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The viewing edition of BWSurveyor is not very difficult to use, so i will try to keep this short but mention all the not so obvious features. Controls & Moving Around: Mouse Controls If you move the crosshair to the left side of the 3d landscape screen, you will get an arrow, which looks like the one in Black and White. If you then hold in the left mouse button and move the mouse down, the screen will rotate clockwise. If you move the mouse upwards, you rotate the screen anticlockwise. If you move the cross hair to the bottom or top of the 3d landscape screen, you will get an arrow which looks like an up and down arrow. If you then hold in the left mouse button and move the mouse up, the screen will decrease its angle with the landscape, thus moving the screen closer to the landscape. If you instead move the mouse down, you will increase the angle between the landscape and the camera, thus moving the screen further away from the landscape. The down action is recommended to be used with the top side, and the up action is recommended to be used with the bottom side. The last function is moving around the landscape without changing any angles. This works like in BW as well. If you hold down the left mouse button, you can drag yourself around the landscape, like with the hand in Black and White. Summary: Keyboard Controls moving camera forward = w For the more advanced users, if you open BWSurveyor.settings.xml (which is in the main installer directory, which is, by default, c:\BWSurveyor), you can easily find the tags where you can customise the controls. If you have any comments about the controls, please e-mail us or post a message on the Temple of Intelligence forums on the suggestions board. Controls & Editing: This is where BWSurveyor completely differs to other editors as it has lots of controls of its own for editing. Basically, all the editing is done through menus, or by using short cuts. If you right click on a loaded landscape and go into editing mode (by going to edit...mode land editor), you will get a menu that looks like this:
You can then select one of the options on the menu. Each of the different options has a different use Copy coordinates = this will copy the coordinates of where you are to the clip board. These functions will be explained later in this helpfile. Next, we also have to explain how the toolbar works. The toolbar is used to specify the strength and the radius of the brush you wish to use. Furthermore, you can set the altitude of the level brush and level map options. The toolbar looks like this, and should appear at the top of the screen when you have gone into editing mode:
There are 2 slider bars and 1 text box. Each have the following labels and functions: Times = This tells BWSurveyor how many times to apply a brush. Its values range from 1 to 10, where 10 is ten times as strong. If you were to do the same brush 10 times at strength 1, you would have the same result as if you did the brush once at a strength of 10. You can change the values by moving the slider bar or by typing in a different number. A more detailed explanation of the uses of the brushes will be given later. Brushes are used to paint the landscape. When you go into editing mode, you will get a brush selection menu on the left side, where you can click on the brushes you wish to use. The menu should look something like this (although the brushes might be different).
To select a brush, click on the brush in the sidebar. Each brush has its own definition for heights, and what effect it should have on the landscape. See the end of this file (the customising section) to find out what the customisations mean. For the ones who just want to see what the brushes will do textually, here is the definition we have given to them in the XML file
When applying a brush, remember at all times that the centre of the brush is where the blue pointer is, and not the crosshair. To add a brush, select the brush you want to add, position your pointer in the centre of where you want to apply the brush, right click and select Add brush. You can also press the = button next to the backspace to add a brush. To subtract a brush, do the same as for adding a brush, except this time, when in the menu, select Sub brush. You can also press the - button next to the = button, which is next to the backspace. You can always customise these shortcuts in the XML file (see the customising section later). If you do a brush, and it edits the landscape, but you are not satisfied with it, then all you have to do is go to the edit menu, and select undo brush:
Furthermore, you can customise the sizes of the brushes, and the number of times that brush is applied by one addition. You can do this by moving the slider bars in the toolbar, at the top. Increasing the radius increases the area over which the landscape is edited. Increasing the 'times' increases the number of times that you apply the brush. There is another type of brush. This is the level brush. It is only affected by the height specified in the alt box and the radius of the brush. The level brush will create an area, leveled to the specified altitude of a specified size. To use the level brush you should do the following. First, choose the radius of the brush you want to use. Then, type in the altitude you want to level that area of land to. Then, position the cursor in the centre of where you want the leveling to occur, and then right click and select Level Brush. You cannot undo a level brush, so it is recommended you save your map before you start using it. Country editing is a pretty fussy business, since they are quite difficult to define. However, we have done our best to explain it for you here. A landscape contains countries, which are made up of materials. The materials have a special definition to them, and are each allocated to a specified height. A maximum of 2 materials can be mixed at the same height, with a different amount of each of them in it. You can have a maximum of 256 different mixes in a country, as the altitude ranges from 0 to 255. After making countries, they can be painted onto a landscape, and the material combination created will be applied to that specific height on a country, thus making it easier to have a country look the way you want it to. To paint countries onto a landscape, move the blue pointer over a block you want to country edit, right click and the select block countries option. You should then arrive in to a menu that looks like this
Next, select a brush size you wish to paint in. Then, scroll through the different countries already loaded into the landscape, until you find the country you want to paint. Then, go to the left screen, and left click, hold the mouse button in and move around to pain the country. (note: the bigger the brush, the more resources that are required, thus it might start to jerk a little). Then, press OK to accept the changes you did, or double click on a surrounding block to edit that block. Set this country to all the land function This function will set the selected country to the whole land, thus giving you a base to start from. To do it, go into the block country editing screen, and select the country you wish to have the whole landscape painted with. Then, press the Set this country to all the land button. And press ok, and wait. Then, your landscape should be filled with that country. Import Country Function The import country function allows you to import countries from other landscapes and from countries that you have made. First, press on the Import country button in the Country Editing screen, and then you should get something that looks a little like this, although you might not have any exported countries in the left. Everytime you load a country, the countries are exported into the same directory, specified in the XML file (see later). By default, this directory is C:\BWSurveyor\temp.
When in the window show above, select the country you wish to import from the left, and press ok. The new country should now be available in the countries menu. WARNING: There is no function to delete any of the countries yet, so be careful which ones you import, since there is a limit Modify Country Function - the 'automatic' way (but slower) This is still a young function in BWSurveyor, and still requires lots of work. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail us or post in our forums. First, get into the Country Editing window. Then, scroll through the countries and find a country that you wish to edit. Press the modify country button, and you should arrive in a screen which looks like this (the images will differ depending on the materials in the country)
Then, select the materials you wish to blend in the material one and material two blocks. If you don't want any blending, select the same image in twice. Next, choose the blending coefficient. The lower the number, the more there will be of material one. The higher the number, the more there will be of material two. Then, change altitude to altitude 1. And repeat the action. Continue repeating the action, until altitude 255. Remember, it is possible to use other materials to make different altitude blends than the ones you selected first. Modify Country Function - the 'manual' way (but faster) This way of editing countries is probably much faster. However, it will require you to dip into some XML code. Open windows explorer, and go into the BWSurveyor/temp directory, and select a folder which contains countries you wish to edit. Double click on it, and select the mats folder in it, and open countries.xml in a text editor (preferably WordPad, since the files are quite large). The XML file should have a format which is similar to this:
<countries> Here are a couple of explanations: You can manually edit these numbers and text in WordPad, by using your keyboard, and copying and pasting data which occurs more than once. Don't forget to change the altitude data then though. A file must contain a minimum of 1 country. When you have finished defining the countries, load up BWSurveyor and your landscape, and import the country through the import texture function. Your country should then appear in the area where you can select your countries. Note: the materials pointed to by mat1 and mat2 can be your own textures, but they must be 256*256 true colour bitmaps, and they must be in the same directory as the countries.xml file. It is also recommended that they are seamless (tile correctly). Deleting blocks will optimise your landscape, and decrease its file size, thus making the people who use your landscape happier. When you have finished creating your landscape, and you are sure that your coasts look fine and that you are happy with everything that you have done, and you are ready for a release, then you should be ready to delete blocks. To delete blocks, put the blue pointer over a block you wish to delete, right click, and select Delete Block from the menu. Then, press OK when the prompt box comes up. Then, the block will be deleted. Repeat this procedure for other blocks. WARNING: Save your landscape before you start deleting blocks, since you cannot undo the deletion of blocks, and so if parts are deleted that you don't want to be deleted, then you will not be able to save them, unless you have saved your landscape before hand. Saving is probably the slowest function of every editor, since there is so much data that needs converting and saving to disk that it is necessary to have two different saving types. If you click on file, then you can see two save options. Their functions are: Save = this function will save all of the map, and will regenerate the lowres textures onto the map you loaded it from, or saved to previously. Quick save as = this function will save the whole map, but it will not regenerate the low res textures. Thus, it is quite fast. Save as = this saving function will save the whole map, and will regenerate low res textures, and thus it is pretty slow. We recommend only using this function when you have finished your landscape, or if you like waiting :) (the waiting isn't too long though) Do not shut down BWSurveyor if it stops responding for a save. We have not had it crash during a save. The bigger the landscape, the longer the save will take, so be patient. If your system has stopped responding for 5 minutes, we recommend restarting your computer, as it has probably crashed. Coordinates Finder Yep, this is true, the viewer can be used to find the coordinates of locations on your landscape, giving you a small preview of what is to come (eventually). The coordinates viewer is probably the most accurate one (and fastest one available). To find the coorindates you place the pointer (the blue thing, which is not the cross hair) where you want to place the object. Then, you right click to open a selection menu. Next, you click "copy coords". This copies them to your clipboard. To paste them in an editor, press CTRL V, or go to edit paste. Summary: Wireframe landscape The viewer always loads the landscapes showing all the textures. However, you also have the possibility of seeing the landscapes without without their full textures showing (textures are still shown on the wire frame though. To toggle between wire frame and full mode, you need to press the following button on the menu bar:
Change noise map Function Noise maps are what artists use to make their images look less computer like and give them more life. This function allows you to customise your own noise map for your landscape. To do so, press right click on a loaded landscape and select change noise map from the pop-up menu. Then, browse for the noise map you want to change the noise map to, and press OK. If you want to make your own noise map, make sure that it is greyscale and 256*256 in size and in BMP format. Level Map Function When you want to start making a new map, selecting this function, which is available from the right click menu, will level the whole map to altitude 0. Then, you can start modifying your landscape to make what you wanted to. To customise files you have to open BWSurveyor.settings.xml (c:\bwsurveyor is the default location, where you installed it to). In there you can customise two things: keyboard controls and the pointer model. In the XML file you should find this. <keys> If you replace the letter between the tag wtih the key you want to press, and save the XML, and restart the viewer, the keys will be made to your satisfaction :). If you want to customise the model, what you can do is look for the code that looks like this: <renderEngine> To change the size of the cursor, change the scale. The bigger the number, the bigger the model that will appear. You can also replace it with your own model, if you have a model i .X format (which is easily done with Milkshape 3d using one of its exporters, available from the TOI site). Put the model, and the texture of the model you made into the ./Media directory of where you installed the viewer, and then change pointer.x (which is within the cursor code shown above) to refer to the name of your new model. We recommend NOT changing the media directory at all. Customising Brushes This is a really great function in BWSurveyor. As well as using the defined brushes we have given with the editor, you can also define your own brushes, in the BWSurveyor.settings.xml file. Open BWSurveyor.settings.xml in WordPad and find the
<brushes> Here are the functions of the seperate sections of the XML file, under the brushes tag: Sending Stuff to TOI you have created There are two things which you can send into TOI when you have created them. These are custom countries and brushes. We would like to create a database of this information so that people can share their information, and thus they can help eachother with making their landscape. To send your brushes to TOI, copy the brush information and put it into a txt file. Then, take the bmp image and the txt file and add them to a zip file, which you can send off to TOI at plonkerfish@planetblackandwhite.com To send your custom landscapes to TOI, put the countries.xml file (only containing the info for your countries) and the materials that the country uses into a zip file and add a readme to give some information (your choice). Then, send them to plonkerfish@planetblackandwhite.com |
