12 · World Editor

Object placement and manipulation. Three linked windows over one 3D view.

All three share the tree in the upper-right quadrant, which is the .mis object hierarchy.

Mouse and keyboard

The complete reference, from the manual [script]:

With gizmos enabled in World Editor Settings:

The modifier scheme is consistent: plain = translate, Alt = rotate, Alt-Ctrl = scale, with Ctrl promoting translation to the vertical axis. Learn those four and the editor is largely in hand.

Planar Movement is the setting people trip over. Off, a dragged object sticks to the terrain surface — right for props and spawn points. On, it moves in a horizontal plane — right for anything that must sit at a specific altitude.

The tree, and the Instant Group

The tree shows the .mis hierarchy. Selecting in the tree selects in the 3D view.

One special concept [script]:

“There is a special group selection call the Instant Group. This group is where objects that are pasted are placed, as well as where objects created from the World Editor Creator are placed. In the World Editor tree view the instant group is displayed with a grey hilight. To change the current instant group, Alt-click on a group in the tree view.”

This is $instantGroup exposed as UI. The same global that governs where script-created objects land at runtime (Scheduling and events) is what the editor is setting when you alt-click a group.

That is worth internalising, because it is how you keep a .mis organised. Shipped missions nest by purpose [script]:

MissionGroup
├── MissionArea, Sun, TerrainBlock, NavigationGraph, Sky
├── RandomOrganics
│   └── (vegetation clusters)
└── Teams
    ├── Team1
    │   ├── spawnspheres
    │   └── base0
    └── Team2

Alt-click base0 before creating a generator and it lands in the right group. Create it with MissionGroup as the instant group and you get a flat, unmaintainable mission that gametype code may not find.

The World Menu’s Add Selection to Instant Group moves an existing selection in after the fact.

World menu

Lock is more useful than it sounds. Terrain and large interiors are easy to grab by accident when box-selecting; locking them once at the start of a session saves a great deal of undo — which, per the manual, is “not all actions can be undone”.

locked = "true" is a dynamic field written into the .mis [script] — visible on MissionArea, Sun, TerrainBlock and NavigationGraph in the shipped missions, which is exactly what you would expect: Sierra locked the things you should not be dragging.

Drop rules

Where new objects appear. Seven options [script]:

Drop at Screen Center is the working default for most placement — point at where you want the thing and create it. Drop to Ground is right for spawn spheres and props. Drop at Camera w/Rot is the one to reach for when orientation matters as much as position, such as vehicle pads and station fronts.

The Inspector

“When an object is selected in Inspector mode, that object’s properties will be displayed in the lower right quadrant of the screen. Once properties are edited, clicking the apply button will set those properties into the object.” [script]

Two things to note.

Edits are not live — you must click Apply. Losing a field edit by selecting away first is the single most common editor frustration.

Dynamic fields can be added here. The manual is explicit [script]:

“Dynamic properties can be assigned to objects with the Dynamic Fields Add button. Dynamic fields are accessable through the scripting language and are used to add game-specific properties to mission objects.”

This is the bridge between mapping and modding. A dynamic field added in the Inspector is readable as %obj.yourField from script (SimObjects and namespaces), persists into the .mis at a deeper indent than static fields, and is how a gametype reads per-map configuration. MissionGroup’s own CTF_scoreLimit and CTF_timeLimit are exactly this (Missions).

If you are writing a gametype, this is how you let mappers configure it — read MissionGroup.<Type>_<setting> and document the field names.

Inspector script hooks are in scripts/EditorGui.cs [script]:

Inspector.inspect(%obj);
InspectorNameEdit.setValue(%obj.getName());

The Creator

“The World Editor Creator displays a tree view in the lower left corner of the screen. This tree contains all objects that can be created in a mission.” [script]

The tree is populated from the registered class list and the loaded datablocks — which is why a mod that adds StaticShapeData blocks makes them placeable in the editor with no extra work. Construction’s building pieces, for instance, appear here alongside the stock objects.

New objects land in the instant group, at the position given by the current drop rule.

Working with the console alongside

The editor cannot do everything. Some things are simply faster typed:

// what am I actually looking at
nameToID(team1flag).dump();

// bulk-set a field the Inspector would need many clicks for
for (%i = 0; %i < MissionGroup.getCount(); %i++)
   echo(MissionGroup.getObject(%i).getName() SPC MissionGroup.getObject(%i).getClassName());

// exact placement
nameToID(team1vehiclestation).setTransform("-180.737 264.173 73.9045 0 0 -0.999913 0.0206931");

That last idiom — nameToID(...) then setTransform(...) — is precisely what the Classic mod’s minivstationx.cs does to reposition stations on specific maps [script]. Exact transforms are easier to set from the console than by dragging.

Related

• 11 · The Mission Editor — the shell, menus and movement
• 13 · Terrain — the other half of the editor
• 16 · Shipping a map — object naming conventions gametypes rely on
• Missions — the .mis structure this produces