| There is no doubt that one of the things that make Myth II such a great game is the release of two editors along with the game itself by Bungie. Nowadays, there are many tools which can help you with making your own maps for Myth, but the basic editors, which are absolutely necessary in a map-making process, are the Fear and Loathing applications.
Fear is an application that allows you to edit 'tags'. Every visible component of the Myth world is built of tags. Their structure and attributes (which you can change) determine many features such as why Berserks run so fast, why Soulless can throw their spears so accurately (or not), why Ghols are brown and how Warlocks shoot deadly fireballs. Using this tool, we are able to completely change the game play, any abilities of units, projectiles, attacks... we can do almost anything which is in the range of the game engine. Therefore, a good artist with a vivid imagination and some pure technical knowledge is able to make us see some entirely new phenomena, not seen in the official game before.
Loathing is an application which allows you to edit 'meshes'. It is a much more user-friendly and intuitive map-making tool. A mesh itself is the terrain we see in the game. In Loathing you put on your map (mesh, to be precise) all the units, scenery, sound effects, projectiles etc. You also do all of the scripting here to make everything work in the level just the way you want it to (units behaviour, various events). In short, Loathing allows you to finally picture your own vision of the map.
However, the map-making process is not as easy as it may seem to be. For example, studying about scripting may take days to weeks, since there are many things you need to know about. Therefore, beginner map makers should avoid making a whole 20-level campaign on their own, but rather launch Loathing and try to mess with some pre-existing maps and after some time go on to Fear. Fortunately, there are plenty of guides for mapmakers around and you can find most of them at mything.org. And if you have some questions about map-making, feel free to post your problems at the Project Magma forums. Some experts in map-making and a lot of other kind people hang out there, so they will help you for sure. These two websites will allow every beginning map-maker to become a great and respected author (with a little bit of work and practise of course).
I wish you all the best with the editors and I hope you will share some cool maps with the rest of the community soon :) |
