Creating a map

To create your first map, you have to use the Worldbuilder. The following tutorial was originally created by Sauron. Feel free to change or expand the tutorial. If you want to know how to make maps specifically playable in Edain, check out thie tutorial

## Using the worldbuilder to create your first Map

### Size of the Map

   A size of 300x300 is recommended for most maps. The border size you can also set it individually. This is the edge of the map, in the WB the orange one rectangle at the ends of the map. The initial height is the height of the terrain. If you make it particularly high, you can later lower the terrain (see below) create ravines. On the other hand, keeping it low will make it easier to create mountains. The default value is 16, you can leave it like that for now.

### Terrain

Let's move on to creating a mountain. To do this, we go to the icon bar under Texture Sizing, where we find 3 brushes - Height Brush, Mound and Dig.

For a medium-sized mountain, we set the height to around 70-100 feet. To do this we go to the Height Brush brush icon. Here we find three values. Brush Width, Brush Feather Width and Brush Height. The Brush Width value indicates the brush thickness. The Brush Feather Height value, on the other hand, determines the nature of the terrain: Should the mountain be steep, or should it be accessible and slope slowly downwards so you can walk up? The lower this value, the steeper your mountain becomes and therefore impassable.

To see this we go to View/Tile Feedback/Show Impassible Areas in the menu bar

The other brush icons Mound and Dig increase or decrease the terrain; the value can also be adjusted here - just like with the Brush Height Tool.

### 1.3 Textures

So that the map doesn't look so bare, we have to add something to it: trees, bushes, etc. To do this, we click on the symbol with the 3 arrows in the icon bar.

    Under **ByNativeType/Civilian** we find the following entries that are important:

*MISC\_MAN\_MADE, MISC\_NATURAL, SHRUBBY, STRUCTURE*

**MISC\_MAN\_MADE** includes some buildings as well as many detailed extras like Barricades, tables, lamps, barrels, benches, chairs, wooden boards

**MISC\_NATURAL** includes rocks as well as animals (dogs, deer, sheep, ducks, birds, wolves, bears, etc.)

**SHRUBBY** includes any kind of plants and trees.

**STRUCTURE** contains components of Minas Tirith, Minas Morgul and other building elements included in the game.

So let's make our map a little greener. Now we select a few tree species under the SHRUBBY entry in the object list, or just one (each is set individually). Think carefully about which tree should go where and don't just place trees randomly with a mouse click. Find different types of trees that fit together and would fit the texture. BUT BE CAREFUL: The rule applies here!:

**More than 14 tree species are not allowed! If there are more than the permitted number, a game.dat error (engine error) occurs when loading the map in the game. The tree textures can add up to a maximum of 1024x1024 textures. That's why I never use a map larger than 300x300 (smaller maps can crash if the ban on species diversity is fully exploited, i.e. 14)**

Tip: You can also see how many trees of each type you have already placed under View/Layers List. Everything is recorded there. So we choose a few trees and plant them, as well as a few shrubs and bushes. It should look something like this, but that's up to each person: However, there is again a golden rule that EA has incorporated here: **no more than around 1100 trees** (which may sound like a lot, but try mapping a forest with this limit). If you exceed this, existing trees will be hidden. EA emphasized this step was taken so that mappers wouldn't block the free building system with so many trees.

After about 10 minutes and a little practice, our map looks much more detailed and lovingly designed: So you can see that many species (but not more than 14) bring out the variety and beauty of the map as if the entire map had 20-25 trees of the same species on a texture that stretched across the entire map. Shrubs and bushes beautify the overall picture.

    Now we can also place animals, put whatever you want. They move freely, so you don't need a script. Now all that's missing are the waters.

### Water

Now we have beautiful textures and a beautiful environment that is missing one thing - water. This is not absolutely necessary, but such a small river is something nice and also looks nice if you have certain additional settings to create different types of water. To do this you need the file “lang.rar”, which is included. Unzip this file and copy it to the “Lang” subfolder in the SUM2 main directory.

First we dig a small trench to make the water or river appear at all. You dig out the riverbed with the Dig brush tool to lower the terrain

**Tip**: if the WB slows down too much, simply uncheck the **View Grass** box under **View** so that it hides the trees and bushes, which saves memory at that moment and you can edit the flow without holding up. Using large address aware on the worldbuilder might also work.

    Now we select the Ocean tool (not the River tool, that looks like shit, the correct use will be explained later) and drag the waypoints to a shape that the river or river bed should have:

Under FX Water Options you can see the entries Enable FX Shadders (water texture) and Deepth Coloring Options (underwater texture). These are located in the Lang subfolder in your Battle for Middle-earth II directory that you downloaded (link above). There you can choose what you like best. Then the river bed is raised or the river. The water height is at 0, your initial height feet at 8. So you raise the river bed and set the water height to approx. 6-7, this is possible because you have previously dug the river bed and the area where the river is has a height of approx. 0-1. So the river is

above the terrain of the riverbed but below that of the remaining terrain surrounding the river. You can change the texture of the water using the Maximum Alpha Depth and Deep Water Alpha settings. If it is a deep body of water, you lower the value and the body of water becomes darker. Now let's lift out our river and it should look like this: This is the 1st of 2 steps.

    Now we have a river, but it doesn't flow in the appropriate direction. So now we're going to use the River Tool just to the right of the Ocean Tool that we just used
We set ONE river tool point and then pull it apart until it appears like this: If we want to have several sections so that we can maneuver the river left and right without distorting the texture, we click on the blue line with active river tool.

    Now we increase the water height slightly until we see the river. You can also use this one, only EA puts the beautiful rivers they make, the river tool is always over the ocean tool so you have the water texture of the ocean.
Tool and the flow direction or animations of the water tool. Make sure that the river tool points are always opposite each other to prevent distortion

    *(to be continued...)*