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Using Niles Little Helper


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Brad.G

Wed Sep 07 2005

Registered Member #622

Joined: Sat Apr 30 2005
Location: Blackpool - uk
Posts: 64

ive typed this line so many times, but im going to type it again because it needs to be said
"Well done Oldman for coding this tool"

This is a reply i wrote to the question
"How do you organise your map making"
Been building DM/TDM maps for a while now and have just learnt how to make coop maps but i am getting a bit confused when it comes to grouping up me soldiers and changing there shoot distances as its taking me agea to do each one.

so what method do u use when building ur maps..???

do u build ur buildings first, soldiers first, ..???

Trying to find an easy way to organize them as theres to much going on and its taking me ages to change each soldier/weapon that i add..

---------------------------------------

Every mapper will vary. its pretty much what you prefer.

this is how i do it.

1) pick a terrain , and always leave it on 1300. i change it to a different time when i have finished the map. reason being its easier to work on a bright sunny map, than it is a gloomy one.

2) i build my bases. this alone can take a couple of months

3) now i add the vehicles in the best places

4) now i add the AI, but i do one base at a time. for instance if i had 3 bases, i would add 50 AI in each , which would leave me with 80 i could use along the way between bases. Although concentrate on the positioning of the AI in one base at a time. when you feel satisfied they are all in the right place, populate the next base ( oo that rhymed.) Now remember the AI limit. 254. what many mappers do not realise , that the amount of players which connect to the game also have an impact on the AI limit.
so for instance if you have 240 AI in your map, and 14 players on it. you are now up to 254 , the limit. if the limit exceeds this during gameplay then some of the following things are very likely to occur
A) Some events will cease to function ( ever seen a post saying , the map does not end - and the designer says , yes it does i tested it.)
B) Vehicles falling through concrete dock pieces
C) some objects may dissapear
D) and in the worsed cases, although rare, the game will sysdump
-- the limit of 254 is not strictly true either. as for if you design a level which has many objects of the same type, the limit will infact decrease. if you have played my map "Warzone rising V2.0" for your information there are around 180 AI in the map. add another 30 yourself and see what happens. you will be able to walk through the walls as though your a ghost.

5) now what i then do , is rename the AI which are on top of buildings or on the edge of a cliff to static. reason being , when i use niles little helper to make them all run around when they see you , i can identify which AI shouldnt be set to do this.. as it looks pretty silly when an AI runs off a cliff lol.

6) now i open niles little helper. i load the map

7) now at the top i click on wac events or whatever its called. its at the top of the program on the same line as file and so on

8) then i click the option at the bttom think its called generate wac script

you will be greeted with a big list of all the AI in your map.

click on select all, which is at the bottom of the window ( NOT set all selected ) you will see a tick has vbeen placed next to all the AI .. now look on the right of the window you will see @ Set nile values@

open this, and change their vision range. once changed click ok.

now make sure all AI are still selected.
now go down the list , and remove the ticks from any of the AI which have the name Static.

once you have done this , at the bottom you will see

SSNMAX
SSNMIN
SSNATT

they will be faded out in grey. Put a tick in the boxes next to these to make them active ( they should no longer be grey )

now change ssnmax to the same distance as what they can see ( could be 200? you set it ).

in the SSNMIN change this to 3

in the SSNATT change this also to the distance which they can see.

now click set all selected. you will notice that some numbers have appeared in the columns.

now click generate script. it will say WAC FILE MADE AT THIS LOCATION! bla bla bla..

open the folder where he npj file resides. you will notice a new file hich has your map name with the extention .WA_

open this in notepad. and copy and paste its contents in to your wac file.

now this will make the AI chase after you when they see you in the game.

what do the above settings do?

well
SSNMAX is the max distance which they can see. if this is set higher than the settings you gave them in hnile , or by click edit nile values, this will override your previous settings.

SSNMIN is the minimum distance which they will stop advancing o you. in this case they will stop coming at you 3 meters away

SSNATT is the distance away from what they will begin to shoot at you. for example

ssnmax 200
ssnmin3
ssnatt100

so with the above in mind, the enemy will start running at you when he spots you from 200 meters away. he will not shoot at you until he is 100 meters away , and he will stop running when he is as close as 3 meters to you.

have i forgotten anything?

oh yes. click ok to close that window.

now click on @ set all to enemy@

now click on @set all to red alert@

now click on @hide all 50 cals @ now click file , and save.

your done.

oh just one other thing.
how about a mission briefing when you press the I key?

again this is done in niles little helper.

at the top of the program , you will see create BIN/WAC events
click on this , and now select create BIN file

you will be greeted with a design window so you can lay out your briefing. once you are happy with this , click file and save , and it will generate a .BIN file to the same location where your .npj resides.

simply add this to your JO directory when hosting the game , and all players will be able to view the mission briefing.

Sincerely

Brad G
<span class='smallblacktext'>[ Edited ]</span>


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