A lot of the steps are probably outdated or irrelevant, since it was being worked on well over a year ago and the editor's been updated a bit since then. I guess it still works well enough, though, since egodbout was able to make use of it.
Side note: Map is looking good. It's nice to know that my findings were able to help someone out and my time spent fooling around in the editor wasn't a total waste. Can't wait to see what you do with this.
It's a marine with no model. The game locks you into selecting it. The animations are just based on the facing of the unit and whether its position has changed since the last frame. If it's within 45 degrees of facing straight north, it uses the up facing frames, and so on. There's also an option to move with the keyboard, which is just a simple eight directional movement thingy.
I'd be more than happy to assist you if you'd like. I don't really have any projects at the moment, but working on this has got me wanting to create a full multiplayer 2d rpg. I've got a few ideas for it, but nothing's really set in stone yet.
It would cut down on the file size, but if I had to create an entire game with small tiles, I'd probably go insane. That's something that requires teams of people and possibly years of development. I'd be better off just drawing my own locations by hand. It'd probably look a lot more awesome, too.
The file size is the biggest issue. Because I'm using a lot of large imported images, I'm pretty close to the map size limit. I think it's at 8mb now with all the 1000 AD locations. Still, I think the playable map area is large enough to accomodate several players. And a single player campaign type map could exceed the size limit, right?
I would absolutely love to do that, but Square has a history of threatening fan games with lawsuits. I could totally try to make a 2d MMO for sc2, but it probably can't use any content from other games, for obvious reasons.
Okay, so here's how you do this! This may look like a lot of work at first, but once you've got it figured out you'll be doing it in no time.
First, you need some kind of image editing program that can save files with the .dds extension. I personally use GIMP with the gimp-dds plugin. I can't afford photoshop, so I won't be able to cover that.
Next, you find the image you want to use for your terrain. For this tutorial I'm going with a location from Chrono Trigger: The Ocean Palace! Open your image in whatever program you're using.
Before doing anything else, add an alpha channel. In GIMP, this is done by clicking the Layer drop down menu, transparency -> Add Alpha Channel.
After that, edit the canvas size of the image. Go to the Image drop down menu and click on "Canvas Size" Set the size to two pixels more on height and width and center your image. So if your image's dimensions are 256x768, you would set them to 258x770 and click on the "Center" Button. You should now see a checkered border around the edge of your image.
Now, click Layer -> Layer to image size.
Save your image. Name it whatever you want and give it the .dds extension.
Hit save. A little window with a few options for compression and format, etc. should pop up. Check "Generate mipmaps" and hit OK.
Open the SC2 editor and import your .dds file. Right click it, click "Move Files" and move it to the "Assets\Textures" directory.
Save your map.
Now, you can either create your own custom decal by editing the .m3 in notepad and changing the texture, or you can replace an existing one. I will cover replacing the existing one, because it's much quicker and easier.
Open your Data Editor (f7). Change Data type to "Textures" under "Art and Sound"
Choose whatever Decal you want to replace. I'm going with Aiur Brood (Protoss). Find the file name for the texture. In this example it's Assets\Textures\decal_protoss_0021_01.dds
Go back to your imports. Right click your .dds and rename it to the file name of the decal you're replacing.
Attached to this post is a .m3 file. Import it into your map and set the path to "Assets\Doodads\Decal"
Open your Data Editor and search for "Decal" in "Models"
Select "Decal" and change the "Model" field to the "TestDecal.m3" that I have attached to this post.
Scroll farther down and set the "Variation Count" field to "1"
Now find "Decal" in Actors and set the "Art - Scale" field to x: 30.0 y: 30.0 z: 1.0
Open up your Doodad Layer (D). Search for the "Decal" doodad and place it on your map. It should be a blue square. If it isn't, something went wrong.
Save your map and close your editor. Reopen the editor and load up your map.
Select your Decal doodad that you place on the map and hit Enter. Open up the "Textures" tab and select the texture you chose earlier (Aiur Brood Protoss in this example.)
You should now see your image on the map. If not, make sure your imported file is using the exact same path as the texture you're replacing. If the image you used was not symmetrical, it will probably be stretched and distorted. The image used in this example was 256x768, so I will set the scale of the placed doodad to 100, 300. You can set it to any amount as long as it's proportional (3, 9 / 25, 75). The doodad may disappear if you set the scale too high.
For any additional decals, you simply import the .dds and replace another Texture. Copy your first doodad and paste it elsewhere on the map. After that, just select the texture by selecting the doodad and hitting enter.
Congratulations! You have created your first 2d environment! You can now open the pathing layer (H) and set the bounds. For best results ingame, you should replace your map's base tile with one that is completely black and set your ingame camera's angle of attack to 90.
I won't cover the animated sprites part, because rrowland's engine probably does it better than mine.
I know I wasn't able to cover how that map was made step by step, but I'm sure most of you can figure it out from there. If you have any additional questions, just ask me and I'll try to respond to every one of them. I've attached the map that was created for this tutorial for reference.
It went from an idea to what you see in the video over a two day period. It's incredibly easy once you understand how. I'm writing a tutorial right now.
This is a really rough proof of concept for creating a 2d rpg in SC2. It currently only contains terrain and a few animated sprites. The sprites were done with text tags and the terrain was done with custom decals.
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The tutorial he's referring to: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/project-workplace/11086-chrono-triggercraft/#p16
A lot of the steps are probably outdated or irrelevant, since it was being worked on well over a year ago and the editor's been updated a bit since then. I guess it still works well enough, though, since egodbout was able to make use of it.
Side note: Map is looking good. It's nice to know that my findings were able to help someone out and my time spent fooling around in the editor wasn't a total waste. Can't wait to see what you do with this.
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@egodbout: Go
It's a marine with no model. The game locks you into selecting it. The animations are just based on the facing of the unit and whether its position has changed since the last frame. If it's within 45 degrees of facing straight north, it uses the up facing frames, and so on. There's also an option to move with the keyboard, which is just a simple eight directional movement thingy.
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@Ranctifier: Go
I'm not sure. Something tells me it's possible, but I'm not entirely sure how one would go about it without making it look really bad.
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@DarkForce9999: Go
Yep. NA region. I've added you.
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@DarkForce9999: Go
I'd be more than happy to assist you if you'd like. I don't really have any projects at the moment, but working on this has got me wanting to create a full multiplayer 2d rpg. I've got a few ideas for it, but nothing's really set in stone yet.
0
@DarkForce9999: Go
It would cut down on the file size, but if I had to create an entire game with small tiles, I'd probably go insane. That's something that requires teams of people and possibly years of development. I'd be better off just drawing my own locations by hand. It'd probably look a lot more awesome, too.
0
@DarkForce9999: Go
The file size is the biggest issue. Because I'm using a lot of large imported images, I'm pretty close to the map size limit. I think it's at 8mb now with all the 1000 AD locations. Still, I think the playable map area is large enough to accomodate several players. And a single player campaign type map could exceed the size limit, right?
@DarkForce9999: Go
I would absolutely love to do that, but Square has a history of threatening fan games with lawsuits. I could totally try to make a 2d MMO for sc2, but it probably can't use any content from other games, for obvious reasons.
0
Okay, so here's how you do this! This may look like a lot of work at first, but once you've got it figured out you'll be doing it in no time.
First, you need some kind of image editing program that can save files with the .dds extension. I personally use GIMP with the gimp-dds plugin. I can't afford photoshop, so I won't be able to cover that.
Download GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ Download gimp-dds: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/downloads/list
Next, you find the image you want to use for your terrain. For this tutorial I'm going with a location from Chrono Trigger: The Ocean Palace! Open your image in whatever program you're using.
Before doing anything else, add an alpha channel. In GIMP, this is done by clicking the Layer drop down menu, transparency -> Add Alpha Channel.
After that, edit the canvas size of the image. Go to the Image drop down menu and click on "Canvas Size" Set the size to two pixels more on height and width and center your image. So if your image's dimensions are 256x768, you would set them to 258x770 and click on the "Center" Button. You should now see a checkered border around the edge of your image.
Now, click Layer -> Layer to image size.
Save your image. Name it whatever you want and give it the .dds extension.
Hit save. A little window with a few options for compression and format, etc. should pop up. Check "Generate mipmaps" and hit OK.
Open the SC2 editor and import your .dds file. Right click it, click "Move Files" and move it to the "Assets\Textures" directory.
Save your map.
Now, you can either create your own custom decal by editing the .m3 in notepad and changing the texture, or you can replace an existing one. I will cover replacing the existing one, because it's much quicker and easier.
Open your Data Editor (f7). Change Data type to "Textures" under "
Art and Sound"Choose whatever Decal you want to replace. I'm going with Aiur Brood (Protoss). Find the file name for the texture. In this example it's Assets\Textures\decal_protoss_0021_01.dds
Go back to your imports. Right click your .dds and rename it to the file name of the decal you're replacing.
Attached to this post is a .m3 file. Import it into your map and set the path to "Assets\Doodads\Decal"
Open your Data Editor and search for "Decal" in "Models"
Select "Decal" and change the "Model" field to the "TestDecal.m3" that I have attached to this post.
Scroll farther down and set the "Variation Count" field to "1"
Now find "Decal" in Actors and set the "Art - Scale" field to x: 30.0 y: 30.0 z: 1.0
Open up your Doodad Layer (D). Search for the "Decal" doodad and place it on your map. It should be a blue square. If it isn't, something went wrong.
Save your map and close your editor. Reopen the editor and load up your map.
Select your Decal doodad that you place on the map and hit Enter. Open up the "Textures" tab and select the texture you chose earlier (Aiur Brood Protoss in this example.)
You should now see your image on the map. If not, make sure your imported file is using the exact same path as the texture you're replacing. If the image you used was not symmetrical, it will probably be stretched and distorted. The image used in this example was 256x768, so I will set the scale of the placed doodad to 100, 300. You can set it to any amount as long as it's proportional (3, 9 / 25, 75). The doodad may disappear if you set the scale too high.
For any additional decals, you simply import the .dds and replace another Texture. Copy your first doodad and paste it elsewhere on the map. After that, just select the texture by selecting the doodad and hitting enter.
Congratulations! You have created your first 2d environment! You can now open the pathing layer (H) and set the bounds. For best results ingame, you should replace your map's base tile with one that is completely black and set your ingame camera's angle of attack to 90.
I won't cover the animated sprites part, because rrowland's engine probably does it better than mine.
I know I wasn't able to cover how that map was made step by step, but I'm sure most of you can figure it out from there. If you have any additional questions, just ask me and I'll try to respond to every one of them. I've attached the map that was created for this tutorial for reference.
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@zeldarules28: Go
It went from an idea to what you see in the video over a two day period. It's incredibly easy once you understand how. I'm writing a tutorial right now.
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@ Pfaeff: Yeah, doodads. I exported one of the ingame decals, changed the texture path to a custom texture and reimported it.
@ rrowland: I'd love to get my hands on that. I'm sure it's much better than the way I set mine up.
@ marine63: I'll try to create a quick little how to for you. You'll probably be surprised at how quickly and easily this can be done.
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@Ash4meD: Go
Yeah, it could definitely be better. The sprite animations were a last minute addition so they're a little rough.
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This is a really rough proof of concept for creating a 2d rpg in SC2. It currently only contains terrain and a few animated sprites. The sprites were done with text tags and the terrain was done with custom decals.
Youtube:
Obligatory Editor shot: