[Milly]

Newbie Guide to Mapping

By Milly

Introduction
Hey! If you're reading this you're most likely trying to map for this game, which is great! I know it may seem super overwhelming at first, but don't get disheartened. Once you understand the basics, the rest come fairly quickly. Of course if you have any questions you can always ask those more familiar with the mapping kit for advice, etc. We're always here. Currently, as of this writing, the more experienced mappers are:

Avee (Discord: Avee#3456)
Lindah (Discord: Lindah#1061)
Milly (Discord: Milly!!#1888)
Tee (Discord: Tee#4825)
MissPerson (Discord: MissPerson#5696)

Getting Started
To start off with, you want to make sure you have the most up to date Map Editor, as well as all of the most up to date files. These can be found in the Development section of the discord, and requires the Map Editor role (Bother Chance for this)! Once you have these things, you can go ahead and open up the map. There is one thing you absolutely want to do first to ensure you have a smooth ride going forward. With the map open in Dream Maker, go to Option at the top row > Click Behavior > and make sure the second option is selected, as shown in the screenshots below:







This will enable you to layer turfs and objects over top of each other easily.

Now you're ready to begin!... Kind of.

Warpers
Warpers enable us to set up interiors that are public and open for anyone to enter. Think of things such as the Dojo, or the castle, or even caves. They all use warpers and in this section I'll be walking you through creating a warper. For every warper, there needs to be a destination warper. Think of it like this:

Petrakis Castle Entrance -- This is your first warper
Petrakis Castle Exit -- This is your second warper

You'll be linking these up, so one leads to the other and vice versa, by setting up a new warper instance. Warpers are located under obj/Warp. You want to right click Warp, and select, "New Instance". A box will pop up with several variables, but the ones you need to fill out are:

Name - This should be unique, to be able to find it easily
Dest_ID - This is the name of the warper it's going to. In our example above, Petrakis Castle Entrance's Dest_ID would be Petrakis Castle Exit, and vice versa.





Once you have both of your warpers created, you can place them down upon the map and they'll be good to go.

Lots & Sub-lots
Lots are things that enable people to rent/buy houses and customize it to their liking. This is going to be a fairly big section so please be careful here. If something is incorrect the entire lot won't work, and depending on what the issue is, may require admins to edit the lot in game.

Lots come with multiple "things" to work with:
Lot Controller (Labeled as just "Lot" in Dream Maker) 

Lot Door - This enables you to separately lock/unlock a room within a Lot.
Interior - This is what you use to distinguish what areas a person can "control" within a lot.
Warper - Exterior/Interior - this is what you use to distinguish a warper for a lot. You don't use the normal warpers, you must use these.

With Lots, there's a set number of variables that need to be filled out / utilized for everything to work well.

For the Lot Controller you need:
Lot_ID - This is the unique ID for the lot. It cannot be the same as another lot. Typically it should be something simple like, "Demon_Tower_A", etc.
Cost_Upfront - This is how much this lot will cost, if it's supposed to be buyable.
Cost_Daily - This is how much the person purchasing the lot will have to pay in daily rent.
Name - Unique name for ease of finding it. I typically match the Lot_ID and the name.
Owner_Guild - This must be set to Esshar.
**This needs to be placed somewhere on the map, I always recommend right above where the Exterior warper is**

For Interior/Exterior Lot Warpers you need:
Lot_ID - Again, this is the same unique ID you set above for the Lot Controller. It must match all throughout the lot.
Name - Same as above.

For Lot Doors you need:
Lot_ID - Matching the Lot information as above
Name - Self explanatory / same as above
Door_ID - This is a unique door ID, for buildings with multiple doors. For example you'd probably want to do, "Demon_Tower_A1" for the first set of doors, and "Demon_Tower_A2" for the second.
**For Lot Doors, you create one instance of it, and place two of them down. They link together using the Door_ID.**

For Lot Interiors you need:
Lot_ID
Name

You can also create sub-lots, which is to say, Lots within Lots. This is useful for Inns or other homes in perhaps which the owner wants to rent the rooms out. With these, you would create the first initial Lot (We'll call this Caelfall_Inn).

You'll create your interior map, with several rooms, and then go back through and create another Lot Controller, and name it Caelfall_Inn_A for example.
*Section will be expanded on later*

Step X/Y (Or, how I learned to break the game)
This is EXTREMELY important for anyone mapping, so please pay attention.



These two variables? They are not your friends. They may make you think they're okay and cool... But they're not. When they're touched, and are brought into the live game they mess up the movement of the entire game. How do you avoid this? Simple.
1) Don't edit the above variables
2) When moving things on the map you may be tempted to right click and select "Nudge"



This is fine as long as you have a single option checked - otherwise, using those will edit the Step_X/Step_Y of the object you're moving. You want to make sure you have the following option checked:



When you do, the option for nudging will appear as this:


Alternatively, you can always be like me and simply go into edit and edit the Pixel_X/Pixel_Y.

Don't mess with Step_X/Step_Y boys and girls, it makes us sad.

[BrahmsFrost]

I cannot deny the brilliancy of this subject and it's approach. Like a Dummies Book. Love it. God I used those to cheat in Software Engineering before Army. Fun times. Fun hacks.

Yeah lot easier when you read this!