E2150 - Map Creation Tutorial
Welcome to Map Creation Tutorial for Earth 2150.
The things you will need:
- graphic editor (Paint or Gimp etc.)
- BMP Templates
- Earth 2150 installed
At the beginning I suggest you to pick one of BMP templates depending on how big map you want to create. You have the choice between Huge, large, medium and small. For example for 4 players map I will take Large template.
Editing map template
I'm familiar with Gimp editor so I decide to open downloaded BMP template file in this application. First of all I set image mode to 8-bit Grayscale. Open Image tab and correct Mode and Precision like it was shown on the screenshots below.
You can prepare map draft by filling mentioned template with gray scale colors in 0-255 resolution. Color can be selected in a tool section (visible on the left side of the Gimp window). Just click on a coloured rectangle in order to change it. In appeared window (screen on the right) click on HSV color mode (1), select S parameter (2) and choose desired gray hue (3) then press OK.
Important thing is that the closer the color is to white, the higher terrain will be. You can always invert this later in Earth 2150 Editor. So dark grays mean depressions and light tints - highlands. Using edge values (black and white) is not recommended.
As you can see on the template there is black outline of a rectangle. It indicates the limits of the possibility of moving and building around the map. Terrain outside this range will not be accessible in game, but still visible. Don't leave that outline black unless you want to have cracks on the edges of the functional map.
If you want to create smooth transitions between altitudes I suggest using gradient tool. Just select right edge colors before.
Most of PvP arena style maps are symmetric. You can achieve that by filling only half or even quarter of the template and then selecting completed fragment and copying it with transformation. You can find flip and rotate option in Transform menu after clicking on a Layer tab in the top window bar (next to Image tab where you were choosing gray scale mode).
Finished project export as BMP file and move it into Earth 2150 game main location. After entering the Map Editor you can open console with Enter keyboard button and type :
Editor.LoadBmp your_map_file.bmp
You may want to see your work from a further perspective. Type in console code below and you should be able to zoom out enough to see entire map. But don't overdo it as your machine may not be able to take it and the game will crash.
graph.zoom.max=500
The only thing left is painting your new map and placing stuff like resources or trees. Thank you for reading and good luck in creating your own creative maps.