WingNuts and Bolts

# Maps

This section details the Maps menu

The Map editor part of WingNuts and Bolts is very different from the rest of the editor. You essentially paint textures onto a blank canvas. You have multiple layers to work in, just like Photoshop.

As you can see there is a lot going on on the Map screen. We will break down it's parts into the the following sections

- Map Creation

- Map Editing

- Item placement

# Creating a New Map

Use the New Map button to create a new map.

This screen details the size of the map you are goign to create. The name, discription, location and author can be changed later. The nodes cannot be changed later (as they set the size of the map).

Map textures are placed on nodes. The more nodes the larger the map. If you can't think in nodes or pixels, look at the time it will take an aircraft flying at 250 pixels/sec to cross the map. 250 pixels/sec is the speed of an average aircraft. For reference the average WingNuts 2 map uses between 20 and 30 nodes. The largest map, New Zealand uses 70 by 50 nodes.

Press "Ok" and vola! A Map. Of course, there's nothing on the map, so lets draw!

Rembeber those textures you created and put in graphics? Well it's time to use them.

Now you will be in a blank map (you'll know it's blank as it has a black background). By default you'll also notice the blue triangles. Those are nodes.

Nodes!

These are the largest of the 3 node sizes. The map gives you 3 layers, the largest sized node on the bottom layer, then a medium size and finally a small size. Think of the nodes like this. The large nodes are useful for large repeating areas, such as water, or dirt. The medium are useful to detail features such as a cliff or beach or a river. The smallest nodes are used to detail items such as sea foam, or cracks in the ground.

Lets get painting.

To begin paiting make sure you have the Paint button pressed and then select your layer.

The paint tool selected and the bottom (largest) nodes selected.

Now you need to select a texture to paint with. You can choose a texture by name from the pulldown list under "Texture" or you can press Control on the keyboard and select the textures from a list.

Click on a node to place a texture there. Click and hold and you can paint. Right click and hold the right button down on the mouseh and you can move your position on the map.

You can then move up to the next layer and draw more textures on top of the current layer.

You can then repeat this for the top layer.

Now lets say you dont' like the "square" look of the textures, they all seem to line up too perfectly. You can move the nodes around.

Click on the "Nodes" button to swtich from paint mode to node adjustment. Each node item can be moved about, letting you shape the land. You can use this to create any shape you want. Observe:

This

Normal medium sized node placement.

Can Become This

Nodes adjusted for a more organic island.

You can also adjust the color of a texutre without affecting the actual texture by adjusting different values.

Here the color of the green grass was shifted to a red color.

What occured in the above image was a color shift. There are 4 values listed under the "Current node color"

- R - Or Red
- G - Or Green
- B - Or Blue
- A - Or Alpha (Transparency

When a value is at 255 that means all of the color is present. So a texture with 255, 255, 255, 255 will be drawn just as you drew it. By lowering a number, you remove that element. A texture with 255, 0, 0, 255 will only have the red in it drawn (Green and Blue have been removed). Now the last value, the Alpha value is rather special. It will make an image transparent. Why would you want this? Lets say you have a nice rock texture. Place the rock texture on the ground on the large node area. Then on the medium node place a water texture with an alpha value of 180. Then you can see through the water and the rocks below, making a transparent lagoon.

Or you can lay a texture on another texture making a brand new texture. This is a good way to break up a repeating pattern.

# Why should I make maps? Shouldn't WingNuts and Bolts do it for me?

Yes, yes it should, and it does.

Instead of pressing the "New Map" button. Press the "New map from image" button.

This will ask you to select a file. The game is looking for an image which it will study and then build a map based on that image. You can use pretty much any image you want. If you want to use a screen shot from Google Earth go for it. Note: We didn't have the luxury of Google Earth when we built our maps. Also, don't steal images. Or you can use a picture of your best friend. Any image will work. Sometimes you can get very interesting results from a rather simple image.

New Image from Map dialogue box.

I'm using a map of China to create my map. There are tons of options that can make for many different things. We will work our way down left side first.

Bottom layer resolution - This is how you decide how big your map is going to be. How many nodes do you want on the bottom. 10 is really small. 50 is large. 70 is huge and 100 is massive.

Blur passes to pre-apply - This will apply a simple blur to the image before it processes it. Why sould you want this? Well say there are many small details, such as the releif of the ocean. All ofthose little spots are going to be represented in my map. If i blur the map a few times, they will be removed resulting in a smoother image. However it won't be as detailed.

Texture match area size - This is how closely the texture will match the map. The larger this number, the more intensive. The larger this number, the longer you wait.

Texture matching method - This lets you choose 3 different ways to match the textures to the map. You may need to experiment with these to find the correct value for each.

Color modulation method - This is how much WingNuts and Bolts will change the color of a texture to match your image. Remember the changes in Red, Green, Blue and Alpha from above? It's the editor doing the same thing.

Bottom layer, Middle layer, Top layer - These boxes will toggle which layers the editor uses. Say you only want it to match the bottom layer to your image so it gets the outline right and you are going to do the middle layers and top layers yourself. Then you would only keep the Bottom layer checked.

Use edge detection to limit middle and top layers - Check this box if you want to limit how much of the layers are used. For example, if you set the slider bar to the middle, then it has an average threshold. So if it realizes a long strech of your map is just open grass, it will only use the bottom layer to make the grass, leaving the middle and top layer empty. If you don't have this checked, it will draw in grass on all layers, even those that do not need it.

Use the Show option to see what the engine is looking at.

Finall there is the "Select specific textures to use" button. This will let you pick which textures to use for a map. So you can turn off specific textures. Such as if you have city textures you don't want the engine to use any in your map.

Once WIngNuts and Bolts has finished process the map. It will present you with a newly constructed map. You can tweak elements, or go with it. It's often best to start with a map from image. It will get the general shape and grunt work out of the way (like filling in all that ocean on a heavy ocean map).

Back in the map editor window, you can hide and show layers with the following buttons:

The different layer buttons.

When a button is pressed that layer will be displayed.

Under Area Types, only the Land/Water defination and Allowed Carrier spawn options will do anything. Any area flagged as "Water" will create a sploosh when a bomb hits it. Areas as ground make an explosion. Any area marked in red will not have a carrier when you start the map. Anly location in green will.

The Boss positions button lets you place the different bosses that can spawn on the level.