#1 2014-07-17 10:15:02

Calinou
Moderator

[Guide] Mapping for beginners

This guide explains how to create maps, manipulate them, save them, with an introduction to cooperative editing.

Commands and keys are always bolded, with parameters as underlined-italic if mandatory, or just italic if optional.

Creating

To start a new map, use /newmap size from the main menu, or while in edit mode on a server. The default map size is 10, which is also the smallest; you may want to use a larger map size. 12 is good for fairly large maps. The maximal value is 16, but very large map sizes should be avoided: they are slow and make player physics less accurate.

To enter and exit edit mode, press E. While in edit mode, you can fly and are invincible.

Useful keys

Be sure to enable edit mode with E before using these keys.

Left mouse button: hold and move to select cubes
Right mouse button: click to extend selection or reorient selection face, hold to move selection
Middle mouse button: hold and move to select corners of cubes

Shift: hold to move faster

Mouse wheel: push and pull cubes or corners
F + Mouse wheel: push and pull faces of cubes
G + Mouse wheel: change grid power*
R + Mouse wheel: rotate selection based on currently selected face
Y + Mouse wheel: change texture of selected face of selected cubes*

Space: deselect
X: flip selection
C: copy selection
V: paste selection
K: optimize the map for performance and looks

F10: show the key reference

*: the grid power is the size of the cubes for selection. Avoid using a grid power that is too low, else the game will be slowed down while editing.
*: pressing 6 will allow you to change the texture of all faces of the selected cubes.

Basic geometry operations

Geometry is the essence of mapping, so learning basic operations is very important. In Tesseract, cubes are divided in 8 levels, which is why you can push corners and faces through 8 different levels.

45° corner

Let's begin with a simple wall, built using the left mouse button and mouse wheel:
mTbi8e07hSsD.jpg

Then, we build a cube in the corner of this wall:
4LXJ8JUMD7Dv.jpg

Select the two corners of the new cube by holding the middle mouse button on the left side of the cube:
xmB56xhYEJYb.jpg

Push the corners by using the Mouse wheel upwards, 8 times, which is the maximum:
Y2nP0PRBxFgX.jpg

It should look like this once deselected by pressing the Space bar:
SLiCT7FkHBFD.jpg

Extending and copying

In order to extend the wall, just select it then pull cubes. Then, select the corner and press C to copy:
hAQJaEDKkzw8.jpg

Here, to simplify the task, we'll build a cube over the corner. Once you are in this situation, press V to paste the copied corner. The cube will be overwritten:
UtcsPcXSY0Mz.jpg

Repeat the operation several times:
mOpk52uLiODu.jpg

Texturing

Now, you probably want your map to look better. Changing textures to make them more diverse is a good way to accomplish that.

Texturing is really simple: you just select an area, then use Y + Mouse wheel (quick selection from history) or F2 (full texture menu) to select a texture.

The “sky” texture is a special one that will appear as invisible. It still blocks players and projectiles, except if noclipped (which is done using materials, which will be seen later).

Tip: to replace a texture everywhere, perform a texture edit, then type /replace. To do the same thing but only in the selected area, type /replacesel. These commands will work only if the all-faces texturing mode is disabled when the texture edit is performed.

Here's our previous wall and corner textured. We applied the “sky” texture everywhere else, by using the /replace command after applying that texture on an area which had the default texture:
eluYjE6DnpUe.jpg

Materials

Materials will modify the properties of the selected area. Unlike cubes, they have no corners and thus can't be distorted.

To set a material in a selected area, type /material where material is the name of the material. This, of course, has to be done after selecting the area. Multiple materials can be put in the same area, if they don't conflict. As an example, water and lava may not be placed in the same area, but water and clip can.

Available materials

water: players swim when entering the area
lava: players die when entring the area; looks like lava
death: players die when entering the area
clip: players cannot enter the area, but projectiles can
noclip: players and projectiles go through the area
alpha: the cubes inside the area are transparent
gameclip: flags cannot be dropped while inside the area
nogi: global illumination is disabled in the area

Entities

Entities are things that affect visuals or gameplay and can be freely moved around in the map. They are placed using the /newent type p0 p1 p2 p3 p4 command, where type is the entity type (see the list below), and p0-p4 the parameters.

In this list, entities that affect gameplay are blue whereas entities that only affect visuals or sound are green.

Available entities

playerstart team: players will spawn there. The team can be 0 (neutral), 1 (azul), 2 (rojo). It is recommended to place several playerstarts in a map to avoid spawns being too predictable. The playerstart can be rotated using R + Mouse wheel and will always spawn in the player's looking direction.
jumppad Z X Y sound: players touching the jumppad will jump in the specified direction. Z represents height, whereas X and Y represent longitudinal directions. sound defines the sound to play; if set to -1, no sound will be played upon using the jumppad.
teleport tag model ? sound: players hitting a teleport will teleport to the associated teledest (teledest with the same tag. Several teleports of the same tag may teleport to the same teledest. sound defines the sound to play; if set to -1, no sound will be played upon using the jumppad.
teledest tag velocity: this sets the destination of a teleport tag. If velocity is set to 1, then players will keep their velocity upon teleporting. The teledest can be rotated using R + Mouse wheel and will always spawn in the player's looking direction.

mapmodel yaw type pitch roll scale: this entity represents a mapmodel, a pre-made object made to be inserted into maps. The direction can be changed using yaw, pitch and roll. type selects the mapmodel, starting from 0. scale changes the size of the model.

light radius R G B type: the most important decoration entity. It creates a light source of size radius units with the RGB colour specified R, G, B should generally be between 0 and 255, but can be anything from -32767 to 32767, so negative lights and very bright lights are possible. The last parameter, type, defines whether the light should cast shadows or not and whether it should be volumetric or not. The default, 0, will cast dynamic and static shadows. 1 will not cast any shadows, whereas 2 will only cast static shadows. 4 is volumetric, 5 is volumetric without shadows, 6 is volumetric with static shadows only. Volumetric lights are very slow, especially with shadows, so it is advised to not use shadows when they are not needed.
spotlight angle: the spotlight is meant to be used in conjunction with the light. It is linked with the closest light entity, with a distance of 100 units at most, so be sure to keep it near the light entity in order to make sure it will stay linked at map load. angle should be between 0 (thin ray) and 90 (hemisphere). The spotlight will use the same radius, colour and type values as the attached light. Spotlights can use volumetric lighting.
envmap radius: the envmap will be used to compute a cubemap used for glass reflection (and potentially some model reflections). Envmaps are updated on map load and using the /recalc command. It is advised to place a few envmaps at most on a single map, as computing them is slow and will lengthen load time. Envmaps should usually be placed near glass in order to achieve more realistic reflections.

Saving and publishing

Before saving, be sure to optimize the map for higher performance and better looks. Pressing K while in edit mode will do so.

To save a map, use /savemap name. If no name is specified, the current map name will be used. The game will automatically backup older versions of maps, so you don't have to worry about overwriting maps. The backups with the .BAK extension can be renamed to have an .ogz extension, which will load.

In multiplayer, in edit mode, type /sendmap to send the map to server. When this is done, other players (or you) can /getmap in order to receive the map. If someone tells you to do /sendmap, you should probably do it, except outside of edit mode where it has no effect.



This guide is released under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Last edited by Calinou (2014-07-17 18:09:41)

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#2 2014-07-17 19:43:11

acerspyro
Member

Re: [Guide] Mapping for beginners

Stuff that into a YouTube video and you'll be flying.

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#3 2014-07-18 08:49:16

Calinou
Moderator

Re: [Guide] Mapping for beginners

acerspyro wrote:

Stuff that into a YouTube video and you'll be flying.

I probably won't do that, because my connection is bad and because I prefer text tutorials, where you don't have to wait through the video to learn stuff (they also use way less bandwidth).

It's not possible to record demos of edit mode, I just tried.

Last edited by Calinou (2014-07-18 09:40:32)

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#4 2014-07-18 10:40:36

RaZgRiZ
Moderator

Re: [Guide] Mapping for beginners

Calinou wrote:
acerspyro wrote:

Stuff that into a YouTube video and you'll be flying.

I probably won't do that, because my connection is bad and because I prefer text tutorials, where you don't have to wait through the video to learn stuff (they also use way less bandwidth).

It's not possible to record demos of edit mode, I just tried.

Ask the cm guys how they made timelapse videos then?

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#5 2014-07-18 16:09:02

Calinou
Moderator

Re: [Guide] Mapping for beginners

RaZgRiZ wrote:
Calinou wrote:
acerspyro wrote:

Stuff that into a YouTube video and you'll be flying.

I probably won't do that, because my connection is bad and because I prefer text tutorials, where you don't have to wait through the video to learn stuff (they also use way less bandwidth).

It's not possible to record demos of edit mode, I just tried.

Ask the cm guys how they made timelapse videos then?

I guess it's a player who stands at a fixed place, recording all the time, then speeding up using video editing tools.

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#6 2014-07-18 16:40:32

RaZgRiZ
Moderator

Re: [Guide] Mapping for beginners

Calinou wrote:
RaZgRiZ wrote:
Calinou wrote:

I probably won't do that, because my connection is bad and because I prefer text tutorials, where you don't have to wait through the video to learn stuff (they also use way less bandwidth).

It's not possible to record demos of edit mode, I just tried.

Ask the cm guys how they made timelapse videos then?

I guess it's a player who stands at a fixed place, recording all the time, then speeding up using video editing tools.

I think they have some sort of program that records edits and allows you to chunk them into parts, controlling it from ingame while you take screenshots.

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