Instant Action map making

[ssuser]

Well, I have fired up the editor, and figured out all the terrain editing, object placing, sky/env tweaking and such, but I have a problem - whenever I load a finished map, it exits almost immediately, like I have won the level. I thought It might be a team problem - one tutorial I read said enemy scions should be team 6, so I have placed enemies in the game as both team 2 and 6, with and without spawn points, and yes, I have set the path to instant.dll - so what is wrong? I am placing both friendly and enemy recyclers on the map, along with other units and objects, is this not correct? Is there a tutorial somewhere that can help me on this? Maybe things are different for 1.3.2XXX maps.

Also, am using some premade blank maps, but isn't there a tool somewhere like maketrn from bz1 that lets me create a fresh map, or is this done from the editor, and if so, how? I have searched for a big list of bz2 console commands, but what I have found seems to be scattered here and there and is almost certainly not a complete list.

[Ded10c]

Sounds like you're deleting the enemy Recycler without changing the DLL. If you create an IA map using another as a base, there are a couple of flags you launch the program with. I can't remember if /noscript is one of them, but that and /nobodyhome both prove extremely useful.

I also highly recommend Zero Angel's reworked version of TimeVirus' editor. Amongst other things, it allows you to set these flags more easily at launch.
http://www.timedisruptor.com/forum/view ... 2dec022848

[Red Spot]

You can make your own 'fresh' maps. Iirc you open the editor with a map given and before launching the editor make sure the .trn file isnt available (rename it). This gives you a blank map which than can be saved.

Not sure about above proces but something along those lines will give you a blank map, and by editing the .inf you can decide which size you want your blank map to be.

The 'noscript' flag prevents stuff to be added to the map when you launch it in the editor, which saves you from having to delete every object that got created by dll, including the recyclers, which should be spawned by the dll in order to allow variants.
The dll, iirc, removes the spawnpoints at start and remembers this location, so if you run a map without the 'noscript' flag the dll will spawn recy's and than remove the spawnpoint. If you now save the map you no longer have spawnpoints on the map and so the dll doesnt know where both sided base areas are and might choke on not spotting recy's that are placed by dll (however iirc the recy-code is generalised by GSH to allow for secondairy recy's and so checks for existing recy's before giving game over conditions).

You could also use Winter to make blank 'flat' maps, but that includes a few extra steps, that being said, as a mapper you probably will love Winter. Not sure where you can find in nowdays though, BZScrap probably has it though.

[General BlackDragon]

In your map, IA uses path points to determine starting recycler position.

"Recycler" is your Recy. "EnemyRecycler" is enemy's recy. Paths are CASE sensetive, so the capital letters matter.

Use Shift+F9 to enter/exit Path editor. It's the same as BZ1's otherwise.

[ssuser]

Thanks for the tips, guys, I will do some more experimenting and see what I can do.

I think I already have a copy of Winter, grabbed a ton of stuff off of bzscrap a while back.

I have also noticed some Instant Action map troubles with other ppls maps: mainly, it seems that any map with it's own dll and aip will load and spawn units (but I still have to put the dll into the missions folder) but the Matriarch will just sit and not deploy, I am assuming some code change in 1.3.6xxx is causing this as well. So far, only an old map "Greenland" has run right, and it has neither custom dll or AIP, but the game seemed to be able to point right to its stock AIPs for the mission, as the ISDF (enemy here) built plenty of units to send at me.

Where are some good IA maps that should run right in 1.3xxx patches? The stuff at bzscrap seems to be very old, and I get "page not found" errors at other map sites, at still other places there are maps listed in a huge mod, which I don't want to mess with right now as this stuff was probably not built to work under 1.3xxx

[Zero Angel]

An MPI map that I made in PB3 stopped working in 6.2 . Moving the RecyclerEnemy path point away from the cliff edge and/or flattening the area around the spawn point a little better seemed to have helped.

[Red Devil]

just add this to the rec vehicle:

[DeployBuildingClass]
DoExtraBuildzoneCheck = false // false = 1.0 .. 1.3pb1 behavior, true = pb2 .. current

[ssuser]

Well, I have made some progress... got a working map now, as it turns out, you need for pathing points: Recycler, for yours, and RecyclerEnemy for the bad guys, with friendly as team 1 and enemy as team FIVE (not six, I hate those inaccurate tutorials).

Also, the game complained about other pathpoints not existing, such as hold1 and hold2, which seem to be for enemy staging zones, so I added those in. Is there a link to a place that would list ALL the pathpoints for the stock 1.3.6.2 instant.dll plan?

My main problem now is this: every I time I load the map it spawns a Matriarch for me, not an ISDF Recycler, and it is in the F2 group, so I am guessing the game is automatically assigning me as scions, NOT what I want. I have been launching these maps from the command line, and I don't know if there is a way to add parameters from here to choose options.

I also recall reading in a blurb from one of the patchlogs that "addon assets will be added to the core game" and I am wondering if the map is supposed to show up in the Instant section of the map shell, it does not for me (and yes, it has an INF and DES file present in the addon). So how can I launch the map with the options I want, (team, difficulty, starting force, etc.) whether from the shell, or the console, or the command line if necessary?

[Red Devil]

custom iA maps need to be in addon\missions\instant so that they will show up in the IA list in the shell. after completion, just the .bzn needs to be there, but having the .inf file there is nice to have there for tweaking.


Enemy path points:

"RecyclerEnemy"

"turretEnemy1"
"turretEnemy2"

"gtow2"
"gtow3"
"gtow4"
"gtow5"

"Hold1"
"Hold2"
"Hold3"
"Hold4"

"SentryEnemy1"
"SentryEnemy2"
"SentryEnemy3"

"tankEnemy1"
"tankEnemy2"
"tankEnemy3"
"TankEnemy3"
"ScavengerEnemy"

stage1..stage4 are the defaults used by AIP's by the Attacker plan type (not specified in the plan) and are randomized in stock, but stage1..stage32 are now allowed.

any of these path points can be used by the Hold plan type in AIP's


Human path points:

"Recycler"

"Scavenger"

"Turret1"
"Turret2"
"Turret3"

"Scout1"
"Scout2"
"Scout3"

"Tank1"
"Tank2"
"Tank3"
"tank1"
"tank2"
"tank3"

used in old Thug/Pilot mode to supply powerups at intervals, but still available for DLL/AIP use:

"ammo1"
"ammo2"
"ammo3"

"repair1"
"repair2"
"repair3"

"power1"
"power2"
"power3"
"power4"


mpic/C#_scionunit_isdfunit

mpih/H#_scionunit_isdfunit


examples:

mpic1_fvturr_ivturr

mpiH1_fvturr_ivturr

these can be used to spawn starting units depending on race


as for command line launching, you can set the MP varbs for those settings like so (from ChangeLog_pb2.txt). not sure if you can use this method to set the IA 'options.instant.*' varbs:

- Added commandline param "/ivar X Y", (e.g. "/ivar 13 102"), which
sets the specified ivar's initial value from the commandline. Note
that in the shell, selecting any map will probably override
this. However, this is great for launching MP maps from the
commandline, e.g. mpibridges. [NM]

[ssuser]

Thank you very much, Red Devil, this should help alot. I thought maps just went into their own folder name off the addon, the conflicting install info different ppl give depending on patch/era is confusing. Hopefully this will let me launch from the shell, which will cure my above problem.

Thanks also for the path point info, this ought to be in a tutorial somewhere, but I haven't seen it in any docs for editing anywhere.

How exactly does bz2 dig for assets off the addon? I assume anything in root addon will override the PAK, but I tried an old map named "Dropship" by 1st Omet, I think, which had a reference to a custom old style bz1 plasma. This was in its own subfolder, but the next time I ran a stock SP bz2 map, I noticed the console complaining about that missing plasma file. I wouldn't think bz2 would look in the "Dropship" folder unless it was running that specific map. Strange.

[Ded10c]

Take a look in bzone.cfg; stuff nearer the top gets loaded first, and once a file is loaded any duplicates won't load on top. In other words, stuff at the top takes precedence.

The default order for this is thus;
-addon folder
-maps13 folder
-patch13.pak
-data.pak
-data folder

The console message should only come up if the file is completely missing. Check the file referenced by the editor actually exists in the "addon" folder/subfolder thereof. As far as I know, subfolders mean nothing to the engine (and files with the same name in different addon subfolders will trigger the duplicate assets message on startup).

[Red Spot]

... enemy as team FIVE (not six, I hate those inaccurate tutorials).

Were you following a guide for IA or MPI mapmaking? Cause depending on which that may be very correct, or incorrect .. iirc

[General BlackDragon]

IIRC: IA = 5, MPI = 6.

[Red Devil]

ssuser, if you have a custom map file directly under addon iy detects that as an SP map and if it has assets in/on it that are not in the search list when using the tock cfg , it may notice. not 100% sure, but easy enough to experiment with it.

[ssuser]

Yeah, I'll have to experiment and see just what it picks up on, insofar as getting custom stuff in goes, probably a special dll is required for things to really work.

Red Spot, tutorial stated TEAm 6, for IA missions, but it seemed to be a pretty old tutorial, probably as 1.3xxx has progressed ppl have not kept all the nitty gritty details up to date.