PolyMap tutorial. (New map system in Pre-Alpha 0.2.0)
This is the unnecessarily long map making tutorial for the new PolyMap map system introduced in the pre-alpha 0.2.0 version of Loot Snake. Don’t worry, I’ll make a in-editor tutorial for it “soon” (read: in the distant future). For now, this will have to do.
Maps in Loot Snake are made of rooms. The player can go between these rooms using doors. These rooms also have spawnpoints, which are used by the doors to make the player spawn at the correct position in the room they are entering.
The map should have a starting room and a starting spawnpoint set in the map preferences. Otherwise it fails to load. Don’t worry, I’ll go through that stuff in the tutorial below.
Click “Map Editor“ on the title screen, and then click “Create New Map“. Put your incredible idea for a map name in the text box and click the arrow next to it. Ta-da! You’ve made a map. To open it, click the map name in the map list.
Placing and editing items.
Every room in the game should have a spawnpoint.
To make a spawnpoint, press [TAB] or click the double arrow icon in the map editor dock to switch the editor to item mode. You can check the mode the editor is in by looking at the text below the item / shape palette.
In the Other subsection of the item palette, there’s a button that looks like the letter S.
Click on it, and then click somewhere in the level.
Magical! You’ve placed a spawnpoint. Now hold down [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON] on it and press [E] at the same time. This should open up the item editor.
Here, you can edit all the different properties of the item.
What we’re interested in right now, is the text field labeled: “spawnpoint name”. Click on it, and type “start“ as the name. After that, click outside the text field to deselect it, and then press [E].
You’ve now set that spawnpoints name. Neat!
You can edit all of the items in the game this way. You can also move the items by dragging them. Holding down [CTRL] while dragging restricts the movement to a grid. Very useful if you want to space items equal distance apart.
You can remove items by right clicking them.
Oh, and you can also move around the map by holding down [MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON] and dragging.
Placing and editing shapes.
Playing on top of the void is possible, but you might want to add a floor to the room.
Switch over to the shape editor by pressing [TAB] or clicking the double arrow icon. The editor displays the current mode right under the palette.
Now, to select the floor shape type, click the light blue / gray colored square in the palette view. When you’ve clicked it, it should appear in the “Currently selected“ section.
To place the shape, click the plus icon on the dock. This should spawn a triangle right in front of the camera.
Every shape consist of points. Editing the points of any shape is simple.
Moving the points: You can click and hold down the [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON] on the white points at the corners to move them around. Just like with the items, if you hold down [CTRL] at the same time, it locks the movement to a grid.
Adding points: To add a point, click using your [RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON] when it’s between two connected points. This adds a new point between those two points.
Removing points: To remove a point, hold down [SHIFT] and click with the [RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON] on the point you want to delete. Note that the minimum number of points you need to have on a shape is three.
Curved points: You can make a curved point by pressing [SPACEBAR] while holding down [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON] on the point you want to make curved. (Please note, that at this time two curved points can’t be next to each other.)
If you have multiple shapes in the room, you can switch between them by clicking with the [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON]. You can also drag the shapes around. You can remove shapes by right clicking them.
When you’re done editing the room, you can name it by typing the desired name to the “room name“ text field and then pressing the save button in the dock. If something goes wrong, the editor will let you know. Remember to save often!
As I mentioned before, each map needs to have a starting room and a starting spawnpoint. So let’s set those now.
Click the cog icon next to the map name. This will open up the map preferences editor.
There’s two text boxes. “Starting room name” and “Starting spawnpoint name“. Type the name of the room you just made as into the starting room name box, and type the name of the spawnpoint you made in that room into the starting spawnpoint name box. After that’s done, click the X button in the top right corner of the map preferences window. Then click the save button to save the map.
That’s the basics all done and dusted! You can test out your amazing new map by clicking “Start game“ on the title screen, and then selecting the map you just made.
If you run into any problems, feel free to send an email to support [at] lastquarterstudios [dot] com.
