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| In the following I will explain how to create a landscape for Payback. |
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The Ground |
| At first you have to decide where you want to start. If you dont want to start in the mid of the map, you should start in the left upper corner (coordinates x0 y0). |
Let's start with something easy. That's a plain area.
Move the mouse on a arbitrary square.
On the right side we see the information window, that the height counts 256 units. 0 would e the lowest and 1280 the highest possible value.
We can also see which face is active and which texture is attached to it. At the moment this should be the upper face with the pavement texture selected.
Let's make a lawn field out of it:
Therefor you have to press "T". Then you will see an overwiew of all available textures.
Select the grass texture. The texture screenwill close and you will see that the square changed to lawn.
In the same way you can make streets and footways etc. |
Buildings |
Select a cube and press "Q". This activates the block above the previous one.
If you want to "build" a building (or other things that are above the normal level), you should allways select a cube that is at a higher level than the blocks around it.
In our case, we now have activated the cube number 2. With "W" you can increase it's height.
Now you can select a texture for the roof by pressing "T" and then choosing a texture.
If you move around the camera a bit, you can see, the cube now only has got a visible face at the top.
Now press "2" for selecting the northern Face (the one looking towards the upper screen border). Then press "Y" untill you see "normal" in the statuswindow (press 1x).
Then press "T" for selecting a texture for the building's wall.
With the keys "3"-"5" you can also set the other sides of the cube.
Now we got our first little house.
The cube below the house we put off with "Return", cause it is not visible and will only consume CPU time. |
Larger buildings (more than one cube) can be easily created like this:
Switch to level 2 with "Q" and "W". Now mark an area (drag and drop the area from one corner to its opposite corner). For this example you should mark an area with at least 2 cubes in both directions.
Now press "Return" so the active cubes get put on (we now see "normal" in the status window).
Now only mark the northern row of the building. Select the northern faces (the wall) by pressing "2".
With "Y" we put on these faces. Now we can see them in the editor.
Then we choose a texture for the wall ("T") .
In the same way we proceed with the other sides of the building...
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Now i gonna describe, how you can use cube's slopes.
You allready got a building and now i tell you how to make a diagonally roof...
At first you have to switch to cube level 3 ("Q"). Then we mark one (or a whole row of) cube(s) above our building.
Then you should choose a texture for the roof. Press "T" and select one of the textures usefull for such a roof.
Now you have to create some walls for the roof framing, in the same way like we created the building walls previously.
Untill now, the roof isn't visible yet. To change this, you have to press "Return" till the cube gets shown as Horiz(ontal) or Vert(ikal) in the status window. This depends on in what direction the roof shall slope.
Now you have to decrease one edge if the slope with "D" , so it is below the other edge but still above the lower building. You will have to try around untill it looks like a real roof...
Either you keep a bit space to the lower building or you pull down the lower roof edge to the height of the building. For each possibility there is a genlock texture available, so the wall isnt drawn over the roof.
If the sides of the roof slope is slipping downward when you decrease one roof edge, you have to change to RHoriz or RVert and then switch height 1 and 2 with "W"/"S" and "E"/"D". Depends on the direction the roof shall slope...
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You can also use slopes as ramps for bridges or to upper level.
I will first describe the best way how to make such an upper level.
You have to mark (with the mouse) the whole region, you want to be higher than the before. With "W" we increase the height (e.g. on 320)
If we scroll to the border of this region, we can see, there are no walls yet and there is nothing under the upper level. All surounding textures "smear" in this area. You will see what i mean...
This effect should not appear in a finished map, cause 1) it looks note good and 2) it will result in strange jumps when you drive over it.
Now i tell you how to make a ramp, from the normal Level to the upper level.
Therefor we switch with "Q" to cube level 2 and then mark one row of the (not yet visible) cubes along the upper level (where you want to have the ramp).
With "Return" we switch the row of marked cubes to (R)Horiz or (R)Vert (depends on the direction of the ramp).
Then we decrease one edge (the one that looks away from the upper level) with "S" or "D" as far, so it will be the same height of the lower level. In our case it will be 256. The other side should have the same height like the upper level (e.g. 320).
So the cars can later drive over it, it is important that both edges of the slope are not activated, therefor the car is not driving against it.
Now we mark the cubes below our ramp. Then we press "Enter" untill those cubes are put off (you will see it in the status window).
Thats important for all ramps, because else the vehicles will drive in the ramp and then suddenly continues on it.
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| If the ramp is limited on the left and right side of the slope, the sides should be put on. Otherwise you will be able to look and drive under under the ramp.
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Single (limited) ramps should allways be one cube above the surrounding plains.
Only when you want to make slope that goes from one side of the map to the other, you can make it out of the same cube level (mostly cube level 1).
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For creating an area of water, for rivers, seas etc., you have to select the upper face of a floor-cube. In the texture selection you have to select the water texture. This one doesnt look like water yet, but that we gonna change now. Therefor you press "Y", untill the face type in the status window is shown as Water. Also the cube looks like water now.
Height2 is the height of the water.
Only the upper face of a flat cube can become water.
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Transparency is possibly for every texture. But it only works on the upper face of cubes!
To use this feature you have to select the wanted texture ("T") for the upper face ("1") of a block, and then change the face type to Alpha. You will see the texture gets 50 % transparency. Like this you can create glass roofs for example.
Another usefull ability of the Alpha-mode, develops automatically if one side face of a cube gets a transparency texture. This face is not transparency but it will now brake when it gets driven in by a car.
A good example of this is the Quickie Market in the 2nd level of the first town in the game...
In this way I (Philipp Bödeker) made some hidden areas accessible in my map "D-Town".
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Genlocking |
This texture ability makes all parts of the texture, which are black, 100% transparency.
You can switch the active face with "Y" in the genlocked mode.
Genlocking is mainly used for fences and grids. It can be used for every side of a cube.
There are two kinds of textures for the sides of a roof frame of diagonally roofs. They have a black area which have to get cut off by means of genlocking.
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| Overview of the keys: |
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| Q | move cursor one level up |
| A | move cursor one level down |
| W | Height1 increase |
| S | Height1 decrease |
| E | Height2 increase (used for slopes) |
| D | Height2 decrease (used for slopes) |
| 1 | activates upper face |
| 2 | activates northern face |
| 3 | activates eastern face |
| 4 | activates southern face |
| 5 | activates western face |
| T | texture selection |
| Return | change current cube's slope |
| Y | change texture/face type |
| F | flips texture left-right |
| C | copy cube or whole region to clipboard |
| P | insert cube(s) from clipboard |
| Keys in the texture selection: |
| E | change self-made texture |
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Important Notes: |
- When creating slopes you should pay attention, which of both elevator indications shall outweigh and whether reverse slopes (e.g. RHoriz) has to be used. Thats depending on whether you can see the sidefaces of the cube (e.g. ramps) or not (e.g. diagonal floor). It's also important for fences on slopes.
The best way is, you try it out yourself. For looking up and memorization here a small overview:
| Elevator indications: |
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| h1: | h2: |
| Horiz | West | East |
| RHoriz | East | West |
| Vert | North | South |
| RVert | South | North |
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- h1: is also the lower edge of the upper cube.
- Is the cube flat only h1: is used for the height an, except for water.
- You should not make faces, which you cant see, cause they are completely hidden by other faces. Else they will take cpu time, unnecessary. Such faces should allways be switched off with "Y" or, if possible, switch off the whole cube with "Return".
- In addition, no "holes" should develop...
- At the border of the map you should place a wall, thus you cant drive out of the game field.
- The floor should not be higher than 1000, thus it remains enough space for buildings, cause 1280 is the maximum height.
- For water better only use the default water texture, so the colorcycling will work correctly.
- Buildings and other "sudden elevations" should allways be made of the middle cube (level 2) (and upper cube [level 3]). The lower cube is only for floors else you wll get drawing failures.
- Ramps must not have a block below!
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Hints:
Rotate Textures:
Some textures are not available for all directions. You can now try to flip the texture left-right with "F" in the right direction, but that does not allways work.
If it's the upper face of a cube you can set height1 and height2 to the same values and then change the cube to Horiz or Vert. This makes the upper face's texture turn around.
New Textures
Another method: Make a screenshot of the texture you want to change in the MapEditor (go to texture selection, highlight the texture, so it will be shown at full size, and then make the screenshot). Then load this grab in your preferred paint prog and flip it in the right direction.
Then you have to cut out and save the texture. The size has to be 64x64 and the file format must be Amiga ILBM (.iff).
Parts of the texture which have to get cut out by genlocking have to get the color #0 (black).
To add this texture to your map you have to go to the texture selection screen. At the end of the texture list you will see a red square. When you klick on it, Payback opens a requester where you have to select your custom texture.
The same proceeding also applies naturally for creating new textures and changing old ones. If you do so, it would be nice if you send them to Amig@lien, so we can offer them here for other map designer. Some textures which I (Philipp Bödeker) created are allready available here.
Function mode of the grafics representation
This is not necessarry to know but is usefull for creating maps.
Payback draws the faces in a determined order. They are drawn one over the other.
Cause there are three cubes over another possible, the lowest cube gets drawn at first. The faces of the next upper cube will overlay those of the lower cube.
The drawing of a cube begins with its side faces and after that it "writes" the top face.
The whole procedure is going on internally and so quick, that you only see the finished result (the frame).
So if a cube at level 3 is close to a cube at level 2, and cube 2 is taller than its neighbour, cube 3 will still get drawen over cube 2. Thats perspectively not quite correctly, but if you adhere to the "rules" you should not get any problems.
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