Super Powio - Auguest 20, 2004 4:42 pm
Introduction:

ZEDs are building like shapes in Starsiege. Unlike .DTS's, they do not animate, but have independent lighting and allow vehicles to walk over them.

Until now, it has been impossible to create new shapes due to the lack of developer support for Starsiege and the Darkstar engine. Starsiege: Tribes has made better progress in these areas, however it is where possibilities for Starsiege first appeared.

This thread is intended to gather information concerning the creation of ZED shapes, and to periodically announce its working progression so far.



Super Powio - August 21, 2003 3:13 pm
Here is is. A ZED for Starsiege, created using Worldcraft. If you look closely, you can see that the bottom side of the upper box is even lit.

[img]http://sunandshadows.com/staticscreen/powioimgs/ZENBox.jpg[/img]



Sentinal - August 21, 2003 3:20 pm
So, are you saying that the ZED editor had problems with lighting? Or just that Worldcraft does a better job?



Super Powio - August 21, 2003 3:25 pm
No, there's no difference between the shapes I make with Worldcraft and the shapes I make with ZED editor. It's just that Worldcraft makes the job a lot easier, and that it's still capable of doing everything the ZED editor could, and with better tools.



Super Powio - August 25, 2003 7:17 am
To get Worldcraft installed (you should be using 3.3, or Hammer 3.4 which is its new name) all you really need to do is follow the setup wizard. :mrgreen: 

But if you mean setting it up, then you'll have to follow different procedures for different games (ie, Quake, Half-Life). The most important thing you'll need, is an .FGD (or a fhqwhgads as I like to call it), which tells the editor what it will be working with, and at least one .WAD, which are the textures. From then on it's just directories and compiling programs. Depending on what game you're playing, there should be different instructions for how you should set things up.



Sentinal - August 25, 2003 2:41 pm
[quote]Is max 2.5 just for creating new shapes and WC for editing shapes?[/quote]

I think you're a little confused. Maybe this will help clear up some of the confusion between DTS and ZED shapes:

3DSmax 2.5 makes DTS shapes (staticShapes). DTS shapes are used for [i]destructable[/i] and/or [i]animating[/i] objects (such as destroyable buildings and vehicles). DTS shapes can also be made transparent/translucent.

Worldcraft and the ZED Editor make ZED shapes (staticInteriors). A ZED shape is nothing but a mipmap. Basically it's an immovable, indestructable shape that is often used for large interior buildings. ZED shapes are the only type of shape that a herc can "walk" on. ZED shapes [i]cannot[/i] be made transparent/translucent.



Super Powio - August 25, 2003 3:07 pm
You can get the .FGD from [URL=http://www.planettribes.com/blueprint/files.html]here[/URL]. Download the Tribes Mapping Tools and there should be one somewhere in the Worldcraft zip folder. Just one more thing, if you're using Worldcraft 3.3 or greater, you'll need [URL=http://www.planettribes.com/hosed/projects/MapCon.html]MapCon[/URL] to revert any .map files you make to 2.1.

As for the .WAD, only one for Tribes was made, so I had to make one myself. Just a note: textures longer than 15 characters will not work with .WADs correctly. You'll have to revert them to their original name in a hex editor after compiling the shape. As far as I know, there are only 5 textures with names that are too long in the .WAD I have.



Aldaron - September 14, 2003 10:00 am
I am really new to this ZED creating area, but I just created a .map and a .max thing that I had exported after I completed an object. What do I do to get it into Starsiege?



Super Powio - September 14, 2003 10:46 am
Eh. Which editor did you make it with?



Aldaron - September 14, 2003 10:51 am
I made them with the Worldcraft editor. It is way easier than ZED.



Super Powio - September 14, 2003 2:32 pm
Before we export anything, there are a few things you should know:

All geometry, texture, and light scales need to be set to 1 in the Map Properties of Worldcraft. If those options aren't available, you aren't using Starsiege.fgd. Every unit in Worldcraft will equal one meter. If you need to make smaller things (which you shouldn't), lower the scale to about a quarter. (Then 1 unit would equal 0.25 meters).

First you're going to need to export the shape to .map format. For the sake of this little step-by-step tutorial, call it MyShape.max.

Now you'll need to convert that .map file to an older version with [URL=http://www.planettribes.com/hosed/projects/MapCon.html]MapConverter[/URL]. Type this out at the command prompt (unless you're using XP, which then I don't know how it works):

[code]MapConverter MyShape.max[/code]

If you don't type in anything else after that, you'll just get a new file named Temp.max.

Now you'll need to conver the .map to .zvl with [url=http://sunandshadows.com/staticscreen/speshul/]Map2zvl[/url]. This program comes with a special version of Tribes-Tools that has some tools for Worldcraft, which I have yet to upload. Anyways, do this at the prompt now:

[code]Map2Zvl temp.map MyShape.zvl[/code]

And you'll get MyShape.zvl. (Duh :mrgreen: )

Now make sure you have ZedShape.exe, ZedBuild.exe, ZedLight.exe, and VT.exe in the same directory. These also come with Tribes-Tools. Type this out now...

[code]ZedShape MyShape.zvl[/code]

It should do a whole bunch of stuff, which will then get you a MyShape.div.

Last step, now you'll need to either: A) Decompile the .div with a .vol extractor, then recompile it into a .vol; or B) Use buggy VMerge.exe to make a new .vol. Just use VMerge for now. Again, for the sake of this tutorial, we're just going to use the name MyZEDs for the .vol.

[code]VMerge MyZEDs.vol MyShape.div[/code]

(Note: You can merge multiple ZEDs inside the same .vol, but every time you use the same .vol for merging, it gets bigger and bigger, even if you're just fixing up your ZED and merging it again, so clean out your stuff when you're making final builds.)

Now you finally have your completed shape. If you know how to use Worldcraft's compling GUI, you could have just used that too, but I don't want to get into that right now.

Take you're new .vol, and put it in the main Starsiege directory for now. Open up autoexec.cs in the scripts folder and add this line somewhere:

[code]newObject( ZEDs, SimVolume, "MyZEDs.vol" );[/code]

That let's Starsiege know that there's a .vol file somewhere with your ZEDs in it. Without it, the next step will mean nothing to the game.

Now you'll need to use this line somewhere. You can either start up the editor and type it into console, or add it to registerObjects.cs (which you may need to extract):

[code]ME::RegisterObject("ZEDs", "MyShape", ME::CreateObject, ObjectName, StaticInterior, "MyShape.dis");[/code]

Press F3, and check the bottom of the list. If you did everything correctly, it should appear normally. If it doesn't appear, but doesn't crash, check:

1) Make sure the ZED isn't so rediculously small that you can't see it. Check the ground for it. If this is the case, you didn't set the scales right at the top of this tutorial.

2) Make sure the ZED was created at the coordinates 0,0,0 in the editor.

3) Make sure Starsiege is reading the .vol correctly, and that you didn't get any filenames wrong.

If it does crash, it's working, it's just that there's a problem with the textures, but I'll walk you through that later. =P




Super Powio - September 15, 2003 5:30 pm
Alright, new stuff.

Our little texture culprit happens to be the Map Converter, so you could just use 2.1 to make the ZEDs without a problem, but I don't want to do that.

Seeing as I'm a picky bastard and it's enough of a hassle already that you need 3DS Max 2.5 to make .DTS's, I just went ahead and mailed the creator of MapCon. Hopefully it's not too late to make a new build. (Btw, he's registered on Garage Games.)