Revision as of 16:17, 1 August 2017

This article describes the most basic parts of the editor, from first setup to launching a smaller

test level ingame.

Preparation

Before you start using the editor, you need to setup a working directory for your level, campaign or

mod and a scenario info.xml file.

Navigate to your SSBD directory, then go into the folder scenarios, inside here, create a new

folder called mycampaign or whatever you feel like calling it. Inside mycampaign create

yet another folder called levels.

Now you need to set up an info.xml file, this file contains important information about the

scenario.
Create a text document inside the mycampaign folder, name this info.txt, then open it and

paste the following text inside

<info>
	<name>My cool campaign</name>
	<tag>This is the best campaign</tag>
	<description>The end is near, or perhaps not! In any case, this is a really fun level!

</description>	
		
	<players min="1" max="4" />
	
	<start>
		<level name="The Pride of Memphis" lvl="levels/level1.lvl" />
	</start>
</info>

Save the file and rename it to info.xml.

Starting the editor

The editor can be found inside the SSBD install directory, called EDITOR.exe, or as a lunch

option in Steam when you click the Play button.

Workspace

The editor workspace consists of several parts: History, Layers, Properties, Toolbar,

Menus and the Status Bar, the picture below outlines these parts.

Workspace

1. Menu: In the menus you can find most basic functions, like testing the level from the editor

and showing and changing the grid.

1. Tool Bar: Quick shotcuts to such functions like turn on the grid and simulate physics

(recommend to turn simulate physics off).

1. History: Saves your current work progrss so you can undo in steps, sometimes this function

undo twice, so be careful, better not use at all.

1. Layers: Where you choose your work layer, if you don't have Global Selection on, you can

only work in one layer at once.

1. Properties: Used to change properties of a selected unit or script, like what unit to spawn

with a SpawnUnit_WorldScript.

1. Status Bar: Shows the number of units selected, zoom grade and on what co-ordinates the mouse

cursor is at.

Game mode

GameMode settings

Before you start constructing a level, you need to decide what game mode it should have. You should

always do this, since it contains important settings and information about the level. For this tutorial, we would choose Campaign under the tab GameMode in the Layers

panel. The only thing we will change here is the MapName and the CreatorName.

Constructing

Now we will start and produce a small playable level. We will place some tilesets, then on to

building parts and finally some basic scripts to end and start the gameplay with.

Environment and tilesets

Painting a tileset

The absolute first thing you want to do is set a default environmental light of the level, so you can

actually see what you are doing (else everything will be black). Switch to the Lighting tab and

look down a bit until you see Env:, open that list and look close to the bottom, find the

environment called egypt_outside.env.

Now enter the Tilemap tab and scroll down the list until you find a tileset called

egypt_tile_inside_16.tileset, start painting these (Add: Left Mouse Button. Remove: Right

Mouse Button) tiles until you have a good and sturdy ground. There are a few settings in the

Properties panel that you can change, like increase or decrease the size of the paintbrush,

this can also be made with the shortcut CTRL+MWHEEL.

Walls

Almost a room

Two rooms!

Before you start placing walls make sure you set the grid to 16 (either from the menu or

by pressing "5" on the keyboard), standard walls are 16 units thick and this will make sure

they always follow that grid. Now, open the Doodads tab and in the search field, type egypt_fancy. This will list

all units associated with this theme. We are going to use a few different building blocks here, the

following is a list of the units we will be using right now:

• fancy_h.unit
• fancy_v.unit
• fancy_crn_ne.unit
• fancy_crn_nw.unit
• fancy_crn_se.unit
• fancy_crn_sw.unit

Start by selecting fancy_h.unit and place it down using the right mouse button, place a

couple of these to form a long wall. Then move on to the other units and shape a room with a gap.

Just like the image to the right.

When that is done, continue and expand the level so you get two rooms, place a door in between them.

Also, trim the tileset so it won't show outside the walls. Now, let's add some decoration and lamps!

Artpass and lighting

The blue area around the walls are called the void, this is outside the level. You can walk there,

but enemies and other things might start to act strange and it doesn't look too good either. Think of

this as an area you should never see.

The two basic ways to handle this is either to paint over tilesets there, like grass or something

else, or as you can see when you play the first level of the game you notice that there's

roofing on top of the walls making it feel like you are actually inside a temple, this also covers

the void. This is the method we will be using here and to achieve this, search the Doodads tab

for color and you will find units called color_egypt_fancy_*.unit, where * are

different sizes. Pick the one called _512.unit and place them around, so they cover all the

void around the walls.

When that's done, let's place some decorative props around the two rooms, this is a list of units

that I will be placing around (they are all found inside the Doodads tab):

• lamp_torch
• china_* (different vases and things)
• fancy_deco_pillar
• fancy_deco_pillar_blank
• fancy_deco_pillar_large