships pretend to be space ships.

[Soty]

how about this??

play it. looking at it in the scen editor is not fun

[Deado10]

Well that was quite interesting, certainly a good effort, obviously with some more refining and scaling i could see this actually working for a large scale space scenario.

[Mr.UNleash]

It looks amazing

But I suggest getting rid of the more modern hot air balloons. It doesn't seem to fit in well.

[Shieldwolf]

that was definitely good looking! although i must agree with unleash, the balloons are obviously balloons. an article on how to do just that?

[Soty]

i also have a somewhat similar approach to space design without units... It relies on the graphics effect: conversion glow...

[_ZeuxisX_]

Seems hard to me.

[Soty]

no its simple. it triggers a loop that creates conversion glows and other graphics effects on a black map until a certain limit (variable is reached)

[zaia]

I was curiously wandering through some threads and stumbled across this one, great stuff I'm reading so far (the grid method is pretty cool too, Soty, i'll defs have to try it out) ... Anyways, i'm happy to start writing some articles of my own to give this a little more content. I haven't really experimented much with scenario design in the past several years (since I pretty much exclusively worked on MT once i got back into it), but we'll see what I can ome up with.

Also, regarding conversion glow, i've learned it has several effects:
- it doesn't go away
- it makes my computer lag insanely if there are like 30 on the same object (which loops tend to accomplish)

But it could potentially look very, very cool as a star. You could do say Apollo Nano Shield for some quasar or something, or some laser effects for other combinations of graphics for other outer space entities. Pumped to experiment now, I've been wanting to do a space-themed scenario for a while (although i use aoc)

[Soty]

I strongly recommend not to use AoC. We on EC use EE regular.

[zaia]

Mar 1, 2013 15:12:56 GMT Soty said:

I strongly recommend not to use AoC. We on EC use EE regular.

Oh shite... i'm totally screwed - everything i've made has been in aoc

[Shieldwolf]

Mar 1, 2013 12:45:16 GMT zaia said:

Also, regarding conversion glow, i've learned it has several effects:
- it doesn't go away

Yep. That's correct. Graphical rally flags do so too. As to the lag, any graphical effect that is looped continuously would produce varying degrees of lags, so I suggest you don't loop them and instead use the Off-On effects.

As to AOC, we have continually time and again advised new designers to stay away from it. The space age is cool, but all the others you can design in EE vanilla. It's better, more stable and more accessible to all.

[t1m2n3t4]

So this grid method is actually just placing barbed wire on a map in the form islands or land borders and such?

[Shieldwolf]

You might actually try using it, it's quite effective. I've done many maps based on the principles laid out by Soty.

[t1m2n3t4]

I did. It's not bad. Nice to have a way to mark areas and see how they look on the mini map. I remember doing the world map from scratch years ago. Japan and Africa were very small. With the grid method it'll be easier to form the shoreline.
Great idea, Soty!

[Soty]

Thanks. I create basically all my maps (haven't done any in quite a time now though)using this method. I snatched the principle from those coloring books for children

[sunndae]

Hi guys.

Does by chance anyone of you know how this grid method can work with the new updated site?

maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/wcs-client/

[Shieldwolf]

Welcome Sunndae!

Without a functioning EE, I'm afraid I can't help you with this. However, may I suggest playing around with the ASCII grid options and downloading samples in each file and doing trial and error for the coordinates?