tain.totalcodex.net

Hey guys,

Medium-core Myther here (I play it about once a year all the way through since the game first came out all those years ago).

Anyway, I've got a lot of the popular plugins that I play, but I notice that when I open Loathing, the only maps I can find are the ones from M2 and then some other random multiplayer maps (the maps start at 00 with the Training Map and go to 25, then start again at 60 and go to 79, followed by one map that says Gower). I was trying to find the maps for the M2 plugin of the TFL (I'm guessing they're maps 26-59?) and the one for Mazzarin's Demise. For MD, I don't play multiplayer, so I want to make it so my units fire on their own when an enemy comes near (they currently just sit there picking their noses while the wights just walk up to them and blow up, so I wanted to change that).

Could somebody help this noob figure how to get these missing maps to show up in Loathing? Thanks!

Fear and Loathing only show you the default maps plus whatever is in your "local" folder which is found in your Myth II folder. So any map you want to look at you will have to disassemble from the plugin and place it in the local folder. First make sure you got the latest Fear and Loathing. If they say 1.8 in the file name, they are the latest. If not, you can just run the latest Myth2 update and select the option for the tools.

There is no Gower map in the default maps. You likely have something in your local folder you extracted at some point. Take a look in there. If you don't want it you can delete whatever you have in your local folder unless you want to keep whatever you altered. Anything you change in Fear and Loathing gets saved in your local folder.

To disassemble a plugin into the local folder you will need either UnTag or Oak. UnTag can be found at the Tain. Oak is still in private beta testing so that may not be much of an option. Using UnTag, select the plugin with the map you want. You can choose to extract specific tags or in your case just disassemble the whole thing otherwise it won't work. It will then show up in Fear and Loathing.

Keep in mind if you already have tags in your local folder, they may conflict with whatever you are trying to add in there. So you might want to rename (to save for later) or just delete your local folder before placing tags from other plugins in there. Conflicts happen when tags have the same tag ID which is how it knows which tags its linked with.

If you are just playing single player, then keeping the tags in your local will work just fine. It can however conflict with other plugins you try to run. Most of the local folder is ignored if you are on a metaserver. Sometimes it is better to create a plugin out of what you have altered so you don't have to worry about conflicts such as those. To do this, use Fear. Go to file and build plugin. Give it whatever name you want and check all the tags you intend to include. Once the plugin is built, you can delete the local folder or just rename it if you want to use it later. Though you could simply use UnTag on it if that was the case.

Though in the case of Mazz, I'd recommend playing it in coop. It was made for it and you might end up liking coop even if it is not Mazz you play.

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply, Pyro.

I got UnTag and managed to get the maps I wanted into the local folder. They show up in Loathing when I open it, but when I try to open them, Loathing simply closes out. Do I need to put more files in the local folder besides the meshes themselves or is there something else I need to do?

I can get the very first version of MD to open in Loathing, but version 6 and all the other TFL maps won't open.

Thanks for any help you can shed on this!

Extracting just the "mesh" tags will not be enough. Other tags are linked with it so you have to have those. For example the mesh tag is linked to a collection tag that contains the actual image your units walk on. Which is why you need to choose the extract all option to get all the tags from the plugin and not just select the ones you think are needed.

When Loathing crashes, it is due to missing tags. Check the "myth_log" text file found in your Myth II folder for details. However, as long as you extract all the tags from the plugin it should work out fine.

Do not extract tags from multiple plugins into the same local folder unless you know what you are doing. Doing this with plugins with large number of tags could mean you easily have conflicting tags where the game will ignore some due to having the same tag IDs. Tags from TFL plugins will not work with Myth 2 and its tools unless you mean the TFL maps from The Fallen Levels Myth2 plugin. Those will work if you get all the tags needed.

Mazz VI used a special version of Loathing to be created that allowed it to add more scripting to it. Mazz VI has since been updated. You can find the latest version here. The latest version can be opened in the regular version of Loathing.

OK, I got it now.

I copied all the files extracted from the plugin to the local folder and can now open the maps. So how do you add units and change their characteristics (ex. making passive archers into archers that will fire when an enemy enters their field of fire)? I was hoping to find something within Fear, like being able to have Fear and Loathing open at the same time where you can just add a unit from Fear to a map in Loathing and then determine what its characteristics are within Fear. Apparently that's not the case =).

In Loathing, the only units I can add from the little toolbar pallet are the ones pre-existing on that particular map. So if I wanted to add some archers to a map that only has all berzerks, how would I do that? Also how do you change their characteristics?

Thanks for your patience. I'm learning, I promise!

To add new items not in the drop downs, including units, just double click on the button. In this case, double click on the unit button and you get a window that lets you add other units to the map. It will only let you add whatever you see in Fear's unit tag list. So if you create a new unit, make sure it has a unit tag.

Something you should know about Fear and Loathing. Anytime you are looking inside the settings of a tag and you do not intend to change anything, hit Cancel and not OK. Hitting OK will just save the tag in your local even if it has no changes which can quickly add up when messing with default tags.

To change the characteristics of a unit, you use Fear. Doing so can be tricky as a combination of settings might be responsible for the desired outcome. Even for Fear veteran users, it can often mean a lot of trial and error. In the case of Archers in Mazz ignoring Wights for example, it may not be the Archers you need to modify. The Wights have a flag enabled for "Cannot be Autotargeted" in Fear. This means your units will not automatically target them unless you tell them to attack. To see that setting, open the "monster" tag of the Wight and click on the "Flags" button which contains a bunch of checkboxes for settings.

Remember that Fear and Loathing come with a zip file that contains html documents that can be useful to explain what every option in Fear and Loathing does. It may not answer all questions but it can help in some cases.

I'd also recommend walking yourself through a simple mapmaking tutorial, or at least some sections of one (placing units/scenery etc) so that you've got a better grasp on the extreme basics. Then when we/Pyro explains stuff from a mapmaker's point of view you're not tripping on his words. There's a lot of simple but odd nuances with mapmaking that those of us who have been in it for ages have forgotten about explaining, taking certain things for granted/second nature. Touching up on a basic walkthrough will clear some of that fog I reckon.

Edit: Fear and Loathing docs work well for anyone with a coding mentality, but the way the notes are made, starting out at least, I needed examples of what they were talking about for it to start making sense. Once it clicks though, basic modding really is quite a simple architecture to get around. Creating new fancy attacks with unprecedented results can take much more time as Pyro mentioned, but the basics you can definitely pick up fast.

The Myth II Handbook has a decent basic how-to-mapmaking walkthrough. (In the Tain or uDogs) Another really good one is Heal with Steel's
Newbie Guide to Mapmaking, it's pretty thorough and a good refresher. http://mythgraveyard.org/003720