CoD UO Modding Tutorial - Part 3 : Spawn Points, Compiling and Testing

We currently have an empty room and no way of the player entering the map to play in it. To add a spawn point right click on the 2D view and navigate the menu to find mp > deathmatch_spawn; then click on it. An orange box will appear in the 2D and 3D window. Have a look in the 3D window to make sure that it is at the correct height (on the floor). We then need to give the spawn point an orientation to indicate which way our player leaves it. With the spawn point selected press 'n' to get the entity window.

At the bottom left of the entity window there is a series of buttons that make up a compass, numbered 45 to 360. These correspond with the 2D view so if you were to press 270, which is at the bottom of the compass, your entity (in this case the spawnpoint) will be facing downwards in the 2D view. My spawn point is in the corner and I want it facing into the middle of the room so I will select 225.

Note: On a diagonal spawnpoints and other entities can look rather odd, having a box in a box: this is perfectly normal.

As our player can now spawn within the our room it is possible for us to test the map. However, there is a rather complicated step required in gettting a map from the editor to the game. Firstly, save your map. Now open up your game directory and go to uo\maps. Here you should find your map that you just made. Make a new text document in the folder (Right click > New > Text Document) and open it in notepad. Paste in the following text and replace [map name] with your map name.

cd ..\..\UOtools\bin

q3map ../../uo/maps/[map name]

q3map -vis ../../uo/maps/[map name]

flare -extra -sundiffusesamples 10 -dumpoptions ../../uo/maps/[map name]

cd ..\..\

Note: For CoD Radiant (not UO) editors go to main\maps and use this text.

cd ..\..\tools\bin

q3map ../../main/maps/[map name]

q3map -vis ../../main/maps/[map name]

flare -extra -sundiffusesamples 10 -dumpoptions ../../main/maps/[map name]

cd ..\..\

Save the document, but when you save it type .bat after the name and under 'Save as Type' change 'text documents' to 'all files'. You now have a batch file which will compile your map for you simply by double clicking on it. Do that now and you will see a black command window. Most of it will look like nonsense so just ignore it and wait for it to finish. Once it has finished go back to your map folder and you should see a few files, a .prt, a .poly and a .bsp. The .bsp is the only one we want so select it and move it into the mp folder. I suggest that you delete the .prt, .poly and sometimes the .lin or your folder will get too confusing.

The map is now compiled and ready to use in game. Start CoD or UO MP and select 'Start New Server' from the menu. Our map is in an unpacked .bsp format so to play it we need to tell CoD to run an unpure server. Set 'Pure' from the main options menu on the new server screen to No and begin the server (the map you choose does not matter). When the map is loaded bring down the console (using ¬, thing left of 1) and type 'map [your map name]'.

Congratulations! You have now made your first CoD/UO map and played it in game (assuming you didn't come across any problems on the way)

CoD UO Modding Tutorial - Part 4 : Joining Rooms