A novice with ambitions

[Nobunaga]

Hi everyone!
I decided to join this forum because I'm currently attempting to create some single player maps for myth II.

A week ago I felt the urge to complete the myth II single player campaign since I never finished it some years back. I dusted of the old total codex and downloaded the universal binary update. After completing it I must say that the game has aged like fine wine. It is still great fun and the storytelling was as good as I remembered it!

I recall trying on some multiplayer maps with my brother but I don't think I ever tried to play online back then. I tried Chimera and some cool plugins like the one were you were a Samurai (god damn that was hard haha) and some wild west-plugin which was awesome.

All those good memories of fan created maps made me want to give it a try now when I'm a bit older and more patient. I have always wanted to make a game of my own but I think this is as close as I get. The problem is that I have to start from scratch and learn everything involved with the map making process. Luckily I've found various tutorials scattered around the web and I especially found this one helpful:

http://mything.org/index.php?a=article- ... 0000000213

I also followed bits of Clems colormap walkthrough and the HPC tutorial (mapmaking for newbies). Very appreciated!

But I still question if I'm able to make my visions come true. I'd like to make five levels as some sort of campaign pack. I'm interested in telling a story through cutscenes similar to the ones in the original myth II and I want to modify the main character in a special way (I have currently played around with the bowman hero model, changed his name and other stats mainly regarding his attack). I am however not too interested in modifying a lot of things. All I want is to create some cool levels and tell a good story that is an epilogue to a music project/album which me and a friend created a while back for a course before we graduated. It's called Sunless Dawn and (in short) tells the story about a man named Shered and his quest to find his long lost sister. The music itself ranges from country rock to death metal. As pretentious as it may sound it's actually not meant to be taken TOO seriously

Here's the album if you want to hear it:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MWW1TZ9N


I think it's nice to continue the story in the Myth universe and bring it to an end. But how hard is it to do all these things? I have already learned some of the basics but what about my ambition to make a campaign consisting of five levels? I don't know how much time I'm willing to spend but I have tried my first map and it seems to work quite nicely. It's not finished by any means but it's a start

Shit that's a lot of text Hope you don't mind it.

[vinylrake]

Nobunga, welcome back to the world of myth! Always nice to have more warm bodies to keel...

Glad you found some useful resources for mapmaking, if you have difficulty locating anything, drop me a line. sometimes it's not easy to find a specific thing in the swamp of material in the graveyard.

I applaud your ambition to make more stuff for Myth, if you get stuck on something post to the forums here - there aren't a ton of mapmakers still making myth stuff but the ones who are REALLY know their stuff - and they are pretty friendly/helpful with advice too.

You asked about the difficulty of creating a 5 level mini-solo campaign? well if you know what's involved in creating ONE map, then basically just multiply that level of effort x 5. It's an oversimplification of course, especially since as you get more familiar with the process or mapmaking and find out what the Myth engine is capable of doing you'll probably be tempted to make each successive level more feature-rich and complicated so more time-consuming, but basically the only thing that makes your campaign a campaign instead of 5 individual solo levels is that you link them together in fear so that when you finish one successfully you proceed onto the next one instead of being bumped back to the Main M2 screen. Each level can have it's own pregame image(s) and music which it sounds like you already have (the music) so you are starting off ahead of where most people start.

[gugusm]

Everything depends on how exactly do you want to make your campaign. Whether you want to make new colormaps or use existing ones, whether you want to make new units, models, scenery or not, whether your maps are going to be very big and complex or small and simple. Depending on these things, it can take you a month or even I'd say 2 years

All in all, there are some useful guides at Myth Graveyard (vinyl, post something here ) which will introduce you to the basics of mapmaking. I can already tell you, that you will have to learn scripting and probably cmap making if you want to create something new and original.

And one good advice: be patient and don't expect too much from your first creations. It would be even better, if you'll start with something smaller than campaign, I think. Anyway, good luck.

[vinylrake]

All in all, there are some useful guides at Myth Graveyard (vinyl, post something here )

sounds like he already discovered the mythgraveyard, and the primary articles I always recommend to new mapmakers. he's either done his homework here looking at past posts, or he took the initiative and found the articles on his own. Either way... well done!

[A-Red]

If you're reading Clem you're probably not going to find a better colormap tutorial.

To figure out scripting, I recommend starting with Ares' tutorial: http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20Us ... torial.zip

After that, if you're looking for a more thorough explanation of advanced script, I wrote this tutorial to pick up where Ares left off: http://tain.totalcodex.net/items/show/a ... g-tutorial

[gugusm]

Yeah, Ares' scripting tutorial is really good IMO and A-red's follow-up clearly explains some advanced stuff. So I recommend them. Anyway, if you want to ask for help with some specific things, post it here.

[Nobunaga]

Thanks a lot for your helpful comments! Going to check out those scripting tutorials because I have some things in mind that probably needs some advanced scripting. I don't think I'm going to make new models and scenery and such, at least not for this project. However, I am interested in modifying the appearance of the main character (still the bowman hero) but I only want to change the hair color. Is there a possible way to edit the sprites in say photoshop? And what is this program Amber and is it needed somewhere in the map making process? It didn't seem to work for OSX.

Since I'm new to everything Fear & Loathing (except for when "in Las Vegas" is added to the mix) I also wonder if my edited bowman hero will always have the same warped effects when I'm playing myth II. Not that it matters, but I haven't quite figured out how everything works with these programs. I assume that my edited bowman can will be included if I make some sort of plugin? Do you need the untag program or something like that?

Regarding the music, I actually plan on making some new stuff for this mini-campaign

Very well, think I'm going to check out some fan created projects before I go any further...

[Graydon]

Most Bungie units have what is called a Collection Reference. The Collection itself holds all the individual sprites that make up the unit, but certain colours are set up so you can change their tints (so as to create different team colours and so on).... By default, the hair colour on the bowman unit is one of those colours. If you open up the Bowman Hero collection reference, you'll see an option for Hair where you can edit the colour.

If you always play myth with your 'local folder' active, any level that has a bowman hero will appear as your own customized bowman hero. If you build a plugin file out of your local, then remove the local folder and only activate your map with the plugin file, then only on that map will the bowman hero be different. Other standard maps will use the default hero.

The local folder loads last, that is to say.... all the default tags in myth load up, and then if there's tags in the local that overwrite default tags, any of those tags in the game will show up as the version in your local, rather than the default.

[A-Red]

Most Bungie units have what is called a Collection Reference. The Collection itself holds all the individual sprites that make up the unit, but certain colours are set up so you can change their tints (so as to create different team colours and so on).... By default, the hair colour on the bowman unit is one of those colours.

Actually, it isn't. Not unless you've got Horus's altered collection in your local.

That said: Nobunaga, we can give you a version of the bowman collection that allows you to change the hair color. There's a catch, though--the hair and vest use that same color change, so if you set the hair to be a certain color you'll have to keep in mind that the fur/leather garment on his torso will also take on the same color. I'm not sure why it was done that way, but there are some colors that work so well you don't really notice--after all, hair and fur/leather can realistically be close to the same color.

[Deqlyn]

Here is how your Sunless dawn ends. The bowman faces the summoner who looks like the dude on the cover of your album, and he gets his sister back... ? Winner?