Once you're back in WorldEd with your map open, press the 'home' key to jump to your building. Now, the building you have built is too close to the edge. Not for any particular reason, but it's better to build your village/town in the middle of the map. That way, if the player wanders out of the city area, they will have a long walk to get to the edge. This gives the impression of the land going forever because no-one's going to run right to the edge of the map if it's too far away. (Which means you can put some secret buildings way, way out there if you really want :). Only the truly dedicated player would ever find them.)

So, how do we move our building? You can't. There is no cut and paste tool in WorldEd. (As someone once said on a bulletin board, "It would save some major carpel-tunnel if there was." That's in reference to carpel-tunnel syndrome which is a repetative strain injury that you can get from doing the same wrist movements constantly....) Anyway, the only way to move your building is to delete it and then rebuild it where you want. To delete a building you have to do it piece by piece, wall by wall, roof by roof. (Didn't I say building was fun?) So make sure the roof is visible (press 'R' if necessary), click on the 'build' tab, select the 'destroy' button and then hold down the 'Ctrl' key while you click on the roof. Delete all of the roof sections. Once the roof is gone, start on the walls. As you Ctrl-click on the walls with doors and windows on them, the doors and windows will be destroyed as well. Eventually, all you will be left with is a floor of dark wood. To remove the wood, you will have to 'paste' over it with grass. To do this, click on the 'environment' tab and select the 'terrain' tool. (The green diamond as in Figure 8.1)

Figure 8.1 - The Terrain Tool

In the little black window on the left menu a picture of 'drt' will appear. We don't want dirt, we want green grass so click the 'select' button beneath the picture and a dialog box should pop up. This is a selection of all the available terrains for Arcanum. Click on 'grsbse0a' and the dialog box will close automatically. Now click and drag all over the wooden floor in the map view. Paste over all of the wood until all you have left is nice green grass. Click 'save' to save your blank grassy map.

Now change into top-down view, zoom out, and scroll towards the very top right corner of your map. Scroll down and count until you reach the third sector from the top. (Remember to count the very top corner sector as the first sector, the next sector down will be the second and so on...) Because this is a 5 x 5 map, the third sector will be in the middle. Now, scroll left and count to the third sector in. This will be the center sector of your map. (Incidentally, whenever you open your map, you start off in the middle. This is useful if you have a big map and get lost. Just save and then reopen the map to be back in the middle) Let's build a small village here shall we?

Before you ever start building, it's good to have an idea of what kind of place you are building. In this instance, we are building a village. For the purposes of this tutorial, let's build a building like that shown in Figure 8.2 below.

Figure 8.2 - The village Building we will TRY to build

Now that we have a plan, click the 'build' tab. Click the 'build' icon and keep clicking 'next' until you find '22 Village - Thatched Roof'. Drag out a 3 x 4 building. (3 x 4 = 12 being the number of pink squares that are inside your building) like that shown in Figure 8.3

Figure 8.3 - A 3 x 4 Building

This will be the right hand side of our house. Let's build the next part now. To do this, click within your 3 x 4 building and drag out left to create a 3 x 3 add-on. Like in Figure 8.4

Figure 8.4 - Just before we let go of the mouse button

Now, notice that what was going to be your internal wall has disappeared? This is what happens when you drag over it to build other parts of your building. But don't worry, we'll rebuild it later. First of all, let's divide the right part of our house in to a top and bottom section. To do this we have to build a single wall. What we have been doing so far is clicking and dragging out areas. This builds walls with a set terrain type on the ground (usually a dark floor tile) and it will also create a roof for the building. Building single walls only puts in that wall, no roof and no floor tiles. (The only way to build roof is by clicking and dragging out areas, which is why you always build the outline of your building first, then build the internal walls.)

To build single walls you have to click on top of a pink dot and drag in a straight line to another pink dot. To build the wall we want, click on the pink dot that is half way up the right hand wall of your building and drag left three pink 'squares'. See Figure 8.5 below for a better idea. (A is where we are dragging from, B is where we are dragging to.)

Figure 8.5 - Dragging out a single wall		Figure 8.6 - After we let go of the mouse

Do you notice how the wall has been built on the top-side of the pink dots? What you find is that whenever you drag out a horizontal wall like this, it will always be built on the top side of the pink dots. If you now look down at the bottom wall of your house, you will see that is was built on the bottom side of the pink dots. This is because whenever you drag out an area, the walls are always built on the outside of the pink dots in that area. So, (if that made any sense what-so-ever) you may well be asking, "What happens when a wall that's on one side of the pink dots, meets a wall that's been made on the other side of the pink dots?" You're about to find out.... MUAHAHAHAH!!! (Evil laughter)

Let's build our other internal wall now, so that we can create 3 nice, neat little rooms. To do this, find the pink dot that's right in the middle of the top wall and drag down until you meet the outside wall at the bottom. See Figure 8.7 below (Again, we're dragging from point A to point B).

Figure 8.7 - Before we let go of the mouse		Figure 8.8 - After we let go of the mouse

Do you see what I see? A gap in our lovely wall? Change to Isometric view and have a look at it from there. It doesn't look good does it? Well, change back to top-down view and muck around a bit. Try re-dragging the wall, try dragging from another way. Try crossing your fingers. In the end, you'll probably only make things worse and end up with a few more horrid walls in funny places. Maybe even some like in Figure 8.9 below.

Figure 8.9 - Some fun you can have by trying to drag over existing outside walls.

This is the bane of building. I have had to re-design entire nicely laid out cities because of this. (The first city I ever tried to build, I designed on graph paper first and then threw out the graph paper because a lot of my nicely designed buildings ended up with this problem). Now this only occurs with the bottom and left outside walls of buildings. How do you get around this problem then? Well, you have to redesign the building. In our case, you could flip it upside down or back to front, either way would be a good work around. See Figures 8.10 and 8.11

Figure 8.10 - The building re-designed upside down		Figure 8.11 - The building re-designed back to front

I haven't found anyone who can fix this problem (if you can, TELL ME!!!) So, we have to delete our building. But this time, instead of doing it wall by wall and roof piece by roof piece, you have two other options. Option 1: If the last time you saved was with a blank green map, then you can reload (This is why I ALWAYS save before I start creating a new building, and I never save until I have finished that building and am happy with it). Option 2: In top-down view, right-click on the map. From the options that pop-up, choose the last one, 'delete'. This will let you delete the ENTIRE sector. (The area between the yellow lines in top-down view) Because this is the only building you have, click 'yes' and presto! A green grassy map again! Of course, choosing this option if you have another building in the same sector will destroy that building as well, along with any other type of terrain, scenery, items and critters you may have in that sector. That menu with the 'delete' option also appears if you right click on any type of terrain in isometric view.

You should now know enough about building to build your own village (or city)! Muck around with building types, check them out, see what they look like. If you want, you can take a peek at them in Arcanum. Remember, you'll have to change the start location in the 'MapList.mes' file in the 'Arcanum\Modules\NAME OF MOD\Rules' directory. Choose a start location that's near one of your muck around buildings, otherwise you'll start up in the top right hand corner of your map (the last place we started in this tutorial) and you'll have a long walk to get to your buildings. (If you don't get lost in all that grassland!) You'll then have to save and close 'MapList.mes' and save your map.

IMPORTANT NOTE: At some point in time you are going to have problems compressing your module. This is because compressing is really only to be used when you are finished and ready to distribute your module. This is why you can actually play your module without compressing it. As long as all the files are under your 'Arcanum\modules\NAME OF MOD' directory, Arcanum will pick them up and let you choose your module and play it. Now, seeing as all the files are under the right directory by default, all you have to do is save your map and load Arcanum. But... That means there cannot be a compressed version of your module in the 'Arcanum\modules' directory. So, delete the 'NAME OF MOD.dat' file (that we created in Part 1) from your 'Arcanum\modules\' directory now. Then you will be able to simply save your map and load your module in Arcanum.

Once you feel pretty confident at building, get back into WorldEd and delete everything you've done (right-click on the map and choose 'delete' in every sector that has a building). It's time to build some terrain. (You didn't think I'd let you keep those buildings without a permit did you?)

If you're going to build a village or city with a street or a lake, it's best to build the terrain first, and then put the buildings in afterwards. That way, you can get the right size for your lake and street and then put the buildings in. If you build the buildings first and then realise that you haven't left enough room for the street, you have to remodel your buildings (which is something to avoid unless you really want to muck around a lot). So, let's start off by putting in a nice lake.

Click the 'Environment' tab, select the Terrain tool (the green diamond) and click 'select'. Now you should have a large range of terrain to choose from. Use the arrow buttons at the bottom of the dialog box to scroll through them. NOTE: I have trouble scrolling left with those buttons. If I click the left arrow, I scroll to a screen of blank blue squares. If this happens, just hit 'cancel' and then 'select' again to reload. The water terrain we want is 'dwrbse0a'. Click on it. Now, paint a lake on the map. Nothing huge. Just a small round lake. Maybe more of a pond. You can paint terrain in either the top-down view or isometric view. I usually flick between both to get it right. Now how about we put in a street? First of all, let's put in a sidewalk. There are two sidewalk terrains, 'WK1bse0a' and 'WK2bse0a'. Pick whatever one you want and paint a sidewalk next to your lake. Something like Figure 9.1 below.

Figure 9.1 - A side of lake, a lump of plants (there by default) and a sidewalk

If you have a lump of plants in the way like I do and you want to get rid of them, click the 'destroy' icon and then click on the plants. De-Weeding can be annoying if there's lots to do. Some people suggest starting with a water based map and then filling it with green grass. That way you don't have any random plants to start off with. (To do this, you'll have to make a new map, save it over the old one for the time-being and then, right-click and select 'Fill with tile type…' and choose grass. You'll have to do it to every sector, so if the map is big, it'll be a lot of filling, plus if you ever want to put in random terrain, it's gonna take a long time putting all the plants in individually… If you do this, you'll have to repaint your lake and your sidewalk).

Now, we have a sidewalk, let's build a street. So, choose a terrain type that looks good as a street. Paste it next to the sidewalk and then paste sidewalk next to that. If you're stuck, try 'TS1bse0a' as your street and paste it on the map like in figure 9.2 below.

Figure 9.2 - A street with sidewalks ('TS1bse0a' as the street and 'WK2bse0a' as sidewalk)

Got the hang of it now? Now build a street like that in Figure 9.3 below.

Figure 9.3 - A little street scene

Once you have your street, put in three buildings in positions A, B and C like on Figure 9.3. Building 'A' will eventually have a trapdoor down to a rat-infested cellar, building 'B' will eventually be a Smithy and Building 'C' will be a Library. It doesn't matter what type of wall you use for your buildings, just make 3 buildings that fit the street. Don't make any of the buildings bigger than 6 x 6 squares at the moment. Build internal walls where you see fit but make sure your buildings have a room for these things. Building A: Should have a main/entrance room, a bedroom and another small room where the trapdoor to the cellar will be. Building B: The Village Smithy will need a main room for trading, perhaps 2 x 3, and a bedroom, perhaps 1 x 2. Building C: Should have one main room for books and a small bedroom. Don't worry too much about sizes at the moment, you're only learning. Later on, when we get to filling buildings with objects, you'll have a better understanding of how big a room should be.

In case you were, wondering.. No, we won't be deleting this lot of buildings. So feel free to put a bit of effort into them if you want. Or you can just whack something together quickly like I did.

Once you have your buildings, it's time to build sidewalk all around them. Personally, I built a dirt path to the door of Building A and put sidewalk around the others. Not that hard. If you accidentally paste sidewalk inside one of your buildings, just choose a terrain that matches the flooring in the building and paste over it. (You might have to try a few different terrains before you find the right one). If you'd like to know, I chose wall types that I thought would match the type of buildings they are. Building A '22 Villlage - Thatched Roof', Building B '4 Grey Stone - 2' and Building C '7 Beige Stone - Nice Interior'. One other thing, build main entrance doors on the left or bottom walls of a building. Because Arcanum is Isometric, putting doors on the right or top walls would make them hidden from view.

Figure 9.4 - The Village that Jack Built. (Well, my name's not Jack, but anyway…)

Once you've put in doors and windows, it'll be time to add a few more things to our map. Namely, some scenery!

In Arcanum, scenery is everything that sits in the background. All those suits of armour that you've seen in the Smithy, the street lamps on corners, the carts lying around the place, the beds… You get the idea. So, we know that we want some lovely scenery in our map. How do we put it in? Simple. First of all, let's put in some beds. Click on the 'environment' tab. A new set of buttons will appear on the left hand menu. As usual 'select' and 'destroy' are the first two (these buttons are on every tab). The next one along is the terrain diamond. Let's go through the rest:

Click on the 'scenery' button. By default a bed will appear in the left hand menu. To change the type of bed you have to click 'edit'. If you click 'select', (like you do with terrain) you will notice that there is nothing there except the default bed. So, click 'edit' and a whole range of beds should pop up. Choose a bed that you think would fit in with your Building A. (For me, that would be 'VillageBed1' or 'VillageBed2'.) Now, which orientation do you want? Do you want a bed along the back left wall or back right wall? Pick one that you think will fit and then click on the map. Presto! A bed should appear right where you clicked. Now how about dragging that bed inside? First, click on the arrow tool from the left menu. (If you click on the bed with the scenery tool selected you'll simple place another bed into your game. If you do, just click on 'destroy' and then click on the bed to be removed.) With the arrow selected, click and hold and then drag the bed into Building A. (Remember, press 'R' to get rid of the roof so you can see inside). Drag the bed up against a wall.

Now you might find pieces of bed left all over the place. (If you don't you may not have that problem) But for me, when I drag an object, I get 'left overs' of that object around the screen. If you get this and want to get rid of it, just press 'R' (or 'W' or any of the other 'view command' shortcuts) and those bits of bed will disappear (except for the real bed you want of course!) Press 'R' (or 'W') again to remove the roof (or put the walls back up again).

You should now have a bed in place. Now let's put a dresser and table in the house. Click on the 'scenery' button again. Get into the drop down menu and find 'wood' right down the bottom. (Just 'wood', not 'wood large' or 'wood small' at this stage). Click the edit button. Now you should have a large range of wood things to choose from. Use the arrow buttons at the bottom of the dialog box to scroll through them. (NOTE: I have trouble scrolling left with those buttons. If I click the left arrow, I scroll to a screen of blank blue squares. If this happens, just hit 'cancel' and then 'edit' again to reload.)

'BigDresser 1' and 'BigDresser2' should be on the first screen right. Select one and then dump it in the house. Now when you first put an item in place, you don't need to choose the arrow button to move it IF you keep holding down the left mouse button. So, when you click to place the dresser in your map, keep holding down the mouse button and you can drag it into position from there. Get the dresser into a position so that it's not sticking through a wall. (With WorldEd, what-you-see-is-what-you-get. If an object is sticking through a wall in WorldEd, then it will be sticking through a wall in Arcanum) Once it's in position, select 'scenery' again (if you've unselected it, that is), scroll down to the same wood category again, click 'edit' and scroll right until you find 'Nightstand'. Put one in in an appropriate position.

One thing you've probably noticed is the red grid that appears under the Dresser, Nightstand and your bed. This indicates a blocking tile. A blocking tile merely shows you (the designer) what terrain is 'blocked'. Ie. The blocking tile under the bed tells you that the player won't be able to walk through the bed. The player instead, would be 'blocked' by the bed. Incidentally, you can make these visible/invisible by pressing 'B' or by selecting 'View à Objects à Tile Blockers'. In a later chapter I'll tell you how to make any object a 'tile blocker' or even turn objects that should block the player into objects that don't.

Let's go outside now and put in a street light and signs. First of all, scroll to one of your street corners. Then, in the 'metal' category find 'StreetLamp1' and put it on the corner like in figure 10.1

Figure 10.1 - A street lamp (with a little bit of 'object crap' that I was talking about)

What's missing now? That's right! Street signs! Street signs are under 'Misc. Small' so pick a street sign and drag it into place. Street signs are a bit tricky. You just have to drag them around until you get them in a position that looks like they're attached to the street lamp. You'll see in Figure 10.2 below a street sign that I dragged into place.

Figure 10.2 - A street sign that's been dragged into place (see all that 'object crap' from the sign?)

Now, select the other type of street sign (the one that faces the other way) and drag it into place on the lamp like in Figure 10.3. (Remember how to get rid of 'object crap'? Just press 'W', 'R', 'B' or any other 'view' command and it'll disappear.)

Figure 10.3 - A completed Lamp Post with Signs! (minus all the 'object crap')

Your map is starting to look like a city now isn't it? Well, build street lamps on any other corner that you think is appropriate. At the moment, I'd say the corners of Building B and C are the only places you need to put signs (at this stage). It's probably best to put in more street signs when you've actually put in more streets.

Now that your street lights are in, let's put in a simple container. Scroll back to the bedroom of Building A. Click 'containers', from the drop-down menu and choose 'Empty Chest'. If the chest isn't facing the way you want, click 'edit' and choose the art you want for your wood chest. (Sometimes I find that you have to change the art even if you're choosing the same chest again as the default. The reason seems to be because otherwise, you end up putting in a 'blank' chest. The chest will appear in WorldEd but won't appear in Arcanum because the default art for the chest ends up being 'blank'. This actually happens later on as well when we get to putting in ammo. It took me forever to figure out what was going on. I had all this ammo on the floor in WorldEd but it didn't appear in Arcanum….)

Drag your empty chest into the bedroom of Building A. I usually put it at the end of the bed. Now that that's in place, let's put in a Rubbish Bin. Scroll back to your street corner. Select 'containers', drop-down to 'Rubbish Bin' and click right next to your street lamp. You should now have a rubbish bin next to your street lamp. Put a rubbish bin next to any other street lamps you may have.

Before we go onto lighting, there is one other piece of scenery to put in. You remember in Arcanum how buildings had gold plaques which gave their street addresses? Well, the gold plaque is under 'scenery', then drop down to 'Wood Small'. Go over right once and there they are! Put one by the front doors of all your buildings. Again, like the street signs, you'll have to drag them until you get them in just the right place.

Once you've finished putting in your plaques we'll put in some lights to make it a whole lot brighter.

By now, you've probably realised that it's very dark inside your buildings. In actual fact, you've probably had trouble putting in scenery because it's so dark. Well, there is a way to rectify that problem… Namely by putting in lights! To put in lights, select the 'environment' tab and then click on the 'lighting' button (the light globe). Click 'select' and a whole range of lights should pop up. Click 'Disk4x4'. Now, scroll to building A and click inside. Shazam! Light! You put lights in just like scenery, so you can either drag it into place as you put it in, or you can choose the 'select' tool and drag it around that way. Drag the light over the bed in the bedroom. Notice how the light brightens it up? See Figure 11.1 below.

Figure 11.1 - A '4x4' light that is brightening up our scenery and the wall.

Before we go crazy just yet, let's put in a coloured light. Click on the'edit' button and a colour palette should pop up. Choose a light green and click 'ok'. The light in the left hand menu should now be a light green. Click on the map and place a green light in Building A. For the time being, put it in a different room, rather than the bedroom. Try putting a red light in the other room in Building A.

Let's change the size of the light. Click 'select' and choose 'Disk3x3'. Change the colour back to white. (Click 'Edit' then choose the colour white, then click 'ok'). Now put some more lights in the bedroom. Fill the whole place until it looks good. That may be with 3 lights, or 4 lights or more. Sometimes you can get good effects by putting in lots of little lights. If you prefer, you can put in just a few large lights. You'll have to experiment with all the different types and sizes to work out what suits you best. Once the bedroom is lit (make sure to get the corners, the walls might be in the way, so remember to press 'W' to see through them), change the colour of the light back to green. Choose a different light size. Maybe 'Disk5x5', 'LargeLight' or something smaller if you want. Now, scroll to the room where you first put in the green light. Now fill the room with green light. Do the same with the red room.

You should now have three rooms filled with three different coloured lights. (HINT: Red light is good to give that nice fireplace glow)

Whenever you put in lights, you have to be careful not to accidentally put a white light outside. If you do, it can be almost impossible to find it again. You can either choose the ‘select’ tool, try to find it and drag it inside or you’ll have to play test your map in Arcanum, sleep until night, find the light, remember where it is, get back into WorldEd and try and drag it inside or delete it with the ‘destroy’ tool.

Let’s see how all this looks in Arcanum now? Remember what to do? If you haven’t already, open up ‘MapList.mes’ in the ‘Arcanum\modules\NAME OF MOD\Rules’ directory. Change the start location to somewhere appropriate (not in the middle of the lake) then save and close the ‘MapList.mes’ file. Go back to WorldEd and click ‘save’. (DO NOT COMPRESS) Now, open up Arcanum (you can either close WorldEd or leave it open. However, you may experience diminished performance in Arcanum with WorldEd open.) Then choose ‘Options à your module à Done à Single Player à New Game à Pick Character à Merwin Tumblebrook’ and if it all worked (which hopefully it did) you should be able to run into Building A and check out the rather weird disco effect.

While your in Arcanum, open the chest in Building A. See how it’s empty? Try the Dresser or the nightstand. Notice how you can’t even highlight them? Now go outside. Check one of your rubbish bins. There should be junk in it. Try the other rubbish bin. Should be some junk in there too or it might be empty. (If there’s no junk in any of them, just sleep for a day and then check again). Now sleep until night time. Check out your street lights. They’re not on are they? Run back into Building A. Your lights in there should still be on. That’s okay then. There’s nothing else to check out so quit and reload WorldEd (if you closed it). Open up your module, open up your map and then scroll to Building A.

Click the ‘destroy’ button and remove all the coloured lights. Leave the white lights in the bedroom. If you accidentally ‘destroy’ a window, door or something else, just put it back in. Now put white lights in place of the coloured lights. Try a few effects. Have a bit of a muck around seeing what you can do with different sizes and shadow. Now, scroll outside to your street lamps. The kind of lights that we’ve been putting in so far are ‘sourceless lights’. That is, they have no visible source, or place where they seem to be coming from. There are no lanterns or wall lamps that could be emitting the light. Instead, the lights are just there, on the ground. So, let’s put in a sourced light. Namely, some lights for our street lamps.

Click on the ‘environment’ tab and instead of choosing the ‘lighting’ button, click on the ‘scenery’ button. Now from the drop-down menu choose ‘light’ and click ‘edit’. A range of lights should pop up. We want a light that fits the kind of lamp that we have. That light is called ‘Glow001’. Choose it and put one right on top of your lantern. You should get something horrible looking like in Figure 11.2 below.

Figure 11.2 - A ‘Glow001’ on top of the lamp post.

Now, choose the ‘select’ tool. We have to edit that light. This is the hard bit. Right-click on the ‘Glow001’ that is on top of your lamp post and choose ‘edit’ from the pop-up menu. Sometimes, you’ll find that you haven’t chosen your light and instead have either gotten your lamp post or some terrain.

igure 11.3 - The edit option for our light (I hope).

If you managed to get the light a screen like in Figure 11.4 below should pop up.

Figure 11.4 - The edit dialog box for ‘Glow001’

If you don’t have a picture of ‘Glow001’ in the blue ‘Art’ box and instead have a lamp or rubbish bin, just click ‘ok’ or ‘cancel’ and try right-clicking again in a slightly different place to get your ‘Glow001’. When you get our ‘Glow001’ up, let’s edit it. First of all let’s make it give out some light. So click on the ‘Light…’ button. A new dialog box should pop up letting you edit your light. Click the ‘select’ button and choose ‘largelight’. (If you want to change the colour, you can choose the ‘custom’ option and then click on the white square. Then choose a color and ‘ok’) Click ‘ok’ and we should be back to Figure 11.4. We have now associated this object ‘Glow001’ with a light. It’s time to make it look a bit better now. Click on the ‘Flags..’ button.

A whole bunch of ‘tick boxes’ should’ve popped up along with a few other options. Notice how ‘Click Through’ and ‘Nocturnal’ are ticked? Well, ‘click through’ means that the player won’t be able to highlight it in the game. It also means that the player won’t be able to shoot at it. If you want, remove the tick from the ‘click through’ option. Personally though, I usually leave it ticked. It doesn’t matter, it all depends on what you want. Now, the ‘Nocturnal’ option means that this item will only ‘appear’ at night. Or, in our case, our light will turn on at night. Well, that’s what we want, so leave it. There are some other options ticked as well. I’m not really sure what they do but I do know that ‘don’t block’ means that our item ‘Glow001’ won’t block the player (remember what I said before about ‘blocking tiles’ in Chapter 10?) If you cast your eye to the right you’ll see a bunch of options under the heading ‘blending’. By default ‘none’ should be selected. We want ‘Add’ so click ‘Add’, then click ‘ok’ to get rid of that dialog box and click ‘ok’ again. You should now have a bright light on top of your lamp post rather than the horrid thing you had before. Do this to all your lamp posts. Put in a ‘Glow001’, change the light and blend. Just so you know, if you ever put in a fireplace (using the ‘décor’ option from the ‘build’ tab and clicking on a wall of the right type), you make the fire the same way, by putting in the appropriate light from ‘scenery’ and then right-clicking, edit, light and blend.

You should have the general idea now of how to place lights and scenery in WorldEd. So, go right ahead and fill up Building B with things that would be appropriate for a Smithy. Put some bedroom type things in the bedroom and some suits or armour and weapons in the main trading room. If you’re looking for the suits of armour, they’re under ‘metal’ in the drop-down menu. You can use a combination of ‘SmithBench1’, ‘SmithBench2’ or ‘SmithBench3’ and place them next to each other to create a bench if you like. I suggest you put a ‘Smithy’ sign out the front for the Smithy and a sign out the front of the Library, you will find all those signs under ‘wood’. Just drag them until they look like they’re in the right place. As you ‘scenery it up’, put in some lights so that it is easier to see what you’re doing. I usually put in a few big lights while I put in scenery and then delete them and put in some more appropriate lighting for the room.

Once you’re finished, save it and test it all out in Arcanum. Make sure you sleep until evening and you should notice that your street lamps come on! In the next chapter, we’ll do something about the dresser that doesn’t open, and the street signs and plaques that don’t work. We’ll also fill up some containers with ‘sources’.

In Chapter 10 I told you how to put in containers. In this Chapter we’ll go through making more complex containers (not that hard actually, but there is a little trick to it). We’ll also give our containers a ‘source’ and muck around with them a bit and we’ll actually make some street signs while we’re at it. Sure, you might think that street signs don’t really go in with a chapter on containers, but you’ll find out that they involve the same thing when it comes to naming things (You’ll see what I mean).

So, open up WorldEd, get into your map and scroll to Building A. Find the Dresser that we put in a while ago. Destroy it. Now, put an ‘Empty Barrel’ in its place. Why an Empty Barrel? Well, certain containers make certain noises. Barrels make a nice wood sound when you open them. The kind of wood sound that you might associate with, oh, say a chest of drawers? Once your barrel is in place, right-click on it and choose ‘edit’ (like we did with the ‘Glow001’ in the previous chapter). In the screen that pops up, there should be a little blue square with the picture of a barrel in it under the heading of ‘Art’. Click on the picture. A bunch of blue squares and one lone picture of a barrel should pop up. Select one of the blank blue squares. It doesn’t matter which one. You should now be back in the previous screen but the picture of the barrel now says ‘Empty’. Click on the blue ‘Empty’ square again. This time, a different dialog box should pop up. Like the one in Figure 12.1 below.

Figure 12.1 - The ‘Art List Picker’ dialog box.

This is essentially a back door way of changing anything into anything else but maintaining the existing things properties. (You’ll see what I mean) From the ‘List’ drop-down menu, find ‘scenery’ (it should actually be selected by default) and select it. Now, from the ‘Sublist’ drop-down menu, find ‘Wooden, Medium’ and select it. Click ‘ok’ and a selection of wooden things should pop up. Scroll right until you find the picture of the dresser that you want (‘BigDresser1’ or ‘BigDresser2’ depending on which way you want the Dresser to face). Click on it. The picture in the ‘Art’ square should now be that of a dresser. Click ‘ok’ now to close this dialog box. You should now have a dresser instead of a wooden barrel in your room. What we’ve done is essentially changed a piece of scenery into a container (or rather, a container into a piece of scenery). But…. There is something wrong with it. Right-click on your barrel, er… dresser, and select ‘edit’ again. The same screen will pop up as in Figure 12.2 below.

Figure 12.2 - Our Container/Dresser.

Now, see up the top that there is a drop-down list called ‘Known’? Currently, your dresser is ‘known’ as a Barrel. Internally, the game will treat it as a container (as you can see from the ‘Internal’ drop-down list with ‘Container’ selected) but when the player highlights it with the mouse in Arcanum he will see ‘Barrel’ pop up when what we want to pop up is ‘Dresser’ instead. (Remember how in the official version of Arcanum some of the filing cabinets were known as ‘Wood Chest’? Don’t remember, go to Tarant and down stairs into the Hall of Records. There is a locked room with a bed and filing cabinets. All of those filing cabinets are actually called ‘Wood Chest’)

To get ‘Dresser’ to show as the name of the item requires that we alter another ‘.mes’ file, like we do to change the start position. So click ‘ok’ and alt-tab (or minimise) WorldEd, find the ‘Arcanum\modules\NAME OF MOD\mes\’ directory. In there is a file called ‘gamedesc.mes’ open it up in NotePad (or whatever text editor you use). Two very simple lines will be shown like those below:

// Known or Unknown Descriptions

{30000}{}

This is where you add any descriptions that you want. Whether it’s naming an NPC or giving a special name to a monster, item or even a street sign (which is why we’re doing street signs in the same Chapter as this). To type in your description, you have to type it between the two empty curly brackets. So, click between them and type: Dresser

Your line should now look like this:
{30000}{Dresser}

Now save the file and close it. Get back into WorldEd, right-click your dresser and from the ‘known’ drop-down list find ‘dresser’. Except…. You’ll find that ‘Dresser’ isn’t there. Everything in the list is in alphabetical order and the only ‘Dre’ that comes close is ‘Dread Armour’. Dresser just isn’t in the list! (HINT: This is the part where I tell you why.) Dresser isn’t in the list because this list was loaded when you loaded WorldEd. So, click ‘ok’ and save your map, close WorldEd and then reload WorldEd. Once WorldEd has reloaded, open your map, go back to the barrel/dresser and right-click, select ’edit’ and now, from the drop-down list of ‘known’ choose ‘Dresser’ (if it’s not there this time then something’s wrong, make sure you followed the above steps correctly and try it again if need be). Click ‘ok’. Now, whenever someone plays your mod and highlights the Dresser, they will be told that it is, in fact, a Dresser (rather than a Barrel).

So how do we make signs? Well, the same way actually. Open up ‘gamedesc.mes’ again. Now, before we add anything else, let’s take a moment to think. First of all, this list in ‘gamedesc.mes’ can get quite long if you add lots of street names, traders signs and NPC names. So, to make it easier to find what you want when you edit this file, it is best if you split it up. It doesn’t matter what number comes in front of a name (unless of course you change a number AFTER you’ve named that item in WorldEd, then you’ll find your name has changed as well). What I usually do is split the file up into something like this:

// All the Books, Notes and Telegrams of Bridgewater
{30000}{Bridgewater Library Catalogue}
{30001}{Me And My Automaton}
{30002}{As It Is Written}
{30003}{Journey Into The Unknown}
{30004}{Troika - God of Creation}
{30005}{Yal'pretni - God of Destruction}
{30006}{101 Ways To Kill Things}
{30007}{Pauls' First Day At School}
{30008}{Garricks' Journal}
{30009}{Payne and Sufferson - Famous Cases}

// All the Characters of Bridgewater
{30100}{Garrick} // Quality Smithy
{30101}{Receptionist} // At Payne & Sufferson
{30109}{Miss T. Chang} // At Payne & Sufferson
{30110}{Mr L. W. Payne} // At Payne & Sufferson
{30111}{Mr C. Payne} // At Payne & Sufferson
{30112}{Mr K. Sufferson} // At Payne & Sufferson

// All the Street Signs of Bridgewater
{30200}{Main Street}
{30201}{Bridgewater Lane}

// All the Street Addresses of Bridgewater
{30300}{1 Bridgewater Lane}
{30301}{3 Bridgewater Lane}

// All the Traders' Signs of Bridgewater
{30400}{Garrick's Iron and Steel}
{30401}{Payne and Sufferson - Barristers and Solicitors}

// All the other stuff.... Dressers, Items etc...
{30500}{Wooden Dresser}
{30501}{Filing Cabinet}
{30502}{Stairs Down}
{30503}{Stairs Up}
{30504}{Mr Vladimir Komm - Barrister} // Sign
{30505}{Mr Arnold Robert Chu - Solicitor} // Sign
{30506}{Mr Jack Jacobson - Solicitor} // Sign
{30507}{Miss Tiffany Chang - Barrister} // Sign
{30508}{Power Generator} // Machine Name
{30509}{Electricity Generation Room} // Sign
{30510}{Console} // Machine Name

The above is the ‘gamedesc.mes’ file for a mod that I’m making called ‘Bridgewater’. You’ll note that I’ve given myself about 100 lines between each category. It might actually be best to make it 200 lines for each category but I’ve already started and if I change all the numbers now, then I’ll have to rename everything in WorldEd. You’ll also see how I’ve commented the file with ‘//’ in front of my comments. This stops the comments causing problems. I’d suggest you comment your file in a similar way (actually, you have to). Also, by commenting your file, you won’t get lost and forget where things are.

Anyway, we want to make a street sign. So, think of a name that you’d like for your street. If you’re stuck, use ‘Apple Lane’. Now you can simply add that into your file like so:

{30000}{Dresser}
{30001}{Apple Lane}

Or a better way would be to do something like this:

// All the things etc…
{30000}{Dresser}

// Street signs
{30200}{Apple Lane}

While we’re here, we might as well add descriptions for all the things we’re doing. So, you want the names for 2 streets, 2 Traders signs (Smithy and a Library) and 3 building plaque addresses such as ‘7 Apple Lane’. If you really can’t think of some names (or don’t want to) just make something like this below:

// All the things etc…
{30000}{Dresser}

// Street signs
{30200}{Apple Lane}
{30201}{Peach Street}

// Traders signs
{30400}{Dwarven Smithy}
{30401}{Public Library}

// Building Address Plaques
{30600}{7 Apple Lane} // Smithy (Building B)
{30601}{3 Peach Street} // Library (Building C)
{30602}{2 Apple Lane} // Building A

Now, save the ‘gamedesc.mes’ file. Close WorldEd and re-open it. Load your map and scroll to your nearest street lamp so we can name the streets. Right-click on one of the street signs (make sure it is a street sign you’ve right-clicked and not the light, lamp or anything else) and in the ‘known’ drop-down list, find ‘Apple Lane’ or whatever street you like (HINT: When you’re in the drop-down list start typing the name you are looking for and the list will jump to it.) and select it. Now, click ‘flags’ and make sure that ‘Click Through’ ISN’T ticked. So you’ll have to click on it to remove the tick. This makes the item ‘highlightable’ in Arcanum. Now, click ‘ok’ and then click ‘ok’ again. Do the same with the traders signs, plaques and other street signs (choosing the right street names etc…). Making sure that ‘Click Through’ isn’t ticked and finding the name in the ‘known’ list. This is how you name items. So, if you had a ‘sword on a wall’ piece of scenery in the Smithys’ shop and you wanted to call it ‘Big Friggin’ Sword’, just add the description to ‘gamedesc.mes’ and in WorldEd make sure the scenery wasn’t click through and that it had the right ‘known’ name.

When you’ve finished, save and load Arcanum. Once in Arcanum, check out your new street signs. They should say what you want them to. Your dresser should now open and it should be known as a dresser. (If you want, you can make the nightstand into a container, or rather, a container into a nightstand. Just follow the same procedure as the dresser only adding ‘Nightstand’ to the ‘gamedesc.mes’ file.) You now know how to name things and how to make anything into a container. When you’ve had a look around and marvelled at your map, quit Arcanum, load WorldEd and get ready to put some gold in that thar’ map!

Remember how you put in scenery, lights and containers? Well, guess what. You put items in exactly the same way. First of all, click the ‘items’ tab. As usual, the first two buttons are ‘select’ and ‘destroy’. Let’s go through the rest:

To start off with, let’s build a herb garden. Select ‘Herbs and Potions’ and from the drop-down list choose ‘general’. Then click ‘select’ choose ‘tobacco leaves’ (which you should just be able to read, even if some of the letters are cut off) and click ‘ok’. Now scroll to somewhere around the left side of Building A, in a nice patch of grass. Now click on the map in a few different places. I wish growing tobacco was this easy at home! Now click ‘select’ and choose ‘Ginka Root’ and put some of that in your little herb garden area. Choose a few more plants and put them all in to your nice little garden.

Now, let’s put in some clothing. Scroll to the area where you start off in Arcanum. Now choose ‘armour’ and from the drop-down menu choose ‘clothes’. Click ‘select’ and scroll until you find the ‘Top Hat’ put one in your map. Put some eye glasses in as well. Notice how they look the same in the map? Don’t worry about that, that’s just how Arcanum shows those items when they’re on the floor, when you pick them up they will be okay. Now let’s dump some gold on the ground. Click ‘gold’ and click ‘edit’. Choose an amout of gold that you’d like to put in. I’d say 500 coins will do. Now you can either use the plus and minus buttons to increment the amount of gold by ten, or you can just type in the exact amout you want. Then click ‘ok’ and then click on the map. Click in a few different places to place piles of gold everywhere!

Let’s put in a weapon shall we? Click ‘weapons’ and from the drop-down menu choose ‘Bows’. Click’ ‘select’ and choose ‘Short Bow’ and click ‘ok’. Now click on the map to put a bow on the ground. Put in another one nearby. Now, we need some arrows for the bow. Click on ‘ammo’ and click ‘select’ and then ‘ok’. Notice how the picture changed in the left hand menu? If you didn’t click ‘select’ and ‘ok’ and instead just put in some arrows, you would find that those arrows appear in WorldEd but don’t appear in the game. This seems to be a bug with WorldEd, but don’t worry about it. (You can click ‘edit’ and choose the arrow picture as another way of doing it, either way works just fine) Now click on the map and put some arrows near the bows. Put in another pile of arrows as well. You should now have something similar to Figure 13.1 below.

Figure 13.1 - Some items on the ground near the player start position.

Now, choose the ‘select’ tool and right-click a pile of arrows. Any pile will do. See the bit at the bottom that says ‘Quantity’ and in it is ‘10’. Change it to anuy number you wish, I’d suggest 124. As you’ve probably guessed, this will increase the number of arrows in the pile. Click ‘ok’. Now right click on one of your short bows (it might take a few tries until you get the right place and actually right-click a bow and not terrain). It’s time to make a super weapon! In the edit screen that comes up are a whole range of values and variables. This is where you can ‘tweak’ the bow. I won’t go through them all, you’ll have to muck around with it yourself, but if you want, change the ‘Bonus to Hit’ to ‘666’, the ‘Weight’ to ‘200’, the ‘Range’ to ‘50’ and the ‘Min Strength’ to ‘1’. Now, click on the box full of numbers below ‘damage’ at the top.

Figure 13.2 - Weapon Damage editing.

Guess what you can do here? The max damage you can put it for any field is 1000. Play around with it. Give it any type of damage you want. Like I said, I won’t bother going through everything you can do because for starters, I’m not sure of everything that you can do, and also because most of it is self-explanatory. When you’re done, click ‘ok’ and get back to the map. (If you really want, create a game descripiton in ‘gamedesc.mes’ with something like ‘BFB 1801 - Big Friggin Bow 1801’ and give that description to the ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ fields of the short bow)

Of course, right now, you have a bunch of items sitting on the ground. Items aren’t usually found just lying on the ground, they’re usually found in a chest. So… Click the ‘environment’ tab, click ‘containers’ and from the drop-down menu choose ‘empty barrel’ and put one in the map. Putting items in containers is simple but can be frustrating. First of all, drag the container into an open area of terrain away from anything else but nearby the items you want to put in it. Now, drag the item that you want in the container, over the container, hold down the shift key on your keyboard and let go. The item will now either be in the container, or it will be on the ground behind the container. If it’s on the ground, try again. This is why you move containers out into the open, it means you can get at any items behind them a lot easier, rather than worrying about accidentally dragging other scenery, lights and so on. So, drag a pile of gold, one of the bows and one of the arrows into your container.

There is another way to fill containers as well. If you haven’t already, put a container in the bedroom of the Smithy’s place. A normal wood chest will do. Now, right-click it, select ‘edit’ and a dialog box should pop up with some info on the chest.

Now you see the drop-down menu next to ‘Inventory Source’? Select it and scroll down to see what’s there. At the end you’ll see a few in the list that say ‘Smith(Dwarven)’, ‘Smith(Magical)’ ‘Smith(Quality)’ and ‘Smith(Rural)’. These are the ones we’re interested in. Which one you choose will depend on the type of good we want our Smithy to sell (When we eventually put in a Smithy). Is it a magical smith shop? Or a dwarven smith shop? Let’s make it a Dwarven Smith. So choose ‘Smith(Dwarven)’. The container will now be filled with lots of goodies that a Dwarven smith would normally have. Click ‘ok’. Now, delete the chest. That’s right, click the ‘destroy’ button and then click on the chest. Notice all those itmes on the ground? Whenever you destroy a container, all the items that were in that container will end up on the ground. To remove them, you’ll have to ‘destroy’ them one by one. (By the way, you may accidentally destroy a light, or some background scenery while you remove them. If you do, just put whatever you destroyed back in again)

Now put in the chest again and give it the same ‘Dwarven(Smith)’ source and click ‘ok’. Remember how the Rubbish Bins were full of goodies? That’s because some containers have a source by default. If you right-click and ‘edit’ one of the rubbish bins now, you will see that it has ‘T0 Tech Garbage’ as its source. Most of the sources are self-explanatory, if you are really eager, create a whole bunch of chests each with different sources and see what ends up in them when you play Arcanum.

You should now be reasonably confident at putting in and editing items, as well as filling containers manually and with sources. Save your map now and load Arcanum. Try out your Dwarven Smithy chest and have a gander at what it holds. In the next chapter, we’ll put in a Dwarven Smith to sell some of those Dwarven goods.

An NPC is a ‘Non-Playing Character’ or in other words, anything that isn’t controlled by the player. This includes monsters as well as normal townsfolk. In this Chapter, we’ll put in a few monsters and a few townsfolk. Click the ‘critters’ tab, ‘select’ and ‘destroy’ plus a whole new button should pop up like the one below. This new button is the ‘critters’ button.
The ‘critters’ button.

Click the ‘critters’ button and from the drop-down list choose ‘Animals’ (It actually should already be selected by default). Click ‘select’, click on the ‘tiger’ and click ‘ok’. Now, put three tigers in the map near the start location. We’re about to have a bit of fun with them. Monsters, by default, are ‘skilled up’, meaning that all you have to do is put them in the map and they will be ready to attack any unsuspecting player. The good thing about this is that you can change it. Let’s make a Tiger that won’t attack the player. Click on the ‘select’ tool and then right-click and ‘edit’ one of the tigers. The dialog box that pops up is similar to every other dialog that has popped up. This is the ‘critter’ or ‘NPC’ edit dialog. You remember how we made that powerful bow in Chapter 13? Well, this screen is the same in that it lets you create a powerful, or weak, monster. First of all though, click ‘flags’. In the new dialog box that opens up, remove the tick from ‘Kill on Sight’. Now click ‘ok’ and ‘ok’ again. Now ‘edit’ the next tiger. Go into its ‘flags’ and remove the ticks from ‘Kill on Sight’, ‘Mute’ and ‘Wanders’. Now edit the last Tiger. Change its ‘Faction’ (down the bottom) to ‘Monster Set 2’, click on the ‘Level’ button and change its level to ‘1’ and click ’ok’. Now change all of its ‘Basic Stats’ to ‘1’ and click ‘ok’. Click on ‘Hit Points’ and change the ‘Adjustment’ to ‘-8’ and click ‘ok’ so that it should now have 1 hit point/health. That’s all we want to change for now so click ‘ok’. Now save your map and try it out in Arcanum.

Once you’re in Arcanum, you should have two tigers that wander around and one that just stands there. They won’t attack you because you removed all of their ‘Attack on Sight’ flags. After a while, two of the tigers might kill the other one. This is because that Tiger was from a different ‘Faction’ (Remember how you changed it? We lowered its skills just in case it attacked you). Try clicking on the Tiger that’s standing still. It should give you a simple greeting. This is because you removed the ‘Mute’ flag. The other tiger should just wander around harmlessly. Now, if you made a super bow in the previous chapter, pick it up and kill the tigers. The bow is very powerful isn’t it? (Of course, it would ruin the game if all weapons were this good, so only make super weapons when there’s some need for it. Maybe as a reward for completeing a quest.) Well, that’s all there is at the moment, quit Arcanum and reload your map in WorldEd.

The Tigers were just an example of what you can do, so delete them now. Now that they’re gone, let’s scroll over to Building B, the Smithy’s and put a dwarf in the shop. Click on the ‘critters’ button, from the drop-down list choose ‘Dwarf’, click ‘select’ and choose ‘Dwarf Shopkeeper’ then click ‘ok’. Put a dwarf in the shop. Now, he should be naked and we’d rather have some clothes on him, so… Put in a suit of ‘Dwarven Platemail’ (Don’t know how? ‘Items’ tab, ‘armour’, drop-down to ‘plate’, click ‘select’ and find it in there) Put the platemail on the ground near the dwarf. Now this is the armour we want on the dwarf so, click the ‘select’ tool and drag the armour over the dwarf, hold down the shift key and release the mouse. The dwarf should now be dressed in a splendid suit of ‘Dwarven Platemail’. Let’s give the Dwarf a weapon now. Put a ‘Feather-Weight Axe’ on the ground next to the dwarf. Then drag the axe over the dwarf, hold down shift and release the mouse button. (This is exactly like containers, so you may miss sometimes and end up dumping the item on the ground behind the NPC. If you do, just try again.)

Oops! My mistake! I wanted the dwarf to have a different type of armour. So, let’s get rid of the armour the dwarf is wearing. With the ‘select’ tool, right-click on the dwarf and choose ‘poop’. All the items we’ve given the dwarf will now be on the floor. Delete the platemail and the axe (it might be useful to drag them away fron the dwarf and then delete them, rather than accidentally deleting the dwarf or any scenery). Now, right-click the dwarf and choose ‘edit’ this time. You should notice that NPC’s have inventory sources just like containers. This is an easy way of equipping characters en-masse. If you have a large number of guards that you want patrolling your city, rather than putting in all the suits of armour and weapons and individually equipping them, you can just give them all an inventory source and they will automatically equip themselves with items from that source. Let’s give our dwarf the inventory of a ‘Dwarven Bounty Hunter’. Click ‘ok’ and your dwarf should be wearing some different armour.

Now, Dwarven Bounty Hunters use guns and our dwarf just hasn’t got the skills, so right-click him, ‘edit’ and click on the ‘level’ button. Make the dwarf a level 12 and click ‘ok’. Now, click on the ‘skills’ button and put as many points into ‘Firearms’ as you can. While you’re at it, make him an Expert too and then click ‘ok’. Now click on ‘Basic Stats’ and change his strength to 12. Click ‘ok’ and ‘ok’ again. Save your map and run Arcanum. In Arcanum, use your pickpocket skill against the Dwarf. See that he’s carrying a Clarington Rifle, some ammo and he’s wearing some small machined plate? Using the pickpocket skill like this is a good way of checking out your characters after you’ve made them. Now, pick up your super bow and some arrows, run back and attack the dwarf! If your super bow isn’t too powerful, your dwarf might have a chance to attack back. If he does, you’ll find out that he truly is an expert at weapons!

You should now know enough to create that map full of monsters that you’ve probably been aching to do. Just create a new map, put in some monsters, weapons and chests and run around and kill things. If you want, you can do it now, just remember to change the name of your start map in ‘MapList.mes’ to your new ‘monster’ map and also change the start location. Go on, the only way you’re really going to learn is by doing it yourself.

When you’re happy after your hack and slash quest, change ‘MapList.mes’ back to the tutorial map and get ready to get ‘Tangled in the Ropes’ in Part 3 as we put in some dialog and start working on a few of the more complex things involved with Arcanum Mod Making.