Cliffdata.slk tutorial (Finally)

Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know what you're all thinking "It's about frickin' time!" :P

I've been rather poignantly reminded of this in another post, and while it was actually finished for the most part some time ago I didn't realise that people were still having problems. So here it is in all its finished glory; a (for the most part) completed tutorial on adding higher-then-normal numbers of tilesets and cliffs to your map. You'll probably notice that I'll go over a few things I mentioned in the old thread, that's just for clarification. The process itself is very simple and will only take you a few short moments to set it up for yourself (Part 1). But for those of you who may be interested in exploring how the cliffdata.slk effects the game further, read on through Part 2. So without further ado, let's begin todays lesson.

Difficulty Rating:
Peon
Required files (for Part 1):
- Zepir's Map Editor
- MPQ Editor (Eg. ShadowFlare's WinMPQ)
- My pre-modified Cliffdata.slk
Extra tools (Part 2 and beyond):
- Microsoft Excel or similar program in which you can freely edit slks without fear of corrupting them.
- Notepad
Map Implantable:
Sure is

Warning ~ While you can still successfully do this process with a map that already has work done on it, always make certain that you have a backup copy. I can't be responsible if your map explodes and you didn't have a recent backup. I haven't had any problems myself, but that doesn't mean nothing bad can't happen.
Another Warning (I'm starting to scare you now with all these warnings, eh?:)) ~ Please note that if you encounter some sort of error while working with Zepir's map editor I can't help. There are other topics in the Map Dev and Wc3 Tools forums for problems with it. If you say to me that "Zepir's editor gave me this message that said it caused an exception fault at 88009A30x092 bla bla bla..." I'll either ignore or shoot you, depending on my mood :P.


PART I: Adding more stuff

This first part can be seen as the 'Express Method' for those people who are happy enough to just follow the instructions to get it set up asap, as opposed to going through the process of learning how it all works. Don't get me wrong, if you trust me enough to simply accept that it'll work, I'm just as happy :). While it won't cover all the things you can do, you will still be able to go beyond the normal 12-texture limit in WE and have plenty of nice cliffs and tiles.

- Open Zepir's editor.
- Open your map in Zepir's editor.
- Press Alt+Enter to bring up the Map Properties window. A screen will pop up with some info about your map. In the bottom right you'll see 3 sections dealing with your terrain:



Main Tileset deals with things like Cliff0 and Cliff1, lighting, the water colour, the textures used for bridge doodads etc. Below Ground and Cliff tilesets you'll see a string of letters. Every group of 4 letters symbolises a different texture ie. Ldrt means Lordearon Summer Dirt, Cvin means Felwood Vines etc. To see the whole list, simply go to the directory where you installed Zepir's editor, open up WZ3MapEdit.ini in notepad and scroll down to about halfway. The ones that Say "Tile=" are your ground textures and the ones that say "Cliff=" are your cliff texture (obviously). You can have as many as 16 Ground Tiles, which can equal up to 32 textures, a far cry from the paltry limit of 12 you are given in WE. Save you map. Download my pre-modified Cliffdata.slk from the top of this page if you haven't already, create a new folder called Terrainart in your Warcraft3 directory and put the slk in there. Startup WorldEditor, if all went according to plan you should now have a great many cliff and terrain textures to mess with.


PART 2: Exploration
Subsection A: How the edited slk works

Now, if you've ever tried using Zepir's editor before to try and add extra cliffs to your map you'd likely run into the problem below when trying to place your cliffs:

http://kharma.wc3campaigns.com/tutorial/Image2.gif

Not exactly the effect you were trying to achieve, right? Each cliff file is represented by a 4 letter code, just like abilities and upgrades etc. Except for Lordearon Summer, each cliff blp is called #_cliff0.blp or #_cliff1.blp, where # is the second letter from each of the cliff codes. Ie: The badlands cliff codes are CBde and CBgr and the blps are called B_Cliff0 and B_cliff1 respectively. The problem with trying to add in extra cliffs is the way they are set up to be read from the cliffdata.slk -- each cliff blp has a unique name, however, Warcraft is set up to 'intuitively' read which texture belongs to which cliff by the 'Main Tileset' (The tileset that your custom set is based off.



As you can see, the "#_" part of the name in the texfile column has been omitted, and herein lies the problem. Since Warcraft3 is set to intuitively read what the #_Cliff0 and #_Cliff1 depending on the base tileset, it will default to the textures for the 'Main Tileset'. To fix this, all we have to do is enter the complete names for the textures. The complete names are indentifiable by looking at the second letter of the ID on each line (This modification is available at the top of this post).



Subsection B: All the other stuff :P

This last part is basically a short detailing of what each of the columns in the slk do and what effect they have on the game:

cliffID ~ Unique 4 letter identification tag.
CliffModelDir ~ Determines what shape the cliff is. The 'Cliffs' tag is your bumpy natural-looking cliff, the 'CityCliffs' tag is the blocky square one that CityScape, Dalaran and the Dungeon walls use. This value is freely interchangeable and with it you can create some interesting effects.
rampModelDir ~ Determines the ramp model used, either 'CliffTrans' or 'CityCliffTrans', similar effect to CliffModelDir.
texDir ~ Determines the directory from where the #_Cliff file is read.
texFile ~ Determines the name of the blp used for the cliff.
name ~ This is a reference ID for worldeditstrings.txt so WorldEdit knows what to call the cliff. It has no effect ingame.
groundtile ~ This determines the tileset texture that is used between a height variation of 0 and 1 surrounding a cliff.
uppertile ~ This determines the tileset texture that is used between a height variation of 1 and 2 surrounding a cliff. This is handy if you wanted to have two different cliff textures conjoined on one cliff.
cliffClass ~ Code identifier for cliff and ramp models. Has no actual effect in WE or WC3 and is obsolete in FT.
oldID ~ Unique ID# for each cliff.

Hints:
- If your extra cliffs don't show up in WE on the palette, open you map back up, select one of the extra cliffs and simply click a square of it in a random place on your map. Save, exit Zepir's and load up WE again. Your cliffs should now show up.
- You'll likely find that the map generated in Zepir's uses a single tileset seed and looks incredibly ugly. To fix it, go to Tools » Advanced » Reset Texture Variations.

Well that's it, if anyone has questions or picked out any mistakes I made, feel free to berate me until I'm crying in a corner :P.

~kharma

dont u have such kind of tutorial for UMSWE 3.6

cause i think its alittle better than Zepirs

plz help me I need 16 tiles to play around with :D

fisrt chemo :
No, Zepir's editor is the only one available that freely allows adding tiles to a tileset. This can't be done with any other editor as Zepir's editor is the only third party editor for Warcraft 3.

All other editors are just enhanced versions of WorldEdit, therefore they can't handle such data.


Now kharma :

After many tests, i have noticed that CliffTypes.slk suffers from the same glitch as UnitMetaData.slk :

It will only work on bnet for players that play the map with that injected file as their first game.

Note that the same issue affects Doodads.slk, making scio's UMSWE's scalable doodads not to work properly on bnet.

I am sorry about this, i am still trying to find an alternative but i haven't found it yet (maybe Terrain.slk ? who knows).

Regards

wait so you're saying that only people who the map with the modified cliffs.slk as their VERY FIRST GAME on bnet will be able to see the changes?

Anyway - thx for the great TUt:D

Ultra, yes that is the condition you have to use when you use a modified cliffdata.slk. The only way to change this is if you have a modified patch.mpq or it is set in a mod.

For everyone that still doesn't get it to work:

Zepir's Editor likes to remove the tick where it says use custom tile set
So if the new tiles don't show up in normal WE, open the map again in Zepir's, open the map properties screen and reenable the use custom tile set option
Then save the map and you're done

So what about TFT? is there still the Bnet problem with CliffTypes.slk? I'm having probs with it right now, as cliffs only show in the editor, not in the actual game...

desty