Making my own foundry maps

thunderbox13 · July 2013

I can't seem to be able to make my own foundry indoor maps, but yet I play foundry missions with indoor maps that I can't find in the pre-made map selection...

Help??

kirksplat · July 2013

thunderbox13 wrote: »

I can't seem to be able to make my own foundry indoor maps, but yet I play foundry missions with indoor maps that I can't find in the pre-made map selection...

Help??

We build them up in the sky on an outdoor map.

drogyn1701 · July 2013

One of the things that a lot of us do is make "Sky Castles." Here's how:

-Start with an outdoor map. I always use Meadow Clearing.

-Place one of the flat Building Block - Platform assets way up in the sky, like 500 units up. That's your floor. Sadly you're limited to just three texture styles for those. (Make sure to set everything you put down to Zero Altitude).

-Now go to the details tab and search for walls. You have a lot more options here. There are Starfleet, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian and other generic walls. Set them to 501 units up. Put these down to get the corridor and room layout you want. Make sure to overlap as usually the short ends walls hang over the actual end of the wall part of the asset. If you're making a Starfleet interior, there are handy walls with opening doors or turbolifts.

-Now that you have your floor plan, you can populate it with consoles, other objects and NPCs. Some of these are better if you set them 1 higher than the Y value of the floor, some are better at .9 higher and some need higher or lower. You kind of have to experiment.

-Last of all put another platform asset on top of the floor. This will be your ceiling. I always use an identical asset to whatever I used on the floor, set anywhere from 6 to 10 higher than the floor, depending on how tall you want the ceiling to be and how tall the particular walls are.

Voila, custom interior. Some of us also use the black space around some of the existing interior maps. However be warned, Cryptic has a tendency to expand or contract these black areas without warning.

thegreendragoon1 · July 2013

There is also an excellent tutorial series on building custom interiors here:

http://starbaseugc.com/index.php/trailers/essential-viewing/guide-creating-a-custom-interior-map/

maninblack017 · July 2013

As a rookie foundry author nearing completion of my first mission, all I can say is thank you! My mind has been effectively blown.

drogyn1701 · July 2013

maninblack017 wrote: »

As a rookie foundry author nearing completion of my first mission, all I can say is thank you! My mind has been effectively blown.

I didn't dabble with this sort of custom map building until I was on about my third mission. It's intimidating at first, but you can do some fantastic stuff with it. Here's a screen of my first effort: http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/senate.jpg

Word of advice, I built that map on the ground of the Meadow Clearing map. Don't do that unless you plan to utilize the ground part of the map too. Otherwise build up in the air.

markhawkman · July 2013

I also stuck with regular interiors until I got the hang of placing decorations.

HINT: use absolute zero. relative to terrain makes for an endless series of adjustments that get frustrating fast.

kirksplat · July 2013

drogyn1701 wrote: »

Sadly you're limited to just three texture styles for those. (Make sure to set everything you put down to Zero Altitude).

A lot can be done with buildings here. For the most part, I've stopped using many of those blocks. Using the tops of certain buildings can work as well.

maninblack017 · July 2013

Great tips, guys. I really appreciate it. Any other hints for a rookie? I'm ready to finish my mission as soon as the editor stops crashing everytime I open it. Looking forward to publishing so I can test it out.

thegreendragoon1 · July 2013

As a general rule I'll try retrofitting an existing map, especially if it's something familiar like a ship interior. However sometimes it pays to think bigger.

kirksplat · July 2013

thegreendragoon1 wrote: »

As a general rule I'll try retrofitting an existing map, especially if it's something familiar like a ship interior. However sometimes it pays to think bigger.

That's awesome.

thegreendragoon1 · July 2013

kirksplat wrote: »

That's awesome.

High praise from the master.

You do incredible work as well.

thunderbox13 · July 2013

Thank- you for the detailed explanation it should really help me a lot:)

drogyn1701 · July 2013

Let's see, any other tips:

- Above all set all your objects to use Zero Altitude. This saves you many headaches later.
- I build from the bottom up, since the Foundry displays newer objects on top of older ones.
- Always run through and check for gaps between the wall assets.
- If you get the flickering texture overlap, go back and set every other wall to be .001 offset. For instance if you have all the walls set to X = 30, put every other one as 30.001.
- Play around with different sky backdrops. Some of them can make some really cool lighting effects for your interior.

I'm sure some of other mad mapmakers have some more tips.

kirksplat · July 2013

drogyn1701 wrote: »

Let's see, any other tips:

- Above all set all your objects to use Zero Altitude. This saves you many headaches later.
- I build from the bottom up, since the Foundry displays newer objects on top of older ones.
- Always run through and check for gaps between the wall assets.
- If you get the flickering texture overlap, go back and set every other wall to be .001 offset. For instance if you have all the walls set to X = 30, put every other one as 30.001.
- Play around with different sky backdrops. Some of them can make some really cool lighting effects for your interior.

I'm sure some of other mad mapmakers have some more tips.

Building from the bottom up is a good suggestion. OP, you'll also find it incredibly frustrating if you put a ceiling on top before putting lots of details on the map. The icons for the platforms can cover everything.

Also, you really should learn how to manually edit the x y and z coordinates. See part 1 of my Back to Basics tutorial series at Starbase UGC.

My other recommendation is to use math whenever possible. For example, if you're lining up a bunch of walls, start with 2. Let's say you tinker with it and it looks like this:

wall 1: X: 300 Y: 300 Z: 300
wall 2: X: 300.001 (to avoid visible clipping) Y: 300.001* Z: 305.5

(*the player won't see the clipping on the Y, but it does affect performance, I think)

So, then you know to do the math for the Z of 3rd wall as 305.5 + 5.5 = 311. 4th wall is thus 311 + 5.5 = 316.5. That way you can put 10 walls down at once simply by using a calculator (if the math is harder that 5.5).

markhawkman · July 2013

thegreendragoon1 wrote: »

As a general rule I'll try retrofitting an existing map, especially if it's something familiar like a ship interior. However sometimes it pays to think bigger.

Awesome! Nice to see I'm not the only person who likes glowing plasma conduits.

How did you do the catwalks to the side?

paxfederatica · July 2013

thegreendragoon1 wrote: »

As a general rule I'll try retrofitting an existing map, especially if it's something familiar like a ship interior. However sometimes it pays to think bigger.

That looks like something from the Death Star.

Anyway, I second what thegreendragoon says - if one of the stock maps works well for your mission in functional terms, it's often easier to just redress it than to make a new map from scratch. In my upcoming mission "Valley of the Shadow I" I took a generic ship interior map and lined all the existing walls with brick-style foundation walls to make them look like underground tunnels and chambers. (I may even add piping to all the ceilings, in order to enhance the look even more.)

thegreendragoon1 · July 2013

markhawkman wrote: »

Awesome! Nice to see I'm not the only person who likes glowing plasma conduits.

How did you do the catwalks to the side?

It's made out of a bunch of Platform - Cardassian 01 arranged in a descending cascade with cube and ramp building blocks arranged to fill in the space underneath. There are four hallways leading off, each at a different vertical level. That's why the 3 different power conduits connect to the core at different heights. It was sort of an experiment in dealing with different vertical planes. The core itself is around a thousand meters in height.

One final word of advice. Successful map building in the Foundry is an exercise in taking existing assets and using them in ways there were never designed for.

nagorak · July 2013

It is always easier to redress an existing map. Unfortunately, a lot of the maps are really crappy. And even those that aren't can be very difficult to actually modify due to all of the consoles and other clutter placed on them.

It was already linked above, but if you check my sig there is another link to my tutorial on creating a custom interior. It has some basic tips to get you started.

thay8472 · July 2013

Right now i'm trying to build this Undine city.

Undine City: 1 2

I did enjoy myself when building the caves in "Depths of Nukara Prime"

thunderbox13 · July 2013

Thank- you to everyone who answered my post. These tips are really going to help me make an AWESOME mission!

commandermic · July 2013

for the ground, there is another interesting model at the foundry, i'm not sure what it's exactly called in english, cause i use another language, but i think it's something like "platform - rock" (maybe anyone could post the exact name). its a bit tricky to use it, cause there is a disturbing little rock at one corner, but it's one of the nicest grounds we could create. also interesting about it, you could turn it and even if you don't place it exactly fitting a second of this platform, the texture of it always shows correctly no matter how you turn to of these into each other (sorry for bad english, i hope it's understandable what i mean)

it's maybe a bit work cause you have to hide the corners, but i think the result is nice

ok, here a little example how it could look:

http://imageshack.us/a/img809/5119/screenshot2013051001264.jpg

adverbero · July 2013

commandermic wrote: »

for the ground, there is another interesting model at the foundry, i'm not sure what it's exactly called in english, cause i use another language, but i think it's something like "platform - rock" ......

ok, here a little example how it could look:

http://imageshack.us/a/img809/5119/screenshot2013051001264.jpg

Never occured to me before, glad i came across the post

I love the idea of using this, hopefully they will get around to fixing my crash to desktop bug then i can use it !

commandermic · July 2013

adverbero wrote: »

I love the idea of using this, hopefully they will get around to fixing my crash to desktop bug then i can use it !

good for you, when the idea of these platforms came across to me, i've already nearly finished this map - was much work to build this ground and hide all the corners when the whole map was there

and bad that so many authors still have problems to use the foundry...i've heard from someone that it has helped him when he created a new foundry character, but i don't know if this is working for others, too.

kirksplat · July 2013

commandermic wrote: »

for the ground, there is another interesting model at the foundry, i'm not sure what it's exactly called in english, cause i use another language, but i think it's something like "platform - rock" (maybe anyone could post the exact name). its a bit tricky to use it, cause there is a disturbing little rock at one corner, but it's one of the nicest grounds we could create. also interesting about it, you could turn it and even if you don't place it exactly fitting a second of this platform, the texture of it always shows correctly no matter how you turn to of these into each other (sorry for bad english, i hope it's understandable what i mean)

it's maybe a bit work cause you have to hide the corners, but i think the result is nice

ok, here a little example how it could look:

http://imageshack.us/a/img809/5119/screenshot2013051001264.jpg

That looks surprising good. I would have never tried that with the rocks.

FYI, here is an interior built with buildings:

Less than 10 props used to make this room, if I recall.

http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/darkmap.jpg

Also, borg cube interior built in the sky on a ground map:

http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cubey009.jpg

(more than 10 props on that one, lol)

commandermic · July 2013

kirksplat wrote: »

That looks surprising good. I would have never tried that with the rocks.

thx, interesting when i think about that this isn't the nicest part of this map imho

kirksplat wrote: »

FYI, here is an interior built with buildings:

Less than 10 props used to make this room, if I recall.

http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/darkmap.jpg

Also, borg cube interior built in the sky on a ground map:

http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cubey009.jpg

(more than 10 props on that one, lol)

looks very good,too :cool:
i always loved missions with custom interiors

Making my own foundry maps

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