Custom Maps

This game offers a variety of customizability, spanning from maps to even units. And now with the newest update, you can even make maps with custom tiles.

This wiki page is a comprehensive guide on how to make custom maps for the game Rusted Warfare - RTS as well as how to upload your creations to the steam workshop. Just as a heads up, this guide is purely for the PC version of this game because when doing a personal search on how to do this, there was barely any results, and if they did come up, they were made over 2 years ago. The only thing in this wiki that you will have to pay for in this wiki is the game itself, everything else in this should be free.

## Downloading the Level Editor

The first thing you will need to do is to install the level editor. The link to the website can be found here.

Once on the website, just click "Download on itch.io" and you will be redirected to the itch page. Download the newest version of the editor (do not worry, this is free. If you come across a page that says to donate, you can bypass this by clicking the "No thanks, just take me to the downloads" text) Make sure you download this in a place that you can access easy.

Next, open the downloaded installer and go through the procedures to download the editor and open it.

## Custom Tileset Creation

This section can be bypassed if you do not want to create a map with custom tiles. But if you do, its suggested to use this section.

A really good free website to create pixel tiles/tilesets as well as sprites (if you plan on making custom units as well) is this website called Piskel. This site is a very easy-to-use and customizable place to create sprites for any pixelated games (including Rusted Warfare).

Here is a couple of tips to use when making custom tiles for RW.

```
-    Default tile size: 20p x 20p

```

```
-    Resize in Piskel by clicking second icon on the right

```

```
-    Export finished tileset/sprite by clicking fourth icon on the right, choose .png, then the "spritesheet file export" option[1]

```

### Get Base64 code for PNG image

Once you have the tileset saved as a .png in an easily accessible location, you will need to get the Base64 information for that image. To do so, go to this website titled Base64 - Image (pretty straight forward name)

Click on this and then find the .png of your tiles and select them.

Select this to view the line of code that was created on this website.

When you view this tab, keep in mind that the actual usable code starts with a lowercase "i"

Example:

```
~~data:image/png;base64,~~iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACgAAAAoCAYAAACM/rhtAAAAAXNSR0IArs4c6QAAAOVJREFUWEftV0EOhCAMxI+Q8ABu/P8F3HgACR/ZjSQmbFNl2bYqbj0qjOO045TFGPMyN76WlWAIgYVijLHicOL9N0Hv/U+VSSnVfWtFRBVUgqP1gSZRBVXBHQXUxVuSqEnUJGoSoMB0STLaw3C9+DTDRpAKJLm/zoOSL6Biiw6sVHLz9CBndranOvYs5gA8haC19qv2KaXUde38hhGk4H2YZFOQAngqQeccqmTOud6/XEElCOqDVeSwB1XBxyvY+xle7uLbEuwRg897SULBQ11MARTN4lFi2BmiJciBN8fASv1Syf1vDWnMEPGr8/YAAAAASUVORK5CYIIA

```

In the above text, the information that is crossed-out should not be copied, but the rest should be.

## Creating the Map in Tiled

Back on Tiled (or if you did not open it, now would be the time), if this is the first time you've been on this app, you should see the following:

The following 2 sub-topics can be completed in either order, but they both will need to be done

### Creating the Tileset

The first thing to do in this situation is to click the "New Tileset..." button (If you already have something open, to create a new tileset go through the following: File >> New >> New Tileset). Doing so will pop up a window of the information on this new tileset. Fill in the information to your desire, but make sure that the tile width and tile height need to be 20 pixels each.

Once all of the information is filled out, click the "Save as" to continue. Currently it does not matter where you save this tileset, as long as it is easily accessible (these keywords will be used a lot).

After saving this in your desired location, it will automatically open. [Hot tip: hold ctrl + scroll wheel to zoom, Click Middle-Mouse to move]

The next step is to create a new Custom Property by clicking the plus icon on the bottom left. Keep in mind, custom properties need to be spelt out exactly as described, or they will not work. This property name should be "embedded\_png" (exactly as spelt) and it should be a type string. After clicking "OK" it should appear under the property information with a white box as well as a 3-dot icon on the right. Clicking this 3-dot icon will open the property back up. At this point, this is where you will paste the Base64 information. Click OK again and save by clicking the 3rd icon on the top left with the green arrow, or use the shortcut ctrl + S.

If you want to add further customization for the specific tiles (like what type they are), select the specific one(s) you would like to add information to, and do the same steps above for the "embedded\_png", but it only needs a name (examples are in the graph below).

Other Custom Properties (if you know more, please put them in here)
 block-land
 cliff-soft
 lava- cliff
 cliff
 large-cliff
Also block hovering and small mechs movement
Fun fact: This is misspelt as large-clift in one of the tilemaps,
 res\_pool

### Creating the Map

The next thing to do is to create the map. To do this, follow this path: File >> New >> New Map (If you are making the map first, just click on the "New Map" button). Doing this will open a window for the map information. Most of the information in the window does not need to be changed at this moment. However, the Map size as well as the Tile size does need to be changed (do not worry about the maps size too much, that can be changed later on if you made it too big or too small). Like with the information above, the "Tile size" should be 20 by 20. After you've changed these values, clicking OK will open up a new menu.

If the tileset from before was already created, it should automatically be seen in the Tilesets tab on the bottom right. If not, do not worry, you can import this tileset my clicking the "New Tileset" button and finding where you saved the created tileset. Alternitively, you can just reopen this tileset by following this path: File >> Open File or Project and finding the tileset save location (if you have the file explorer extension setting turned on, the tileset should have the name you gave with the extension of ".tsx".

After you have made sure that your custom tileset is showing in the Tilesets tab, all you need to do next is to change the layer name on the top right to "Ground" and have at it on the creativity of your map.

Once this layer is filled out to your hearts content of detail, you will need to create 3 new layers. This is done by clicking the page icon right above the Tilesets tab. The first two will need to be Tile Layers, but the third is an Object Layer. The names of these new layers are "Items", "Units", and "Triggers" in the order of creation.

It should look something like this.

The next Tilesets that are required to be opened for your map to function properly are the "misc" and "units" tilesets. To find these and import them, click the down-arrow next to your created tileset in the Tilesets tab, then click the "Add External Tileset" button. To find these tiles, go to your Local Disk (C:) [or wherever you have your steam downloaded] >> Steam >> steamapps >> common >> Rusted Warfare >> mods >> maps. Alternatively, if you when through your steam library and found Rusted Warfare's Properties menu >> Local Files >> Browse recently, you should be able to find these files under your Quick Access tab in your File Explorer.

If you want to input some of the base-game tiles for the ground, they can be found in the "terrain" and "ridges" folders.

The "misc" tiles are to be placed in the "Items" layer, and the "units" tiles in the "Units" layer (Make sure you have the correct layer selected before placing tiles, as it will mess up your other layers if you accidentally place them in Ground for instance.

To select multiple tiles at once, you can either drag your mouse over them, or Shift/Control click them individually. Alternatively, if you have the tiles already on the map, you can hover over it and right click to select it (dragging and Shift/Control right-clicking also works in the same way).

The first 9 tiles in the misc tab are all one object, the res\_pool, so when placing them on your map, make sure all of these are selected (in a 3 by 3)

The units display all types that can be placed as well as some buildings. The numbered units (white numbers, not black) are the Command Centers. Because of this, when you place these down on the map, make sure there is a 1 square gap between other units and res pools so as not to look strange and possibly cause bugs while playing.

The Triggers layer is a bit different from the others. This layer is where you would put information on the map and each team. To create a new Trigger, select the "Insert Rectangle" tool in the top middle (looks like a hollow blue box) and drag where you want it to be (it does not matter, because it is pure information).

After this trigger was created, make sure it is selected (it should have a moving dotted line around the border if selected) and change the name property to "map\_info" (to change property information, just click in the Values box next to the property you want to change, if it is a custom property, just double click the name), then add a new custom string property named "type" (this is the type of map that this is, there is Skirmish, Mission, Challenge, and Endless). The value of this property should be the map type, in lowercase.

## Exporting Map For Testing

At this point, you should have all the basic version 1 stuff down on the map and you want to test it. The first thing you should check is the Tile Layer Format in the Map Properties. To find this click on Map >> Properties, and the properties tab should change to give the information of the map. The proper Tile Layer Format for Rusted Warfare is "Base64 (gzip compressed)", so make sure that is the format selected.

After all of the map info and tile stuff is double checked, you will want to save the map into the Rusted Warfare >> mods >> maps folder. Click the save button (shortcut: ctrl + s) and give the map a name and save.

### Testing The Map

To actually test the map for yourself, open up the game, go to Single Player, Custom Maps, and click the map you just made (it should have an icon with a question mark, do not worry about that for right now, it will be changed later). If you followed everything so far, it should open up properly and allow you to test it.

If you notice that there was some things wrong with this version of the map, no need to worry, you can just exit the game and edit it back in the Tiled app. Once fixed/changed just save it again and it should automatically change in-game as well

## Export Map For Workshop

You've gone through the editing process and fixed any apparent problems that arose from testing the map on the game, and now its ready to be put onto the workshop for everyone else to enjoy.

In this process the first thing you should want to do is to create thumbnails for both the workshop item as well as in game. Doing so is really simple, just go back the the Tiled app, hide all the layers except Ground in the Layers tab, then go to File >> Export As Image and click export. The image should then appear in the same file location as the map. At its current state, the image is way too big for either thumbnail. For the thumbnail in-game, the max size it can be is 160x160, and the thumbnail for the workshop item is 200x200.

To change the size of the image, all you need to do is open it up in Photos, right-click on the image and click Resize image. Before changing the size of the image, its suggested to make a copy of the image so you can have the max size possible for both in-game and in the workshop item, but if you want them to be the same, that is fine as well.

IMPORTANT: For the thumbnail to work properly in-game, it needs to be named the same as the map. Also, it needs to end with "\_map".

The next thing on the list is to move the thumbnail image(s) as well as the map data to the mods >> units folder. In this folder, you will have to make a sub-folder to store this information (you can just title it the name of the map).

Once the map and image has been moved, you will want to make a .txt file named "mod-info". This text doc should look something like this:

### Making the Workshop Item

Finally, everything is ready to be made into a workshop item. Doing this is surprisingly easy for Rusted Warfare. All you need to do is to open the game, go to the mods tab, find the map that you made, and click the "upload to workshop". If all-goes-well, you should have a new workshop item with your custom map and custom tilesets.