Documenting WorldEd

Discussion in 'ToEE Toolset Project Documentation' started by Shiningted, May 28, 2015.

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  1. Shiningted

    Shiningted I changed this damn title, finally! Administrator

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    With the revelation that WorldEd is openly available in the Polish patch (see THIS thread if you don't yet have it) time to codify what we know. Please feel free to add suggestions, opinion or questions below and this first post can be updated as we become sure of more. Note the Co8 bias here (as against KotB) - we just have to wear that ;) It's also a dead give-away I didn't do all this work, just publishing it.


    1. Interface

    Here's a description of the cryptic right panel buttons.

    The "Environment" Tab
    --------------------------

    First row, left to right:
    1) Arrow - selection tool, use it to just select stuff without adding anything to the map or making any alternations to existing stuff.
    2) Red "Stop" Sign - deletion tool, use it to remove things from the map; useful when deleting pathnodes, lights, mobs, etc.
    3) Green tile - Tile material painting tool; use it to paint tile materials, such as stone, water, etc. These affect surface sounds. In order to see what you are painting, make sure "View -> Tiles -> Tile Materials" is enabled. Gray = deepwater, brown = dirt, orange = fire, green = grass, silverish gray = ice, dark green = marsh, dark gray = metal, brownish gray = stone, blue = water, dark brown = wood.
    4) Tree - Scenery placement tool; use the selection checkbox below to select the scenery type; note that not all scenery types are actually available, most are empty Arcanum leftovers. After you choose the category, click the "Select" button to choose a specific scenery object, then place it on the map.

    Second row, left to right:
    1) Really non-descript blackish object - usable scenery placement tool; use it to place treasure chests. The only category available here appears to be "Empty Chest" that contains all sorts of treasure chests; everything else appears to be an Arcanum leftover.
    2) Letter "T" - supposedly used to place traps and trapsources, but appears to be a thing left over from Arcanum because such traps are likely not to be a part of the ToEE code (and you can't really choose anything anyway).
    3) A light - light placement tool. Guess what, can be used to place lights. Make sure "View -> Objects -> Lights" is enabled before placing lights. Click on the map to place a light, then right-click the light and choose "View controls" to make the light edition handles appear. Use the marker on the red circle to extend/shrink the light radius and set the light direction, use the yellow marker to adjust the light height. Right-click the light and choose "Edit" to access the detailed light properties similar to ToEEWB.
    4) Some kind of a white/black 3D object outline - used to place depth art geometry (.dag) on the map. Use the "select" button to import .dag files. A similar button below allows to place 3D geometry (.skm) on the map.

    Third row, left to right:
    1. A straight line - Normal height painting tool. Use it to paint tiles that have normal height. Use "View -> Tiles -> Tile Height" to actually see what you're painting. Tiles that have normal height are not marked in any particular color.
    2. A slightly curved line - Paint lower height (shallow water) tiles (marked in blue if Tile Height viewing is enabled).
    3. A deeply curved line - Paint lowest height (deep water) tiles (marked in purple if Tile Height viewing is enabled).
    4) Some kind of a white/black 3D object outline - used to place 3D geometry (.skm) on the map. Use the "select" button to import skm files. A similar button above allows to place depth art geometry (.dag) on the map.

    The "Items" Tab
    --------------------------

    First row, left to right:
    1) Arrow - selection tool, use it to just select stuff without adding anything to the map or making any alternations to existing stuff.
    2) Red "Stop" Sign - deletion tool, use it to remove things from the map; when deleting pathnodes, lights, mobs, etc.
    3) General items.
    4) Weapons.

    Second row, left to right:
    1) Armor.
    2) Food, potions, beverage.
    3) Diaries, books, journals, etc.
    4) Scrolls.

    Third row, left to right:
    1) Arrows, bolts, etc.
    2) Money
    3) Keys
    4) Unused

    The "Edit" Tab
    --------------------------

    First row, left to right:
    1) Arrow - selection tool, use it to just select stuff without adding anything to the map or making any alternations to existing stuff.
    2) Red "Stop" Sign - deletion tool, use it to remove things from the map; useful when deleting pathnodes, lights, mobs, etc.
    3) TS - Tile scripts assignment tool. Not sure if this works, I asked Steve and I'm still waiting for his response.
    4) TB - Tile blocker painting tool. Paints blocked tiles (in red). Make sure "View -> Tile -> Tile Blockers" is enabled before using. Also used for clearing blocking.

    Second row, left to right:
    1) Non-descript yellow object with what appears to be a black arrow - paint "fly over" tiles that block your path but that flyers can fly over. Paints them in yellow color.
    2) Similar to above - paint "fly over + cover" tiles, that block your path, that flyers can fly over, and that provide cover (paints fly-over subtiles in yellow and 'cover' tiles in cyan).
    3) Blue and pink squares - place path nodes; use it to place path nodes on your map. You can delete them by using the "stop sign" tool.
    4) VN - remove sector visibility blocking (SVB); use it to get rid of the SVBed areas. Make sure "Tools -> Tile Vision Editing" is enabled, as well as "View -> Tiles -> Vision ..." modes are enabled.

    Third row, left to right:
    1) VX - paints svb bit 1, "visibility extender" (painted in gray color). Visibility extends here when you're in front of the object, and objects are partly grayed out when behind the object because it's considered solid. Paint this over the walls and other solid objects which are supposed to block the view from behind.
    2) VE - paints svb bit 4, "visibility ender" (painted in green color). Visibility stops here when you're in front of the object (e.g. in front of the wall so that you can't see what's behind the wall). Paint this, e.g., on top of the walls so that visibility doesn't extend beyond the wall when looking from the front.
    3) VB - paints svb bit 2, "visibility base" (painted in blue color).
    4) VA - paints svb bit 3, "visibility archway" (painted in dark red color).

    The "Build" Tab
    --------------------------

    First row, left to right:
    1) Arrow - selection tool, use it to just select stuff without adding anything to the map or making any alternations to existing stuff.
    2) Red "Stop" Sign - deletion tool, use it to remove things from the map; useful when deleting pathnodes, lights, mobs, etc.
    3) A door - Used to place doors. Select a door type by clicking the "Select" button.
    4) An object that looks like a window - Was used in Arcanum to create windows. It's a leftover feature.

    Second row, left to right:
    1) Letter P - Arcanum leftover (see Arcanum Worlded manual).
    2) An explosion - Kill critter tool. Can be used to kill mobs by setting their hit points to -10.

    The "Critters" Tab
    --------------------------

    First row, left to right:
    1) Arrow - selection tool, use it to just select stuff without adding anything to the map or making any alternations to existing stuff.
    2) Red "Stop" Sign - deletion tool, use it to remove things from the map; useful when deleting pathnodes, lights, mobs, etc.
    3) Face symbol - creature placement tool; choose a creature type, then a specific creature, and then place it on the map.

    2. Peculiarities and features
    - ToEE Worlded is actually a quickly rigged ToEE counterpart of the good ol' Arcanum Worlded. Many features were left unchanged, even if they no longer work (called "Arcanum leftovers"). The online manual for the original Arcanum Worlded, which may be useful to track possible leftover features and generally understand the worlded engine, can be found here: http://users.senet.com.au/~dbschah/resources/worlded_manual.htm
    - There appears to be only one way to scroll the map: enable Num Lock on your keyboard, then use the NumPad 2,4,6,8 buttons to scroll in one direction, or NumPad 1,3,7,9 to scroll diagonally.

    3. Things NOT to do in Worlded (or it will crash)
    - Do NOT click the "Top-down" button on the right panel, it'll crash (Arcanum leftover).
    - Do NOT try to create a new module with worlded, it's not going to work (Arcanum leftover).
    - Do NOT right click on a portal (door, ladder) to edit it's properties, click the set jump point button (flat, wide thing near the bottom) and click 'edit' on the screen that pops up. This will turn your jumppoint.tab to gibberish (mashes up all the entries), though it won't crash the editor.

    4. Tips and Tricks
    - Use CTRL 1, 2, 3, and 4 to change between tile blocker brush sizes without having to go to the drop down menu. 1 is one semi tile, 2 is two semi tiles, 3 is three semi tiles, and 4 is three full tiles.
    - The 'water' and 'marsh' sounds editable in the Environment tab are the same thing in ToEE. Not sure about 'deep water.' Using water sounds of any kind doesn't look right if there is no water (ripples/splashes etc.) actually depicted on the map.
    - .DAG Clippers can be scaled; maybe it's not as useful at the moment, but then again - who knows, maybe you can adapt some existing DAG clipper to meet our clipping needs? In order to scale DAG clippers, enable "View -> Clippers -> Handles" first (and it's better if you use "Fill Zbuffer" at the same time to actually see the clippers); then, drag the white "dots" that appear over the clippers to scale them in different directions.
    - Before generating townmaps, be sure to set all pertinent tile and object viewing options to off ('View' menu - Tiles/Objects - ...'). If you don't, all those things will appear in your townmap. This might not be worth mentioning if it didn't take so long to generate townmaps.
    - You can't paint material height (environment tab, third row) with the largest tile blocker brush size.

    5. How-Tos

    How to add sensible lights to a map, such as lanterns that burn during the night but not during the day, in WorldEd:

    • Select the lights button from the environment tab.
    • Click somewhere on your map and a light will magically appear (doesn't look like a light, just some geometric shapes).
    • Right click your light and select 'edit.'
    • In the panel that opens, insert the name of a particle effect (e.g. 'ef-Lantern') into the appropriate field on the right (night time) side.
    • Do NOT inset the particle effect name in the field on the left (primary) side.
    • Do NOT check the checkbox next to 'particle effect' on either the left (primary) or right (night) side. Apparently, in the world of Troika, not checking a box means "verily, it shall be so, for as sure as the night is long."
    • Click the color box on the left (primary) side and choose straight black. Why are you adding a color for a light that is neither checked/enabled nor has a particle effect entered? No idea.
    • Click the color box on the right (night) side and choose a light tan color (will probably need to be custom - this is the color of the light you'll see at night).
    • Click 'okay.'
    What will this do for you? Well, unlike other original lights on maps that work properly, this will cause a light to become illuminated at nightfall only after you scroll away from it on the map and then scroll back, sometimes immediately, other times not so immediately. These lights, sometimes, will also burn progressively brighter each time you scroll away and back until they are virtual beacons of inferno-like intensity visible through the darkness for miles around. Other times they'll be normal. Meh, at least they burn one way or the other.

    There is also no guarantee that you won't still arbitrarily encounter sectoring-jerk-stop issues after adding these lights (where the lights hyper-burn so brightly as to cause damage to your monitor). This happened to me yesterday after I added like a hundred of them to the new Verbo map for every one of those little lamp posts that line the streets. Once again, no idea why, but I guess ours is not to know such things.

    Note: it's easier in a way to add the lights to the map via World Builder and then position them later with WorldEd, but you have to take care to add the lights only to coordinates within the sector you're editing in WorldBuilder. WorldEd will display them otherwise, but will stubbornly refuse to allow them to be moved or deleted and will start acting crotchedy and you'll probably get hyper-burn in the end and have to just delete them with WorldBuilder anyway.

    How to create day/night transfers in WorldEd:

    • Create a .mob that needs to be in one place during the day and another place during the night.
    • Right click the .mob and select Edit.
    • In the Edit box, click on the 'Standpoint (Day)' or 'Standpoint (Night)' box, depending on whether you want the .mob to be on another map during the day or night. This will open jumppoint.tab. It's best to have a predefined standpoint for your .mob in jumppoint.tab.
    • Select your jumppoint from jumppoint.tab and click okay.
    • Click okay in the Edit box.
    • Click Save in the top left corner of the main screen.
    • Go to the Tools dropdown menu and click 'Daynight Standpoint Process.'
    • Click 'Yes.'
    WorldEd will do its thing with various maps and elements thereof that you didn't tell it to, because it's apparently a module-wide procedure, like generating townmaps. You must start a new game to see your changes. Also note that doing this will remove all entries from daynight.nxd generated by World Builder, so watch out.

    How to add existing ToEE DAG files to your map:

    • click the little wacky dag art button in the environment tab
    • click 'select' down below
    • navigate to yourt DATs - ToEE1/art/clip - and all the original map folders with their various .dag files will be laid out for you there
    You can import any number of these different files to a single map without overwriting anything. This means you can, for example, have stuff from Hommlet Exterior and Temple Level 4 and the good vignette all together on your single custom map. It's actually quite workable and useful, as a lot of the clipping files are sort of generic - just a rectangle or a line that can be used to form the edge of a building or one of the numerous beams that frame ToEE's many interiors.

    Clippers not lining up right? As Ag has pointed out, you can adjust them in five ways to match your art. (You may need to do this if, for example, you distort of skew the art for your custom map). Most sets of clippers come with five 'handles:' one to simply move the clips around, one to widen or narrow them, one to heighten or shorten them, one to change their rotation, and one to skew/distort them.

    In order to use all this stuff, you have to have all the clipping-related info checked as displayed in the View menu.

    6. Where To Find ... (frequently used items & Co8 content)

    Note: as per the current version of Co8, new custom critters tabs have been added for the major Co8 expansions (numbers 2, 7, 11, 17, 19, 20).

    Also, 'Shop Map' has been changed to 'Generic' (there was nothing in there anyway but the original shopkeeper) and now contains all the custom Co8 generic protos like generic spawners, et al.

    Note that with Co8 protos, preference is given to the mod of origin rather than monster type or anything like that. So your custom goblin won't be found in the 'humanoids' family, but rather in your mod's category. This helps to avoid having to make guesses as to which proto is really the one you're looking for, in the case of common monsters.

    Under Critters Tab - top row, 3rd button from left
    1. Animals
    2. Arena of Heroes
    3. Elementals
    4. Encounters
    5. General monsters
    6. Generic
    7. Hickory Branch
    8. Hommlet
    9. Humanoids
    10. Moathouse
    11. Moathouse Respawn
    12. Nulb
    13. Outsiders
    14. Plant creatures
    15. Temple
    16. Undead
    17. Verbobonc
    18. Vignettes
    19. War of the Golden Skull
    20. Welkwood Bog

    Under Environment Tab - top row, far right button

    Misc. - miscellaneous scenery objects
    Passage - door, ladder, and stairs icons
    Tree - trees and bushes, etc.​
    Under Environment Tab - 2nd row, far left button

    Empty Chests - chests​
     
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  2. Shiningted

    Shiningted I changed this damn title, finally! Administrator

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    WorldEd Shops Revealed! - The Unnecessarily Arduous Process of Making a Shopkeeper

    This actually shouldn't be a 'revelation' to anyone - I'm sure we all figured WorldEd could do it - but here are the steps (with a few snags) to making a functioning shopkeeper in WorldEd anyway.

    Disclaimer: I'm finding more and more that WorldEd, much like ToEE itself, operates in the netherworld of computer software. Things work one time, but not the next. I offer no explanations for why this is. It just is. I am pretty sure it's not me mucking things up though.

    Step 1 - Create an entry in invensource.mes that has all the items you want in your shop.

    Step 2 - Create an inventory chest in protos.tab and assign it the invensource entry you just created above. (BTW, let me say here that WorldBuilder remains an invaluable tool when it comes to proto-editing, among other things.) This would seem unnecessary, as there are already empty generic chests in protos.tab that could be used for this purpose, but WorldEd doesn't like populating them with entries from invensource.mes. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Best just to make your own chest with the invensource entry predefined. Chests go in the 10xx range in protos.tab, btw.

    Step 3 - Place your shopkeeper (NPC or chest icon, like in the shopmap) in your map with WorldEd.

    Step 4 - Place your inventory chest in your map with WorldEd. Chests are found under the Environment tab, second row, far left button. Choose 'empty chest' from the dropdown menu and find your chest.

    Step 5 - Right click your chest and click 'edit.' Check the 'don't draw,' 'see through,' 'shoot through,' no block,' 'click through,' and 'don't light' boxes on the right. Check 'locked' also if you want it locked and assign a lock DC and key entry on the left as appropriate. Then click the drop-down menu for Inventory Source and reselect your invensource entry. This is important. If you don't do it, your chest will probably be empty in-game. Note that WorldEd doesn't mind reselecting the current entry, but it doesn't like selecting a new entry, as indicated above. Click OK.

    Step 6 - Right click your chest and click 'Remember for Substitute.' Click OK.

    Step 7 - Right click your NPC (the actual in-game shopkeeper) and click 'Set Substitute Inventory.' If you click that without having first done step 6, WORLDED WILL YELL AT YOU!

    Step 8 - Click Save on the main screen.

    This should get your shopkeeper up and running in the game properly. I've tested every which way and can't get any CTDs after buying ammo and potions, etc. (stackable stuff). However, note these wacky things:

    • Ammo will be stacked in your shop automatically. So if you have 5 quivers of arrows enumerated in invensource.mes, they'll just all be bundled together in-game anyway.
    • The quantity of stacked ammo seems very hit and miss. 1 invensource.mes entry of arrows = 200 arrows for me atm. 1 entry of bolts = 230 bolts. 8 entries of bullets = 100 bullets. I have no idea why this is and it seems to change at random.
    • Arrows and bolts will always be placed before bows and crossbows respectively in your shop, no matter what order they appear in in invensource.mes. Bullets however will appear wherever indicated in invensource.mes.
    • If your shop inventory still doesn't appear in-game, go back to WorldEd and reselect the Inventory Source entry again.
    • I have one particular entry in invensource.mes that WorldEd hates and refuses to load, crashing when you try. I tediously rebuilt the entry in invensource.mes and verified there are no errors. All the entries are legit also. WorldEd still hates it anyway and refuses to load it. Voodoo I say, voodoo. [edit] Oh, this entry did work (you guessed it) one time.
     
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