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[KA101]

Bloody hell.

I just built three new maps (two of which were two-story), without starting from the Nuclear Plant.  Imagine my surprise when I found that the Squad starts out in the middle of nowhere, with the building nowhere to be found.  Is there a "Starting Location" that needs set or something?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Bloody hell.

I just built three new maps (two of which were two-story), without starting from the Nuclear Plant.  Imagine my surprise when I found that the Squad starts out in the middle of nowhere, with the building nowhere to be found.  Is there a "Starting Location" that needs set or something?

Oh... the squad starts in the center top of the map, same place as on all the other maps. However, I could implement a start location special without too much difficulty.

[KA101]

Fox, we love ye but "center top of the map" isn't actually an easy location to find in DAME,  Especially when I'm not ripping off your Nuclear Plant because I don't want all the structures to look the same.  I've spent most of tonight trying to move the maps so that the squad's invisible starting position is outside the front door.  (Mucking about with a test squad revealed that I was 1 & 3 tiles outside the Exit perimeter.)

And DAME has been hanging on the Load lua again.  >(  Fortunately I was able to recover the non-saved layouts for the news stations & PD second floor after the first export; importing map data from .csv works fine here.

Here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cbdzuecj5x9iktb/gy8OPFdeTj  .  Let me know if these are what you're looking for, bearing in mind that they're glitchy at best and not really ready for prime time.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Fox, we love ye but "center top of the map" isn't actually an easy location to find in DAME,  Especially when I'm not ripping off your Nuclear Plant because I don't want all the structures to look the same.  I've spent most of tonight trying to move the maps so that the squad's invisible starting position is outside the front door.  (Mucking about with a test squad revealed that I was 1 & 3 tiles outside the Exit perimeter.)

I'm sorry it was frustrating. You can use the crossed arrows tools at the top to select and move pieces of map around.

And DAME has been hanging on the Load lua again.  >(  Fortunately I was able to recover the non-saved layouts for the news stations & PD second floor after the first export; importing map data from .csv works fine here.

Here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cbdzuecj5x9iktb/gy8OPFdeTj  .  Let me know if these are what you're looking for, bearing in mind that they're glitchy at best and not really ready for prime time.

Ugh, yeah, I haven't been able to load from your .dam file either, some XML read error. Thankfully, I've found the thing you were talking about with importing map data from .csv -- so handy, that. Yes, I like these; I think the alarm system you have in the Radio Station is very amusing. It sounds like you're looking for encouragement and suggestions. For the second part, here are my notes:

1. For the police station, the post-processor for the maps will extend secure areas to fill all adjacent non-secure tiles and lock doors between secure and unsecure areas. So the stairs will be secured and locked off on the first floor, with non-secure areas on the upper floor, as it's currently set up.

2. Was it your intent to have a second floor room full of secure grass tiles in the radio station?

3. As a convention, I usually fill inaccessible parts of the map with walls. This is only really important when you get sleeper maps, and the rule can be broken when done intentionally; for the White House maps, for example, I have a largeish courtyard area you can't reach that is there just to give "context" when you have the location sleeper-mapped.

[KA101]

I know about the green-arrow tool already: that's what I was using.  Problem with Center-Top was that it's an unmarked position in the map window, so squads were starting on the far side of the exit grid, offset from the door, embedded in a wall, all sorts of drek.  ;_;

I had an XML problem once but most of the issue here has been getting DAME to export.  The heady days of being able to hotfix the Courthouse appear over.

Encouragement, not so much.  Clarification on what works and what doesn't, yeah.  So far as I can tell people liked the Courthouse because I could point to areas and say "this is the law library", "here are some courtrooms", "lookit the fire exits", and "Realism: the metal detector".  So, trying to achieve similar results with the media & police.

Re alarmed doors: I'm using them as fire exits.  It's important to design the building from both the gamer and the Conservative Daily Use perspective.  In the event of a fire, it's important to get people down the stairs in a hurry (if LCS can handle multiple upstairs/downstairs on a floor, I might have one on each side of a large building or somesuch).  So, there's a fire door from the newsroom...which happens to be extremely convenient for Liberals fleeing in a hurry.

1) OK, I'll redo that hallway.  Public is supposed to be able to access the Chief's offices and the prisoner-processing on the second floor.

2) Yes.  That's the exterior roof; antennae, satellite dishes, etc.  Incidentally: I'd intended the grass outside the Courthouse to be secure too, with a "Keep Off The Grass" sign.  But that didn't seem to work, probably for the same post-processing reasons you mentioned in 1.  (And yes, you should be able to be Death Squadded for walking on the grass.)

3) Yeah.  Wasn't sure whether leaving the sidewalk/parking visible would emulate windows...and I wasn't in the mood to mess with it and finagle the exporter to slam out another version at 2 AM.  Easy enough to change.

[tahujdt]

I'd intended the grass outside the Courthouse to be secure too, with a "Keep Off The Grass" sign.  But that didn't seem to work, probably for the same post-processing reasons you mentioned in 1.  (And yes, you should be able to be Death Squadded for walking on the grass.)

I feel obligated to post this:

And yes, that is a real image. You can see multiple pics of it on the Internet, and that squished bottle is the same in most of them.

[KA101]

Thanks for that, tahujdt.

DAME is losing the Specials layers again.  (=no Specials tiles displayed or available for a given location; here, the Bank, Police Station, and Radio Station 2F.)  Had that problem with the Bank for a while but now it appears to be spreading.  Throws an error 1009 or somesuch when I try to reimport from the .csv; let me know and I'll screencap if you'd like.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Thanks for that, tahujdt.

DAME is losing the Specials layers again.  (=no Specials tiles displayed or available for a given location; here, the Bank, Police Station, and Radio Station 2F.)  Had that problem with the Bank for a while but now it appears to be spreading.  Throws an error 1009 or somesuch when I try to reimport from the .csv; let me know and I'll screencap if you'd like.

I didn't write DAME and don't maintain it, so I wouldn't be able to do much to fix bugs in it, even with a screencap.

[ed boy]

Thanks for that, tahujdt.

DAME is losing the Specials layers again.  (=no Specials tiles displayed or available for a given location; here, the Bank, Police Station, and Radio Station 2F.)  Had that problem with the Bank for a while but now it appears to be spreading.  Throws an error 1009 or somesuch when I try to reimport from the .csv; let me know and I'll screencap if you'd like.

I find it easiest to just edit the CSVs directly with something like excel. Laying down some conditional formatting to highligh cells makes it really easy to visualize, so all you really have to do is look up the numbers for the special you want to put down.