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Introduction Creating the Level Changing the appearance Populating the level Extra Fluff Objectives The scripts Finishing Touches Back to TheNextGame |
| Changing the Appearance |
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Once you've saved, press escape to go back to the world map, and find a way of opening explorer/whatever you use, funny other platform people! (I always forget to do this first). Anyway, navigate to the Darwinia folder, open up mods, yourmodname (in my case, this is BestModEver), levels, then open the file map_ubermcsuxland.txt, or uh, whatever you called yours... Textures At the moment it looks a bit sparse, but don't worry about that, what you want to change are the landscape_[name].bmp, water_[name].bmp and waves_[name].bmp, or at LEAST the landscape!
I'm going to put a pack together of landscape, water, and waves images that anyone can use, though you'll probably find you'll one day want to make your own ;-;. Remember though, water colours and effects are more important than landscape colours, you'll see why in a minute... Anyway, I'm going to use Landscape_mine.bmp, because you will have that, and keep the default water. Save and close the text file, and return to darwinia, and re-enter your level with the editor. OK so maybe it still looks a bit funny coloured, but that's because we haven't done this yet! Lights Add lights. 2 of them, a high dim one, and a low bright one. That's what looks best! Whee, before and after!
Why are we doing this now? I find that knowing what the level could really look like influences my placing of units, and gives a level a style that otherwise it wouldn't have. Obviously, when you're doing your own thing, you don't have to do this now if you don't want to. |
