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Creating a Metaroom - Part 4: In-game   Development   Malkin | 5/23/2013  log in to like post

updated5/23/2013
Part 4 of 7 from the Creation of a Metaroom: From Inception to Release series by Liam, on getting your background in-game as an agent.

Part 4 of 7 from the Creation of a Metaroom: From Inception to Release series of articles.

This section deals with how to get your room background in-game, making it into an agent file, putting music into it, making overlays, and how to structure your coding when you compile it into an agent. None of this is hard, so you?ve got nothing to fear! It?s all very, very simple.

Introduction

This section deals with how to get your room background in-game, making it into an agent file, putting music into it, making overlays, and how to structure your coding when you compile it into an agent. None of this is hard, so you?ve got nothing to fear! It?s all very, very simple.


Mapping your room

Once you?ve finished your room background, you?re onto the next step of development - mapping the room. Mapping metarooms is really very simple.

To start with, download and install Creature Labs? Map Editor from the CDN. (Note: To download from the CDN, copy the download URL and change it from gameware.co.uk to .com!) Start it up, and you?ll be looking at a blank screen. Click the ?open? button and navigate to your Program Files/Creature Labs/Map Editor/ directory. In it, you should find ?undocked_station.2er? - open it, and you should be faced with a new screen with the DS rooms in it, all mapped.

Go to File > World Properties. Change ?10000? in both Width and Height sections to ?100000?- this will expand the map an awful lot, allowing a *lot* more space for rooms! Find a space where your room won?t conflict with other rooms... now... there is already a brilliant tutorial for mapping, which is on the CDN - I would recommend going and taking a look at that!

Mapping isn?t hard at all, it just requires patience. Don?t make your rooms too small, or too big.


Putting Music into Your Room

Thankfully, putting music into your room is just as easy. Part 6 details more on creating music (or at least understanding how the format works), but for now this is how you put it into your room using the Map Editor.

Select your room (or a part of your room) using either the Metaroom Selection or Room Selection tools. Go to Edit > Music, click it and type into the box which appears:

your_mng.mg\Yourtrack

You can set a different track or even Munge file to different parts of your room! Simple, no?


Making your room into an agent

This is the next step - once you?ve mapped the room, click the button in the top row of buttons which ?Export as Addon?. This will create a .cos file in your Bootstrap which will inject your room into the game.

To find this cos, go to: Program Files/Docking Station/Bootstrap/

Open this .cos in Notepad or Creature Labs? CAOS Tool (my preference, as it colour codes the CAOS commands and puts wrong commands in red!) and take a look. It should look something like this:

setv game "mapeditortmp" addm 22276 36156 2296 1248 "c2swamp"
mmsc 23424 36780 ""
setv va00 addr game "mapeditortmp" 24367 24461 36475 36478 36612 36615
rtyp va00 0
rmsc 24414 36545 ""
setv game "mapeditortmp_600" va00
setv va00 addr game "mapeditortmp" 24278 24367 36471 36475 36607 36612
rtyp va00 0


Delete all the code above this line:

setv game "mapeditortmp" addm 22276 36156 2296 1248 "c2swamp"


And instead put the following code, which will expand the map so your room will work outside the normal map:

*This checks to see if the map is big enough - if it isn't, make it bigger
doif maph < 100000
mapd mapw 100000
endi
doif mapw < 100000
mapd 100000 maph
endi


Easy peasy!

There are some other tutorials floating around the internet (especially on the CDN) which will help you with some core parts of your room, including:

? Favourite Place Icons
? Doors
? Lifts

Once you have the basics you want for your room ingame (this at least requires a favourite place icon so you can easily access the room) open your metaroom injection code from the Bootstrap again. Your scripts need to be placed as follows:

? Map Enlargement Script
? Metaroom Injection Script
? Agent Injection Scripts
? Any Other Scripts
? Remove Scripts, all under one rscr.


Overlays

Overlays can give your room that extra finishing touch; having parts which your norns walk behind gives rooms an extra polish that makes them seem more deep and interesting - in my opinion, anyway!

To make an overlay, you need to put the image which is to be put on top of the background into a c16 file. Remember, the pure black bits are where you see the norn; in the non-black bits the norns will be obscured. Then, put it into the game with the following:

new: simp 1 1 21025 "your_overlay_name" 0 0 5000
mvto 10288 9314


Okay! Now, you just need to replace ?0 0? with the correct numbers (the first 0 specifies the number of images in the file, the second which image you?re using) and move it to the correct place. To find the correct place to move it to exactly, go into your room in-game. Hold down ctrl+shift+x, and the x y position of the pointer will appear.

Move the pointer to near where you want the overlay to inject, and write down the coordinates displayed near the hand.

Go into your script, and change the mvto coordinates to what you just wrote down. Inject into the game. It won?t be exactly where you want it to be; the trick now is to carefully move it by changing the injection coords around by about 10 pixels at a time, until you get it where you want it to be. Go down to the pixel! Make sure it lines up *exactly* with the image in the background you?re overlaying.

There, done - move onto the next one!

Originally published as part of the Creatures Community Spirit Festival 2006.

 


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