Hi everyone, I've decided to make a small guide describing the process of creating a Map Pack that contains one of our campaign maps. You can obviously add more of those and have more of them in one Map Pack.

We'll probably be adding more guides as the time goes, but we're also working so don't expect us to cover everything. I think it'd be wise for us to cover the harder topics that you come across and let you guys handle the rest, therefore feel free to create your own guides. I'll gladly link those to the Mod Creation FAQ topic should they be understandable and well written.

Feel free to ask questions over our forums[forums.hatredgame.com] or steam workshop.

UPDATE: I convinced DC_Gaijin to make some as well in-between developing our next project, so you may expect some kind of guide-series made by us. Obviously, for you.

Next Guide >>

1. Create a new mod. As always, it will reset the editor.
   
2. Open Content Browser.
   
3. Locate the map files you want to copy. Our campaign maps are in folder 'Maps' followed by their name. In my case it's the grey-highlighted 'Lvl_06_ArmyBase'
   
4. Select all the files - click the last one and shift click the first one. When they all glow like on the pic above, right click any of them, once and wait. This is theoretically not required, but this way you will have a nice progress bar that shows the loading progress. If you skip this step the editor will seem unresponsive and freezed, but it is actually doing stuff, just not displaying the progress. This may take a longer while, depending on the map.
   
5. Once it's finished you will see a drop down menu. You don't need it. Select the maps again and drag and drop them to the folder you have created previously - plugin folder. In my case it's 'CopyTest3_Stuffhere'. Stuffhere is a unique ID that will never be the same for 2 mods. Or more precisely, like 99,999999999% never.
   
6. Once you release LMB another menu will show up asking you what to do. You want to copy.
   
7. The copy should be very quick. Once it's done, left click the plugin folder. This is what you should see:
   
8. All levels are unsaved, their date is some garbage and their filesize is the max available in the engine -> almost 16 exabytes.[en.wikipedia.org] Good luck with getting a HDD of that size, though. To see the data the way I have on the screen, click the eye (View Options) in the bottom right corner and choose 'Columns'.
   
9. You need to save them all. Select them again, right click, go 'Save'. Or press CTRL+S, alternatively.
   
10. As is often the case, things tend to fight you and break. In my case, there are 2 maps that denied to be saved. ♥♥♥♥ happens. If you don't want to break too much, before proceeding you have to get those to work.
    
11. Here is how we do it. Open one of them. This window may pop up.
    
12. Click 'Don't Save'. Another window may popup. Press OK (it's the kind of window you can do nothing about but press OK). Once map opens, save it ( RMB -> 'Save' ). CTRL+S won't always work, because not every map will become modified once opened.
    
13. Proceed like this with every map that denied to be saved. Once all of them are saved, you will still see them with bad data (date and size). Get that one fixed. Open each one with bad data and save. The order should be irrelevant, but if it's not, then save the _P map as the last one (the fact that I haven't found a bug, doesn't mean there isn't one)
    
14. Once all the data is fine, open level _P.
    
15. CTRL+S
    
16. ?
    
17. Profit!
    
18. Or maybe not. That would be almost it for a map without any sub-levels. If you're copying a map that has only level _P then you can skip this part and go to point 25, but no campaign map is so small, so here we go. With the level _P opened go Window -> Levels. For Army Base it looks like this:
    
19. You see those blue dots near some sub-levels? It means that those are streamed by a blueprint. If there isn't one it means that this level is always loaded and you have no control over it. Ideally, you'd like to note down details for sublevels with blue dots - you will need it later. To open those details click the marked button on the picture above. Below is how it looks and what's relevant is marked.
    
20. Once you noted it down, you can remove the sublevels. It's shown 2 screens above, to open the menu you just right click it. Select all sublevels and remove them all. Save. Add the proper, existing ones from the plugin content folder.
    
21. Choose the maps from your plugin folder, not the main campaign level. Click 'Open'. CTRL+S (Save).
    
22. Set the streaming type and details I've talked about previously. Removing dots == setting the streaming method to 'Always Loaded'.
    
23. Check the details for those with dots that are supposed to stay with dots. Make really sure that this is set exactly the same as in the original version.
    
24. Verify that this is the right map. Hover any sub-level (which means level listed under _P, _P is not a sub-level). You should see something similar to this:
    
25. This is why we had to do this part. The references between the levels had to be updated. If you skiped this you would only have new level _P, but the game would load the original sub-levels and no changes done to those would make it to the plugin. In an ideal world this would work by itself and happen during copying, unfortunately we're not living in a perfect world. You will see the difference if this is wrong - there will be no plugin name and no UID that I mentioned previously. Rebuild geometry. Rebuild paths.
    
26. CTRL+S
    
27. ?
    
28. Profit!?
    
29. Nope, not there yet. You still have to get the mod done. You only copied files from one place to another in a way that it will work. So, have fun doing it, then save everything and cook the Map Pack as always.
    
30. Yeah, making games ain't as easy as one would think ;)
    
31. If during the process you find yourself in a situation when you look into the plugin folder and there are missing files (like, only one map visible and rest gone) - reopen the editor and continue as if nothing happened. The maps will reappear. Things tend to break.