Your first world
This guide is written assuming you have installed the default server pack and have been able to connect to your world.
  • Introduction
  • Step 1 - The default setup
  • Step 2 - Your first settings experience - Getting time moving
  • Step 3 - Try out a few commands
  • Step 4 - Explore a few settings
  • Step 5 - A quick look at the server menus
  • Step 6 - Your first buildings
  • Step 7 - Time for a breather..
  • Step 8 - Making a plane : Assigning a model
  • Step 9 - Making a plane : Settings
  • Step 10 - A quick look at robocrows
  • Step 11 - Weaponry
  • Step 12 - Conclusion

  • Introduction
     Following this step by step guide will help you learn all about the possibilities and procedures that you’ll need for making your own world.

    The world server is designed to be as flexible as possible, to allow a wide range of different gametypes and environments, so there are endless different ways of building it. Depending on your design ideas you’ll spend more or less time on certain aspects.
    Learning the ins & outs of the world server is a long process.. so lets start by forgetting about all of that and having a quick play around.
    Don’t Panic :]




  • Step 1 - The default setup
     The default world setup gives you a nice standard lil landscape with some hills, rivers and beaches, with textures auto-generated by the game.
    Have a run about a bit. :]


  • Step 2 - Your first settings experience - Getting time moving
     On the default setup, time is frozen, so its always Midnight, 1st Jan, Yr 0. As your world’s God, its up to you to do the whole ‘Genesis’ bit..

    Type *settings


    		 Ooh.. Look at all those options. Scary isn’t it?

    Select ‘World Rules’ and page down to ‘Day Length’. Its 0 at the mo - press end, and enter 300 instead. Ding.. you’ve just invented time.

    (For now, you’ll probably want time frozen until your world is a bit more advanced, so set the Daylength back to 0 and the clock will stop.)


  • Step 3 - Try out a few commands
     Theres a huge list of commands available - the reference manual contains a fairly comprehensive list and descriptions of what they do.. Don’t be daunted by the amount.. you don’t need to know them all and you’ll soon start to remember the common ones.
    First off, lets try changing your vehicle. (You’re a god now, so you don’t need to buy things :] ). In game, type..

    *setvehicle [NAME] 2

    (Replacing the [NAME] bit with your own game name). If all is working your chap should now be sitting happily inside a vehicle. Wahey.

    Heres a few other basic commands that you might find useful early on..
    *resetpos [NAME]
    ..this sets you back to the center of the map. Very handy if you get lost
    *settime [0 - 16000]
    .. this lets you set the current time of day. *settime 4000 for instance will set it to dawn.


  • Step 4 - Explore a few settings.
     The settings screen is the place where you control most of the stuff that determines how your world works.. from things like how the economy operates (if at all), whether or not weapons are allowed, and how quickly your vehicles move. Theres a huge amount of settings to control so don’t expect to be able to do everything straight away.
    Type *settings again

    Now have a browse around at the other settings available - and don’t worry if it looks a bit daunting at first. You don’t need to get everything set in one go - most of the time you’ll just need to change one or two settings occasionally as you build up your world.

    Heres another one to try.. Assuming you’re still in the vehicle 2 you set with the command above, lets have a look at giving that vehicle a jetpack.
    On your settings screen, go to ‘Vehicles’. There are 24 different vehicle settings to change – press ‘+‘ once so that the settings you’re editing are the ones for vehicle 2.
    Scroll down to the ‘Extras’ setting and set it to 1 - which is the setting to give the vehicle an infinite jetpack. (The description on the left tells you what each of these ‘Extras’ means.) Once you’ve done this, you should find that when you press delete while driving your vehicle you’ll be launched into the air on a trail of flame.. Woot!

    TIP : If the are other people on your world, you need to confirm settings changes by selecting the ‘Confirm Settings’ option at the bottom of this *settings index list. This will transmit the new settings to anyone else currently connected to your world.


  • Step 5 - A quick look at the server menus
     The server window itself is used to set some of your world’s options. If you don’t see a panel for your world, click the blue circle symbol in the system tray to open up your server window.

    The Options menu lets you change things like whether your world is passworded, how often backups are saved, which folders are used to store your world’s models, etc. Take a few minutes to look through all the options and make sure they’re set as you’d like.

    Next, lets have a look at changing a few textures..

    		 Go to your server menu -> Tools -> Texture Selector. This will bring up a dialog showing the list of game textures on the left, and the list of files available for use on the right. Select ‘Auto-terrain 1’ in the left-side window.
    On the right you should now see a list of files that can be used for this texture, as well as the name of the texture currently being used.

    Try setting all Auto-terrain surfaces to 'defrock.bmp'. Once changed, as with all model and texture changes, you’ll need to relog your client (i.e. quit the game and restart), to see the difference. (This requirement will be removed in a future version of the game). When you return, you should now have a landscape covered with rocks, rather than grass, rocks and beaches.

    Not half as nice, so you’ll probably want to change that back now
    You can add new textures to your server’s folders and players will automatically download the new files when they log in. If you’re feeling creative, perhaps try making (or finding on the web) a few different terrain textures and setting them to different autogen sources. Theres various other methods available for painting on your landscape (covered in more detail elsewhere).. Mucking about with terrain is fun :]


  • Step 6 - Your first buildings
     Whether you’re designing an action game, an economy game or just random world building, a large part of how your world works will probably be defined by the buildings in it and what they do. There are lots of things you can change, such as what your buildings make, and how quickly they make things – and this can be quite a complicated process at first. For the moment, we’ll just look at using the default buildings and changing their appearance. Later on in this guide theres some more in-depth info on how you change their properties.

    { Docs to be completed }


  • Step 7 - Time for a breather..
     Right.. by this point you’re probably starting to get a fair idea of how much stuff is involved in setting up the world. You’ve perhaps already got a few ideas for funky things to do with it too.

    This is probably a good moment to consider further what you want to do with your world. Many people just enjoy tinkering around with stuff, tryin out new bits and pieces… If that’s the case, you can continue the remaining stages of this guide to find out about some more of the features available. Otherwise, if you have a specific aim in mind, you might now want to start concentrating on one of the key areas for your design – setting up a bunch of robocrows perhaps, or working on your building/economy layout.

    Before you start making your world in earnest, first consider how your world will be run and accessed. If you’re not planning on hosting & running your world all the time, or you have not registered a permanent location for your world on the galaxy, then a long-term, persistent economy will probably not be very popular. Getting players to visit your world takes a lot of time and effort, so don’t make too many initial designs that rely on a huge population of players - you’re likely to be disappointed.

    For an occasional, unregistered world, features more likely to attract players are novel use of settings, models or music files, a well-balanced short-term game like robocrows, or a simplified econ or task-based minigame. Some worlds would be more like a 3d homepage – just displaying your snapshots in art gallery building perhaps, or having a radio station of your own tunes.

    Ok, break over :]
    The next few stages go into a bit more detail about a few aspects of world building, and teach you a bit more about how to modify your world setup…


  • Step 8 - Making a plane : Assigning a model
     Now its time to do something a little more in-depth and useful. Lets turn vehicle 3 into a plane. First thing to do is set yourself to that vehicle..
    *setvehicle [NAME] 3

    The first problem will probably be obvious - the vehicle 3 does not look like a plane - so we need to change the model and texture for the vehicle.

    Go to your server menu -> Tools -> Model Selector. This is where you choose the graphics used for your vehicles, trees, wildlife etc etc.
    Select Vehicle 3 on the list on the left- the list on the right should now display the models and textures you have available in your worlds' Data\Models\Vhcls folder.

    Select the 'uniBiplane1.atm' and 'uniBiplane1.jpg'. Rejoin your world, and your vehicle 3 should now be a biplane.

    That’s a start, but the thing still won’t fly yet - it looks like a plane but still drives like the vehicle it was before. To make it fly you’ll need to change the settings for the vehicle..


  • Step 9 - Making a plane : Settings
     Go to *settings -> Vehicles and use + / - to select vehicle 3.

    The main setting that controls how the vehicle behaves is the ‘Control Mode’. Have a look through the descriptions of the options there.. For a basic plane control we want control mode 2.
    Next you need to set various physical properties about how the plane flies - you can define how much lift the wings generate, how much thrust the engine has and how quickly the plane turns.
    The physical property settings for the various control modes will be covered in more depth elsewhere, for now just try using the following values..

    Control Mode :2
    Air Thrust :2000
    Speed Lift Ratio :4000
    Air Drag :500
    Bank Acceleration :700
    Pitch Change Max :1500
    Pitch Change Speed :3000

    Once they’re set, press home and confirm the changes. Now when you use insert to increases the plane’s throttle you should find the plane begins to fly.

    Try it out for a bit and see how it feels. The settings above produce a plane that turns very slowly, so it will feel sluggish and heavy.

    Head back to the settings and increase the Bank Acceleration to 5000 and the Pitch Change Max to 3000.. Confirm again, and try out your new settings. The plane should now feel a lot more responsive.

    Don’t worry about setting all your vehicles perfectly first time.. every game designer will spend a large amount of time tweaking settings until they get the perfect control method. Start with a rough setup, using the real-world properties of the thing you’re trying to create as an outline (e.g. a jumbojet should have a slower turn speed than a jet fighter.. a jetfighter should have more thrust than a biplane), then later you can tweak the values to better balance the playability.


  • Step 10 - A quick look at robocrows

     Robocrows are the Subspace-inspired subgame.. F5 to change to the crow view..


    The initial settings for robocrows uses a topdown view, with a default crow setup and no weapons. Not much fun :). So.. before we start adjusting the individual crow settings, lets first activate a few nicer modes to make the crow section more interesting. Try making the following adjustments on the *settings screens..

    Graphics -> Robocrow Camera Mode :3 (To select a 3d robocrow camera)
    Graphics -> Crow Scale :400 (To zoom the camera in a bit)
    Subgame -> Robocrow Height Mode :2 (To make the robocrows fly lower)

    Thats a bit more like it :]. Check out the *settings -> Robocrows page and maybe try adjusting a few of the parameters there. Most robocrow settings should be straightforward by now.. speed, acceleration, maxspeed (used when the player is holding shift) etc etc. Getting a good balance of energy, recharge rate and weapon energy costs is one of the keys to a great crow set up - something that'll probably take a lot of playing, tweaking and testing to achieve. But first.. we've yet to get any weapons on the robocrow, so that'll be our next aim..

    On the robocrow settings for crow 1, change the Bomb Type to 4. (The default setup includes a plasma weapon preset to weapon 4.. The next section will explain in more detail how that's done.). Back in the main view, press TAB. We've assigned a weapon to our crow but now apparently 'Weapons are not allowed here'.


    To allow weapons on your world, you first need to change the global 'Fighting' setting - by default this prevents anyone from using weapons. Go to *settings -> World Rules -> Fighting to 1. Once confirmed, tab in your robocrow should now launch little glowing plasma type weapons.

    Before we continue on to adjusting weapon parameters, lets have a brief look at how things like the robocrow subgame can be linked in to the overall gameplay on your world. One simple, often-used option is to give cash rewards to players for killing each other in crows. The main setting that controls this is *settings -> Subgame -> Crow Kill Reward Mode. Check out the settings descriptions for the possible values there. Mode 3 is a good option, that allows you to specify a fixed money value (Subgame -> Crow Kill Cash Prize) taken from any player when they are killed.

    Its perhaps worth highlighting at this point the implications of some gameplay options. Consider the Kill Reward Mode 1 option - where any robocrow kills are rewarded with a prize from the 'treasury' (Your world's inexhaustable sheckles supply). If you use this setting on a 'serious' economy world, then don't be surprised if your first players spend a lot of time idly killing each other to collect their free cash. You could design your world such that this is all part of the game, but often you, as the game designer, have to limit which options are used to stop players 'abusing' the gameplay. Just one of the many perils of online game design :).


  • Step 11 - Weaponry

     { Docs to be completed }


  • Step 12 - What next..

     Phew. Well done, you made it through the first twelve steps to becoming a god. Award yourself a small cup/glass of your favourite beverage.

    There are loads of features we haven’t covered here yet - terrain texturing & map editing, reward modes, economy & subgame settings, buildzones, world radio stations and newspapers, welcome images and surface properties.. the list goes on... Keep exploring and trying stuff out and over time you’ll become familiar with all of these things - Researching how to use certain game features, exploring new patches, discovering new settings and methods and coming up with new world ideas is all part of the fun – at least it is for some people. If by now you’re thoroughly bored, world/game design is probably not the sorta thing for you. If you still think it might be.. well - enjoy exploring creation..

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