It's the Stinky's terrible maps thread.

I am confused... or tired.. but confused

basicaly, as long as we keep the spreadsheets clean, and we have backups on our PC, the mess is not an issue.

BTW, about backup. Chris mentioned me he includd 3 of my maps (indus's) by mistake in the game. As it may happen again, I suggest we keep backup somwher of the stuff he includes, in case it would be removed, or whatever.

I keep a backup of every CMP pack on dropbox. Worst case scenario, I have everything

Found something interesting with the long grass tiles. They are really flammable. And fire spreads to them, so after a single rocket and a few turns there's a huge blaze raging around the farmhouse.

Do you like element that or not? I can turn their flammability off with a custom spectre (I'm playing with editing the sprites anyway so that they're grass borders, and don't take up the entire square). I can also put in patches of uncut grass around the grass fields, similar (but on a smaller scale - a 3x3 square probably) to the untamed meadows random fields.

It'd be an element that's not especially apparent in other maps: a prop that's got no bearing on the gameplay for the most part, but then an explosion happens and, uh oh. Wild fire! Or it could be weird and annoying. You tell me.

Assume that the smoke-grenades-causing-fires thing will be sorted, if it hasn't yet. Also the whole self-immolation thing by NPCs.

I am confused... or tired.. but confused

I have that effect on people. I was worried about spamming the submaps spreadsheet since I use a lot of "convenience" submaps. For example, the entries for my tall red wall would be:

4 entries for each side (Up, down, left, right)

4 entries for the corners

(NYI) 4 entries for end pieces

More entries for ivy-covered walls, if I can ever get it so it doesn't look like someone vomited on the wall

That's a lot of entries for what, to the person who simply plays the map, is just one wall. So should I input them individually or make an entry that covers the whole set? Mox doesn't seem to mind, so there's that.

I don't want to be obnoxious, or at least, not any more than I am naturally. And let's face it, that's quite enough for anyone.

Personally, I love it. My first thought was "hmm, that's alot of fire", then "whoah, now that's some fire", then "I should start more fires, but I really need to kill these 3 aliens first". Then the mission ended.

Cool. I was going to tone it down when I do my next pass over the farmhouses, but now I'll keep it as it is.

I'd put more flammable stuff . Set the world aflame!

I fixed a very small, almost inconsequential bug with my tall red walls in UrbanStink 1 and 2. Hardly worth mentioning really, it was only the ability to fire straight through them.

As usual, both CMP to-be-reviewed and Stink Pack 2 updated. While I was at it, I put in the updated down-facing StinkHouses as well as a new one below the drop site - R StinkHouse A. The rooftops, walls, windows and doors should all be done, clipping issues aside. Let me know what you think, and also suggestions for the garage roof on D Stinkhouse A (the one seen directly north of the drop site). There's still one Stinkhouse placeholder to the east. Once that's touched up, UrbanStink1 will have all intended submaps included.

I'll do the farm wildgrass thing tomorrow, as well as sort out the mid walls and rooftops. I might have a new town map out tonight, depending on how things go. I also need to sit down and update the submap and tile lists. Then hopefully on Thurs I can implement Flash's suggestion for the arctic maps to make prop snowfields more consistant (but still random).

Badass burning!! I will be on silent running till Friday because we have an inspection this week....Goes into a cupboard to hide

I'm sure your inspection will pass with no problems at all. (:

UrbanStink 3 is now up, in Stinky Pack 2 plus the CMP review section. 60x60 town map, corv/lship. I tried to finish it last night, but I wasn't feeling it. I restarted the map from scratch, and I think it's better for it. This does mean I haven't done anything on farm today, though.

New buildings are the laundrette, Scabby's Cafe, and the pub. The barstools didn't work out as I have the artistic skills of a three year old, but I think the rest of it's alright, although I need to do a hack job on the coffee tables so that they can pass for actual tables. The pub's a good excuse for a green outside seating area, if nothing else.

I updated the spreadsheets, but I'm not putting down the 20+ submaps for farm's random prop fields and the like. I already put in 60+ entries for the tiles, I'm not going to blanket the submaps one with submaps that consist of two bales of hay or whatever.

I'm gonna work on the public footpath/untamed wilds for my next farm map next. I might put out a static version, then add submaps later. Here's a preview.

you could just write propsfield -6 variants etc

Yeah, that seems like the best solution. I've added a comments section to the submaps spreadsheet.

I've also added three new maps: 60x60 FarmStink 2 (1 map for lightscout, another for sct/corv) and 70x70 FarmStink 5 (cru/lship). Bring matches. They're in Stinky Maps 2 and CMP review.

The visual tweaks to the existing buildings aren't included as they're not finished yet; I need to create a midwall tile for the brown soviet wood, as well as an overhanging corrugated iron roof tile.

New arctic maps! The ColdStink 5 set: one lightscout, one sct/corv, one cru/lship. I've also put in a new town map for corv/lship that features the library submap.

It's been a while. (I seem to say that a lot.) When v19 came out, I started playing through the campaign again, which took up time I usually spend on maps. Playing through the arctic maps, I strongly agree with Flash's comment about the inconsistancy of the more randomised artic maps, and I also felt that the thick/thin forest random props really failed to deliver. As a result, I've gone through my arctic maps and tried to improve them a bit. Hopefully, they're better now.

I've split the big randomised prop sections into sparse and dense submaps now, with the buildings being their own thing. Dense prop submaps are 7 or more submaps, sparse ones have less than 7 in them. Lakes aren't counted as a prop for this purpose.

This stuff is only in Stinky Maps 2 at the moment, I'll be updating the CMP review in a bit.

Here's a list of changes for all of the people who care, which is currently a very round number. It helps me keep track of what I've done and still need to do, though, so prepare to eat a lot of words anyway.

• ColdStink 1, both 60x60 and 70x70, have the official outpost in. If people miss the larger outpost in 70x70 I can put it back, though. I've also moved civs away from the entrance so that they don't form a human barricade there; they should now cower in the safety of the power generator room, their dorms, the security checkpoint, and the toilets.
  In the 70x70, the fairly static props in the vertical lane on the east side of the outpost have been replaced with a dense and a sparse random propfield. I've also put a couple of rock covers on the approach so it's a little less murderous on the xnauts. The props in the north east part of the map have been replaced by sparse propfields.
  
• ColdStink 2 70x70 is now closer to its 60x60 cousin, with the big lake in the middle forcing the xnauts to go around the edges. There are sparse propfileds around the perimeter, along with 100% certain rock covers to account for bad luck with random props.
  CS 2 60x60 has had the "random" thick forests removed. LSct version has been thinned out in general, and has two sparse fields north and south of the lake. Sct/Crv is denser in terms of props. It should be possible for a tank to get around.
  
• CS 3 70x70's central lake now has a land-bridge running through it. There's also an outpost B, as there was meant to be in the first place but wasn't because, um, I guess I was a bit out of it when I made the map..? Anyway. There are dense fields of props if you go the long way around the lake. You can go across the land-bridge, but you'll be pretty horribly exposed.
  CS 3 60x60 LSct has had a lot of the trees cut down, but apart from now being more open is pretty much the same. Sct/Corv version has a sparse prop field north and south of the outpost, and a dense field outside the ship.
  
• CS 4 70x70: relatively dense, prop-and-building-wise, in the middle vertical column. There are sparse patches of cover/LoS/movement blocks in the outlying columns.
  CS 4 60x60 LSct: no dense prop fields, since there's only going to be a few aliens around and it already has a central feature in the form of the river anyway.
  ColdStink 4 60x60 Sct/Corv: 1 dense field in the SE, and a few sparse fields as you go around the river.
  
• CS 5 60x60 and 70x70 added. I put the little outpost in as a fixed feature, along with the logging camp.

Okay, the CMP should be up to date: the accepted map pack arctic stuff's the latest version, and the review pack contains the stuff that's not been greenlit but is in Stinky 2.

ok cool. I will release a new version at the weekend. Currently have my hands full with 3 kids..

I've made a start on the SmogStink 1 set, meaning that there's two new industrial maps in Stink Map Pack 2 and the CMP review pack.

I've played about with map sizes this time around. The lightscout version of SmogStink 1 is 40x50, while the scout/corv version is 85x40. Be aware that the sct/corv's size is misleading, as it takes place at the docks, and there's a chunk of the map taken up by sea. I don't know what this means when it comes to the guidelines. The guidelines set out sizes, but some of the official maps have non-standard sizes as well; if my map sizes rock the boat too much, tell me and I'll remove 'em from the CMP rev. pack.

Why am I using odd map sizes? Well, I'm trying to make some industrial maps that are a bit more about close combat. The trouble is that CQC maps take longer to explore than, say, an open desert. As a result, I've made the maps a bit smaller so that you don't spend days exploring every potential monster closet in the map. There are still exposed sniper lanes for people who like to take down targets at a distance, so if I'm lucky, I'll please everyone.

Two more industrial maps for you: SmogStink 2's lightscout and scout/corvette. These have two new buildings in, StinkOfficeA and StinkWarehouseA. There's also a spectre fix for the double-headed LR lamppost in there. Stinky Maps 2, or CMP Rev. Pack.

Do these currently work with the experimental builds (19 ) or just the stable builds?

They work with any builds. Some stuff is now officially in the experimental builds, but the naming scheme means that it works fine. All that will happen is that a few maps (5 maybe) will have 2 versions in game until the next stable release.

I think I saw some new props in your folders. Do you know how to add props/etc to the game?

Yessir. You've got two options.

You could slap the .png in this thread and tell me what properties you want the prop to have, and I'll be more than happy to make the spectre and such. I'll put it in its own .zip so people can see how I did it/what I did themselves.

Or, if you want to do it yourself - which is fair enough! - I'm writing up how to make spectres and also insert custom assets for the guide in the sticky. I've not finished it yet, but here's a draft version for your viewing pleasure.

-----

It's not technically necessary, but life becomes a hundred times easier if you follow Flash's guide to unpacking the tiles. If you're successful, you should have a Xenonauts\assets\tiles\ folder. Have a browse through and decide where you wish to place your prop's .png. If you create your own folder, don't do it directly in Xenonauts\assets\tiles\. When I made Xenonauts\assets\tiles\Stinky spectres, it caused the submap editor to become highly unstable; I'm guessing I infuriated the archiving system. You should be okay to make a folder such as Xenonauts\assets\tiles\town\Stinky spectres or Xenonauts\assets\tiles\common\vehicles\Stinky car, though.

If you simply can't get the tiles to extract properly for whatever reason, then create Xenonauts\assets\tiles\common\Your Folder yourself and place the .png in there. You won't be able to use the submap editor, though, or see the spectres for other props, so you're better off asking for me to do the spectre stuff for you.

Now that we have the .png in place, we have to create the spectre for it and establish how we want the prop to behave. Does it block line of sight, movement, gunfire? Does it explode, and if so, how explosive is it? Where do we want it to be displayed on the screen? Does it have multiple states such as damaged, destroyed, opened (for doors)? Is it a window? Is it vaultable? How much cover does it provide? Is it a staircase? And so on.

I'm going to use one of my own custom assets as an example. Here's tiles\town\wall\TallRedWall_Stinky\TallRedWall_SE_Stinky.png. You can find it in Stinky Map Pack 2 in my signature. I basically merged a redbrick wall with the imposing soviet/industrial pillared wall, since the town tileset normally doesn't have a wall that blocks line of sight.

You can either A) open the submap editor and set its properties there, or B) copy and amend an existing spectre through a text editor.

--

A) Doing it via the submap editor. When I load the submap editor, I click on "rescan resources" since I've added a new resource in the form of TallRedWall_SE_Stinky.png. The program will pause for a while - don't panic - and will in short order tell me it's finished scanning. Next, I create a new submap, giving it a nonsense name and sticking with the default size. The submap editor currently becomes unstable if we load spectres without a submap to go with it, so I make a new submap before playing with the spectres. Now, I go to "Add Spectres..." and browse to TallRedWall_SE_Stinky.png's location.

TallRedWall_SE_Stinky.png should now be in the tile list. I click on it, and the spectre editor on the right shows me a preview picture and a whole screen of attributes. If there are any graphical anomolies on the spectre editor side of the screen, wave the mouse over them and they might go away. (Remember that this is beta software for a beta product.) This wiki page covers each of these in great detail, and you should have it on hand. I go through the list and set the properties I want:

• I paint a TallRedWall_SE_Stinky on the submap, and fiddle around with the pivots until I'm happy with the result.
  
• I give it a pathscore of 0, which stops units moving through my prop, as opposed to a pathscore of 1 which allows movement
  
• I select "Structural Wall" from the object type drop down list. It doesn't set all of these options to the following - for example, I set the hp to 60 and the orientation to SE myself - but some are changed to this preset selection:
  
  
• I give it a brick wall's destruction sound.
  

By the end of it, this is how it looks.

I then click on "save spectre" at the bottom, otherwise I lose all my changes when I close down the submap editor. If a tile in the tile selection list is in red, it has unsaved changes. If it's in bold, it has had changes made to it this session that have been saved. You won't see this unless you select another tile on the list, however.

If you want a damaged state, you have to select the damaged state from the drop down menu near the top and then set and save its attributes, too.

--

B) Copying and amending an existing spectre.

I browse to tiles\town\shop\walls\ExteriorSE_spectre.xml and copy it, then paste it into tiles\town\wall\ where my asset is. I rename it TallRedWall_SE_Stinky_spectre, then open it in a text editor. This is what it looks like.

<?xml version="1.0" ?><spectre id="town/shop/walls/ExteriorSE" width="1" height="1" version="1">   <state id="damaged" name="" pivotX="43" pivotY="89" pathScore="0" objectTypePreset="2" visibilityScore="0.000" bulletScore="0.000" orientation="1" sortPoint="0.300" hp="60" wallType="tall" isCollapsibleTile="1" destructionSound="Brick Wall">       <image src="tiles/town/shop/walls/ExteriorSE_damaged.png" />   </state>   <state id="default" name="" pivotX="43" pivotY="89" pathScore="0" objectTypePreset="2" visibilityScore="0.000" bulletScore="0.000" orientation="1" sortPoint="0.300" hp="60" wallType="tall" destructionSound="Brick Wall">       <image src="tiles/town/shop/walls/ExteriorSE.png" />   </state>   <state id="destroyed" name="" pivotX="43" pivotY="89" pathScore="1" objectTypePreset="0" visibilityScore="1.000" bulletScore="1.000" orientation="1" sortPoint="0.300" hp="0" wallType="none">       <image src="tiles/town/shop/walls/ExteriorSE_destroyed.png" />   </state></spectre>

Obviously I don't want it to point to those damaged and default images, and I want to give it a different spectre id. So:

<?xml version="1.0" ?><spectre id="town/wall/TallRedWall_SE_Stinky" width="1" height="1" version="1">   <state id="damaged" name="" pivotX="43" pivotY="89" pathScore="0" objectTypePreset="2" visibilityScore="0.000" bulletScore="0.000" orientation="1" sortPoint="0.300" hp="60" wallType="tall" isCollapsibleTile="1" destructionSound="Brick Wall">       <image src="tiles/town/wall/TallRedWall_SE_Damaged_Stinky.png" />   </state>   <state id="default" name="" pivotX="43" pivotY="89" pathScore="0" objectTypePreset="2" visibilityScore="0.000" bulletScore="0.000" orientation="1" sortPoint="0.300" hp="60" wallType="tall" destructionSound="Brick Wall">       <image src="tiles/town/wall/TallRedWall_SE_Stinky.png" />   </state>   <state id="destroyed" name="" pivotX="43" pivotY="89" pathScore="1" objectTypePreset="0" visibilityScore="1.000" bulletScore="1.000" orientation="1" sortPoint="0.300" hp="0" wallType="none">       <image src="tiles/town/shop/walls/ExteriorSE_destroyed.png" />   </state></spectre>

The advantage to this method is that it's quicker. The disadvantages are that it's possible to cause severe problems from a simple typo, and that I have no idea how suitable the pivots are.

Wow, thanks a lot. I'm thinking about adding some maps/submaps and more props, so I'll look into this. The game, imo, needs some things, like retail spaces, malls, and ponds, but really lots more vegetation. Not sure I'm up to the task of making new vegetation, but I will give it a try eventually.

It's not just in your opinion, the game absolutely needs more props. For ponds, I'd look into editing the shore tiles in tiles\arctic\ground\shore. For vegetation, there's some grass and corn sprites in tiles\Farm\ in their own folders. Whatever you decide on, good luck and have fun.

If you're looking to make something that will get the most use across multiple tilesets and are a dab hand at drawing, I'd look into making more cars. The mazdas in tiles\common\vehicles\mazda fit into soviettown, town and industrial, and could work in farm and middle east. Just be careful about copying their spectres as they're inconsistent.

Okay, two new desert maps (1 lightscout, 1 corv) and a new town map are in Stinky Maps 2. There's a bunch of under the bonnet stuff I've been fiddling with.

I'll update the review pack tomorrow morning when I'm hopefully not still knackered.

Here's a pic of me clearing out the stadium in the corv/lship UrbanStink 5 map I put in just now.

And here's a pic of one of the submaps in the SandStink 1 lsct/sct+corv maps. The base you're encountering in these two maps are a dodgy lot and you don't want to know what they're cooking in there.

Here's a bunch of words about less obvious stuff I've changed.

Town:

- My old car park submap's been changed. It's no longer a ground submap but a prop, and the name's been changed to indicate its direction (up/down). I also edited the intersection tiles to cut out the concrete around the white line, so it should blend properly. There's now an LR version too.

If you're a mapper thinking about using my stuff for a town terror map and you've downloaded a previous version of Town_CarParkSpace_1x3_Stinky, feel free to delete it from assets\maps\town\ground.

- Redbrick rooftops should now block line of sight.

- UrbanStink 1 has had the cluster of small houses taken out. Now on the eastern side there's StinkHouse B.

- UrbanStink 2 has a couple shops in the south west instead of a grey house.

- More park path sizes.

- A few convenience submaps included (such as a 1 tile short red walls).

Farm:

- Wooden farmhouses have been tweaked. Let me know if the look isn't good, because now the roof and window tiles are pretty much done, except maybe for better transition between base/mid walls.

- The various random facility buildings (barns etc.) now don't have a mix of brick and wood, they're one or the other.