So I've been debating on trying out my skills in custom map making. I believe I talked myself into giving it a go and was wondering if this was a good way to get started. I was going to use the Tokuno map and blank it out using Centered. I'd start building from there. When I see people talking about blanking out the map, does that mean everything is deleted but the land mass, or everything all together? Is there a better way to do this for a beginner?
 
The answer depends on what you plan on doing with the map.

If you plan to make an island on it, like Tokuno is, then just delete the statics and replace the entire map with water and start from there. Choosing Tokuno as a starting map for your first map project is a good idea scale wise if you're scratch drawing the map in CED+ (which I highly recommend over CED).

If you just want to alter the current landmass and customize it, you'll need to manually delete stuff you don't want so as not to ruin all of the coastlines etc. Those are a real pain in the ass to draw in by hand.

Alternatively you can use dragon or another bmp/mul generator to draw your map and then generate a mapX.mul fileset and just replace those in your files.

Mapping is a labor of love, much like writing code for the programmers among us. If you start to hate it...walk away from it for a while and do something else. There's nothing worse than burning yourself out on your first try!
 
Thanks for the answer. So if I do like you said. I can wipe the map, put water everywhere and start making land masses however big and whatever shape I can fit on the map?
 
Correct!

You can do it all with the Global Commands.

You'll want to delete statics by setting the "Field" from 0,0 to the bottom right corner coords for Tokuno, check the "Delete Statics" box at the top left, then Run.

Then set the terrain height with the relief range both set to the same z value (whatever height you want your water), check the "Change Height" box. Then also check the "Draw Terrain" box and load your water tiles into the Tiles list. Then Run.

If you run into issues, just ask.
 
Ok cool. When I get home I'll play around with it and probably have a bunch of questions. Probably with the basic water height lol. Another question since I've been looking for tutorials but can't really find any in English. Do I have to put every tree tile by tiles or that has commands, also is there a way to draw in the program in an overview of the whole world instead of the little square box that has the arrows to move around.
 
I'm not sure what you mean about the trees, but I think you're asking if you have to draw them individually as a trunk and then leaves, or can you place them both at the same? If that's the question, then the answer is yes you can draw them as a single object with CED+ if you create them in your xml files. Think of it sort of like a multi in the game files.

The second answer is...sort of. In CED+ you can zoom out and draw, but the farther out you zoom from 100% the more resource intensive it gets. You can zoom out as far as 25% if you have a good rig, but drawing at that scale is rough for anything other than terrain for the simple fact its tough to see it.
 
My first question was say I want to make a forest. Do I have to draw in the grass then place every tree in that forest. Or is there an easy way to make a certain section of the map forest.
 
With Centred you can place large areas of tiles or groups of tiles and set the density. You'll have to play with it to see what looks best, though. The downside is it only does so in square areas.

With some of the other mass map generator programs you can draw areas of statics from a tileset, and then do finish work in CED if you prefer.
 
Like I said, the Tokuno map is a great one to mess around with as a first project like this. Its small enough to not be daunting but still be fulfilling when you finish it.
 
Ok cool. Is there a discord or anything I can ask questions in or this is the only place?
[doublepost=1484208340][/doublepost]I tried to set it up, but when i type in my password the command prompt closes fast. Then I goto login and says connection refused.
 
Not sure. I got it to load everything in the command prompt box but now it's still giving me the connection refused
 
I would love to know more about if you were able to correct this issue... I am using client 7.0.62.2 and my server runs great on it. I just tried to get the latest CED + 0.7.9.1796 and mine is doing the same thing.. CED server starts to load and vanishes before I can see any errors... When i try to load CED+ app, it will act like it is trying to load, and I can see it is trying to log in on my server, then it timesout.. I would really love some help with this if anyone has any spare time?

Thank you all for such a wonderful community!
 
I have posted a few versions of UOLandscaper below. This software is a lot better than dragon because it can also do 3-way transitions and dual layer any map; ie. you can have a sea floor and a transparent ocean surface compile if you know what you're doing; look at the way it does shallow water for an example of this. Anyway back to your question:

If you create a map template in UOLandscaper, then you have a choice; either compile the blank templates for a blank world that you can edit in CentrED with the UOLandscaper compiler <or> draw a map and compile it. This program was made to work with Adobe Photoshop. If you do not have Adobe Photoshop then I suggest a program like gimp and then use the ColorTables inside the UOL directories.
 

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