IRON STORM TOUGH TO MOD

[Minty]

We all know that Iron Storm lacks big time in the map department. I have been trying to bring us a few more maps but its not an easy task because the game, unlike many other current games, simply was not designed to allow new maps. The best we can do without the orginal creation tools is modify the existing maps. Map 3A which is available for download from the Undies Klan server ( http://www.undies-klan.com/index-ismaps.html or at http://www.undies-klan.com/forum1/viewtopic.php?t=145) is a melding of map3 DM and map3 CTF. This is of course why we have the left over Red flag in the attic. The big difference in map 3A is that the amo cabinets have been moved and the map now has a zuke in it.

Map 3B which I have had up and running for some time is a melding of map2 DM and map3 DM. Map 3 is the only map that seems to allow changes. For instance the modification I made to get rid of the wind wont work in map 1 (sorry guys).

The designers of the game, 4X Studios, went belly up long ago and never left any material that we can get our hands on that would help create new maps. If you have ever played the single player game you know there are some great areas for multi player but we have no way of accessing them. Other games have the core game engine as a seperate file which when run must be told which map to use (this may be a great over simplification but is in essence correct). In Iron Storm the game engine is directly tied to one of 6 maps for multi player. While we can modify the maps they must match the designated creteria in the engine (main single player levels) in order to be useable. Also if the map modification alters the total checksum of the .gex file the game refuses to load the file. So we have these two limitaions, we cannot create new maps and we can only alter the existing maps to a certain degree. Many people (Im talking about dozens here) have asked me to get rid of the zuke. No can do! Any attempt to remove the amo cabinet the zuke is in results in the checksum being altered and the file being useless. Even renaming the amo cabinet so that the game would put a different cabinet in the same location causes a checksum issue.

To make any modifications requires a hex editor. The best I have found for modifying these files is 010 Editor ( http://www.sweetscape.com/010editor ). I have tried other programs but none do the job as well as 010. When you go to edit the .gex file you need to read through it, the first part of the file is garbage - scroll down till on the right hand side you see text. Have a good look through ALL of the readable text. if you know anything about GPS (Global Positioning Service) you will notice that there are a lot of entries that look like GPS coordinates. In essence what the devolpers have done is use X, Y, and Z axis to layout the map. You can tweak these coordinates but most have no effect for some reason and again you must keep the same character count or you end up with the checksum issue. Map 3 both DM and CTF are laid out on the same positioning structure and thats why it was so easy to create 3A. Map 2 uses the same positioning structure and again this is the reason we got 3B. The other maps use positioning that in effect goes in another direction, think of it this way - Take a page of paper and fold it so you have four quarters when its unfolded again. Map 3 and 2 are laid out from the center of a page of paper to the top right quarter, other maps are laid out to the top left, bottom left and bottom right. If we try to meld a map that goes to the bottom right with one that goes to the top right we have increased the total map area. Now heres where the real problem comes in, spawn points and amo cabinets. If the spawn points and cabinets are on the same quarter page for both maps something can be done to meld them. If the map layouts over lap even a small amount there is a chance that some spawn points might be located in the area where the maps over lap. Spawning off the map results in a player looking into nothing, then when walking ends up falling into the abys and dieing. Even when spawn points are on the map, they may be inside of a building and this results in the same issue, no place to go but down. In the game if you spawn on a floor or road you can move around the map. If you spawn ABOVE the ground you can fall, land and move on. If you spawn in the ether (such as exists inside a building - why put a floor inside a building if a player will never enter it) you have one option, fall and die. Now when some spawn points are off the map the file can be tweaked to renumber that spawn point to one that is a good location. The problem here is figuring out how to make this determination. Every time a modification is done you need to save the file, start the game, create a multi player game, see if it loads, and then see if the spawn points are workable. You need to literally kill yourself off numerous times to see if you have eliminated the bad spawn sites. As anyone who has played in 3A can attest to, some times you just cant get rid of every single bad spawn site. In both 3A and 3B I have one bad site I can't elliminate.

I've gone on at length here and as you can deduce, making maps for Iron Strom isnt easy and darn near impossible. There is more to making mods than I have laid out above but I think this should give you a good idea about how difficult tweaking maps in Iron Storm is. If anyone else would like to give it a go, great. Maybe they can find something I have missed and we can get new maps. If you have created something that works and want to share, send the file to me at minty@undies-klan.com and you'll get all the credit when I post it on the klan web site for others to download.


Map 3B now available for download at: http://www.undies-klan.com/index-ismaps.html