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Tutorials: Mapping: Complete Beginners' Guide to Embrace

by Kiramin

9. Making an Exit Out of Your Map

To make an exit, you need to have a brush that the players can click on to leave the area. In this map, lets make a door at the back of the arch way. To make the door, you need to cleave a brush that is 64 wide x 128 tall in the back (and still whole) section of the north wall. If it is not whole, then you probably had overlapped it with the cylinder brush when you used the subtract brush. Either reload an old save and redo the subtract function or rebuild the back brush.

Instead of deleting the 64x128 midsection, switch to the XY top view and drag its southern edge one small grid square backwards (8 units). It should now be slightly recessed in the wall. Choose a door texture and apply it to that brush. The door texture probably wont be aligned properly. This is the time you use those surface manipulation tricks I taught you earlier. Select the surface using SHIFT+CTRL clicking. Then hold down shift and use the arrow keys to line up the door.

Now you have a perfectly good looking door. Too bad it does do anything yet. To make it into an exit, you need to select the door brush (and only that brush) and right click on the 2D window. This brings up that good old menu. At the bottom you should see a line that says templatebrushes. Select it. You have just turned the brush into a template so you can edit its template properties by pressing N. It will bring up this window:

That is the template window. On the left hand side, there is a list of the different NOT files. You can look through them and find things such as trees, flames, actors, and props. Double-clicking on a template will add it to your world. On the right hand side of the window you will see the different information of your currently selected template (your door). There you can change the orientation of your template as well as properties such as light color, intensity, and falloff.

Before you go any further, take a look in your Vampire directory and open the codex.nob with WinZip. Create a directory under your vampire directory called Codex and extract all of the files from Codex.nob to that directory (make sure you have subdirectories enabled). Now you select the Overrides tab in the Things and Templates window and click on the Pick Script... button. Under the Codex directory you created, find the file named "Clickexit.class". Select it and hit Open. Then click the Apply Script button.

Now you need to set the exit number. The exit number is a value that is passed to the script by the Codex Linker. With your door selected, open the Codex Linker by holding down SHIFT and pressing C. You should see three fields: Value, Type, and Description. You are only allowed to change the value. The Type field tells you what type of data the value field holds, and the description tells you what role the value plays in the script. You should see a value of zero for the Exit Number. Since this is the value this exit SHOULD have, leave it as is and hit apply at the bottom of the window. If this were our second exit, we would have changed the value to 1 by selected the zero and hitting enter. If this were our third exit, we would have changed the value to 2. When you are done with the Codex Linker, click the close-box in the top right.

The last thing you have to do in order to make your exit work, is apply the tracker_thing template to it. So, open up the Template Window again and hit the plus sign next to "Global", then again next to "Miscellaneous" and single click on "tracker_thing". DO NOT DOUBLE CLICK! If you double click, it will create a tracker_thing in your map. If that happens you must select it and delete it or you map wont run right. After you single click "tracker_thing", click the Apply Template button.

There, you did it. You can make other exits using the same method. Before you rush off to do that, you need to create a playerstart. Every exit should have a corresponding playerstart. The playerstart is linked to from other maps and it is where the players appear when they travel from that map. For more information on linking maps together to form a hub, take a look at our Basic Hub Tutorial. You should always make sure that playerstart [X] is linked with exit [X] otherwise travel to and from your map wont make any sense (i.e. players exit through door 1 to map 2, and come back through the door on that end but end up at door 4 half way across your map, because they were sent to playerstart 1 which was next to door 4 while playerstart 4 was next to door 1).

To create a playerstart, unselect everything and right click somewhere in the 2D window. Select playerstart from the menu. Since this was the first exit you created, it is exit number zero, so pick playerstart0. Place it somewhere a shortways outside of your arch. You shouldn't put it right up against the door because the camera would be squished up against the wall and staring right at the back of your chraracter head when they appear there. Also, the playerstart is currently oriented to zero degrees. This means it is facing straight north. That would have your players facing the door when they appeared. Since you want it to seem as if they just came through that door, open up the Things and Templates window with the playerstart selected. Under the main tab, change the orientation to 180. The playerstart is now facing south.

In order to see your exit in action, you have to create a chronicle file that links your map to another. In the Chronicles directory, make a copy of the file "mp_new_york_null.nsc" and rename it to "embracetest.nsc". Copy the first line that begins with "location NewYorkDocks"... and insert a copy on the line before the original. Rename "NewYorkDocks" to "Courtyard" and change the "n1_dock.nil" to "yourmap.nil" where your map is the name of your map. Now scroll down to the line labeled "# NewYorkDocks exits". Right below it, replace the line "exit NewYorkDocks,1 GunHaven,0" with the line "exit Courtyard,0 GunHaven,0"

You just connected Courtyard Exit Zero with GunHaven Playerstart Zero, and GunHaven Exit Zero with Courtyard Playerstart Zero. That one line works both ways. That is why you need to make sure your Playerstart numbers and Exit numbers match up. Go ahead and export your map, and hit run. Instead of playing a single player game, start a multiplayer LAN game using the "embracetest" Chronicle. You should now start in your courtyard and be able to walk back and forth between it and the gun shop.

Now its time break the map up into sectors. This is the last step that you need to preform before you release your level, and you will learn what you need to know on Page 5.