Dalsie's Noob Questions Thread

[Dalsie]

Hi everyone. Eventhough W3 has been out for many, many years now - I only recently starting toying with the editor. I was rather happy when I discovered tvw with its wealth of information.

Still I have many questions about small things in the editor, many of which I have not been able to find answers through searching, and im sure many yet to come.

I will post the questions here in this one thread, in hopes that someone with more expertise will be willing to help a noob...

Thanks in advance

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For the sake of not double posting, il kick off with an edit to first:
- Im having difficulty with changing the terrain texture. It seems once a choose a base terrain for the map, it limits the textures in the palette to textures from the base terrain.
Is there somehow I can access and use the textures from other terrains without changing the whole map?

- Im trying to make a Post Sign like I have seen in many rpg maps, one that is clickable and when clicked simply has the name of the area your in. However the only sign post I can find is the one Under Doodads -> Props, which is not clickable. What am I missing here?

 

[Mr_Bean]

I'm currently making a small test map for the sign post.

EDIT: Here it is.

Note: It could probably be done better (i.e. by making the sign post a doodad instead of a unit) but that's just how I did it.

As for your question about the tileset, you cannot change it too much, but you can swap certain tiles for other ones (go Advanced, Modify Tileset).

 

[Dalsie]

Thanks Mr Bean, had a look at the post approach, I think il use a similar way, except instead of a different trigger event for each post, il just make as many different post items as needed.
Im still having a problem with the tiles though, when I change the tileset via Advanced -> Modify Tileset, it changes what iv already placed on the map as well.

Another thing I was wondering is how to access a native w3 model file? For example, I want to make a doodad from the spirit lodge building, but I only know how to make a custom doodad from a downloaded model?

 

[Ultimatony]

For the doodad - Go to the object editor(f6) go to doodad tab, find the thing you want it like, (easy way would be ctrl + f to search the list) anything in that list you can copy, then paste to make another identical item, and you can change anything about it.

For the tilesets, yeah your stuck with what will fit in the slots.

 

[Dalsie]

I think I didn't ask the question clearly.
I understand howto create a custom doodad and assign a model too it, what im not sure of is the location of native w3 models. For example, i can set the model of a custom doodad to a model I download from here quite easy by ref the path. But what would the path be of a model that is native to w3? - Lets say for example a barracks.

Im still having alot of problems with terrain though. Iv been dling and testing quite a few rpg maps lately, and many of them ( teve for example ) use many, many different terrain tiles. Even in maps where most of the explorable area is composed of 2 tiles, a town could use 2 tiles, interior could use another one - and thats already over the tile choices in the editor. And even then youd have very very basic tiling.

How is it people are using so many different tiles in a map?

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EDIT: Jass New Gen allows a custom tileset of 16, which should be enough for my purposes
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EDIT: As I discover answers to my own questions, il post them here as well, so hopefully this will be of some use to other beginners
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[Vladadamm]

For pass throught the limit, you need to change the terrain tile with a trigger.

 

[Spartipilo]

There's a program (Zephyr Terrain Editor, or something like that) that allows you to add all the tiles and cliffs you want to your Tileset. You can find it in the 'Tools' section of THW. Just be sure to BackUp your map before testing the program and it's features.

The first time I used it it was too complicated for me... so I just added tiles, saved, and used common WE again... And then re-started the map because I did something wrong xD And didn't have a backup.

 

[Zaio]

I think I didn't ask the question clearly.
I understand howto create a custom doodad and assign a model too it, what im not sure of is the location of native w3 models. For example, i can set the model of a custom doodad to a model I download from here quite easy by ref the path. But what would the path be of a model that is native to w3? - Lets say for example a barracks.

If you mean what i think you do, in the trigger editor just create a simple trigger to show you it.

• Special Effect - Create a special effect at (Center of (Playable map area)) using buildings\orc\OrcBarracks\OrcBarracks.mdl

then convert that to custom text and you get

"buildings\\orc\\OrcBarracks\\OrcBarracks.mdl"

Is this what you was after?

 

[Nasin]

For the sign, create a unit, the select the "model" field. There are two dropboxes, select the one that says "Units", change it to Doodads, and then search the other dropbox until you fuínd the sign model.