Ground and Cliff heights.

[hopy]

Hey everyone, I've only just started working with the Starcraft Map Editor, so I'm quite a nooby still. However I've had a ton of experience working with the WarcraftIII Map Editor, so (I hope) I can still understand the basics and learn the rest fast enough.

Anyways, to the point. I've just started working in the map itself (textures, heights, cliffs etc-), but I've encounted a problem already.
1. "Lower cliff" heights.
When using the "Raise Cliff" tool you (from a single click) get small cliffs (I'll just name it a height of 1), and by clicking on it again you'd again raise it a little (1). However, when using the "Lower Cliff" tool the ground drops way more (a height of 2), and I can't find a way to fix this. Basicly what I mean is that the "Lower Cliff" drops the ground twice as far (2) as "Raise Cliff" would raise the ground (1).

I wanted to use the negative cliffs for rivers (water), and passage ways. I could ofcourse do this using the "Lower/Raise Ground" tools, however that would allow units to just walk in and out of the river at any place, and I'd need the cliffs to block those units from getting in/out of there at certain points.

Same as in WarcraftIII you could raise/lower cliffs by one or two (by selecting the right butten), however here I can raise by one (good enough, since you can click multiple times), but only go negative by two, which just looks silly.

So my question is as followed: Is there any way to decrease the size of Lower Cliffs?

Now for a second question here:
2. Leveling the entire map.
Now due to some copie/pasting stuff my map has some pretty strange height differences (not cliffs, but normal height), which causes some problems with water in my map (namely that on point A a small drop in height causes a good amount of water to spawn, whereas on point B a gaint pit would only spawn a tiny bit of water, since water spawns at a certain height, and point B is located a lot higher).

Anyways, is there a quick way to level the entire map (height based)? I could, ofcourse, make a new, flat, map. However this would require me to redo a ton of work, and that's something I'd rather not do (or I'd have to copie and paste, resulting in the very same problem ).

Thanks in advance for any awnsers, and do let me know if I didn't explain something very well or you need extra information.

 

[Dave312]

Hey everyone, I've only just started working with the Starcraft Map Editor, so I'm quite a nooby still. However I've had a ton of experience working with the WarcraftIII Map Editor, so (I hope) I can still understand the basics and learn the rest fast enough.

You should be able to pick things up fairly quickly. The Terrain and Trigger modules are much the same (a few improvements here and there). The biggest change is with the Data Editor and this will take you a while to figure out. I recommend having a look at some basic tutorials before trying to do something yourself.

Anyways, to the point. I've just started working in the map itself (textures, heights, cliffs etc-), but I've encounted a problem already.
1. "Lower cliff" heights.
When using the "Raise Cliff" tool you (from a single click) get small cliffs (I'll just name it a height of 1), and by clicking on it again you'd again raise it a little (1). However, when using the "Lower Cliff" tool the ground drops way more (a height of 2), and I can't find a way to fix this. Basicly what I mean is that the "Lower Cliff" drops the ground twice as far (2) as "Raise Cliff" would raise the ground (1).

I wanted to use the negative cliffs for rivers (water), and passage ways. I could ofcourse do this using the "Lower/Raise Ground" tools, however that would allow units to just walk in and out of the river at any place, and I'd need the cliffs to block those units from getting in/out of there at certain points.

Same as in WarcraftIII you could raise/lower cliffs by one or two (by selecting the right butten), however here I can raise by one (good enough, since you can click multiple times), but only go negative by two, which just looks silly.

So my question is as followed: Is there any way to decrease the size of Lower Cliffs?

SC2 cliffs are quite different from WC3. SC2 cliffs only have 4 levels. The first cliff level has a height of 0 and is typically filled with water or used as a canyon. By default, this cliff level is unpathable so units cannot walk across it (you can change this). The second cliff level has a height of 8, is by default pathable, and is typically the starting cliff level when you create a map. The third and fourth cliff levels have heights of 10 and 12 respectively and are by default pathable.

So when you have created your map, you have started a cliff height of 8. Now when you have raised the cliff level by 1, you have increased the cliff height up to 10. When trying to lower the cliff level, you are dropping it down to a cliff height of 0 which it causing it to seem as if you are dropping the cliff level by 2.

Water also works rather differently than Wc3. In WC3, you had to have a water cliff to make movement between water and ground unpathable. In SC2 however, water is placed without any cliffs and then you can adjust the height of the water to determine the path of the water. To stop units from entering water, you can use the Pathing Layer to paint No Pathing to the area you want units unable to enter. I suggest you try playing around with the pathing layer and water and what I mean should become a bit clearer.

Now for a second question here:
2. Leveling the entire map.
Now due to some copie/pasting stuff my map has some pretty strange height differences (not cliffs, but normal height), which causes some problems with water in my map (namely that on point A a small drop in height causes a good amount of water to spawn, whereas on point B a gaint pit would only spawn a tiny bit of water, since water spawns at a certain height, and point B is located a lot higher).

Anyways, is there a quick way to level the entire map (height based)? I could, ofcourse, make a new, flat, map. However this would require me to redo a ton of work, and that's something I'd rather not do (or I'd have to copie and paste, resulting in the very same problem ).

Thanks in advance for any awnsers, and do let me know if I didn't explain something very well or you need extra information.

Go Data > Modify Height Field in increase/decrease the height of the entire map. However it sounds to me like what you actually want to do is change the height of the water? To do this, go to place water in the Terrain Module, select the type of water you are placing, and click on the Edit Water button. In the window that opens, there should be 3 tabs. On the Basic tab (this one should be open by default), there is a Height property where you can adjust the height of the water. Each type of water can only have one height specified at a time (you can give them different states which allows you to specify different heights but all water on your map of this type must have the same state), but what you can do is create a new type of water that looks identical to the type you are using with a different height.

 

[hopy]

Alright, first of all: thanks a lot for the reply. It's all explained very clearly, and you obviously know your way around the editor. It's really appreciated.

SC2 cliffs are quite different from WC3. SC2 cliffs only have 4 levels. The first cliff level has a height of 0 and is typically filled with water or used as a canyon. By default, this cliff level is unpathable so units cannot walk across it (you can change this). The second cliff level has a height of 8, is by default pathable, and is typically the starting cliff level when you create a map. The third and fourth cliff levels have heights of 10 and 12 respectively and are by default pathable.

So when you have created your map, you have started a cliff height of 8. Now when you have raised the cliff level by 1, you have increased the cliff height up to 10. When trying to lower the cliff level, you are dropping it down to a cliff height of 0 which it causing it to seem as if you are dropping the cliff level by 2.

Water also works rather differently than Wc3. In WC3, you had to have a water cliff to make movement between water and ground unpathable. In SC2 however, water is placed without any cliffs and then you can adjust the height of the water to determine the path of the water. To stop units from entering water, you can use the Pathing Layer to paint No Pathing to the area you want units unable to enter. I suggest you try playing around with the pathing layer and water and what I mean should become a bit clearer.

Alright, that makes sense I guess, though I'd much prefer my old Warcraft cliffs. Not sure why Blizzard decided to change it to this.

So, my solution was to increase the enitre level of my map to 10, and than lower the river areas to 8, so that I could still have my rivers at height 8, but I need the two levels above my main level as well... bleh.

Conclusion: I either need to find a way to make a cliff level of 6 possible, or something that indicates where you can/can't enter the water (and blocking vision), without it looking silly.

Go Data > Modify Height Field in increase/decrease the height of the entire map. However it sounds to me like what you actually want to do is change the height of the water? To do this, go to place water in the Terrain Module, select the type of water you are placing, and click on the Edit Water button. In the window that opens, there should be 3 tabs. On the Basic tab (this one should be open by default), there is a Height property where you can adjust the height of the water. Each type of water can only have one height specified at a time (you can give them different states which allows you to specify different heights but all water on your map of this type must have the same state), but what you can do is create a new type of water that looks identical to the type you are using with a different height.

Aye, thanks a lot, the Modify Height Field was exactly what I needed. I've figured out how water works in Starcraft (more or less, the Reflection and Texture options are still Chineese to me). The problem was that (due to copie/pasting mainly) my entire map was sloped, having one part of the map a lot higher than the other part. This resulted in some strange looking issues with the water.

Thanks a lot for the help and the explaining.

 

[Dave312]

Alright, that makes sense I guess, though I'd much prefer my old Warcraft cliffs. Not sure why Blizzard decided to change it to this.

When I first started using the SC2 Editor, I would have agreed with you. But now I have gotten using to being limited by the heights of the cliffs and really don't need the extra levels anymore. Mind you I remember using a WC3 editor and thinking why couldn't they have given me more cliff levels to use.

Thanks a lot for the help and the explaining.

Not a problem.