Tutorial: How to make a simple world map with 2 towns

Arcanum World Map tutorial

Welcome to the first (as far as I know) tutorial that will teach you how to create a single player module containing a world map. I plan to add more to this as I can find stuff out. Please bear in mind I will be using the 1.0.7.4 patch and Unofficial Arcanum Patch version 091225. I know the 1.0.7.4 patch changes the interface a little and Dark Underlord (who made Amtut) says not to use it, but I have this time so your interface may be slightly different (though not much) from mine. I will assume no prior knowledge to World Edit, so I will be exact as possible in my descriptions of what to do. I won’t cover contruction of an actual town to save time as it isn’t needed to make a town map and building creating is covered in Amtut located here http://terra-arcanum.com/downloads/ here http://terra-arcanum.com/amtut/amtut.htm or in youtube form http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oYSLA3RbV8.

Also, before I begin, the following links inspired me, taught me or gave me enough information in some form to make this tutorial.
viewtopic.php?t=15909&view=next
viewtopic.php?t=16118&view=next
viewtopic.php?t=15226&view=next
viewtopic.php?t=13846&highlight=map
viewtopic.php?t=14882&highlight=map
http://terra-arcanum.com/amtut/resources.htm

Thanks to;
Shiin for his MapList.mes and GameArea.mes tute
rryo for town map generation
team a for some explanation of Worldmap.mes
and DarkUnderlord for putting the final piece of the puzzle in comm_undat.zip which I battered myself against, until I divined enough meaning from it.

By the end of this tutorial you will have:
1) A module called TutWorld
2) 2 maps called Town1 and Town2

Estimated time to do this tutorial: 45 to 50 minutes.

The Steps:
Part 1: Creating a new module
Part 2: Shaping the World
Part 3: Saving the World
Part 4: Making Town Maps
Part 5: Finishing Up the World Map

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Part 1: Creating a new module
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1) Open up world edit.
You will be shown a box saying “Open Module” where you can select from a list of modules. This box also has a section at the bottom called “Enter module name”. Enter the text “TutWorld” into the text box. There is an option to “Allow Multiplayer” but DO NOT CLICK IT. You can only traverse a world map in a single player module as far as I know.
2) Click the “Ok” button.
You will be shown a new box saying “Module Tutworld does not exist. Would you like to create it?”.
3) Click yes.
You will see a large grassy field. Look at the top left of your screen where you will see a menu with File, View, Tools and Help.
4) Click “File” then click “New”.
You will be asked “Save changes to untiled?”.
5) Click no.
You will see a new box asking for a base terrain type and the map size. The map you are about to create is the world map. Every building, every town, every NPC etc that you will meet outside a dungeon will be on this map. This is why, I think that if you don’t use a world map and just keep running from one town in Arcanum to the next, YOU WILL ACTUALLY GET THERE. Eventually. After a long, long, looooong time.

So what to make? As this is a tutorial we don’t have to think much, but when making your own, you’ll want to plan out your module a lot before hand, once you make a world with towns, they will ALL have to be destroyed if you want to change the map size. That’s a lot of work to redo!

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Part: 2 Shaping the World
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6) For now, from the “Base terrain” drop down box, select “forest”.
7) Set the “Width” and “Height” to “200”.
8) Click “Ok”.
You now have a massive map with forest covering it. I’ve heard it said that the world should be surrounded by water. Don’t know why but we shall do this just in case. To the left of your screen you will see a grey bar wide variety of buttons. In the middle of this bar you will see one called “Edit Terrain”.
9) Click the “Edit Terrain” button.
You will see a new window pop up with an image of your world as it stands.
10) Click the Expand Window Size button (The square).
This will allow you to see your whole world. For larger world sizes, even this may not be enough, but it is for this tutorial. You will notice at the top left of your screen a drop down box with “broad leaf forest”. This is where you select what terrain you want.
11) Click the drop down box and scroll down till you see “water” and left click it.
To the right of the drop down box you will see a number and plus and minus keys. The keys zoom in or zoom out the image, so we can ignore them here.
12) Click the drop down box with the number and scroll down till you can select “21”.
With 21 selected we can now start placing squares of water on the world.
13) Left click around the edges of the green square, but not on the black. Do not stop till there is water between the forest and all edges of the map.
I’m using windows vista and have found that world ed can lag incredibly after placing not much water. Just give it time till each square of water appears and then place the next one. You can drag a line of water but it will start to lag after a bit so wait till the rest of the water appears before dragging any more on.
14) Close the Edit Terrain window. Don’t click too fast or you’ll close world edit and lose your progress!
At the bottom left of your screen you will see that apparently no changes have been made to the forest world. 15) To see the changes, left click on the mini map.
At the top left of your screen you will see a black arrow among other buttons. You want that selected when you click the mini map or any portion of the map if you do not wish to make unexpected changes to your world. This should be selected by default, but it’s something to keep in mind.

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Part 3: Saving the World
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Now we have a world to play in, we must make sure we don’t lose our progress. Before we do however, we want to have a location that the player’s character will start in.
16) Right click anywhere on the ground and selected “Set as start location”.
We can change this later. Now near the top left of your screen you will see a “save” button.
17) Click the “save” button or click “File”-> “Save As… (And Unlock)”.
You will now see the “Save Map As” window.
18) Enter “MainMap” into the “Enter map name:” field and click “ok”.
I don’t know if making the map name the same as your module is a bad thing, but I recommend not tempting fate and using “MainMap”. Now I think this is only in the later versions of world ed, but in order to see any changes you’ve made to your map, you’ll need to make the the .dat file that Arcanum uses to run your module.
19) Click File then selected Compress Module
A little progress window appears for a short while then the file has been created. Don’t forget this step or you’ll be wondering what on earth is going on if you don’t see changes you’ve made when playing the module in Arcanum.

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Part 4: Making Town Maps
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Ok, now we have a world but we want it to recognise when we are in a town (and can’t access the world map) and when we are not in a town (and want to fast travel places with waypoints). Before we can do anything though, we need to do some quick and easy scripting.
20) Close world edit.
Making changes to the .mes files will not be recognised by world ed usually until you open it again so it must be closed for now.
21) Go to Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\Rules and open “TownMap.mes” using notepad.
You should see this:
//
// TownMap Info
//
// The first entry must be left as (0)(<none>)
//

{0}{<none>}
{1}{my town}

The numbers for each row are a unique identifier for a location and the text is the name.

22) Replace {1}{my town} with {1}{Town1} and add a new line with {2}{Town2}
You should now see this:
//
// TownMap Info
//
// The first entry must be left as (0)(<none>)
//

{0}{<none>}
{1}{Town1}
{2}{Town2}

23) Save and close “TownMap.mes” and then open WorldEd.
24) In the “Open Module” list select “TutWorld” and click ok.
You’ll see the bright green plane again. Do not despair!
25) To open your world map, click File -> Open -> Don’t save changes to untitled.
26) Selected MainMap and click ok.
You’ll see you world map now. You might be wondering, how does go to a particular location given scrolling is so very slow? In the grey bar to the left of the screen you will see 2 numbers which change depending on the mouse position on the screen. Above these numbers Is the heading “location” and button “set”.
27) Click in the text boxes and change the numbers to 6000 for both. Make sure your mouse doesn’t move out onto the main screen or the numbers will change!
28) Click the “set” button.
You’ll notice the little red dot on the mini map has now moved to roughly the centre of the screen. You’ll also notice in the middle left of the screen are the buttons “Isometric” and “top down”.
29) Click the “top down” button

30) Right click the ground and select “town map”.
You should now see a box called “select town map”. This box has a drop down box which contains all the names you entered in the TownMap.mes file.
31) Click the drop down box and select Town 1. Then click ok.
Note that when in top down view, you can see dividing yellow lines which mark out square regions. If you want a town to include more than one region as part of the town map, you will have to go to each region and set them to Town 1 or whatever name you want to give them.
32) Go back to Isometric view and right click the ground. Select “Town Map”.
You should now see the same box only with the option to generate data not greyed out. Be warned, this can take a while, but after it’s finished, you’ll have a sizeable map.
33) Click Generate Data.
You will be asked to confirm the actions as existing data will be destroyed.
34) Click yes and then click the save button.
Now you’ll want to follow steps 27 to 34 again with some slight modifications.
35) Go to location 5000,5000 using the set location button.
You’ll now be above and to the right of 6000,6000.
36) Change to “top down” view, right click, select town map, select town 2, click ok.
37) Switch to Isometric view, right click the ground, select town map, click generate data.
Note that when it asks you to generate town data, it will only generate it for towns which don’t have data yet. If you want to generate all town maps at some point, go tools-> generate town maps.
38) Click save.
Arcanum has a detailed and fancy world map image when you travel across it via way points. We’ll be using a quick and easy way (you can make a better one later using image creation tools later if you wish).
39) Click tools then click export bitmap. Then close WorldEd.

Now we need to do some more simple scripting.
40) Go to Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\maps\MainMap.
41) If startloc.txt does not exist, create a new text file called that. Then open it. Make the first line 6000 and the second 6000. Your text file should now look like this:

6000
6000

This is the starting location for this map.

42) Close startloc.txt and go to Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\Rules. Open MapList.es.
You should see this:
//
// Map List Info
//

// Types:
// START_MAP -- This is the starting map (there should only be one of these!)
// SHOPPING_MAP -- This is the shopping map used in character creation. If not
// present, then this process is skipped during character creation.

// Starting Location (Convert for World by
// (54624 - 32) / 64 = 853
// (45408 - 32) / 64 = 709

// Area: <#> -- This is the Index # in area.mes that the map maps to


// List of valid maps for game & Starting X/Y position
{5000}{ShopMap, 31, 29, Type: SHOPPING_MAP}
{5001}{start, 2048, 2048, Type: START_MAP, WorldMap: 0}

You see the lines starting with 5000 and 5001? Those are where all the maps in your module go. This includes dungeons, but not towns since they are a part of the world map. 5001 is the number of the map. “start” is the map name.
43) Change the name to MainMap
2048,2048 is the start location of that map.
44) Change 2048,2048 to 6000,6000
This will mean we start in Town1. “Type: START_MAP” is the map’s type. Don’t change it. “WorldMap: 0”. This means the world map can be viewed from this location. The MapList.mes and GameArea.mes tute wasn’t sure what else it did so best not to change it for now.

Now your list of maps will be like this

{5000}{ShopMap, 31, 29, Type: SHOPPING_MAP}
{5001}{MainMap, 6000, 6000, Type: START_MAP, WorldMap: 0}

Now there is one very important change to make. For no reason I can tell, but I know it works, sticking with just this is not enough. You will not be able to move via way points on the world map!!!

45) To fix this problem, swap the ShopMap and MainMap lines (but not numbers) so they look like this;

{5000}{MainMap, 6000, 6000, Type: START_MAP, WorldMap: 0}
{5001}{ShopMap, 31, 29, Type: SHOPPING_MAP}

46) Save and close MapList.mes. Now go to G:\Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\mes and open “gamearea.mes”

You’ll see this:
//
// Area -- List of areas in the module
// X-Coord, Y-Coord, WM-X-offset, WM-Y-offset /Name /Description./Radius:<#>
//
// Coords are on the main world-map, in tiles. Radius is detection radius
// (in sectors), in other words, the # of sectors that the player must pass
// near it on the WorldMap to make it visible if it isn't already known;
// default value is 5.
// The WM-#-offset values are used to position the name text in the worldmap,
// if it the worldmap is available. User mods can leave these as "0, 0".
//

{0}{0, 0, 0, 0 /A Place Unimportant/This is the unknown area.}

This is where you tell the world map where all the towns on it are located as well as the start locations for those towns.
47) Add the following 2 lines just below the very last line

{1}{6000, 6000, 0, 0 /TestTown1/A small river town.}
{2}{5000, 5000, 0, 0 /TestTown2/Another small river town.}

The first number {1} is again the unique identifier. The 6000,6000 is the start location. The 0,0 alters the position of the town’s name on the world map, around the little black dot that marks the town location. By default this should be 0,0 making the name appear just above the dot. /TestTown1/ is the name of the area as it appears on the world map. /A small river town. Is the description.

48) Save and close gamearea.mes

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Part 5: Finishing Up the World Map
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Now we’re almost done.
49) Go to the G:\Arcanum\modules\TutWorld folder and create a new folder called WorldMap.
50) go to G:\Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\maps.
You should see the image of the world map you created earlier.
51) Move “MainMap.bmp” to G:\Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\WorldMap
52) Rename MainMain.bmp to map001.bmp , then make a copy of it.
53) Rename the copy to Zoomed.bmp.
54) Create a text file in the WorldMap folder called WorldMap.txt.
55) rename WorldMap.txt to WorldMap.mes. When it asks you are you sure, click yes!
56) Open WorldMap.mes and put the following into it

{20}{50, 50}
{50}{1, 1, map, ZoomedName: Zoomed, MapKeyedTo: 1}

I’m not entirely sure what the {20}{50,50} line does, but I do the other one.
In Arcanum, you can zoom in on the world map, The zoomed in image (map001.bmp) is separate from Zoomed.bmp since map will be made of several zoomed in images. The 1,1 means the zoomed in image consists of 1 column and 1 row (so in this case only 1 image!). If there were 1 row and 2 columns it would be 2,1 and instead of map001.bmp we would ALSO have map002.bmp. If there were 2 rows and 2 colums, map001 and 002 would handle row 1 and map003 and 004 would handle row 2.

After 1,1, “map” means the name of the zoomed in images. ZoomedName: Zoomed is the map name for the full world view (Zoomed.bmp) while MapKeyedTo: 1 is the map number it is keyed to. In theory this should mean Shop Map (Number 5001 in MapList.mes) should be the map it looks at for your character walking over it. HOWEVER THIS IS WRONG! You MUST have the world map as 5000, NOT 5001! Or it will not work. It is possible the reason for this is although the .mes file starts with 5000, it is still the FIRST row and so 1 maps to this row. This is all purely conjecture but I know it works at least.

57) Save and close WorldMap.mes. Now open WorlEd, then open TutWorld, then open MainMain.
58) Click File, select Compress Module and when it’s done, click ok. Close World Ed.

We are now down! Let’s take a look in Arcanum.

59) Open up Arcanum, change the module to TutWorld and start a new single player game.
I use pick character and pick the first one for speed.

60) Click on the parchment symbol at the top left of the screen
You’ll see a town map with only what you’ve explored be visible.
61) Run to the right of the screen till the parchment becomes a glowing blue world.
62) Click the world symbol.
You’ll now see the bitmap image with the town1 symbol on it.
63) Create a way point diagonally up and right and move to it.
You’ll see town2 appear as you move up and right.
64) Stop moving and make a waypoint on town2 and go to it.
You’ll appear in town2. Congradulations! You’ve made a world map with 2 towns!

 

Sounds cool and well-explained. Congrats! :thumbup:

 

Nice guide and well written. I just ran through your guide and everything works great. Thanks for the guide =)
one more thing, I have seen people get a world map picture similar to arcanum's world map. is this done via photoshop or is there a way to generate it?

 

Thanks very much, glad you liked it!

I've just made a couple of small changes;

1) In step 31 in the town maps section I included the fact that one must set each region to be for a particular town if you want a region bigger then one square.
2) In step 56 I remembered that the 3,2 mean 3 columns and 2 rows, not 3 rows and 2 columns, so I edited it. The rest of the step is the same though.

There's also a bug if you do more than 1 row and column in that although all the images will appear fine, the town circles and names will all appear on the first image. Not sure why, but I've stuck with 1 image for now.

@Chaoswizard98

I've seen that too. I have no idea how they did it, but I guess photoshop could be one way. I know in one case someone just coppied bits of the Arcanum world map, but in others they must of used a special image tool.

What I would love to have is a tool that takes in a bitmap image and converts it to something that looks like the Arcanum map. I did something a little bit like it in uni with 3d models, so I'd imagine it can be done, but as exactly how, I'm not sure.

 

I can answer your question. To make a map that look like Arcanum, he used a lot of screenshots from the original Arcanum WM and, with a lot of patience, ...

 

Hm... he made a good image for sure, but it sounds like it'd actually be easier to write a program for it.

I regret so much that I lost some of my third year uni stuff. I had a C++ program that made a black and white height map image based on numbers in an array. If only, if only I still had that. Still google is available and if not that, coding forums will be.

 

I suppose you could take a while messing with photoshop. Although it would take alot of time, especially for large maps. It was kind of akward seeing the generated bright green map in arcanum lol at least it works =)

ps one more side thought. what would happen if you made a world map in a multiplayer mod? I know you cant open the world map in multiplayer, however if you open the map playing the same mod in singleplayer would it still work? Theoretically Im thinking it should, but world editor seems to throw curveballs every once in a while.

 

You can't travel in multiplayer. All the stuff is on one BIG map.

 

@Chaoswizard98

Haha yeah, my thoughts exactly. Had a little look for loading/creating bmp files with C++ yesterday and will continue searching this week. What I'm thinking of won't make it look exactly like arcanum, but it'll make it look a bit more recognizable and less neon bright

 

My mind only comprehended about seventy percent of that, but the seventy percent it understood was awesome! Well done on a brilliant write up!

 

That's a great guide The Pigeon, thanks very much; though I suppose any kind of tutorial where one of the parts is titled "Saving the World" was always bound to be pretty cool! It seems like with everyone's fine work around here recently Arcanum's modding community is getting a new lease of life, so from me thanks to everyone who has been making new modules or tutorials - your work is appreciated. Also if you were wanting 8) to not look like a smiley face in shades in your original post (I'd imagine you might), then check "Disable Smilies in this post" under Options when you write a reply or edit your first post.

 

Thanks guys! Glad you found it useful

@Jojobobo
Ahh yes the smiles in the 8 ) parts were most unexpected. I have disabled them.

 

@ Wims, I know you cant travel on multiplayer. I was wondering if you made the map multiplayer compatible but played it in single player would it still work. I know this would be useless anyways, just something I thought of.

@DarkFool, Making a world map is in part 4 of amtut. I am making an amtut guide for youtube so this will be in video form also, once I finish the rest of part 3 and questing. So hopefully you can understand it 100% =)

@Jojobobo, Yes the modding community does seem to have new life. Arcanum is similar to a book in my opinion. You can pick it up years later and still understand the philosophys and messages. Arcanum is a game that I will remember my whole life. Modding allows people to expand the game and create a unique adventure. The more guides that are written, the more people can jump into modding a bit easier. Who knows maybe guides like this will inspire people in later years to make Arcanum 2.
If they do im buying it instantly lol

@ The Pigeon, I think that a map generator for C++ would be a nice idea. At least it wouldnt look like a cheap flash game lol

 

@Chaos Wizard

I totally forgot I was working on that program! I'll get back to it eventually. I've spent so long not working on my story plan :S that now I've got something to work with I'm inspired to make more of my module. That and I might be getting a job soon might limit my time. Will definitely do it at some point though!

 

@ the Pigeon:
I went though all the steps in your tutorial and i still get the message "world map is not available". I have a perfectly working Town map though. Once i leave the town, the world icon appears (not available) and if i go back into the town the town map will no longer show up, only "the world map is not available". Even though i went through your tutorial twice.
The only issue might be that i have a German version of this game, but thats only a guess.
I have already worked a lot on my world map but it wont help me as long as it wont open, the player will never reach all the diffrent citys.
I am a professional Phtotoshop user, if you make my world map work, i will draw a world-map for you just like the one in the original Arcanum (i have done this already for my module...)
help plz!!! ;___;

 

Hy everyone!
I followed all the steps in the tutorial (twice to make sure), everything worked as described in the tutorial but still my module failes to show the world map.
The issue looks like this:
Town map works wonderfull! As soon as i enter the world map (the blue world symbol appears) and i press the icon, it says "worldsmap is not available". If i reenter the town map, it says "world map is not available" even though the townmapsymbol appeared again.
My module is already pretty develloped, but the world map is a major part of it therefore i rely on it to work somehow.
Can somebody help me?

 

@Caracal, strange it worked for me, but then I am using the english version. I tell you what, I'll go through it myself again and see if i get the same problems. The world map not being available is something i saw when i was getting mine to work. I'll let you know what happens

 

@Caracal ok, I've gone through it again and it works for me.


A few things:

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1) Re-reading it i noticed a few typos, though i can't imagine they would have caused problems. Just in case:

In 26) it says "In the grey bar to the right of the screen you will see 2 numbers" it should say left not right.
In 50) It should be TutWorld NOT TestWorld in the folder path.

I've edited both of these lines now in the original post.

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2) If you coppied and pasted my code for the mes files you should be ok, but if you copied individual lines be sure to check if all the text in them is correct!! I can't tell you how many times (mostly with dialogue) i've gotten errors that seemed impossible to fix. This is even after checking the text several times and having it all seem ok. Best bet is put working code above each line of your code and sometimes that'll make the mistakes magically appear. Might have deleted a "}" here or there and never noticed it. May have copied in a town name and not changed it or not have changed the id number of the line.

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3) You may have clicked "allow multiplayer" (see tute step 1)

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4) Make sure your TutWorl\Rules.mes file has the code in step 45 for lines 5000 and 5001 (make sure the id's are correct!!).

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5) You may have forgotten to copy the world map file into Arcanum\modules\TutWorld\WorldMap and/or missed some steps in Part 5: Finishing up the World Map.

Hmm... it's hard to figure out exactly what your problem is as it's been so long since i did it myself. I know I've had your exact problem before.... hm...

Are you using Drog Alt's UAP patch? I am.

 

@Pigeon:
Well i checked all these points, twice and tree times and even more. ;-P
But its not it. Your tutorial is really good and well understandable this is why i dont understand whats wrong. SO either there really is a completely stupid mistake (a wrong spelling somewhere) or it is because i still use the old version of the World editor. The one that has been suggested in the original Tutorial. In the manual it says that its not possilble to do world maps.
I have tryed to find the new version (07 or so) but i cant find it. Or i could not install it because of some missing file (i dont remember since it has taken a month untill my last post was finally approved lol)

 

I have been using this site for so long I thought I would finally make an account. Thank you for posting it, I applied your instructions to the mod I am currently working on and it is working!!