Toaster Arena

Toaster Arena

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Tofawil's guide to making maps
By Tofawil
This guide contains a basic overview of builder mode and some tips for making maps, with an emphasis on arena maps.
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Introduction
Making maps is fun. Learning how to use a WIP side mode in an early access game without any outside help is not. In this guide I will try to provide as much information about the ingame map editor as I can, starting off with explaining the most basic features and traits of the builder and finishing with more complex design advice. I will not talk about NPCs, advanced scripting, and singleplayer content because I'm not experienced with it enough to give advice on it.
If you are looking for one topic in particular, use ctr+f or the index on the right. If there is anything important that I have skipped or missed, please write about it in the comments and I will add it.




Basic functions
In this part of the guide I will cover most stuff that can be instantly seen when opening the builder, by which I mean the bar at the top and the window on the left. I will skip talking about the self-explanatory things here.



top bar
At the top of the screen you can see 3 buttons: CUBE TOOL, TOGGLE UI, and EDITOR TOOL. TOGGLE UI simply hides most of the editor's ui, which can be helpful if you want to make a quick screenshot. EDITOR TOOL makes the left panel appear, and also lets you place and alter objects. CUBE TOOL will be covered in New Basic Geometry. It lets you make layouts without objects, but it's still in its experimental phase.



Information
Controls are given INPUTS at the top.
I will explain what RESERVED CHANNELS means later (check Basic Scripting in the index).
I don't exactly know what RESERVED VARIABLES does, but you probably don't need it either.



Tools
GLOBAL TRANSFORM and LOCAL TRANSFORM change rotation of the transform gizmo (the tri-colored thing attached to the selected object) to either be aligned to the world or the edited object.
MOUSE FOLLOW/LOOK AT can be good for quickly changing the position of an object by a lot, but this method is very imprecise. Objects dragged this way also tend to detatch or "float" from the surfaces they are put on, leaving small gaps (I will elaborate in Jank).
ENABLE/DISABLE SNAP is important. Snap tries to round the location, rotation, or scale of an object to a multiple of the snap value, but only when dragging the transform gizmo. When dragging an object from the menu, using MOUSE FOLLOW/LOOK AT, or directly inputting the value into the inspect window on the right, snapping doesn't apply. Personally, I almost always have snap enabled and set to 10 or 80. Just remember that this setting resets each time you enter the editor.



Misc
TOGGLE LUMEN toggles the lighting system between the old one and Lumen. Lumen is a more costly system that simulates more realistic reflections and shadows.
QUICK TEST spawns you into the map on the selected team. To go back to building, change your team in the pause menu.



Map Tools
I will explain MAP PROPERTIES and WORKSHOP in depth when we get to Publishing. For now remember that the editor has no autosave feature, and changes have to be saved either via the map properties menu or by pressing TEST MAP, but not with QUICK TEST.




Objects
The tabs at the bottom of the screen is where you find all placeable objects. Excluding geometry made using CUBE TOOL, everything in a map is an object.



Decorations
This folder contains a random assortment of static props. Objects on this list are static and have no interactions, e.g. vehicles cannot be entered. The only only object in this category with an additional function is Cold crystal extractor in Machines, which has the trait of extinguishing all burning players nearby.



Geometry
Before even clicking on any of the subfolders, there are already 3 noteworthy objects listed: Construction Block, Skeletal Mesh, and Static Mesh. I have a lot to say about these three, so I decided to dedicate an entire section to them (Old Basic Geometry in the index).
Aside from them, this folder has objects which are generally more connected to making modular buildings. Bridges, Buildings, Pillars, Plates, and Landing Pad from Platforms have a consistent style, making them all fit together, and are all colorable, which lets you colorcode symmetrical bases.



Lights

This folder contains only 2 objects, these being Point Light and Spotlight. Both have adjustable color, brightness, athenuation, and even blinking. The only real difference between them, is that the latter has an adjustable cone angle, letting you focus its light on a smaller area.
The Dynamic Light? option changes whether shadows are calculated. Change this to true only if there is a moving object that will block the light or you want to prevent leaking. Otherwise it just wastes processing power.
The upper block was moved during gameplay via scripting to obstruct the light in both examples. On the left the option was turned off, and on the right it was turned on.
On the left we can see some light leaking through the surface. On the right the option was turned on, so there is no leaking.



Logic
This folder is huge. I will not cover everything in detail, partially because there is simply so much in here, and also because I myself don't yet fully understand the AI system.
  • URL Decal – is actually outside the subfolders; shows an internet image
  • AI – contains stuff connected to AI, which I sadly don't know that much about. Someone would need to make a separate guide for it.
  • Ambiance – contains only Weather controller, which I will talk about in Finishing
  • Destructible – all objects in this folder are actually just one object with differently set parameters; you can adjust health, models before and after destruction, sounds, particles, and even the explosion; if you are looking for exploding barrels, they are here
  • Game Modes – contains stuff necessary for Capture Points and Corruption; for some reason Respawn Camera is here too
  • Narrative – contains logs and dialogues; not that useful when making arena maps, but grat for singleplayer/co-op levels
  • Parkour – contains logic for parkour maps
  • Power Ups – aside from power ups, this subfolder also contains health and ammo packs
  • Scripting – contains a lot, including 3 smaller subfolders; Jump pad and Teleporter are here for some reason; other things are either for co-op levels, decorating, or scripting; what's useful for arena maps will be covered in Scripting and Finishing
  • Spawn Points – contains spawn points for FFA, Teams, and Corruption; keep in mind that Corruption Frigate and Corruption Zombie Dropship are in Game Modes instead; if there are no spawn points for the currently played gamemode, players are instead spawned at world origin (coordinates 0,0,0)
  • Trigger – contains triggers for scripting; will be covered later (Scripting in the index)
  • Volume – contains Invisible Wall, kill barriers, and other things that apply an effect in a volume, such as anti-gravity, water, and lava.



Vehicles
This folder contains drivable vehicles. Their respawn timer is adjustable. Keep in mind that vehicles spawn only in gamemodes that alow them, and the TEST MAP option launches a match in a gamemode without vehicles. To test them, you have to launch a match from the lobby instead.



Weapon
This folder contains placeable weapons and utility/equipment items, like the fishing rod. Most weapons are present, but not all of them. Items on pedestals can be made invisible. Items in the Pickups subfolder have physics applied to them, so they will fall if placed in the air.
Remember that weapons spawn only in some gamemodes.




Old Basic Geometry
Old vs. New Basic Geometry
When this guide was originally written, the CUBE TOOL didn't exist yet. I will cover it in the New Basic Geometry part of the guide; meanwhile, the Old Basic Geometry covers the old methods of making geometry. Both approaches are valid, so you should try both and decide which one is more comfortable for you.



Construction Block, Skeletal Mesh, and Static Mesh are very important when it comes to making maps. While objects from Decorations and subfolders of Geometry are also useful, these 3 are the most versatile and easy to use.



Construction Block
This is the simplest object in the entire builder mode.
By default, it is an 80cmx80cmx80cm cube. For comparison, the player character is ~150cm tall and ~75cm wide and long.
Scaling Construction Blocks is the easiest and fastest way of creating floors, walls, and ceilings for your map. After using it enough, you will get really fast at making rooms.
This one took me less than a minute.
When using Construction Blocks to create geometry, snap is especially helpful in hiding seams. It also helps in measuring distance because you only have to work with whole numbers.



Skeletal Mesh
This object can have its model swapped for most weapons, body parts, and some other miscellaneous props. These props have no interactions, physics, or collision. They are purely decorative.



Static Mesh

After Construction Block, this is the second most important object in the editor. Just like Skeletal Mesh, you can set its model. The main difference between Skeletal Mesh and Static Mesh are their mesh collections. Static Mesh has way more options, with almost every model in the files of the game being available. Additionally, most of these models have collision, which means that they can be a lot more than just decorations. You should go into that menu and see for yourself how much can be found there.

There is one model in particular that I should mention, that being Ramp 1. It can be easilly rescaled and rotated, which means that it can be used for all angles of inclines. It's also great for detailing and creating angles sharper than 90 degrees.



materials
Materials are the textures that you asign to some objects. All textures in the game can be used on any of the objects above. They only change the visuals and have no effect on gameplay, e.g. a Construction Block with water as it's asigned material will remain solid and will not turn into a water volume.
Materials can be world aligned or object aligned. World aligned materials do not care about the shape, scale, or rotation of an object, and will "slide around" when the object is moved. Object aligned materials will instead be applied like you would expect a texture, staying the same no matter where you place the object. I recommend using world aligned materials for larger geometry and object aligned materials for individual elements.
Construction Blocks on the left have a world aligned texture, while the ones on the right have a texture that is object aligned. In the example on the right, the materials on the objects are z-fighting as a result of being aligned to different things.




New Basic Geometry

CUBE TOOL is neat. It allows you to create layouts with non-object blocks on a grid.



Instructions
Using the CUBE TOOL is quite simple and easy. If you have ever tried to make a map in Minecraft, you will quickly get a hang of it.
Each space on the grid (and therefore each block) is 80cmx80cmx80cm (the same as a default Construction Block). Blocks cannot be resized. You can switch between adding new blocks, removing placed blocks, and changing blocks' materials with the buttons at the top of the panel on the left. You can either click to add/remove/paint one block at a time or you can drag to affect all the highlighted spaces.
The Constraint Volume place tell you about placing constraints that you can toggle with W, E, and R keys. They will lock the highlighted shape to be at most 1 block thick in their dimension. They can be useful when you want to make flat rectangles with the CUBE TOOL.
The Blocks list lets you choose the block you want to place. The panel on the right side of your screen lets you change the material that added/placed blocks have.



Rotating
Rotating blocks is a bit more complicated than you may at first think. Instead of having a list of rotations that you browse by scrolling, each direction of the scroll wheel corresponds to a different axis of rotation. By scrolling up, you rotate the block highlight along the Z axis. Scrolling down will result in the block being rotated along the Y axis. Since each block has 24 possible rotations in total, you may spend a few seconds finding the rotation you are looking for.



Upsides and downsides
Since every CUBE TOOL block is of uniform size, keeping in mind scale when working with them is a lot easier than when using Construction Blocks. If you remember that a toaster is ~1 block wide, ~1 block long, and ~2 blocks tall, your layouts will hardly ever be too big or too small.
The CUBE TOOL is really cool, but you shouldn't rely on it exclusively when making layouts. While I normally recommend staying on the grid when possible, this thing doesn't let you stray away from it at all, so your map may end up feeling really blocky and flat. You also can't resize or rotate blocks, which means that surfaces are either perfectly along a plane or at a 45 degree angle.
Blocks placed with CUBE TOOL are not objects, so you can't select them when using the EDITOR TOOL. This can be useful because you won't accidentally select them when fiddling with objects, but you also won't be able to quickly move them. My symmetrizing trick (see Tips for using the builder in the index) also won't work on them.




Basic Scripting
I believe someone else should do a more comprehensive guide to scripting in particular because it can be a bit complicated, but I will explain the basics.



channels
Channels are the main way objects interact and communicate with each other. Objects use channels to send and receive simple signals. Many objects from the Logic folder have a more complicated inspect window. They feature text fields for channels.
These channel text fields can either be sending, which means that the object will release the signal to the asigned channel if a certain condition is met, or they can be receiving, which means that the object will do something if it detects a signal on the asigned channel. There are also text fields not related to the channel system at all. If you don't know what type or purpose a text field has, simply hover your cursor over it and an explanation will appear.
This Button Trigger Console features all these types. Trigger channel a and trigger channel b are sending channel text fields, and they will send a signal to their respective channel when the button is pressed. Activation channel and deactivation channel are receiving channel text fields, they and will unlock and lock the button respectively if they sense a signal on their assigned channels. Action prompt doesn't care about channels, and instead tells the button what to display on the screen.



RESERVED CHANNELS
Just under INPUT in Information (discussed in Basic Functions, check the index), there is a button called RESERVED CHANNELS. It has information about channels that you cannot manually send a signal to, but you can make objects receive signals from those channels. Only built-in gamemode logic can send signals to those channels.



UIDs
Each placed object has a unique asigned UID, which can be seen at the top of its inspect window. Some objects manipulate other objects, and use UIDs to identify which object they interact with.
You don't need to attach a UID to an object if it is the only object manipulated. If you want to, for example, hide an entire building, you can attach UIDs of its parts to reduce the ammount of logic.




Jank
The game is still in early access, so there is a lot of jank in it. I don't exactly know how Unreal Engine works, so I can't explain many of these problems, but I can still list some ways of fighting them.



"floating"
After placing an object or moving it with MOUSE FOLLOW the object will not be directly on the surface, but will instead "float" a bit above it.
If you want to avoid seams, drag it with a gizmo with snap enabled or directly correct its coordinates in the inspect window.



"pixel walking"
(I couldn't get this bug to appear in a controlled environment, so I had to use examples from actual maps.) If you stack 2 Construction Blocks and their walls are perfectly flush with each other, "pixel walking" might be possible there. This means that players will be able to stand and walk on infinitelly small invisible ledges that shouldn't be there.
Remember to check places on your map where this can potentially happen. If you find a problematic spot, rebuild it with vertical blocks instead of horizontal ones.



rotating and scaling using the gizmo while snapping is enabled
Scaling and rotating are both inprecise when it comes to applying snap. In the example above, I rotated and rescaled this chair a bunch while keeping snap on at the value of 10.
You can avoid imprecise numbers by inputting values directly into the inspect window.



inputting rotation in more than one axis
When changing an object's rotation using the inspect window, the values freak out. In the first example, I wrote "120" in every field in rotation, but they changed on their own afterwards. In the second exapmle, I wrote "90" everywhere.
I recommend rotating using the gizmo and snap instead. The values will not be perfect, but they should be close enough.



altering multi-selected objects
When moving, rotating, and scaling mult-selected objects, their real values are only changed when dragging the gizmo. Inputting the values into the inspect window makes them change in the editor, but after a reload they change back to where they were dragged. TL;DR: use the gizmo when multi-selecting.



CUBE TOOL highlight
The highlight that you can see when using the CUBE TOOL is weird. It will always have a size that could fit on the CUBE TOOL grid, but it often becomes offset by 40cm into a direction. This bug is only graphical, so it's not that big of a deal. If you use the CUBE TOOL enough, you should be able to just ignore the offset and know what area you are highlighting anyway.




Tips for using the builder
While the first half of this guide focused on the theory of using the editor, the second part is more about the practical implications of the established tools and rules. I will mostly share tips and tricks that could help when making a map.



world origin
"World origin" (or sometimes just "the origin point") is a term used across many math-related fields, including videogames. World origin is a point is pace whose coordinates are all equal to 0. Toaster Arena uses non-shifting 3d space, which means that each map has one world origin. This point is quite important because if something doesn't have a set position, it will default to being placed there. That's why players will spawn there if there are no set spawnpoints on the map. That also means that if something unexpectedly disappears in builder mode, it probably ended up at world origin and you should check it.
I highly recommend building your maps in such a way that world origin is exactly in the middle of them. If anything teleports there for no reason, you can instantly check it. Additionally, it speeds up making your map symmetrical.



symmetry
There are 2 types of symmetry when it comes to maps in videogames: mirror and rotational.
A map has mirror symmetry when its halves are flipped compared to each other. You can point out a vertical plane in the middle which could work as a "mirror". Examples of such maps in toaster arena include Reactor and Tower. There is no easy way of making a map with mirror symmetry in the builder. If you want to make a map with this symmetry, you will have to carefully calculate all the coordinates.
Rotational symmetry is a lot simpler. One half of the map is taken and rotated 180 degrees along a rotation axis to form the second half. Some maps in Toaster Arena with this symmetry are Bridge and FloorIsLava. Making a map with rotational symmetry is way easier.
If world origin is on the rotation axis, you can simply duplicate an object, multiply the values in the first 2 Location fields by -1, and increase its rotation in the 3rd field by 180. If world origin and the rotation axis don't align, the math will be a bit more complicated.
There is also a quick method for symmetrizing a bunch of objects at once. Place an object on the rotation axis and then multi-select every object you want to mirror. Then, as the very last one, select the object you placed on the axis. Duplicate the selected objects and rotate the axis object by 180 degrees using the gizmo. To finish, delete both objects on the axis and adjust the numbers on the duplicated objects.



building rotated buildings
If possible, you should avoid making buildings with walls that are not parallel/perpendicular to the world grid created by the snap function. In other words: rotate Construction Blocks by increments of 90 degrees or use the CUBE TOOL.
Due to the Pythagorean theorem, even if you place Construction Blocks on grid but give them a strange rotation, the other corners of that Construction Block will not be on grid, and that could result in problems such as seams.
If your map idea relies on many buildings being at various angles compared to each other, rethink that idea before you begin creating.
If you still many walls at angles, I recommend using the Ramp 1 Static Mesh and rotating it 90 degrees, so that it's on its side. It allows you to make diagonal walls between 2 on-grid edges, which is a lot easier than trying to calculate the exact length of a wall.



natural terrain
The CUBE TOOL and Construction Blocks are great for making buildings and more geometric layouts, but they aren't that good when it comes to making more chaotic/natural environments. In those situations Static Meshes and Decorations are better.
Some of my favourites are meshes SM_Cliff_0, SM_Cliff_1, SM_Cliff_2, SM_Terrain_1, SM_Terrain_2, and Scroll_Terrain.



testing
There are 3 ways in which you can test a map. Each one has it's upsides and you should know when to use which one:
  • QUICK TEST – instantly spawns you into the currently edited map; doesn't reload the map, it just changes your team; many logic objects are not hidden and don't work; the fastest way to check the layout
  • TEST MAP – launches a match on the currently edited map; saves and reloads the map; logic objects are hidden and work; always launches the match in a strange FFA/Arena hybrid where you start with weapons and you can pick new ones up; doesn't let you check other objects connected to other gamemodes, such as Infection, Teams, and vehicles
  • Testing through a match – isn't a built-in option; manually starting a private/public session in the server browser; all logic is hidden and works; lets you check any gamemode with as many people as you want; takes the longest to start




Designing
Designing a map is not difficult, but designing a good map is a whole different story. I have compiled a list of general guidelines that I try to keep in mind when using the builder. Most of them are applicable to level design as a whole, so they might also be be useful when making maps for other games.



1: Practice
Your first map is gonna suck. Only after using the builder for quite some time will you get the intuition for what works and what doesn't. Just don't give up after your first flop and learn from your past mistakes; you will eventually get good at designing maps.



2: Think of a vibe
It's a lot easier to come up with ideas for a map when you have an audiovisual identity for it in mind. Look for inspiration in real-life places or things you have seen in video games and movies. When working on a map, I always listen to music that matches the vibes of the environment I am working on at that moment.



3: Find a central gimmick
Along with the visual identity, the gameplay identity should also be chosen relatively early on. Find an interesting Logic item, create a weirdly-shaped central room, or get anything else that will stick in the player's mind after playing on your map. Try to make something that stands out when compared to other maps on the workshop.



4: Avoid the "box with junk" style
I have noticed that many people new to making maps do this. When designing a map, they make a huge enclosed room and then try to fill it with meshes and occasional walls. This results in many problems, such as the map being flat, there being not enough cover from snipers, players avoiding most of the placed stuff, and the traversal being boring. Of course, it is possible fight these problems and make a good "box with junk" map, but it's difficult and not worth it.



5: Rooms and passages
Instead of thinking about a map as one big room with things inside, try to imagine it as a web of "rooms" connected by "passages". These "rooms" don't need to be literal; they can also be parts of islands, rooftops, or any other smaller piece of terrain that is even slightly separated from the others around it. "Passages" are the ways that you expect the player to use to get from one room to another. Players traverse the web of rooms by using passages.
When looking at a map this way, it's a lot easier to predict the path that a player might take when playing it. With that knowledge, it's a lot easier to predict where to add or remove stuff.



6: Build rooms with intent
Don't add space to your map if you don't also have a reason for players to go there. Try to make each room and passage have some purpose. For example, a room can be an arena, a healing station, a vantage point, or a hiding spot, among others. Passages mostly derive their value from how quick they are and what rooms they connect.



7: Make the map flow
You should give players the freedom of choice when they run around your map. This means that rooms connected to only 2 other rooms should be used sparingly, and rooms with only one passage should be reserved only for special reasons, such as secrets and gimmicky reward rooms. Passages should also lead into rooms in a way that lets players experiment and conserve speed.



8: Most problems have multiple solutions
Try to keep an open mind when designing and connecting rooms. It's easy to fall into the trap of using a only few favourite solutions, which can result in your map feeling samey.



9: The fast route should be the fun route
Running in a straight line from point A to B is boring. Whenever possible, encourage the use of more interesting passages. Make parkour the optimal way to play your map.
If your map has long straightaways, add some gimmicks, such as launch pads or teleporters, to let players skip them.



10: Remember what game you are playing
Toaster Arena is a movement shooter, and you should play into that. Don't limit yourself to flat, gray, realistic battlefields. Make players run on walls, climb towers, or leap over huge gaps. Keep in mind just what mobility the characters have.



11: Adapt, don't copy
I recommend looking at maps from other games for inspiration. Just keep in mind that if you are adapting a map or a piece of one, you should make changes to accommodate for the differences in control schemes. Otherwise the map will feel out of place and will not feel fun to run around on.



12: Guide players with health packs
If a room is not used as frequently as you want, add an easy to spot healthpack there. Players love those, so you will definitely see more action there. Guns are also good for that, but they only appear on certain gamemodes.



13: Powerups are too powerful
You could theoretically also use powerups to guide players, but I don't think that's a good idea. Keep in mind just how powerful doubling someone's damage or fire rate is. Unless you go out of your way to design your map around those powerups, they will feel way too overpowered. Don't use powerups; they are not worth it.



14: If it's unused, remove it
If you can't find a way to make a room or a passage fun and engaging, delete it. This will funnel more players to rooms that have more to them.
This also goes for rooms that are too big. If you don't know what to put there, shrink it so that it's easier to find something for it.



15: Everyone deserves to have fun
Your map should encourage many playstyles and strategies. Make the rooms diverse, so that each weapon can shine somewhere.



16: Everyone except snipers. ♥♥♥♥ snipers. All my homies hate snipers
While other weapon types benefit from different types of cover, snipers thrive on the complete lack of it. This is the playstyle that you have to design against instead of for. Add enough walls to block shots from across the map.
Remember to block off vantage points, so that there is no spot on the map where one sniper can sit and shut down the entire server. Players have infinite wallclimb in this game, so you will have to put some invisible walls and kill triggers to prevent players from climbing onto scenery.



17: All gamemodes are valid
Even if you are making a map with one particular gamemode in mind, you should still make the map compatible with as many gamemodes in the game as possible. Add all the types of spawn points, place objectives in important places, and fill the map with weapons to be picked up. If you can't make your map compatible with every gamemode (or you simply don't feel like doing that), make sure it's mentioned in the map description.



18: Break rules if you have a reason
The guidelines I mentioned here help me combat some of the problems I encounter when making maps. If you believe that you can break a guideline while adressing the problem some other way, then go for it.




Finishing
After finalizing the layout and placing the spawn points, weapons, and health/ammo packs, there are still some things that your map might lack. While the map can be fine without these finishing touches, you should at least think about implementing them.
To illustrate what I'm talking about, I will be using screenshots from real workshop maps. If I don't give the name of the author of a map, it's probably mine.



boundaries
By "boundaries" I mean invisible obstacles preventing players from exiting the map. I recommend using Invisible Walls and Kill Barriers, both of which are in the Volume subfolder in Logic. Soft Kill Barriers are, in my opinion, not reliable enough.
Which obstacle you choose should depend on the type of map you are making. Maps floating in space or on top of tall buildings, e.g. Lantern's Ring, should prevent players from falling out by having a cage made out of Kill Barriers around it. A map with a traversable plane at it's base, e.g. I Poisonned the Water Supply, can have Invisible Walls as it's barriers.
Just remember to tilt Invisible Walls slightly towards the playable area, so that players can't climb them.



clipping
By "clipping" I'm not referring to objects overlapping, but to "clipping off messy geometry". Sometimes, there are spots that players can get stuck on, or spots which players can exploit. Use Invisible Walls and Soft Kill Barriers to make traversal smoother and to discourage players from staying in some places for too long.
On TA_towers by dubious-cheese you can see that there are invisible walls added to some of the stairs to make them behave like ramps during gameplay. Without this, you wouldn't be able to slide down them.
When making I Poisonned the Water Supply, I was afraid that snipers would use the decorative ship on the blue side, so I clipped it off with a Soft Kill Barrier.



particles
There is an object called Particle Creator in the Scripting subfolder in Logic. As the name implies, it creates particles, which can be great for detailing your map.
Broadside by xR167 uses many fire and smoke effects for esthetic reasons.
Remember that there are many more available particles than just fire and smoke. Just like with meshes, I recommend going through the list from time to time to look for interesting stuff.
Some particles (like explosions, glass shattering, and muzzle flashes) don't loop and instead happen once. You will have to make them not active by default and then activate them with scripting.



sound players
Sound Player 2D and Sound Player World are also in the Scripting subfolder. They are quite similar to the Particle Creator, except they emit sounds instead. Sound Player 2D doesn't care about distance from the player. Sound Player World has an adjustable area of effect.
Looping isn't based on the sound chosen but instead on a toggle.



weather
Weather Controller in Ambiance in Logic. Use it. The weather is a huge part on a map's visual identity.
The time of day number field can have values between 0 and 2400. 0 gives midnight, 600 gives dawn, 1200 gives noon, 1800 gives dusk, and 2400 gives midnight again.
The translation rate number field has an incorrect explanation. It doesn't set the duration but the rate, so the higher the number the faster the weather changes.
Set the active? toggle to true and set the translation rate to 10 if you want the weather to instantly be changed on map load. You should change those values if you want to have a more complicated weather system in your map.



lighting
Lighting used to be easy, but then Lumen (or Global Ilumination) was added. Before you release a map, make sure it looks presentable in both lighting modes, or at least make sure players know which one to use. Use the TOGGLE LUMEN button in the editor to quickly swap between both modes.
With Lumen on, more detailed lighting is calculated, which means that areas without a direct line of sight to the sky will be almost completely dark. If you are ever making a map that is underground or inside of a building/spaceship, you will have to add a lot of artificial light sources.
These 2 screenshots are from a map I made called Welcome to the Underground!. The left picture was taken with Lumen off and the right one with Lumen on. I had to add a very strong source of light in the middle to make anything visible when Lumen is on.
Aside from lights from the Light folder, there are also other sources of light in the form of some meshes and materials. The main light hanging from the ceiling in the screenshots above is a sphere mesh with it's material set to MI_Spit.
Sometimes, some light from the sky can leak through terrain into closed spaces. If that happens, get a Weather controller and set time of day to 600 or 1800.




Publishing
Publishing a map to the workshop is not difficult. Doing it well is a whole different story.
In this part of the guide I will explain the MAP PROPERTIES and WORKSHOP buttons in the Map Tools on the left. I also want to give some tips for making the workshop page look a bit nicer.



MAP PROPERTIES
Clicking this button will open a menu containing basic info about the map:
  • Map Name – lets you set the name of the map. Each time you change the name of a map, the game will see this as you creating a new, independent map that just so happens to look like an older one. Both versions of the map will be seen by your computer and the workshop as separate files. Remember to delete old versions after renaming to avoid potential confusion.
  • Map Description – lets you give the map a description. This description will be automatically copied to the workshop page, but it can be changed there if needed. I recommend describing the premise, the size, and the supported gamemodes of the map.
  • Map Type – lets you change the map's type. Aside from Arena, there is also Solo and co-op.
  • CAPTURE SCREENSHOT – lets you make the main screenshot for the map. This screenshot will be used as the thumbnail for the map selection menu for builder mode and single player. This thumbnail is also what people see on the workshop, so make sure it looks nice.
  • SAVE MAP – lets you save the map. Use it often.



WORKSHOP
This is where you go when you are ready to release a new map or you want to push an update to an already published map.
The big text field here is for patch notes. Stuff written here will be visible in Change Notes on the map's workshop page. These patch notes can be changed later on the workshop page.
Remember to not change the name of the map between updates because it will make the workshop think it's a new map. If you want to tell people which version of the map it is, write about it in the workshop description.



screenshots
A single thumbnail doesn't tell much about a map. If you want to show people what your map looks like before they download it, add a few screenshots to its workshop page.
I recommend using the built-in photo mode. It's inaccessible in the editor, so you will have to launch a session via the server browser to use it. Once in a match, open the pause menu and turn on the photo mode.
2 Comments
Tofawil  [author] 22 Sep @ 10:24am 
Sorry I didn't notice the comment before. Go ahead and post it if you are still interested
Shadow_Hawk  [developer] 14 Sep @ 1:01pm 
Hello, I love the guide
I would like to ask for permission to be able to post it on the discord server as a learning resource

-Cheers