Worldbuilder

This guide is designed to get those who have never used an EA Worldbuilder, up to speed. It will cover all the basic functions, tools, and tips of the CnC3 Worldbuilder.

Contents
Setting Up
The Menu Bar
The Tool Bar
Object Properties
Creating Player Starting Positions and New Players

This post has been edited by Marauder709: Jun 24 2007, 04:20 AM

Setting Up

-CnC3 Worldbuilder is a tool used by the game designers at EALA to create maps for Command and Conquer 3. While they export their maps differently, the tool remains the same.

1. You must install the game CnC3 before you attempt to do anything with the Woldbuilder. Play a few matches and get the general feel for the maps and the game. Note that, while Worldbuilder is a freely downloadable tool, it will not work without CnC3 installed (unless you fiddle with the programs code, which is illegal).

2. Download the CnC3 Worldbuilder from this link. Once it is downloaded, double click on the executable file and the Worldbuilder installer should open and direct you from there.

3. The installer will create a Worldbuilder icon on your desktop. Double click n it and wait for the program to load. This may take a long time as Worldbuilder is a very memory intensive program. I would suggest not running it with any other programs as it sucks CPU and Memory.

4. When the program is open, it should look like this



This post has been edited by Marauder709: Jun 24 2007, 04:19 AM

File
Most of the things under File are self explanatory. Things like "save" and "new" should be relatively simple and I therefor wont go into great detail about them.

Edit
Now things get tricky and we start getting into the nitty gritty of the map. Most of the edit options are also self explanatory if you know what all the tools are. I will be going into only two ones in this tutorial "Edit Map Settings" and "Edit Player List". These I will illuminate later.

View
View is used to apply different filters when observing the map. Most of these are also self explanatory. You can fiddle around with these but be sure to remember which ones you fiddled with so you can restore them if if you don't like the effect. Just re-starting Worldbuilder will not re-set the View preferences.

Window
Window allows you to choose the programs screen resolution.

Validation
This has two tools for checking object properties and teams. It is very unreliable and as long yu dont do anything catastrophic, both will say you are fine.

Help
Self Explanatory

This post has been edited by Marauder709: Jun 24 2007, 04:01 AM

The Tool Bar

The tool bar is the most essential part of the Worldbuilder Program. I will go through each button from left to right and describe its function. If you get lost, hover your mouse over a tool button and a little text will appear giving you the name of the button.

New
Creates a new map

Open
Opens a new map from the map archives. The archives are located at this file path: C:/Documents and Settings/Your User Name/Application Data(hidden folder)/Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars/Maps/

Save
Saves the map to the map archive

Cut, Copy, and Paste
Exactly what they say.

Ruler Tool
This measures the distance between two point on a map. To use simply click and hold. A green line will appear and the measurement of that line will appear in the bottom left hand corner of the window.

Select and Move
This your standard mouse. You can select, move, and rotate object and roads. Anything with a selection circle.

Lock Selection
This tool allows you to manipulate a single object without the fear of accidentally clicking on another object. You will not be able to select another object unless you switch out of this mode.

Lock angle
This allows you to select any object without fear of accidentally rotating it. You can select different object with this mode, you just cannot rotate them.

Height Brush
This brush allows you to raise the terrain of the map. I would recommend that this tool not be used as the same end can be achieved with the Mound Tool

Mound Tool and Dig Tool
This tool allows you to raise and lower the terrain of a map. When clicked on, these settings appear in the Terrain Brush Options window.



-Brush Height:The amount of units the terrain will be raised or lowered
-Brush Width: The radius of circle of terrain that will be raised to the brush height
-Brush Feather Width: The radius of the slope of the mound that will connect ground level to the Brush Height

Smooth Height
This is also a very useful too that can smooth heights and pits. It attempt to make constant the slope of the selected area. When Clicked on, These are the Feather Brush Options



-Brush Width: The radius of the circle in which the feathering/smoothing will occur.
-Filter Radius and Feather Rate: Both have explanations under them so I won't go into detail about what they do.

Mesh Mold Tool
This tool serves no practical purpose and to the best of my knowledge, doesn't even work. Ignore it, the services it supposedly provides are useless anyway.

Lake/Ocean Tool
I won't go into great detail about this tool as it is very complex and only has one built in water texture (an ocean one). It isn't very practical though and requires a tutorial all its own.

Wave Tool and River Tool
They have no use in the CnC3 Worldbuilder because there are no wave or river textures in CnC3. You must import your own. This, again, is another can of worms and has no place in Worldbuilder Basics.

Single Tile
This tool paints textures and other things on the map at the size of one tile. It is non adjustible and good for painting Hard to get places.

Large Tile
This tool allows you to paint a customizable size tile. When clicked on, the Terrain Material Options window appears.



You can paint 8 different kinds of "things" (for lack of a better word)

-Texture: The artistic floor of the map, grass, rocks, and such.
-Passability: Weather a specific area is passable or impassable
-Passability Width: Only relevant to AIs and scripting
-Taintability: Terrain is able or unable to be scarred by battle/explosions
-Flammability: Weather the are can catch fire or not. This is not relevant as you can't set things on fire in CnC3
-Visibility: Weather the ground is visible or not
-Buildability: Weather the selected area is able to be built upon.
-Tiberium Growability: Weather Tiberium can grow in the selected area


Eye Dropper Tool
Allows a texture to be selected

Flood Fill Tool
paints all textures selected with another texture of the mapper selection

Auto Edge In and Auto Edge Out
These two tools blend the texture clicked upon inward or outward. This is essential for making a good looking map as all textures MUST be blended.

Blend Single Edge
The second most useless tool after the Mesh Mold Tool, it blends a single tile with the surrounding tiles.

Terrain Copy Tool
This is a useful little tool for making symmetrical maps. It Copies the selected terrain which can the be rotated before being placed. It is a fairly advanced tool so I won't go into details. It is best learned by playing around.

Place Object
This tool allows you to place any object seen in any CnC3 Map on to your map. It is a point and click deal but if you click and hold, you will be able to rotate the object before placing it.

Road Tool
this tools allows you to place roads on the map. Roads are simply ribbons of texture in the likeness of a road. You can also make curves by placing more than one point in the road. Junctions are made by joining two sections of the same road (be warned, you can only have four way junctions)

Grove Tool
This allows a mapper to make forests and groves of trees. It places trees at random in the selected area. This is the Grove Options Window:



Make sure the tree you select is a tree. There are some objects listed in the drop down menu that don't exist. Even if the percentages you add do not add up to 100, the computer will still calculate the ratio of tree to tree.

Ramp Tool
This is a useful tool that is pretty much self explanitory. Just set the ramp width and click and drag. Make sure you don't use widths over 150 as widths over that amount can cause the program to crash.

Scorchmark Tool
This tool is aslo pretty self explanatory. Just choose the size, the template and click.

Build List Tool
This is a scripting tool and is best left alone by beginning mappers. For those of you who want to know it is the way to set what an AI builds and when.

Waypoint Tool
Yet another scripting tool but essential to creating a map. I will detail that later on in the guide

Polygon Tool
Ok, this ones not a scripting tool........haha fooled you . It is. It creates areas for script events.

Border Tool
Ignore it, It doesn't work...

Scripts Tool
Yet another scripting tool best left alone unless you are fooling around or know absolutly what you are doing. A word of caution, that place is scary

Edit Teams
How many script things are there? This one is for creating new teams and has virtually no use because its better to create players anyway. For those of you who don't understand, its a joke (can u tell I've had too much coffee writing this?)

Open Item Selection List
This is a list of all objects on your map. It's useful if you are looking for something or if you are reviewing a map. Not much good for anything else though.

The Last Two Tools
The last two Items are dumb and require no explanation because they don't do anything. The first only works if you mess with the programs code (which is illegal anyway) and the second is a little window that pops up telling you that this program is Command and Conquer 3 Worldbuilder.

This post has been edited by Marauder709: Jun 24 2007, 04:12 AM

Every Object in CnC3 Worldbuilder has specific properties and ways to adjust them. This is a quick rundown of how they work. For this demonstration, we will be using everyones favorite or least favorite unit, the GDI Mammoth Tank.

"The Object Dot"




-The little red circle with the line sticking out is the object dot.
-If you click and hold on the line, you will be able to rotate the object
-If you click anywhere else, you will be able to move the object

Object Properties (General)



These Are the general properties of the object.
-Name: This is only important when scripting
-Team: This is the team the unit belongs to
-Event List and In Base: These do nothing
-XY Pos: This is the exact position of the unit on the map. Do not edit this directly, move the object manually on the map.
-Z: This allows you to bury of make an object float
-Angle: This changes the direction of the object, again, I recommend doing this on the map unless you are making a symmetrical objects
-Scale: This doesn't work currently
-Align to Terrain: Aligns the object to the ground it is on
-Time and Weather: Only change these if you know how to set time of day and weather


Object Properties (Logical)



These are the Logical Properties of an Object:
-Initial HP %: This is the percentage of HP a unit begins with at the beginning of the game. It be customized by selecting other in the drop down menu.
-Max HP: The amount of HP a unit has. If you want, you could make our Mammoth have 10 HP!
-Experience Level: This set the rank of the object, Experience level 4 is a Heroic object. Bear in mind, this will only effect units.
-Stance: Sets the stance the object will be in at the beginning of the game. Again, this will only effect units.
-Vision Range Mod: Doesn't do anything
-Enabled: Everything must be enabled otherwise it wont be available.
-Unsellable: The object cannot be sold, this only applies to buildable buildings
-Targetable: This makes the object targetable, no matter what it is (ex. you can make trees and rocks targetable)
-Indestructible: Self Explanitory...
-Sleeping and AI Recruitable: These features do nothing
-Powered: This determines weather the object has power. It only effect buildable buildings.
-Is a base: This does nothing except screw things up. It should only be used in conjunction with a beacon starting position
-Is Selectable Override: Allows the object to be overridden by any human player, ie. you can override an AIs commands
-Distance (stopping, range, shroud): These determine the range at which each of these functions occur.
-Upgrades: Quick and easy way to give upgrades to objects. (ex you can give the Mammoth Rail Guns)


Object Properties (Sound)

These properties are not useful unless you want to make a mammoth sound like a soldier running. What it does is adjust the ambient sound an object makes and can interchange that for other ambient sounds. Kind of cool to play with but not very practical.

This post has been edited by Marauder709: Jun 24 2007, 04:14 AM

Creating Player Starting Positions and New Players

It is essential that your map have Player_Start positions. Otherwise your map will not show up on the in-game menu. New Players are essential for maps with more than 4 players. These Steps should be done before you do anything else on your map.

Creating Player Starting Positions

Waypoints are used to create player starting positions:

-Using the Waypoint Tool, add a waypoint where you want a certain player to start.
-Choose a Player_#_Start from the drop down menu pictured below or label it manually:




In game, this waypoint is where the players MCV will spawn fully deployed.
If you wish for a player to spawn with out an MCV, Change the Waypoint Type to Beacon. Note that unless you give another structure to the player with a beacon player start, the player will loose automatically.


Creating New Players

Congrats, you now have Player_Start positions. Now go to the Menu Bar and go to Edit>Edit Player List. The window that opens should look like this:



Looks kinda blank, ya? Now click Add Skirmish Players in the bottom left hand corner of the window. This will add all the different skirmish players and neutral players as well a four multiplayer players. After you add the skirmish players, the window should look like this.



-Any player with the word "skirmish" in it is a universal designator, meaning it is a script thing. If you want to add scripts to a map, you script these universal players, not individual players. (If this doesn't make sense thats normal )

There are four multiplayer players:
Player_1
Player_2
Player_3
Player_4

These are the inherit players. Remember that Mammoth unit we leaned about above. Lets say I want to give this Mammoth to the player starting at Player_1_Start. To do this, you would simply make the mammoth belong to Player_1.

What happens if you want more than four multiplayer players on your map? You need to create new players.

Click the New Player Button in the bottom left hand corner of the window. The following box should appear:



Always make the Player Template "FactionCivilian"

Hit OK

Then Re-name the Player Name and the Player Display Name. In this case the names should be changed to:
Player Name: Player_5
Player Display Name: Player_5

you now have created a new player that can inherit objects. This can also be done through editing teams but this way is far easier.

This post has been edited by Marauder709: Jun 24 2007, 04:16 AM

Very Nice Guide

Thanks for your help.

Been looking for something like this.

yes very nice, cant wait for the scripting tut!