More Modding Questions! NOOO!

[ladeda]

Thanks to the extremely large amount of help in the Aquaria forums, I've gotten the confidence to learn some mapping skills and have now gotten a good feel for nodes, tiles, and entities. Unfortunately, I still can't wrap my head around a few things...

1: I've noticed that The_Bear has made a very well made preview of his upcoming Aquaria prequel mod. Looking at his tileset folder, I notice that all of the tiles are in different .txt files, and yet he uses them separately somehow for the two different areas his mod is set in (one is the energy temple, the other the hub tileset). How do I do this? Also, is it possible to compile all these tiles into one .txt file? Do the numbers beside each tile have any purpose?

2: All of the map tests I've been trying out to get a feel for the editor have been in the Aquaria starter template, which has its limits. First off, it's limited in shape. I simply cannot understand how I can change the circular outline; removing those tiles that make it up is easy, but I don't understand how I might be able to remove them in themselves. Is there some other way to set up these pixellated areas and those tiles?

3: It's also limited in composition; the main music and background (heck, even the starting tiles for the map borders) all comes from the hub level. Supposing I wanted to make a Kelp Forest themed level (or whatever theme I desire, for that case), would I be able to change the background colour, music, and walls as I use the editor? Are there alternatives?

Thank you very much for reading my questions. You guys are a really great and helpful community.

[TheBear]

Once again I'll suggest trying to hop onto irc http://www.bit-blot.com/forum/index.php?topic=176.0 so you can get a little more consistent help. I thought about making a detailed map guide but don't know if I'll get around it.

1: You have to start outside of the editor and create your own mod (http://www.bit-blot.com/aquaria/mods/playmods.html) then setup an xml file for your map (http://www.bit-blot.com/aquaria/mods/maps.html).  You don't want all the tiles in the same file for 2 reasons. One it takes forever to press 'e' and 'r' through 100 tiles as it is and having all of them would be way to much. Plus having them separate organizes them to visual styles that go well together.

Copy the guert_mod folder and inspect every crevice. Use is it as a guide for your own.

2: You can create a new map template in any image editor. It has to be a square from 0x0 to 1024x1024 (.png). Naija can swim around in any area created in white.  Open one of the images under the MapTemplates folder.

3: Refer to the map link in #1.

If you don't have much experience mapping or with game structure from other games this might be all a little confusing. It certainly was for me. I'd be happy to answer any other questions and if it would help you I could look into working on a step by step guide based off what I know.

[Alphasoldier]

I first have to say that you should really scroll through EVERY FOLDER of Guert's mod, you'll get a LOT wiser.

1. Every map has it's own XML file that says what picture it has to take from the map of the shape, like bear said, white is where you swim in, black is where you can't swim in, it ALSO picks the tile set in that same file.The numbers in the tile set stands for the ID they use, to replace tiles with other tiles. Like you have a rock0001 as 1 and replace it with shadow0002 or something, they get switched. Every ID is saved in the XML file that contains the whole map.

2. Bear answered this, even though the size of the map has to use these values: 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096... etc, I think, don't know if there's limit. Example: 1024x256 for a very tall map, or 512x2048 for a very wide map.

3. Once again, also the MUSIC is sorted in the XML file, and the background has it's own layers.

[Alec]

The main reason the tiles were separate was to keep the load times down. This is still important. (basically the game has tilesets divided into regions, I can send you those if you want)

Right now you have to change a line in the xml code to set the tileset.

[TheBear]

Power of 2: yeah I interpreted that wrong. I just made my maps squares. 290x290 and 900x900 =/

[Alec]

Not sure if power of 2 textures are required for the map templates.

But in terms of graphics, power of 2 is needed.

This means N^2.

Dimensions of 8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024, etc

The dimensions do not have to be equal to each other.