Mapping For Dummies

From UFO:AI

Intro

Welcome to Mapping for Dummies, the complete newbie's guide to actually working within UFORadiant, specifically in context with building maps for UFO: AI. It is intended to get you started building your first map, then modifying it. Like a 'Hello World' project, you won't necessarily do much else with it other then learn.

You want to get your hands on a copy of UFORadiant, available here.

Prepping the Software

Before launching UFORadiant, you want to find your path to the ufo.exe file on your system. In this folder you'll find a folder called base. Inside here are files with pk3 for the extension. They're simply zip files with a different name. The textures, sounds and maps for the game are inside of these files. You can add your own textures by creating your own pk3 files or by just copying your new files into the directories below base/. The paths are:

• textures/

for the textures - see Artwork to get more information about supported format, resolutions, normalmaps and so on.

• sound/ambience/

for the ambient sounds - see misc_sound for more information on how to add ambient sounds to your map.

• maps/

the location where your source maps and the compiled bsp files will be stored.

• materials

the location where the material files will be stored for your map

• ufos/

the location where you can add your map definition - not doing this would mean you will not see your map in the skirmish or multiplayer menu

Also see directory tree for a more detailed view.

When you start up UFORadiant, you have to select the engine path and the ufo2map (map compiler) binary. The engine path is the path the UFO:Alien Invasion data is installed at. There should be the ufo.exe and a directory called base/. For my system, this is C:\Program Files\UFOAI21 (Windows default install locale for 2.1 and 2.1.1). If you don't do this step, your textures and models will not function properly.

Lesson list

So, now that we've got the preliminaries taken care of, on with the show!

MFD: Basic Definitions and Controls
MFD: Lesson 1 - Build a shed and a yard - Teaches the very basics.
MFD: Lesson 2 - Expanding the map - Teaches a multiple number of basic tools.