World Builder is a scenario editor created by EA games for the purpose of editing or fabricating your own maps and missions for the fabulous game of COMMAND and CONQUER GENERALS. It is a robust and easy editor to use once you are familiar with all it's functions. Let's start by looking at the menus and their subheadings.

Begin by clicking on "FILE". Most of these will be self explanatory and should be familiar to you with the exception of a few. The first is the "RESIZE" subheading. This function will allow the user to resize the map he currently working on. You CANNOT undo this once it is done. As you look at Screenshot 02 you notice there are boxes that allow you to specify the size, height, and border of the newly resized map. You can also offset the resize function by anchoring to a particular section of the map. In other words if the map needs to be enlarged to the right then you would anchor it to the left center by depressing that box. If the map needs enlarging towards the north, or top, then by selecting the lower center we will have forced the program to enlarge the map to the north.

The normal or optimal border size should be around 70. This setting keeps the player or players from looking past the edge of the map to the southern and western hemispheres. Of course you can change this as it does depend somewhat on the relative size of your map. But after many, many hours the designers have come to this parameter and it works for all situations quite well.

We should also discuss briefly the height function. This is not currently employed in the resizing of a map. Once the map is created then it is locked in. You may only change the height by manually running the height tools around the terrain map. You should also be aware that 10 feet equals 16 units. I.E: if the height of the map you are making starts out at 16 then in reality the map height is 10 feet when looking at the scale on the bottom of the editor.

Again looking at the first screenshot we can see the subheading "DUMP MAP TO FILE". This will create an inventory of all objects, scripts and waypoints to a file that can be found in the game directory. Comes in quite handy when trying track something down.

The next group of functions call up the last 4 opened files. You will notice in the screenshot that the bottom 2 entries refer to an "AUTOSAVE" map. The World Builder will automatically save the map you are working on every 120 seconds by default to your game directory. It will keep 3 copies of the map before dumping the last save and resaving the map. In other words after it autosaves 3 times the first save will be dropped off to make room for another. The time between saves can be adjusted by editing the World Builder ini file located in the game directory.

Every thing else in this menu should be familiar to the user and as such, I will not touch on them.

The next drop down menu is the "EDIT" menu. Upon inspection of Screenshot 03, we see various subheadings. The topmost being "UNDO". This backs-up the operation one step at a time for a total of 10 times. If you make an error you can simply "undo" it by selecting this function. Under this is the "REDO" heading this will allow you undo the "undo", or go forward in the operations. Next we have the cut, copy and paste functions. These are used by capturing the area of focus, using the cursor, and selecting the function (Copy, Cut, and Paste). You may copy from one map and paste to another, you can cut and paste from one map to another, however you cannot copy from one section of the map and paste into a different section. If this is tried then duplicates will be created OVERTOP the originals.

The delete box means just that, to delete or remove the object or prop captured by the cursor. Next up is "SELECT DULICATE OBJECTS". This function will select those items that were placed in error (or not) that were placed overtop of another. This comes in handy when the when something is inadvertently double placed and one of them needs to be deleted.

"SELECT OBJECTS WITH BAD TEAMS" will select all objects on the map that have there links to specific teams broken in the creation process, thereby making it possible to repair or delete them.

"SELECT SIMILAR" will call up all objects that are the same as the one that is currently captured by the cursor. this is convenient when pruning trees and other objects is required and also moving or deleting an object that can no longer be picked, as in the case of an object being placed to high or low in the z-axis. By placing an identical object on the map somewhere where it can be picked conveniently and then selecting "SELECT SIMILAR" you can delete or move the object of focus.

"SELECT MACROTEXTURE" is not currently activated in this version. It is assumed that if it is activated that it will allow selection of different macro's or the selection of user provided macro's.

"REPLACE SELECTED" (see Screenshot 04) brings up another menu for the replacing of one object for another. For example, you have selected several fall oak trees and then later decide to replace them with a tree of a different species then just by capturing one and then clicking on "SELECT SIMILAR" all the trees that you want replaced will be selected, you can then click on "REPLACE SELECTED" and navigate to the trees you want to replace them with.

"PICK CONSTRAINT" (see Screenshot 05) will let the user select only the item type that he is currently focused upon. For example, you are trying to make a road curve a certain way and there are props, structures and other items very close to the road pick point the by selecting roads from the "PICK CONSTRAINT" it allows only roads to be selected and all other object icons will be ignored.

"SCRIPTS" opens up the script editor. This will be discussed at length in a later tut.

"GLOBAL LIGHT OPTIONS" will also be discussed in a later tutorial.

"CAMERA OPTONS", Screenshot 06, will open a dialogue box that will affect the camera angle of the editor. The default is 1, which is approximately at a 45 degree angle to the isoview. By moving the slider down towards 0 the angle is reduced to a lower angle thus at the lowest point the horizon is visible. This is also useful when adjusting the "Accent Values" in the Global Light options.

"EDIT SHADOWS", Screenshot 07, opens the shadow editor. With this you are able to change the shading and intensity (brilliance) of the shadows.

"MAP SETTINGS", Screenshot 08, opens a dialogue box for changing the time of day. There are four basic settings, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. There is also a box that is currently disabled for adjusting weather characteristics from NORMAL to SNOWY.

The next 2 functions, "EDIT TEAMS" and "EDIT PLAYERS" are normally used for single-player (mission) maps. But they do have uses for multiplayer maps. These will be covered in later tutorials.

Chapter 1 - Part 2 here »