Author: DvD

Well, while playing the missions, you might have noticed that on some maps, buildings had different names than they would have on skirmish maps; that some things were not buildable or were stronger. Perhaps the best example is 'McNeil' unit (from the Capture McNeil Nod mission) that looks like a mutant but is a lot stronger and has a different voice.

However, when we search through the rules.ini, there is no McNeil unit to be found. So how do the Westwood guys pull this off? Simply by putting updated rules.ini code into their maps. This is easy, as maps are simply text files with a different extension. Let me show you an example. This can be found as-is in the nod11a.map file, when opened with wordpad:



As you can see, McNeil actually is the [MUTANT] unit, but they changed quite a few things: the 'mutant' suddenly suddenly goes by a name and appears amazingly vital.

You may wonder now why they did not just create a new 'mcneil' unit in this map. That's because you can only edit existing rules.ini objects! Another example from the same map:



This basically removed Ghost Stalker from the techtree in that mission.

But there is more. If you are a more experience mapper, you probably know the invisible light posts. However, some of them are just way too bright by default. Again, in nod11a.map we find:



Here they basically decreased the brightness of this lamppost. This comes in handy if you want different green light posts in your map. Simply edit, say, INREDLAMP to give a green shade, only brighter/dimmer than the standard one, and use it in your map.

You can go pretty far with this; infact, the only thing you can NOT do, is create a NEW object.

I wish to add to this that FinalSun has an INI-editing section, which quite easily allows the adding of (modified) INI sections to the map.

You can also add pre-written INI files to it.

I've got a few INI files somewhere that cover the most common light-posts, and the ambient lighting values for different times of day (a seperate file for each time of day).

-- There are two files (a temperate day and a temperate night). They're in the attached zip.

I will probably make a few more later on. At least a snow-day and snow-night, as the default values are eye-blinding bright.

This is a good tut. Very usefull when making special maps with better\stronger buildings\units. You can for example make the obelisk of light stronger if there's a research mission where the result were a
stronger obelisk. You can also edit a building's name to set the person who owns the map on for example boards. And when you set you coursor over it, it says for example : Map made by AAAAAA
It's very useful. Also editing the tutorial.ini file allows you to make your own text messages to appear on your map