Exercise 10 - Level Properties, Notes, Landscapes
In this exercise we'll cover a range of small topics.
Setting the Level Properties
The Plugins>Marathon>Level Properties
command brings up a window for setting various level-wide parameters.
Let's take the opportunity to give our level a suitably silly name.
I'm
not sure whether the Environment setting makes a difference any more,
because Aleph One seems happy to load textures from multiple wall sets
at once, but it's there if you need it for anything.
The
Environment flags, Level Type flags and Mission Type flags are the same
as in Forge. If you don't choose a Level Type, MarathUp will set it to
Single Player for you.
The Physics Model choices may seem a bit
strange. Forge has a setting called "Landscape" that actually does two
things: it determines which landscape texture you get to use, and it
sets the physics model index. MarathUp handles landscape texture
numbers the same way as any other texure, so here the setting only
controls the physics model.
Theoretically you should be able to
enter a number into the Music Index field to select a piece of music
for your level from those available, but I haven't tested this yet.
Adding a Note
The
object in Objects.skp that looks like a blue pushpin represents a note
that appears on the overhead map. Let's add one to the swimming pool.
Open the Object Properties window and type in some text for the note.
Now
when you play the map, the level name you chose should appear on the
overhead map, and when you've explored the swimming pool, the note as
well.
Landscape Textures
Landscape
textures are a little special, as they can only be applied with a
Transfer Mode of "Landscape" -- if you try to use any other mode with
them, the wall will appear untextured. Although you can select this
mode manually, it's a bit tedious doing this for every wall, so
MarathUp provides another way. If you append "-L" to the end of the
name of a texture material, Marathup will automatically set the
transfer mode of any walls you use it on to Landscape in the exported
map.
There are four landscape textures in the standard Marathon
2 and Infinity Shapes files, one in each of the texture
collections 27, 28, 29 and 30. So the corresponding Sketchup textures
should be named 27-0-L, 28-0-L, 29-0-L and 30-0-L.
There's an example texture image called Landscape1.jpeg in the MarathUp distribution to try this out with. Create a new texture, load this texture file into it and name it 27-0-L. Set the height of the texture to 1" and click the Close button.
Now
let's make a window in the pool room to use it on. Mark off a rectangle
set 1/8" in from the edges of the wall and pull it out 1/8".
Apply the landscape texture. There's no way to make it look like a landscape in Sketchup, but that doesn't matter.
Export and play the map, and if you've named the texture correctly, it should work.
In Exercise 11, we'll polish off our little level by adding a terminal.
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