Map Editor

Questions and answers about the how and why of making maps.
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Master Kenobi
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Map Editor

Post by Master Kenobi »

Hi everyone, I need help with making maps with an editor. I don't know which is the best to use and where to get it.(Ex. www.bzmapeditor.com) Thanks so much, I realy want to make a map or 2. Look for me around Bz flag!
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L4m3r
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Post by L4m3r »

[moved to the appropriate forum]

There is no "best" map editor, really, it all depends on what OS you're using and what you want to do.

Basic map editors include BZEdit for Windows, iBZEdit for Mac OS X, and BZFed for linux.

Blender is a free 3D modeller that runs on all of the above, and Teppic has an awesome BZWtools plug-in for making BZFlag maps. However, Blender has a pretty steep learning curve.

There may be a new, easier, cross-platform editor coming in a few months' time as well.
Optimism is just a milder alternative to denial.
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Post by Legolas_ »

This is from the map making wiki

For Mac:

iBZEdit is the name of 2 separate Apple Mac OS X BZW map editors, with a shared history. Both projects are no longer in active development.
Overview

iBZEdit was planed to be one of the first fully featured version 2.0 map editors, and was to support Mesh objects and materials. It was originally begun by BinarySpike with help from macnus, and was done independent of the mainline BZFlag development community. A basic version was released on the BZFlag Forums that could read some map features and display them.
Development

iBZEdit development was slow, and BinarySpike discontinued his involvement. The project was then restarted by macnus on his own. macnus continued to add features and created a website for the project http://www.ibzedit.com/, but also eventually discontinued his involvement.
At present the source code and a number of binary builds can be found at the iBZEdit SourceForge site.
Replacement by blender

The current accepted method of graphically editing BZW maps on Apple Mac OS X is using the BZWTools plug-ins for blender, as they provide a full 2.0 compliant editing system on a large number of platforms.
For PC's
BZEdit is the name of the original GTK based BZW map editor. Originally designed for Linux operating systems, portions of it's code base was shared with the Microsoft Windows version of BZEdit, BZEditWin32.

Overview

BZEdit provides a graphical representation of the BZFlag world, and tools to place various objects in it. It has tools to create and edit the basic objects that were supported in BZFlag version 1.7. These include:
Box
Pyramid
Base
Teleporter
Link
Development

BZEdit was developed by David Trowbridge aka CaptainProton, in May of 2000. Active development on the project stopped a year or so after. The project is currently abandoned with no active developers. No pre-made binary versions were ever made, but the code is in the BZFlag SVN repository.
Compiling and building

Building BZEdit has always been notoriously difficult due to it's use of the GTK GLArea for 3d drawing. The GLArea features were deprecated and removed from current GTK versions. This prevents many people from building BZEdit on modern GTK systems. The BZFed project built upon BZEdit and removed the GTK GLArea requirement, allowing it to be built on modern systems, but it too seems to have been abandoned.

Replacement by blender

The current accepted method of graphicaly editing BZW maps on Linux is using the BZWTools plug-ins for blender, as they provide a full 2.0 compliant editing system on a large number of platforms.
Also, you might want to check out the bzw channel in irc, ##bzw to discuss mapmaking with those who have been doing it for many years.
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WarPig
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Post by WarPig »

i suggest that you use BzEdit. its very easy to use and you can make a map very quickly. blender (like L4m3r said) is hard. well atleast for most.
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Post by halo3 »

yes i find bzedit the easiest blender confuses the crap out of me lol
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CannonBallGuy
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Post by CannonBallGuy »

Blender has a steeper learning curve, but can do much much more than simple bzflag world objects.
Wings3D can do, imho, almost as much as Blender but the learning curve (while still steeper than BZEdit's - is a lot more gradual).
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that exploding tank
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Post by that exploding tank »

No, unless your using blender wihth Teppic's tools, you would have to add the textures by hand. Before the "end" part of an object, just add this.
Example:

Code: Select all

box
  name exampleBox
  position 100 100 100
  size 100 100 100
  rotation 0
  addtexture /path/to/your/texture
end
As an alternative you can do this.

Code: Select all

material
  name example
  addtexture /path/to/your/texture/
end

box
  name exampleBox
  position 100 100 100
  size 100 100 100
  rotation 0
  matref example
end
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