Map Editor Tips

Tips and tricks for the map editor

Shortcuts

There are a lot of shortcuts in the editor.

• Ctrl + Wheel and Plus/Minus will set the brush size
• 1-9 also sets the brush size
• Wheel zooms in/out
• Middle mouse button pans the scrolling area
• Shift + Click picks the color under the mouse
• Q/A sets the current Z layer
• Ctrl + C copies the current layer
• Ctrl + V pastes the current layer
• Ctrl + Shift + C copies the current layer for use in an external image editing program. The color fuschia (#FF00FF) stands in for transparent pixels.
• Ctrl + Shift + V pastes to the current layer, and is used to paste in an image from an external editing program. Pixels colored in fuschia will become transparent.
• Del will erase the current layer
• Right-click will erase using the current brush
• F5 will open the map in VOXED.
• Ctrl + S will save the current map

Heightmaps

The pyspades map editor features several heightmap tools to build maps. A heightmap is a 512x512 image which determines the height of the map. The height at a pixel is determined by the formula h=(r+g+b)/12, where r, g, and b are the color channels of the image. Note that height is a zero-based numbering system; a pixel with the color of (0, 0, 0) will make water.

• File>Export>Heightmap will take the current map and save a heightmap image of it.
• File>Export>Colormap will take the current map and save the colormap.
• Heightmap>Additive takes a heightmap and a color map as inputs and adds the voxels determined by the heightmap into the map. Note that the newly placed voxels will override any voxels that might have existed previously.
• Heightmap>Subtractive takes a heightmap as the input and deletes voxels instead of adding them. This tool is useful for things like tunnels. Note that the subtractive heightmap tool will not remove z level 0 (water)

Tunnels can be made using the combination of additive and subtractive heightmaps. The general workflow to make tunnels is:

1. Create the surface terrain of the map using an additive heightmap.
2. Cut out the tunnels using a subtractive heightmap.
3. Add the floors of the tunnels using an additive heightmap.