Loading original map

Grim Dawn Modding - Tutorials and Help
1

Anyone get it? I found the giant (900 meg!) world001.map, and then mainmenu.map in the extracted files, but Editor doesn’t want to open them. Afterall, the best way to learn is by example. And boy is the program crash-prone when doing anything with it.

Attachment: World001.zip

2

I haven’t tried opening it yet, but if you want “by example”

then unzip this file
something:\blah blah blah\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grim Dawn\ModdingTutorial.zip

and put it in your mod folder

then when you open the asset manager , select “open mod / modding tutorial”

3

I’ve been playing with that. It (the map) is sparse. Unlike most who want DBR files, I want to learn the editor more :slight_smile:

4

Just rename the extention and place it into Maps folder in a newly created mod directory. You can check out all the regions and move/add/delete objects but that’s about it until a .map decompiler is made.

5

I went ahead and clicked “Force Save All”… it saved a ton of regions, after that you can load them in a new world file. Just not at the correct position, but it would probably be possible to put all the regions together and recreate the full campaign world (also possible to load quests).

My editor crashed after I went into editing mode, but I saw devils crossing with npc and everything :slight_smile: But Im warning everyone who dares to try, its alot of regions :smiley:

But if someone just wanted to make custom maps and be able to play their mod (class changes/new items) he/she can move the Levels.arc (/Grim Dawn/resources/Levels.arc) into the resource folder of the mod, only issue with that is it would have to be copied everytime the mod is built. But for the released version its a nice way to give users the possiblity to play the campaign and custom mod maps with everything else that mod has to offer.

EDIT: forgot to mention there is the option of merging world files… I tried but again, it crashed.

6

Thanks WareBare for the hint with the renaming!
I managed to create the appropriate world001.wrl and world001.sd files.
Copy them to your \mod\source\maps\folder

7

Ha, Force Save All was tempting…glad there was a guinea pig :smiley:
This will be handy by selecting a few regions to piece together to use as a starting point for smaller world creations at least. The catch is region alignment and deleting anything unnecessary or that could lead to crashing the editor.

8

I spent an hour or so fiddling with loading the map, I probably just don’t have enough RAM at all to load the whole thing. I’m tempted to try and make different texture sets, so each type of map could be loaded with minimal resources. This is especially true of dungeons that use a narrow subset of the terrain tools available.

Since my focus is programming and DBR, I’m going to skip map modding in my “hello world” example unfortunately. If someone could make a basic map with a subset of the textures required, I’d greatly appreciate being able to load the tools.

9

This is the method how i created and loaded a copy of the original world:

  • use the asset manager and extract all game files
  • this creates a bunch of folders within the database and the resource folder of your GD installation
  • create a new mod with the asset manager, i named it “MyTestMod”
  • move/copy all exportet folders from the database folder into the “…/mods/MyTestMod/database” folder
  • move/copy all exportet folders from the resource folder into the “…/mods/MyTestMod/source” folder
    (IMPORTANT: the target folder is “source”, not “resource”)
  • launch the editor, it prompts you for a mod to load:
    • pick “MyTestMod” (or whatever you named it)
    • highlight the levels folder from the directory-list
    • check the “Open an existing world” option
    • type world001.map in the file name box
    • hit the OK button
10

I wouldn’t recommend this method because you would be replicating every single asset/game file used for the entire game such as sounds, textures, text strings and so on. For modding purposes, its best to reference the original extracted files. Since the map regions are still compiled, terrain editing/painting ect. will not function.

So the editable results are the same as simply changing the world001.map extention to world001.wrl and placing the single large file into a newly created mod folder: “Maps”.

11

Edit: I managed to load the map by modifying the .map to .wrl extensions but when I build the mod it gives me and error (because you have to create a new map asset to make it work ingame).

Surely there is a way to modify the GD map but I don’t know how…

12

It has been done, but I’m not the guy. http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37791

13

I missed the post where there’s the actual map :confused:

Thanks anyway :smiley:

14

Some talented person would need to create a .map decompiler first. There were a couple that were made for Titan Quest which are incompatible with Grim Dawn’s .map file as far as I had tested unfortunately.

15

TQ used grids apparently, they are fundamentally incompatible. You’re probably better off making a new map “in the style of” a game you like.

16

So what I’m gathering from this discussion is that if I want to add an npc, say to devils cross, who gives you a quest to go to a new dungeon location, say a trapdoor in one of the houses in lower crossing, then this would require creating a new map altogether and replicating the current world to match the world you’re building?

I guess I’m not getting the mechanics on how to tie into the current standard story with a new mod

17

If you modify the world, you need to modify the world files. If you make a separate map linked to the world, then you need to link them which involves a minor edit to the world files, but still an edit.

There are examples and references in the Tutorials post, but nothing that does 100% of what you’re asking for yet.