Making Your First Base Map
By Drummin


There are a number of highly detailed tutorials on map making, still it seems some very basic steps are not clear. For example: New mappers might not make their base areas big enough or leave enough room for a Combat Zone or for some other reason they find they need to resize their map after they've spent days working it. Often they find that things don't look right after resizing. These basic steps should help the new mapper get started on the right track.


Size The Map:
Decide the size of your map first. It's easier to resize a map before adding a bunch of stuff to it. Go to "File" then "Resize" and a popup window will come up. Try changing the size to 200 x 200 then click Ok.

Add Skirmish Players:
Go to "Edit", then at the bottom click "Edit Player List". Click the button that says "Add Skirmish Players" then Ok. Any buildings and trees will belong to the Civilian Player.

Modify Default Texture:
You probably don't want gray asphalt as your landscape so click the paint can tool and select a nice texture to work with, then click on your map.

Place Temp Building Site:
When you're first making maps it can be hard to judge the size of things. By Adding a TempBuildingSite you can see how much room the AI needs to build their base and where you want players to be located. Be sure to space these building sites far enough apart to allow for a Combat Zone.

Once you've defined these base areas by adding some landscaping you can remove the temporary building sites. Depending on how many players you're placing, you might want to resize the map again.

Click the "Place Object" tool and select the TempBuildingSite from the Civilian/Structure object list. Left click on the map to place them. Right click to "Let go" of the Object tool. You can then left click on the edge of these sites and move them around.

Add Start Positions:
Using the Waypoint tool click and add a waypoint in the center of one of your temporary building sites. You'll see a popup window with a textbox called "Name" and from this dropdown click "Player_1_Start". Right click to "Let go" of the Waypoint tool, then repeat for all player locations.

Save Your Map:
At this point you have your base map done so it's a good time to save it. You might want to keep this as a base map of future maps as well, so I'd save it with a name like "Base Map1"

If you move ahead with adding elevations and textures and props, use the "Save As" option and give your new map a different name. Your base map is now preserved and you also have your "New" map.

For more information on making your first map and using World Builder tools see the Basic Tutorial  by Fleetatks.

Tips
Resizing A Map You've Started:

There is two parts to doing this.
PART 1
In world builder, go to "File" and in the dropdown menu you'll see "Resize..."
Notice on the "Resize" window the area that says anchor square. This represents where your current map will be when you resize the map. For example: Select the center and the map will be added to on all sides. Select the bottom-left and the map will be added on the top and right. In most cases, you don't need a border of more than 10.

PART 2
Once you've resized the map, you need to move the orange active border. Under the category "View" you should have "Show Map Boundaries" checked so you can see any borders. Click "Ctrl i" and you should see a blue band around your map. This is where your orange border should be. Click the border tool on the right side of your toolbar. Left-click and HOLD down the top-right corner of the orange border and drag it up to match the blue band.

If you make another border (color) on accident, drag it all the way to the bottom-left
to remove it. DON'T remove the orange border.
That should do it.