I thought I would start this thread for people to share any tips they have for map making in RWR, or for generally discussing any ongoing projects, problems and/or challenges they are facing. I have only just started out recently creating maps for the game, and although it seems at first straightforward (at least there is zero barrier to entry unlike other games), after creating some quick simple map designs, I'm finding it more and more difficult to achieve the exact results I want. I've mapped in most games going all the way back to Quake and the days when you carved out your maps from a gigantic block of ether, but this is definitely different.

I don't really do much work with vector graphics so combining laying out objects in Inkscape with traditional graphics editing via Photoshop or Gimp is personally what I am struggling most with. If it were all in one app or the other it would be relatively easy, but I find Inkscape quite frustrating to use and haven't yet discovered a method for getting everything into the game precisely layed out how it should be.

To which end, I would like to ask if any of you who are more experienced could maybe share a brief idea of your work process for making a map, especially if you use PS/Gimp to create your height and texture maps (the only way, surely). How do you make sure everything matches up to your objects.svg?
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So far I have personally found that it's better if you draw out the texture layers with a paint tool and don't gaussian blur it at all (you can soften if you like), since that makes it hard to heightmap accurately. I've made roads in Inkscape and stuck with the gaussian blur with good results (no blur makes them jaggy looking - though I suppose that could be used for style). I am currently making a big city map and I had a rough sketch drawn up but it seems like, due to scale, about half of it needs to be dumped because of how little relative space you have within the confines of a RWR map image (have not tried making the map area bigger, don't know if this is possible).

hello, I can't help with the gaussian stuff because I have yet to build complex heightmaps using ps or gimp.

However, the one bit of useful information I can give you is that if you are using the map template from the PVP map contest, you can very easily make the map huge by simply unlocking the appropriate layer and deleting the red box that is the current boundaries. If you are not talking about that, then I am also useless

Hope that helps a bit?

ComJak

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ComJak's house... stay out of it

I think I know what you are talking about. When starting with RWR, I used to make maps using both GIMP and Inkscape, but pretty soon it was evident that e.g. placing buildings (in Inkscape) on a leveled ground (leveled in GIMP) became just too much of a hassle when you needed to make modifications to what you had already done, because of the constant Inkscape/GIMP exporting to see all the relevant stuff in both editors in their right places to align terrain textures and objects properly.

I since changed to using Inkscape only and for me that has worked fairly well. I like to work with certain amount of randomness in certain map features, so Inkscape's turbulence filters are doing an ok job when I need to handle sand/grass/heightmap -kind of things, which I can then extend with any other shapes I feel are needed. My only gripe about Inkscape is that it's sometimes slow as hell processing the filters, so I'm forced to reduce the filter quality in preferences or disable them altogether. Inkscape 0.49 dev version seemed much faster in this aspect, I just wish it would become stable soon.

You can see my way of doing things by taking a look in map1-3 (actually, I think map1 still has an external height map base image made in GIMP), that's one way to deal with map making using one tool.

Also, currently map size can not be changed, except by making it smaller using the boundary objects.

The RWR terrain texture exporter extension for Inkscape is also very handy, used together with the converter tool found in the PvP map contest template.

Thanks for the replies.

pasik: if you use Inkscape only, which tools do you use? I'd be happy if there was a paintbrush tool (would be nice to paint an area then make it a vector polygon), but all I can see is line drawing and the standard polygons. Is your method to lay out polygons and then apply filters to them? I agree randomness is nice, I would probably use some filters but just used spray tools (in PS) so far.

All that is really needed is a method to keep height maps and objects.svg 'syncronised' (ie, as simple as importing image to Inkscape, line it up to map/canvas boundaries, no resizing to fit or anything like that). I'm sure I have just not done things properly so far.

To both: I guess if I remove the boundaries on the map contest canvas (yes I'm using that), then the image dimensions will be more obvious, 2048x2048 (don't know if Inkscape has a non-standard dpi), and there will be a lot more room to work with.

The default maps are lovely as is the new contest map and those in this forum You can get great results in this game.

I wonder if it is possible to find out what the minimum widths for RWR objects are in Inkscape? It seems like resizing (with the rectangle tool) them too small causes problems. I can't actually tell if resizing things like trees has any effect in-game.

In Inkscape I mostly use just rectangles and paths for dealing with terrain graphics.

With paths, you can create any filled polygon by just making the ends meet and setting a fill color for it. Then you can further deform the path by dragging the nodes and/or edges. I find it great for laying out grass and sand areas, I might also use it to level certain areas in the heightmap.

For roads and pavement, I again use paths mostly, just this time I keep it as a disconnected path and use the stroke width to give the path some width.

For trenches that have a lowered center area, I think (I haven't done this in a while) I create a trench as a closed path first, then poke holes in it at the entrances by removing specific edges from the path. Once I'm done with the trench walls, I copy the path over to the height map layer and align it properly, make it completely black filled first, then adjust the opacity to about 10% so that it ends up just darkening the heightmap slightly, effectively lowering the height at the center of the trench. Then I usually also copy the trench path to the sand layer, make it filled again and pick a sand filter to give some random appearance at the edges of the trench. The not-so-nice part about this is that if I have to make significant changes to the trench wall, I basically have to redo the copy & paste with both height and sand layers.

Yeah, if you want a bigger map than in PvP template, just adjust the boundaries e.g. so that they are closer to 2048x2048 page size. You'll want the boundaries somewhere still.

Some RWR objects use the actual extent of the Inkscape objects, some of them don't. From the top of my head, it's just buildings and signs that actually make use of the extent. For the others, it's just roughly used to visually indicate the size of the object. Buildings have a minimum size of 1.5x1.5 (m) which corresponds to about 3x3 (px) in Inkscape with the settings in the "official" templates I believe, the building sizes get also truncated in RWR to match a multiple of 1.5m.

Some objects have specific properties which can be set using the object description field, like height hint for trees for instance. You'd set "height = 4;" in the description, and the game would try to pick a tree model with that height. Currently there's no documented summary of these fields or the ranges anywhere, so you basically have to look at the existing maps and objects to learn more about the customization possibilities with them, or ask about it

Also, the Inkscape object's center point should match the center point of the object in RWR, but there's a somewhat big problem with the way RWR works with Inkscape if the Inkscape object has received a matrix that deforms its original size. In such a case, you end up seeing the object positioned more or less off in RWR to where you tried to position it in Inkscape. Currently it's not exactly known where the matrix deformation comes from, but it's relatively easy to fix it as long as you haven't ended up duplicating such a deformed object all over the map. Read this viewtopic.php?f=7&t=135&start=10#p2635 if you haven't already.

Thanks for all that information. That's really useful and answers all the questions I think I had. I did read that problem about the objects getting misplaced, I wasn't sure if that was what was happening, but it seems like it. It's not a massive problem if you spot it early enough.

I have been looking at the default maps for ideas and the code you've put in the description boxes I'll also try out making some trenches the way you describe, and hopefully I can adapt that for other map features.

edit: having restarted with a new map, importing 2048x2048 images straight from PS onto a new canvas is working nicely. I've even worked out how to use the line tool and polygons to add to the height map (mostly for flattening areas). Currently my map doesn't actually load in the game and it crashes when it gets to the bases line but I think it's probably just because I'm missing some stuff in some of the layers (not sure which are exactly required).

You should check the log file that's mentioned in the crash dialog (assuming it's that kind of crash that shows the location of the log, should be). At the end of the log, before the clean up traces somewhere close to "execution halted", there should be something of value about what caused the crash to happen.

I got it working eventually. I think in that case it was that I had misnamed one of the layers and bases was on its own layer. At any rate, once I copied out all the layers from the default maps the map loaded fine.

I've been using an imported height map now, linked in Inkscape so I don't have to do anything there, and it's working well.

I wonder though if there is any method for getting smooth terrain with sudden height changes in the heightmap. Some things are appearing jaggy in game - I have for example a heightmapped docks area, which will have asphalt surface and buildings on it later, and the sheer faces of the dock walls are jagged (antialiased, but still jaggy). Also, the player can walk up these cliff faces and it looks really bizzare.

One thing: would it be possible for you to make it so we can arrange in Inkscape the separate height map elements on separate layers within the 'height' layer group? This gave me problems when I tried it so I assume that the layer isn't flattened when the RWR Extension exports the height image? Inkscape is better for creating elements now I have tried it, but not being able to layer them (or even flatten the various bits of a layer group) means I have been exporting a png to GIMP and adding it to the linked heightmap image that way.

If you're going for something like a wall or cliff, a very steep hill, almost up-right, using the terrain, you won't get there due to the relatively low density of terrain vertices. The terrain in RWR should only be used to create landscapes that are accessible everywhere by characters and are relatively easy on height changes, so you shouldn't be using only the terrain if you're making something like a canyon. A small dug in trench might be just about ok (you can see a few edgy bumps on map 1 trenches near the trench walls too, but those are mostly acceptable).

For this reason, the objects (grouped path pairs actually, look for blue and red paths) named as platforms have been introduced, which may be used to create platforms e.g. extruding from a side of a terrain hill out in the open, essentially forming a dock or a bridge depending on which mode the platform is. Doing it like this, the side contour of the dock wall will be as smooth as you make the path be. Also, the platform top surface can be made to use the terrain texture splatting to make it look more like a part of the terrain. Also, the AI will realize there are walls there when using platforms as opposed to very steep changes in terrain, and ladders can be attached to walls.



Yeah, that's right, the extension doesn't handle sublayers when exporting with the heightmaps or texture layers. Sure, I guess it can be extended to support this.

That's great. I'll start using the platforms for things like that, then.