Empires Wiki - User contributions [en]

SteamUser

2019-02-17T16:47:01Z

Mloc:

Displays the avatar and nickname for a given steam ID.

== Properties ==
{{SteamDisplay_Properties}}

== Example ==
<pre>
"SteamDisplay"
{
"ControlName" "SteamUser"
"fieldName" "SteamDisplay"
"font" "HudMines"
"xpos" "2"
"ypos" "0"
"wide" "126"
"tall" "17"
"steamid" "STEAM_0:0:15161464"
"paintbackground" "0"
}
</pre>

[[Category:VGUI Elements]]

Version/2.23.x

2019-02-11T13:49:11Z

Mloc:

== 2.23.3 ==
=== Bugfixes ===
* Fix bug where the first team to reach 0 tickets lost automatically on all maps.

== 2.23.2 ==
=== Bugfixes ===
* Fix flags taking tickets from the wrong team.
* Fix top HUD bar displaying 0 tickets for your team.

== 2.23.1 ==
=== Features ===
* Signed models, players with custom player models might get blocked from servers in next releases.
* Not having a spawn results in a one ticket per second drain.

=== Bugfixes ===
* Fixed issue where squad reviving wouldn't cost any squad points.

=== Scripts ===
* Wall cost 15->18
* Normalized cannon speed for High-Explosive/Plasma/Bio Cannons.
** High-Explosive Cannon
*** Gravity 0.4125->0.4
** Thermobaric Cannon
*** Speed 3000->3100
*** Gravity 0.4->0.37
** Plasma Cannon Prot.
*** Gravity 0.4125->0.4
** Plasma Cannon
*** Gravity 0.4->0.37
** Virulent Cannon
*** Speed 3000->3100

[[Category:Patch_Notes]]

Jargon

2008-12-31T12:06:01Z

Mloc: /* S */

__NOTOC__
{{Sitenav|Jargon}}

{| style="border:1px solid #BBB; padding: 0 5px;"
| [[#.23|#]] [[#A|A]] [[#B|B]] [[#C|C]] [[#D|D]] [[#E|E]] [[#F|F]] [[#G|G]] [[#H|H]] [[#I|I]] [[#J|J]] [[#K|K]] [[#L|L]] [[#M|M]] [[#N|N]] [[#O|O]] [[#P|P]] [[#Q|Q]] [[#R|R]] [[#S|S]] [[#T|T]] [[#U|U]] [[#V|V]] [[#W|W]] [[#X|X]] [[#Y|Y]] [[#Z|Z]]
|}

When you are playing Empires, you may come across some jargon you don't understand. Here is a list of the most commonly used bits of Empires jargon.
==#==
'''3 Phase''' - Refers to the (3 Phase Electric) engine upgrade.

'''9 mine''' - Refers to the 9th Mine Trick and anything associated with this ability.

==A==
'''Abs''' - Refers to (Absorbant) armor upgrade.

'''AIDS''' - The effects of Bioweapons. "They are giving us AIDS!11"

'''APC rush''' - Building a Vehicle Factory at the beginning of the game, constructing an APC from it, getting all players inside it, and then driving off to the enemy base to quickly destroy their barracks and CV before they have defense.

'''Arty''' - Artillery Vehicle. Plural: 'Arties'.

'''Arty Whore''' - Unsportsmanlike use of the artillery.

'''Aura''' - Refers to the Squad Leader's power-up aura that gives nearby units improved abilities.

==B==
'''Bar''' - Barracks.

'''BE''' - Refers to the "Brenodi Empire" Team.

'''BEAR''' - The standard assault rifle of the Brenodi Empire's [[Rifleman]]. Not the carnivorous mammal.

'''BEHR''' - The heavier variety of the assault rifle available for the Brenodi Empire's [[Rifleman]].

'''Bio''' - BioDiesel Engine

'''Blimb''' - Slang term for aircraft, which are unavailable at this time.

'''Blitzkrieg''' - Usually started when both sides decide to APC rush. In a blitzkrieg the bases will move from place to place very quickly. There's no time to build defense because it wouldn't be done before the base would be rushed, so it's better to just set up a new base elsewhere.

'''Boomtank''' - The [[Command Vehicle]]. Originates from before the Commander voting system was implemented, when new players would rush to the Command Vehicle and proceed to drive it around the map as if it were some kind of uber-tank, oblivious to its true purpose. It is ironic that some skilled players do use the Command Vehicle to destroy weak tanks or stop/slow bigger tanks allowing others to get a shot in without worrying about the target running. (For further satire, see: [[Noob's Guide to Empires]]).

==C==
'''Calculator/Calc''' - Engineers tool which can be used to heal/repair/build structures or units.

'''Cam''' - Surveillance camera constructed by engineers to detect near-by enemy infantry.

'''CDR''' - A prefix to the name of a map, taken to mean 'commanderless'. The only current usage of this term is in [[map:emp_cdr_canyon|emp_cdr_canyon]].

'''Chem''' - The 'Chemistry' research tree.

'''Chokepoint''' - Any point on a map that forces a team into a small geographic area--for example, a bridge, a narrow canyon, an elevator, or a gate. It is these spots in a map that are most often camped, and where battles most often take place, because both teams know that the other team must pass this particular area. These also are the routes that are most easily defendable against assault, as the assaulter is vulnerable when forced into tight quarters.

'''Cloaker''' - Typically used in emp_escort and sometimes in emp_district402; a scout with hide that has or is in the act of sneaking past your defenses to capture the flag unnoticed.

'''Comm''' – [[Commander]].

'''Comvee''' - [[Command Vehicle]].

'''Comm Suicide''' - A usually malicious act of intentionally destroying one's own Command Vehicle by driving it into an unrecoverable situation (e.g. off a high cliff or into deep water).

'''Coolant''' - Refers to the (Advanced Coolant) engine upgrade.

'''Crash Dumps''' - Files generated by the game whenever it crashes. These files contain debugging information used by developers to track down bugs responsible for the crash.

'''CV''' - [[Command Vehicle]].

==D==
'''Death APC''' - Seldom used term for and APC with extensive armor, weapons, and (usually) engine upgrades.

'''Decon''' - Short for "Deconstruct"; an Engineer's ability to un-build and destroy enemy structures with the engineer tool.
==E==
'''E''' - East side of map / Right side of map

'''Engy''' - The [[Engineer]] class.

'''Engy Tool''' - Engineers tool which can be used to heal/repair/build structures or units.

'''ER''' - The Extended Range cannon.

'''ETA''' - Estimated Time of Arrival (e.g. "ETA armor?!" = When will armor be done)

==F==
'''Fireworks''' - When an engineer constructs a cluster of missile turrets to 99%, and finishes building all of them at almost the same instant. The result is a surprising barrage of missiles, often used near enemy bases to great effect.

'''Flip''' - (Verb) In reference to when a vehicle is somehow turned upside down by any number of means; poor driving, collision, explosion, etc. Usually in reference to the command vehicle, when a grenadier uses the [[Grenadier#Tips|ninth mine trick]]. Flipped vehicles self-destruct over a short period of time to simplify game mechanics and prevent the server from being bogged down with vehicles. As in "to Flip," or "has been Flipped."

==G==
'''Gameboy''' - Engineers tool which can be used to heal/repair/build structures or units.

'''Geraniums''' - The Uranium Machine Guns research.

'''Gren''' - The [[Grenadier]] class.

'''Griefer''' - Someone who intends to ruin the game. See 'Comm Suicide'.

==H==
'''HE''' - The High Explosive cannon.

'''Heavies''' - Heavy tank.

'''HMG''' - The Heavy Machine Gun, a weapon of the [[Rifleman]].
==I==
==J==
==K==

'''Killspawn''' - Suiciding by typing "kill" in the console so that you can re-spawn at another spawn point elsewhere on the map. Useful emergency measure if immediate reinforcements are required.

==L==
'''Lights''' - Light tank.

'''LT''' - The Northern Faction Light Tank.

'''LT Rush''' - Attacking early in the game with many Light Tanks or AFVs.

'''Lvl/Level''' - In reference to turrets. Usually described in-game as a "lvl3", this being the third and most powerful variety of turret.

==M==
'''Meds''' - Medium tanks.

'''MG''' - Machine Gun Turret.

'''ML''' - Missile Launcher Turret.

'''Mowtar''' - Alternate spelling of the [[Grenadier|Grenadier's]] Mortar weapon.
==N==
'''N''' - North part of map / Top of map

'''Nade''' - Grenade.

'''Nader''' - Another term for a person spamming grenades.

'''Nadespam''' - The act of constantly throwing grenades into some vital area, while simultaneously restocking from an ammo box.

'''NE''' - Northeast corner of map / Upper-right corner of map

'''NF''' - Refers to the [[Northern Faction]].

'''NFAR''' - The standard assault rifle of the Northern Faction's [[Rifleman]].

'''Ninja''' - The attempt of a player to sneak into the enemy base and destroy key structures (especially the CV) without the enemy noticing before it is too late.

'''Ninjaneer''' - An Engineer who intends to Ninja the enemy, often utilizing his grenades and Engineer's tool.

'''Nuketank''' - An Heavy tank armed with a nuclear missile. Deadly, and should be avoided at all costs by the enemy soldiers.

'''NW''' - Northwest corner of map / Upper-right corner of map

==O==
==P==
'''Paper Tank/Arty/Armor''' - A vehicle armored with the basic (weak) armor. Also applies to tanks that have one plate of armor on all sides, regardless of armor type.

'''Partyvan/Partywagon/Partybus''' - An APC.

'''Pixerduduh''' - Vocalisation of PXR-DDH ('''P'''ortable '''X'''-'''R'''ay '''D'''etection '''D'''evice for '''H'''umanoids), a.k.a. an engineer-placed camera. Rarely used in-game.

'''Poop/Pewp''' - Placing a structure close to an essential area to temporarily prevent the enemy from using it. For example, a camera near a resource node so that the enemy can't drop a refinery there, or crashing a tank into the entrance of a Vehicle Factory to prevent the enemy from being able to build tanks.

'''PUG''' - Acronym of ''''P'''ick-'''U'''p '''G'''ame', a community organized match frequented by veterans of Empires. A good place to show off your skills to the best of the rest in the Empires community, or, at the very least, meet some of the regulars.

==Q==
==R==
'''Rax''' - Abbreviation for [[Barracks]].

'''Ref''' - [[Refinery]].

'''Regen''' - Usually in reference to Regenerative Vehicle Armor. Sometimes refers to the Regenerate skill upgrade.

'''Res''' - Resources, the "money" for Empires and therefore required to build anything.

'''Rev''' - The act of reviving a dead player by use of the Engineer skill.

'''Rez''' - Derived from "resurrect". See 'Rev'.

'''RTFM''' - ''''R'''ead '''T'''he '''F'''*cking '''M'''anual'. Popular acronym, uttered when a new player asks an obvious question.

'''Running''' - Used to indicate that the enemy command vehicle is attempting to flee from his base while being attacked, usually a last ditch effort to relocate and set up a new base elsewhere. As in, "Heads up, the comm's running!"

==S==
'''S''' - South part of map / Bottom of map

'''Scunt''' - Insulting term for Scouts.

'''SE''' - Southeast corner of map / Bottom-right corner of map

'''Shotty''' - The Northern Faction Shotgun pistol.

'''SL''' - Squad Leader, the first person to join/create a squad.

'''Sploit''' - From "exploit": abusing a bug to gain an unfair advantage over the enemy. Examples include clipping into geometry, falling under the world, getting to places inaccessible by design, etc.

'''Spawnnkill''' - Getting killed the moment you spawn before you can do anything. Happens often when you are revived during a battle.

'''Spotting''' - Use of radio command or scout binoculars to mark enemy units/buildings for the sight of infantry, tanks, and artillery vehicles.

'''Stack/Stacked''' - Referring to when the teams are uneven and there are more players on one team than the other.

'''Stalingrad''' - When one team has almost defeated the other team, but ends up losing because they run out of tickets before the other team, and soon get outnumbered.

'''Sticky''' - Also, 'to have been stickied,' and 'to stick,' this refers to the various sticky grenades used by riflemen and scouts.

'''Straight Tech''' - (Verb) The action of researching a higher tier upgrade, such as heavy tanks or nuclear missiles, before completing any other research in the match. As in: "the commander straight teched heavies before getting us armor or engines."

'''Suicide''' - Often the last resort to getting "unstuck," or used to get somewhere else in a hurry; pulling down the console with the tilde (~) key, typing "kill" (without quotes) and pressing enter.

'''Suicidespawn''' - See '''killspawn'''.

'''SW''' - Southwest corner of map / Bottom-left corner of map

==T==
'''The Pub''' - Light APCs that serve no purpose other than a spawn point.

'''Tickets''' - How many more "lives" the team has to spare.

'''Turret Climbing''' - Rapidly building and trashing turrets as an engineer in means to build a "ladder" in order to get on top of high places. Often considered exploiting. Has been fixed in later versions.

'''Turret Farming''' - Act of creating multiple turrets in a localized area.

'''Turrent''' - Common misspelling of "turret".

'''Turtling''' - Variant of 'Turret Farming', where a team relies on walls, turrets and other defensive measures to protect a small area, instead of advancing across the map.

==U==
'''Unstuck''' - As in the command "emp_unstuck" used to remove your avatar if it is clipped into part of the map and can't move.

==V==
'''Vanilla Tank/Arty/Armor''' - Refers to a tank with no upgrades.

'''VF''' - A [[Vehicle Factory]].
==W==
'''W''' - West side of map / Left side of map

'''Wall''' - (Verb) To rush an enemy vehicle, usually the [[Command Vehicle]], and build walls around it, thereby trapping it. As in "to wall the tank."

==X==
==Y==
==Z==

Dedicated Server Setup

2008-12-31T12:02:26Z

Mloc:

{{Sitenav|Dedicated Server Setup}}

== Dedicated Server (Windows) ==
=== Downloading ===
First of all you need the [http://steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.exe HLDS Update Tool]. This is what we use to update/download the server. You will also need Empires Dedicated Server from the [http://empiresmod.com/download.php Empires Download Page].

If you want to use [http://www.mani-admin-plugin.com/ Mani Admin Plugin], make sure you download it before going any further.

=== Installing ===
* First we need to download the SDS (Source Dedicated Server). To download we open up hldsupdatetool.exe and download the tool to an arbitrary location on your machine, for example:
C:\HL2DS
* When you have finished installing the update tool open the install folder in a command prompt and type:
hldsupdatetool.exe -command update -game "tf" -dir C:\HL2DS

* If that doesnt work or your stuck or having trouble getting tf then you can go [http://www.srcds.com/db/engine.php?subaction=showfull&id=1097362093&archive= HERE] for a more indepth tutorial on how to get it.

{{Tip|Make sure you replace C:\HL2DS with your install path if it's different.}}

This will download all files necessary to host a Team Fortress 2 server (and Empires). And remember to "Go get yourself a cup of coffee." as valve said, this will take some time

* Install the Empires Dedicated Server files to "C:\HL2DS\orangebox\empires" (use your own install path).
* Create a shortcut of '''srcds.exe''' and place it where you want then go to properties of the shortcut. Add the following to the end of the shortcut target:
-game empires +maxplayers 14 -port 27015 -console +map emp_canyon -autoupdate
It sould look like this;
srcds.exe -game empires +maxplayers 14 -port 27015 -console +map emp_canyon -autoupdate
{{Tip|You can adjust your port and maxplayers via the shortcut or the ''server.cfg'' file.}}

=== Configuration ===
Next, edit your mapcycle.txt and server.cfg files to your liking.
{{Warning|When editing your server.cfg remember to change your '''rcon_password''' and '''hostname''' directives!}}
rcon_password "pass" //Your rcon password
hostname "Servername" //The name of your server

These are the most important settings to change, there are more in the cfg so test around what is best for you.

=== Starting ===
You should now be able to double-click your server shortcut, which will start up your dedicated server.

== Dedicated Server (Linux) ==
=== Downloading ===
First of all you need the [http://storefront.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin HLDS Update Tool]. This is what we use to update/download the server. You will also need Empires Dedicated Server from the [http://empiresmod.com/download.php Empires Download Page].

=== Installing SDS ===
Now we have to extract the HLDS-Update-Tool.
* Go to the homedir of the user who is designated to run the HL2-Server and create a subdir.
hl2usr@hl2srv ~ # mkdir hl2
* Copy the HLDS-Update-Tool into your new subdir and chmod it to make it executable:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin
* Run the binary:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # ./hldsupdatetool.bin
* If you get a warning about not finding "compress", go grab the "[http://ncompress.sourceforge.net/ ncompress]" package on Redhat/Fedora:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # yum install ncompress
* Now that you have finished extracting the Update-Tool you can use it to download all required files:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # ./steam -command update -game "tf" -dir .
Get yourself a cup of tea, coffee, soda, etc., and have a rest. Depending on your connection speed this can take some time

=== Installing Empires ===
Next, we have to extract the previously downloaded Empires-Server.
* Copy the zip-file (something like empires_v1xxx_server.zip) to the folder where the HLDS-Update-Tool resides (''~/hl2'' in this example) and extract it:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # unzip empires_v1xxx_server.zip -d orangebox
This command creates the directory ''~hl2/orangebox/empires'' and extracts all needed files into it.

=== Configuration ===
Before you can start your new Dedicated Server the servers config files have to be altered to satisfy your needs.
* cd to the ''"orangebox/empires"'' subdir
* Edit the file ''mapcycle.txt'' with your prefered text editor and add/remove the maps you like/don't like in your mapcycle
* cd to the config dir of your Empires installation (''~/hl2/orangebox/empires/cfg'' in this example)
* Edit the ''server.cfg'' to your liking
{{Warning|When editing your server.cfg remember to change your '''rcon_password''' and '''hostname''' directives!}}
rcon_password "pass" //Your rcon password
hostname "Servername" //The name of your server

=== Starting ===
Now your server should be ready for startup
* cd to your Dedicated-Servers basedir (''~/hl2'' in this example)
* Start the Server:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # ./srcds_run -game empires +maxplayers 14 -port 27015 -console +map emp_canyon -autoupdate
{{Tip|Use a terminal multiplexer like [http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ Screen] to be able to detach the HL2-Server Console and disconnect from your servers shell without terminating the HL2-Daemon}}
* You can create a Bash-File in your Dedicated-Servers basedir to easily start your Empires-Server in a virtual Screen-Terminal:
{{ Box File|empires.sh|
<pre>
#! /bin/bash
screen -A -d -m -S empires -t empires ./srcds_run -game empires +maxplayers 14 -port 27015 -console +map emp_canyon -autoupdate
</pre>
}}
Please note that if you wish to retain explicit control over when updates happen on your server you can omit the -autoupdate option.
* Now make the Bash-File executable and run it:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # chmod +x empires.sh
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # ./empires.sh
The Dedicated-Server now runs in the background. You can attach to the Screen-Terminal by typing:
hl2usr@hl2srv ~/hl2 # screen -r empires

You can detach from the Screen-Terminal and leave the server running by typing a Control-A followed by a d.

To stop the server, reattach to the Screen-Terminal and type Control-C.

If you intend to run multiple servers then you will need to set a unique value for the port used & the the Screen-Terminal name used via the -port & -S options in the above command.

== Related Links ==
* [http://server.counter-strike.net/server.php?cmd=cmdall General HL2 Directives/Commands]
* [http://www.mani-admin-plugin.com/ Mani Admin Plugin]

Configuring Hammer for Empires

2008-12-31T11:54:11Z

Mloc: Updated for 2.2

{{Sitenav|[[Mapping]] > Configuring Hammer for Empires}}

{{Note|Before you do anything, make sure you have installed Source SDK, available through Steam under the ''Tools'' section.}}
{{Note|You may need to run Source SDK Base - Orange Box at least once for the game executable to be set up.}}
[[Image:Tools.png|thumb|right| To get to the Hammer configuration window...]]

Start by opening Hammer Editor through the Source SDK link in your ''Tools'' section in the Steam client. Once hammer is open go to 'tools' at the top, then click 'options' which brings up the hammer configuration window required for this tutorial. Follow the directions below.
== Game Configuration Tab ==
[[Image:Hammer1.png|thumb|right| Game configuration tab]]

'''Add following .fgd files into your fgd list:'''
* Base.fgd
* Halflife2.fgd
* Empires.fgd (located at $SteamDir\SteamApps\SourceMods\Empires\mapsrc\fgd\empires.fgd)

'''The Game executable Directory should be set to:'''
$SteamUserDir\source sdk base 2007

'''The game directory should be set to:'''
$SteamDir\SteamApps\SourceMods\Empires

'''The hammer vmf directory should be set to:'''
$SteamDir\SteamApps\SourceMods\Empires\mapsrc

All relative to where you installed empires, meaning that if you configured your folders to be called somthing else then you need to specify the paths according to that

== Build Programs ==
[[Image:Build_programs.png|thumb|right| Build programs tab]]
'''Game executable:'''
$SteamUserDir\source sdk base 2007\hl2.exe
'''BSP executable:'''
$SteamUserDir\sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin\vbsp.exe
'''VIS executable:'''
$SteamUserDir\sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin\vvis.exe
'''RAD executable:'''
$SteamUserDir\sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin\vrad.exe
'''Place compiled maps in this directory before running the game:'''
$SteamDir\SteamApps\SourceMods\Empires\maps

And that should be it, now all you have to do is exit hammer and restart the SDK.

[[Category:Mapping|Configuring Hammer]]

User talk:Jcw87

2008-12-29T10:13:25Z

Mloc: My page is better off without this trash on it.

User talk:Jcw87

2008-12-29T10:02:39Z

Mloc: /* On the Democratic Movement, etc. */

fancy! So how far along is the actual map? Just the script? We need this.--[[User:The Buttery Lobster|The Buttery Lobster]] 21:38, 24 November 2007 (PST)
* Did you find this article by yourself? I made a thread in the Empires forums and linked to here. Please discuss it there. http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=3890 --[[User:Jcw87|Jcw87]] 01:50, 25 November 2007 (PST)

oh, oh yeah. I read the wiki and all the changes, i don't read the mapping forum. I know the bare bones basics of mapping so i half of the stuff in that forum reads like so: "gobbeldy factory gooblety blurbilty entity bla bla bla turrets etc etc etc etc skybox." Wiki much more idiot-friendly then sdk.--[[User:The Buttery Lobster|The Buttery Lobster]] 13:54, 25 November 2007 (PST)

== On the Democratic Movement, etc. ==

We should discuss whether or not they should be on the Wiki. --[[User:Ç|Ç]] 01:46, 29 December 2008 (PST)

You are a fucking troll who needs to get a life. Anything you have to say is not welcome here. The admins have already made this clear. --[[User:Jcw87|Jcw87]] 01:51, 29 December 2008 (PST)

They have not made anything clear vis-à-vis contributing to the Wiki. Think what you want, but I am in fact trying to legitimately improve the Wiki. If you believe that the Empires Wiki should ''solely'' focus on Empiresmod and not the forum then very well, I will submit. Please reply to make this clear. --[[User:Ç|Ç]] 01:53, 29 December 2008 (PST)

Seeing as Krenzo just banned you, my argument stands. --[[User:Jcw87|Jcw87]] 02:01, 29 December 2008 (PST)

Oh, and don't forget that time you were banned for a year for doing exactly this. --[[User:Jcw87|Jcw87]] 02:02, 29 December 2008 (PST)

User talk:Jcw87

2008-12-29T10:01:54Z

Mloc: /* On the Democratic Movement, etc. */

User talk:Jcw87

2008-12-29T09:51:51Z

Mloc: /* On the Democratic Movement, etc. */

User talk:Jcw87

2008-12-29T09:51:39Z

Mloc: /* On the Democratic Movement, etc. */

User talk:Jcw87

2008-12-29T09:47:57Z

Mloc:

User:Jcw87

2008-03-13T03:50:27Z

Mloc:

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
Keep in mind that a clan tag does not equal commanding experience.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.

Now lets talk a little about the interface.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key

<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>

In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
The Brenodi Empire's buildings will be seen to the left, and the Northern Faction's buildings will be seen to the right.
Each building has a unique function that is crucial to the game.
When you are ready, you may begin your tour of the buildings by entering the next area.

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.

<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>

You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
The ticket count can be seen at the top of the screen

<draw attention to ticket count>

When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.

<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>

Vehicles play an important role in the later stages of the game.
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
If you see an unbuilt radar in your base, it is a good idea to build it as soon as possible
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on various maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
This can be very useful, as you can upgrade your tank without wasting resources on a new tank chassis.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the class skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these can give your team resources, a spawn point, or even drain the other team's tickets!
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.

<give player 10 points>

You have just been given some rank points.
Try equiping a skill now.

<detect if a first slot skill is active on the player>

Remember to use these skills well, as they can be a deciding factor in combat.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They do not carry over to the next map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

<detect the player class>

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

<Bridge is built>

Good job!

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

<Barricade destroyed>

Good work!

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
The cameras and mini-radars are the only structures in the game that can be destroyed with bullets or melee attacks.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
For instance, revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
The turret upgrade skill can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead.

<detect player class>

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.

Try shooting at these targets. Make sure you crouch or go prone, or your shots will go everywhere.

<targets destroyed>

Nice shooting!

Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Armories that are sabotaged will stop giving out ammo.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath, armor, and ammo.
Sabotaged refineries will generate half the normal resources.
Sabotaged radars will display the positions of enemy tanks within its range to your team.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will also stop working.
Try sabotaging this building

<draw attention to the building>

<armory sabotaged>

The building is now sabotaged.
Notice the purple smoke coming from it.
This is the only indication that the building is sabotaged, so it can be quite effective in an empty base.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The grenadier is a very important class, as normal bullets do not hurt vehicles at all.
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The rocket launcher is also not an overpowered insta-gib weapon like in every other game that has one.
It has very little splash damage, and is highly ineffective against infantry.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.

<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>

<detect if team has a commander>

When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
Try placing a barracks inside the flagged area

<barracks placed>

The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

<if simple bots are added to Empires, continue>

Here are some AI soldiers. Unlike players, they will not think on their own, and will only respond to a commander’s orders. Use them to attack this enemy outpost.

<enemy outpost destroyed>

Good job!
This concludes the tutorial.
We hope you enjoy the game!

User:Jcw87

2008-03-13T03:45:49Z

Mloc:

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
Keep in mind that a clan tag does not equal commanding experience.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.

Now lets talk a little about the interface.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>

In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
The Brenodi Empire's buildings will be seen to the left, and the Northern Faction's buildings will be seen to the right.
Each building has a unique function that is crucial to the game.
When you are ready, you may begin your tour of the buildings by entering the next area.

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
The ticket count can be seen at the top of the screen
<draw attention to ticket count>
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
Vehicles play an important role in the later stages of the game.
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
If you see an unbuilt radar in your base, it is a good idea to build it as soon as possible
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on various maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
This can be very useful, as you can upgrade your tank without wasting resources on a new tank chassis.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the class skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these can give your team resources, a spawn point, or even drain the other team's tickets!
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.

<give player 10 points>

You have just been given some rank points.
Try equiping a skill now.

<detect if a first slot skill is active on the player>

Remember to use these skills well, as they can be a deciding factor in combat.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They do not carry over to the next map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

<detect the player class>

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

<Bridge is built>

Good job!

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

<Barricade destroyed>

Good work!

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
The cameras and mini-radars are the only structures in the game that can be destroyed with bullets or melee attacks.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
For instance, revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
The turret upgrade skill can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead.

<detect player class>

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.

Try shooting at these targets. Make sure you crouch or go prone, or your shots will go everywhere.

<targets destroyed>

Nice shooting!

Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Armories that are sabotaged will stop giving out ammo.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath, armor, and ammo.
Sabotaged refineries will generate half the normal resources.
Sabotaged radars will display the positions of enemy tanks within its range to your team.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will also stop working.
Try sabotaging this building

<point at building somehow>
<armory sabotaged>

The building is now sabotaged.
Notice the purple smoke coming from it.
This is the only indication that the building is sabotaged, so it can be quite effective in an empty base.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The grenadier is a very important class, as normal bullets do not hurt vehicles at all.
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The rocket launcher is also not an overpowered insta-gib weapon like in every other game that has one.
It has very little splash damage, and is highly ineffective against infantry.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.

<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
<detect if team has a commander>

When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
Try placing a barracks inside the flagged area

<barracks placed>

The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

<if simple bots are added to Empires, continue>

Here are some AI soldiers. Unlike players, they will not think on their own, and will only respond to a commander’s orders. Use them to attack this enemy outpost.

<enemy outpost destroyed>

Good job!
This concludes the tutorial.
We hope you enjoy the game!

User:Jcw87

2008-03-09T02:15:04Z

Mloc:

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
Keep in mind that a clan tag does not equal commanding experience.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.

Now lets talk a little about the interface.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>

In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
Each building has a unique function that is crucial to the game
When you are ready, you may begin your tour of the buildings by entering the next area.

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
The ticket count can be seen at the top of the screen
<draw attention to ticket count>
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
Vehicles play an important role in the later stages of the game.
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
If you see an unbuilt radar in your base, it is a good idea to build it as soon as possible
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on various maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
This can be very useful, as you can upgrade your tank without wasting resources on a new tank chassis.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the class skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these can give your team resources, a spawn point, or even drain the other team's tickets!
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.
Remember to use these skills well, as they can be a deciding factor in combat.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They do not carry over to the next map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

<detect the player class>

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

<Bridge is built>

Good job!

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

<Barricade destroyed>

Good work!

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
The cameras and mini-radars are the only structures in the game that can be destroyed with bullets or melee attacks.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
For instance, revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
The turret upgrade skill can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead.

<detect player class>

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.

Try shooting at these targets. Make sure you crouch or go prone, or your shots will go everywhere.

<targets destroyed>

Nice shooting!

Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Armories that are sabotaged will stop giving out ammo.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath, armor, and ammo.
Sabotaged refineries will generate half the normal resources.
Sabotaged radars will display the positions of enemy tanks within its range to your team.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will also stop working.
Try sabotaging this building

<point at building somehow>
<armory sabotaged>

The building is now sabotaged.
Notice the purple smoke coming from it.
This is the only indication that the building is sabotaged, so it can be quite effective in an empty base.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The grenadier is a very important class, as normal bullets do not hurt vehicles at all.
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The rocket launcher is also not an overpowered insta-gib weapon like in every other game that has one.
It has very little splash damage, and is highly ineffective against infantry.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.

<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
<detect if team has a commander>

When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
Try placing a barracks inside the flagged area

<barracks placed>

The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

<if simple bots are added to Empires, continue>

Here are some AI soldiers. Unlike players, they will not think on their own, and will only respond to a commander’s orders. Use them to attack this enemy outpost.

<enemy outpost destroyed>

Good job!
This concludes the tutorial.
We hope you enjoy the game!

Setting Up Map Resources

2007-12-09T04:01:31Z

Mloc:

{{Sitenav|[[Mapping]] > Setting Up Map Resources}}

== Resources? What are Those? ==
First off, your asking, "What are Resources?"
Well, Resources are the scripts and files needed for the Minimap and Objectives for your map.

How important is this? '''very'''.
You cannot spawn without the resource.txt file in your '''Empires/Resource/Maps''' directory, and without the minimap VTF file and VMT file in your '''Empires/Materials/Maps''' directory. All you will see on your minimap is a black and purple checkerboard (that is, if you don't crash).

== Creating the Minimap ==
=== Step 1 - The MiniMap Image ===
Take an overhead screenshot of your level.

Become a spectator by choosing it on the team menu, and hide the HUD by typing "cl_drawhud 0" in the console. If your map has fog, use the command "fog_override 1" to disable it (sv_cheats must be set to 1). Fly up to a decent height and look down. Do not go outside of the level.
Use the cl_leveloverview command to have the engine draw the level flat. Setting cl_leveloverview to a higher number will make you zoom out more. Once you are happy with the camera, use the console command "screenshot <picturename>" to save as a targa (.tga) formatted image which has no compression.

You can also save to a .jpeg (default key F9) if you would like to edit the minimap picture from this format. You will then need a program such as [http://www.gold-software.com/abc.shtml ABC Converter] to save to .tga for conversion to .VTF

{{Tip| if you are using a large func_precipitation brush in your level, viewing too much of the brush at one time will cause you to crash to desktop. }}

=== Step 2 - Formatting the Image===
Open your image in Photoshop/ABC or any decent image editing program. You can find it in '''Empires/Screenshots'''.

Crop it so that the image's width and height are the same and resize it so that they are a multiple of 2 (ie 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024). Note down the pixel coordinates of the top left corner and the bottom right corner of your map as shown on the minimap image.

The coordinates can be found by hovering the mouse cursor over the relevant point in the minimap, and looking at the toolbars in your image editing program. Depending on what program you are using there will be a pair of numbers like this: (232,884) or (75 X 1024) for example. Those numbers are the pixel coordinates of your cursor position. Write these numbers down as you will be needing them later. You should have two pairs of numbers, one pair for the top left corner, and another pair for the bottom right. Neither pair should be smaller than 0 or larger than your image width/height.

It is very important that you find these coordinates with precision or the minimap will lose accuracy and this can cause all manner of problems.

=== Step 3 - Conversion to VTF ===
Convert yourt TGA image to HL2's VTF format using VTEX (found in your source SDK directory).

If you are unsure how to do this then follow [http://www.snarkpit.net/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL2&id=121 this tutorial]

=== Step 4 - Save in Directory ===

Place the .VTF file in your '''Empires/Materials/Maps''' folder

=== Step 5 - Creating the VMT file ===

Open a plain .txt file with a text editor such as Notepad. Copy this text into it.

<pre>

"UnlitGeneric"
{
"$baseTexture" "maps/<your map name>"
"$vertexcolor" 1
"$vertexalpha" 1
"$no_fullbright" 1
"$ignorez" 1

"%keywords" "empires"
}

</pre>

Edit <your map name> and save as a .vmt file in '''Empires/Materials/Maps''' directory. Make sure that you have '''not''' saved it as <your map name>.vmt.txt or it will not work.

Your Minimap has been created. But before we can see how it looks, we need to make a script that tells the game all about your map and its files.

== Setting Up the Script ==
=== Step 1 - The Basic Script .TXT file ===
"How do i set up the script?"
its very simple.

Open your text editor and '''turn Word Wrap off'''. Then, copy this text into a plain .txt file:

<pre>

"<your map name>"
{
//the location in the 'materials/' dir where the image for the map is
"image" "maps/<your map name>"

//the top left corner of the image which equals the top left corner
//of the map coordinate below
"min_image_x" "90"
"min_image_y" "45"

//the bottom right corner of the image which equals the bottom right corner
//of the map coordinate below
"max_image_x" "990"
"max_image_y" "950"

//the top left corner of the map
"min_bounds_x" "-11150"
"min_bounds_y" "14850"

//the bottom right corner of the map
"max_bounds_x" "14350"
"max_bounds_y" "-10250"

//the size in map coordinates of each sector of a map (A1,F5, etc), a grid
//line is drawn around each sector on the minimap to visually segregate them

"sector_width" "200"
"sector_height" "200"

//There are four levels of zoom. These are the min and max which correspond to
//the amount of the map visible in the minimap panel when at that zoom level.

"min_zoom" "1"
"max_zoom" "0.25"

//Team panel descriptions
"nf_description" "The Northern Faction is less equipped and trained than the forces of the Brenodi Empire,
but its forces make up for it with genetic manipulation and determination. All members are ex-citizens of Jekotia whose
disbanded military's past exploits into genetic manipulation were phased into the general population and provided a counter
to Brenodi technology. This gives them the advantage of more versatility in ability enhancement and an unmatchable level of
cohesiveness and coordination. They've managed to find support in ex-Jekotians hidden within the Brenodi Empire and
among remnants of bunkers and weapon caches left over from the great battle which dissolved the nation of Jekotia."

"nf_objective" "Objective: Build refineries to gain resources and build up your army.
Then destroy the Brenodi Command Vehicle, or destroy all barracks (removing any place to spawn) and kill all members of the
enemy team."

"imp_description" "The Brenodi Empire’s forces are equipped with state of the art weaponary and equipment.
All members undergo a strict training regiment to establish their combat effectiveness, and they are
supported by the very best mechanized armor and air units. All Brenodian citizens are required to receive an extensive set
of nanotechnological devices to function, and their military relies on these nanotech enhancements to further
enhance the abilities of their soldiers. The Brenodi Empire wages an ongoing campaign to subdue the Northern Faction
and eliminate their terrorist actions through force that have become all too common in ex-Jekotian territory."

"imp_objective" "Objective: Build refineries to gain resources and build up your army.
Then destroy the Northen Faction Command Vehicle, or destroy all barracks (removing any place to spawn) and kill all members
of the enemy team."

}

</pre>

Now look at the lines beginning with two forward slashes like this // . Make sure that they have only one line of text. They must not start a new line of comment text without a double slash. If your map crashes when you load it, it is probably because this script has the wrong format. Look at the picture below to see what I mean.

<center> [[Image:Comment.JPG|thumb|Correct Comment Format]] </center>

=== Step 2 - Editing for Your Map ===

Now we will edit the script for your map.

First off, edit <your map name> on the top line.

<pre>
"<your map name>"
{
</pre>

=== Step 3 - Minimap Location ===

The next section is to add the minimap to your map, this will also create a "megamap" for spawning.

<pre>//the location in the 'materials/' dir for your maps VTF file.
"image" "maps/<your map name>" </pre>

This tells the game where to look for the minimap you have just created. Change <your map name> to the name of your minimap.

=== Step 4 - Minimap Calibration ===

<pre>//the first part of the minimap calibration information

//the top left corner of the image which corresponds to top left corner of the Hammer map coordinate below
"min_image_x" "90"
"min_image_y" "45"

//the bottom right corner of the image which corresponds to the bottom right corner of the Hammer map coordinate below
"max_image_x" "990"
"max_image_y" "950"

</pre>

Remember those two pairs of numbers I asked you to write down in the first section ? Insert them into the obvious locations here. (by the way if you don't know, the first number of each pair is the x value and the second is y).

<pre>//the second part of the minimap calibration

//the top left corner of the map as displayed in Hammer
"min_bounds_x" "-11150"
"min_bounds_y" "14850"

//the bottom right corner of the map as displayed in Hammer
"max_bounds_x" "14350"
"max_bounds_y" "-10250"

</pre>

Insert your map coordinates here.

If you don't know how to do this, read carefully. Look at your map in the top view of Hammer. You know, the plan view, usually in the top right with (x/y) in the corner. Now zoom into that view so you can see the absolute top left corner (but stay inside the skybox) of your map very clearly. Now move your mouse cursor over that point, as precisely as you can or noone will be able to hit anything with artillery feedback and your buildings/units will be displayed incorrectly. Now look at the bottom status bar without moving your mouse, see that little pair of coordinates twinkling up at you ? Wipe away the sense of Deja vu from your mind and insert the numbers into your script. First number of the pair goes into the x value etc. Repeat for the bottom right position and you have calibrated your minimap.

=== Step 5 - Grid Overlay and Zoom Levels ===

<pre>//The grid overlay sizing information

//the size in map coordinates of each sector of a map (A1,F5, etc), a grid line is draw around each sector on the minimap to visually segregate them
"sector_width" "200"
"sector_height" "200"

</pre>

This is the grid overlay onto the Minimap. This allows you to control the sizing of your grid overlay. For example, a large map will require large grid squares and large values. A smaller map will require smaller grid squares and smaller values.

You can also tweak these numbers to make sure your grid overlay does not end halfway through a sector on the minimap. In other words it lets you stop the computer drawing 5.5 grid squares instead of 6 or 5. You will understand this when you see your minimap for the first time I am sure. If you don't understand this then leave those numbers alone for now.

<pre>//Zoom Level Options

//There are four levels of zoom. These are the min and max which corresponds to the amount of the map visible in the minimap panel when at that zoom level.
"min_zoom" "1"
"max_zoom" "0.25"

</pre>

Self explanatory really, again if you don't understand these numbers, leave them alone and you will soon.

=== Step 6 - Map and Objective Descriptions ===

<pre>
//Team panel descriptions
"nf_description" "The Northern Faction is less equipped and trained than the forces of the Brenodi Empire,
but its forces make up for it with genetic manipulation and determination. All members are ex-citizens of Jekotia whose
disbanded military's past exploits into genetic manipulation were phased into the general population and provided a counter
to Brenodi technology. This gives them the advantage of more versatility in ability enhancement and an unmatchable level of
cohesiveness and coordination. They've managed to find support in ex-Jekotians hidden within the Brenodi Empire and
among remnants of bunkers and weapon caches left over from the great battle which dissolved the nation of Jekotia."

"nf_objective" "Objective: Build refineries to gain resources and build up your army.
Then destroy the Brenodi Command Vehicle, or destroy all barracks (removing any place to spawn) and kill all members of the
enemy team."

"imp_description" "The Brenodi Empire’s forces are equipped with state of the art weaponary and equipment.
All members undergo a strict training regiment to establish their combat effectiveness, and they are
supported by the very best mechanized armor and air units. All Brenodian citizens are required to receive an extensive set
of nanotechnological devices to function, and their military relies on these nanotech enhancements to further
enhance the abilities of their soldiers. The Brenodi Empire wages an ongoing campaign to subdue the Northern Faction
and eliminate their terrorist actions through force that have become all too common in ex-Jekotian territory."

"imp_objective" "Objective: Build refineries to gain resources and build up your army.
Then destroy the Northen Faction Command Vehicle, or destroy all barracks (removing any place to spawn) and kill all members
of the enemy team."

</pre>

This is the Description of the two sides (factions), as well as the map objectives. if you have objectives other than the default ones, you can change these, otherwise its not necessary.

If you do want to edit them, just make sure that you do everything inside the quotation marks and it will not affect the operation of the script.

=== Step 7 - Save in Directory ===

Save this file in your '''Empires/Resource/Maps''' directory as <your map name>.txt

Load up the map, and if you have followed this guide to the letter, your minimap will show up!

----
Guide Created by [[User:Kylegar|Kylegar]] and [[User:MichaelWalker|Jimather]]

[[Category:Mapping|Setting Up Map Resources]]

User:Jcw87

2007-12-01T10:54:42Z

Mloc:

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
The buildings on the left belong to the Brenodi Empire team.
The buildings on the right belong to the Northern Faction team
When you are ready, please move on to the next area..

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
Vehicles play an important role in the later stages of the game.
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on different maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these usually gives your team a new spawn point, and takes one away from the other team.
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.
Remember to use these skills well, as they can be very useful.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They are lost when the map changes.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
The cameras and mini-radars are the only structures in the game that can be destroyed with bullets or melee attacks.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
Revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
Turret upgrade can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.
Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Armories that are sabotaged will stop giving out ammo.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath, armor, and ammo.
Sabotaged refineries will generate half the normal resources.
Sabotaged radars will display the positions of enemy tanks within its range to your team.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will also stop working.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The grenadier is a very important class, as normal bullets do not hurt vehicles at all.
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The rocket launcher is also not an overpowered insta-gib weapon like in every other game that has one.
It has very little splash damage, and is highly ineffective against infantry.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

User:Jcw87

2007-11-26T09:28:23Z

Mloc:

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
The buildings on the left belong to the Brenodi Empire team.
The buildings on the right belong to the Northern Faction team
When you are ready, please move on to the next area..

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
Vehicles play an important role in the later stages of the game.
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on different maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these usually gives your team a new spawn point, and takes one away from the other team.
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.
Remember to use these skills well, as they can be very useful.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They are lost when the map changes.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
The cameras and mini-radars are the only structures in the game that can be destroyed with bullets.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
Revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
Turret upgrade can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.
Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Armories that are sabotaged will stop giving out ammo.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath, armor, and ammo.
Sabotaged refineries will generate half the normal resources.
Sabotaged radars will display the positions of enemy tanks within its range to your team.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will also stop working.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The grenadier is a very important class, as normal bullets do not hurt vehicles at all.
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The rocket launcher is also not an overpowered insta-gib weapon like in every other game that has one.
It has very little splash damage, and is highly ineffective against infantry.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

User:Jcw87

2007-11-26T08:41:23Z

Mloc:

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
The buildings on the left belong to the Brenodi Empire team.
The buildings on the right belong to the Northern Faction team
When you are ready, please move on to the next area..

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
Vehicles play an important role in the later stages of the game.
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on different maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these usually gives your team a new spawn point, and takes one away from the other team.
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.
Remember to use these skills well, as they can be very useful.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They are lost when the map changes.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
The cameras and mini-radars are the only structures in the game that can be destroyed with bullets.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
Revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
Turret upgrade can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.
Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Ammo and health crates in sabotaged armories will give out health and ammo at half the normal rate.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath and armor.
Sabotaged radars will have their vehicle detection range cut in half.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will repair vehicles at half the normal rate.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The grenadier is a very important class, as normal bullets do not hurt vehicles at all.
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The rocket launcher is also not an overpowered insta-gib weapon like in every other game that has one.
It has very little splash damage, and is highly ineffective against infantry.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

User talk:Jcw87

2007-11-25T09:50:47Z

Mloc:

User:Jcw87

2007-11-25T03:30:31Z

Mloc: New page: The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map. == Starting room == Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine. This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empi...

The following is a WIP Script for a tutorial map.

== Starting room ==

Welcome to Empires, an RTS/FPS hybrid for the Source engine.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of playing Empires.
Let’s start with the basic rules of the game.
At the start of the standard gameplay, you will have to vote for a commander.
You should try to vote in someone who has a lot of experience in commanding.
After the voting period ends, all players will be able to spawn at the spawn point they have chosen.
The elected commander will spawn in the command vehicle, and the game will begin.
The primary goal of each team is to destroy the opposing team’s command vehicle.
The destruction of the command vehicle will result in a win for the other team
The game can also end if all the players on one team are dead, and have no means of re-spawning.
Certain maps which deviate from the standard gameplay have flags that can be captured.
If one team captures all the flags, it is usually an instant victory.
Like any RTS, Empires has a mini-map.
All friendly buildings, players, vehicles, and spotted enemies are shown on this map.
It is really useful for making a quick assessment of battlefield conditions.
You can view a larger version of this map by pressing your map key
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
In the following areas, you will see what each building looks like for both teams.
The buildings on the left belong to the Brenodi Empire team.
The buildings on the right belong to the Northern Faction team
When you are ready, please move on to the next area..

== Barracks room ==

The barracks acts as a spawn point and allows you to change your class.
To change your class, enter the barracks, and press your change class key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You should note that spawning costs your team one re-enforcement ticket.
If your team runs out of tickets, they will not be able to re-spawn.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Armory room ==

The armory contains health and ammo crates, which replenish you when you press your use key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You can also change your class in an armory, just like in a barracks.
Vehicles that are near armories will have their ammo replenished
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Vehicle Factory room ==

Now for the fun part!
Vehicle Factories can be used to customize and create your own tanks and jeeps.
To build a Vehicle, find the screen inside the Vehicle Factory, and press your use key on it.
Alternatively, just step into the factory and press your vehicle customization key.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
You have 3 essential areas of your vehicle to configure.
The weapons, the armor, and the engine.
Each of these has their own resource and weight costs.
You cannot build your tank if you do not have enough resources or if your customizations go over the chassis weight limit.
You will need weapons on your tank if you expect it to last long, so make sure it has some!
As your commander researches better armors, you will want to use those.
Different armors have different strengths and weaknesses against different weapons.
But for now, all you have is plain armor, which isn’t very good at all.
As you are firing your weapons and blowing your enemies to smithereens, your tank will start to heat up.
If it over heats, your engine will stall and you will not be able to fire your weapons until it cools off a bit.
You will need a good engine on your tank if you want to keep firing your weapons, so be sure to use one other than the standard when possible.
After picking your weapons, armor, and engine, you will need to assign your weapons to slot numbers.
This is very important, as you cannot build your tank unless they have been assigned.
When pressing a weapon slot key, all weapons on the vehicle that are bound to that slot will become active, and will respond to your primary and secondary fire buttons.
You can bind a weapon to more than one slot.
After finalizing your customizations, you can build the tank by pressing the build button.
Tanks can be entered or exited by pressing the use key.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Radar room ==

The radar will show you enemy vehicles that are in its range on your mini-map.
More importantly, it allows your commander to research better weapons, armors, and engines for the vehicles.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Refinery room ==

Refineries are placed on top of resource nodes, like the one in the center of this room. When built, they generate a steady stream of resources for your team automatically.
Resources are needed for the commander to place buildings and to purchase tanks.
It’s very important to capture resource nodes by building refineries on them early in the game to make sure your team doesn’t get left in the other team’s dust.
You should note that resource nodes can be represented differently on different maps.
However, one trait that is usually found on all resource nodes is a smokestack coming from the ground.
Most maps also mark resource nodes with yellow dots on the mini-map.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Repair Station room ==

Vehicles parked on the repair station that are not in combat will slowly repair themselves.
They will also restock on ammo.
If you press your vehicle customization key while on the repair pad, you can reconfigure your tank load-out.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Turret room ==

Turrets are your average stationary defense.
They sit there and wait for enemies.
If it sees an enemy that is in range, it begins shooting at it.
These particular turrets are inactive, to prevent them from killing each other or you.
There are 2 different types of turrets.
The inner turrets are Missile Launcher turrets.
They can target vehicles and other buildings.
The outer turrets are Machine Gun turrets.
They can only target infantry.
The commander can research improved turrets which have a greater range and a faster firing rate.
Engineers can place their own turrets, and if they have the skill, they can upgrade their turrets too.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Flag room ==

This is a typical flag.
In the maps where they appear, they are usually the primary objective of that map. Capturing these usually gives your team a new spawn point, and takes one away from the other team.
You can also change class while standing in the capture zone for flags that belong to your team.
As long as you are here, with a convenient place to change your class, let’s talk about rank points and skills.
As you play the game, you will gain rank points for doing certain things, such as killing an enemy, capturing a flag, building or repairing a building, or sabotaging an enemy building.
When you get enough rank points, you can get a special skill that enhances your abilities.
Some skills, such as increased health and increased accuracy, are available to every class. Other skills, such as the repair upgrade or hide, are specific to one class.
You can select a skill by pressing your change class key.
Remember to use these skills well, as they can be very useful.
Please note that rank points only stay with you for a single map.
They are lost when the map changes.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Class room ==

You may have already noticed that there are 4 classes to choose from.
It is important to know what these classes do, and how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with the engineer, which is arguably the most useful class in the game.
If you are not already an engineer, change your class in the armory ahead.

The engineer is equipped with an SMG weapon, pistol sidearm, seismic grenades, and the “engineer tool.”
The engineer tool is what makes the engineer useful.
The primary trigger makes it build or repair buildings, repair vehicles, heal other players, or construct various map-specific structures.
Try using the engineer tool to build a bridge across the pit.

The engineer tool can also be used to deconstruct things that belong to the enemy team.
Try taking down that enemy barricade.

The secondary trigger opens the build menu, which allows the engineer to build his own turrets, cameras or mini radars, walls, or ammo crates without any help from the commander.
Some of the engineer’s class specific skills are used with the engineer tool.
Revive is activated by using the primary trigger on a dead friendly corpse.
It also requires that you have one full bar of engineer tool ammo to use.
Turret upgrade can be used by walking up to your turret and using the secondary trigger.
Note that engineers cannot upgrade commander placed turrets, or other engineer’s turrets.
Seismic grenades are effective against buildings, but barely scratch anything else.
When you are an engineer, you teammates will be relying on you to build the base, place ammo boxes at the front lines, and build refineries.
Change your class to rifleman in the armory ahead

Rifleman is an easy class.
They are primarily concerned with the First Person Shooter aspect of the game, and little else.
Riflemen can choose one of three anti-infantry rifles, explosive or sticky grenades, and a pistol.
Explosive grenades are deadly to infantry, and if you are lucky, they can destroy an immobile tank.
Sticky grenades cannot be thrown far, but they will stick to whatever vehicle, person, or building you throw them at, making them very effective against tanks if you can get close enough.
While applying to all classes, you will have much better accuracy with your weapons when crouched or prone, but it’s especially important for riflemen.
When you are a rifleman, your teammates will be relying on you to protect them by mowing down opposing infantry.
Change your class to scout in the armory ahead.

The scout’s main purpose is to gather information about what the enemy is doing, which can be very helpful to the commander. The scout also has a fun sabotage ability, which will disable or impair a building in some way.
Buildings can be sabotaged by walking up to them and holding down your use key.
Players who spawn in a sabotaged barracks will have half health.
Ammo and health crates in sabotaged armories will give out health and ammo at half the normal rate.
Vehicles produced in sabotaged vehicle factories will have half hull heath and armor.
Sabotaged radars will have their vehicle detection range cut in half.
Sabotaged turrets will stop working completely.
Sabotaged repair stations will repair vehicles at half the normal rate.
The scout can be equipped with an SMG, or a unique rifle.
This scout rifle acts like a sniper rifle with 100% accuracy, and is usually lethal when getting a headshot.
The scout has 3 different grenades to choose from.
You can have flash grenades, smoke grenades, or a sticky grenade.
The scout’s sticky grenade is different from the rifleman’s sticky grenade.
It overheats tanks on detonation, but lacks the power of the rifleman’s sticky grenades.
Change your class to grenadier in the armory ahead.

The grenadier is the anti-tank class.
He is equipped with a rocket launcher, a mortar, mines, and a pistol
The rocket launcher fires a single rocket, and then reloads.
If the primary trigger is held down after firing, the rocket will slowly guide toward your crosshair.
If left alone, it will continue going straight until it hits something
Note that the grenadier’s rocket course correction while guiding is much slower than in Half-Life 2.
The mortar fires projectiles in an arc path.
The grenadier can lay down a maximum of 8 mines, which blow up when stepped on or driven on.
After 8 mines have been placed, placing more mines will cause the oldest mine to blow up.
Note that if the player stepping on or driving over the mine has the defusal skill, the mine will not go off.
When you are ready, please move on to the next area.

== Commander room ==

The commander’s job is to place buildings, perform research, and give orders.
You can only have one commander at a time.
A player can become the commander when the game starts if he has the majority vote on his team.
A player can also become the commander by entering the command vehicle, and then pressing the change to vehicle seat 2 button.
<insert HUD tip showing you what that key is bound to>
When in the commander mode, you will have an RTS style HUD and camera view.
Clicking on the build tab will show you what buildings you can place, and their prices.
Clicking on a building entry will cause a ghost image of the building to appear in the world when your cursor is not on the HUD.
Buildings can be rotated before being placed by holding down the left mouse button, and moving the mouse to the left or right.
The units tab will show you all the units available to you.
The list includes all infantry, vehicles, and squads currently in existence on your team.
The vehicle tab will allow you to use the vehicle customization dialog to make vehicle presets.
These presets can then be used to build vehicles instantly at any friendly vehicle factory.
The research tab shows you the status of the current research item, and allows you to bring up the research tree.
To research something, click on an item, and click the research button.
If you have enough resources, the research will begin.
Many research options are really categories that contain other researches.
To see the contents of a category, the researched category must be clicked on.
You can issue basic commands to your troops with the mouse.
Click on a unit to select it, or click and drag to select multiple units.
With a unit selected, you can issue an order by right-clicking on the desired target.

Map:as escort

2006-07-12T22:05:57Z

Mloc: A better way for NF to get the free upgrade

{{Sitenav|[[Maps]] > emp_escort }}

[[Image:emp_escortmap.jpg|thumb|right|Emp_Escort]]
[[Image:EscortBridge.jpg|thumb|right|Bridge]]

== General Map Information ==
Escort is a conquest map. There are no [[Command Vehicle|Command Vehicles]] on this map. Brenodi Empire's base is pre-built in their starting area, consisting of an [[Armory]], a [[Radar]] and a [[Vehicle Factory]]. Their base is walled in and its enterance is protected by a collapsable gate. Northern Faction has no base, and due to the absence of a [[Commander]] they cannot build any buildings or equipment (aside from what the [[Engineer|Engineers]] can deploy). This means that the NF team has no access to vehicles on this map and must rely only on their infantry to hold back the enemy. Also, Engineers cannot build any [[walls]] on this map. Each faction gets a stream of resource credits from "invisible" [[Refinery|Refineries]] that are (obviously) only of any use to the BE team. This stream is constant, but very slow (only one [[Refinery]] per team.) Both teams start with the Technology Tree fully researched and all upgrades active and ready for use.

== Objectives and Conditions ==
This map utilizes a "Push" style of gameplay, which means that one team (Brenodi Empire) must capture flags in sequence (i.e. flags cannot be "skipped"), while the other team (Northern Faction) must protect the flags. Once a flag is captured by the Brenodi team the Northern Faction can re-capture it, but they will still not be able to respawn at the recaptured flag.

Brenodi team starts off with 2500 tickets, which count down to zero at one ticket per second interval. Norhtern Faction starts each round with 200 tickets that do not count down based on time. As always, one ticket is subtracted from the teams' score for every soldier that respawns. Brenodi will lose the round if their tickets run out before they capture the last flag. Northern Faction team cannot run out of tickets: their ticket counter will stop at 1 at which point the soldiers will not be able to respawn. NF will lose only if their last flag gets captured. Although extremely difficult, it is still possible for the NF team to capture the first flag belonging to the BE team. If the BE team does not have other flags, they will lose the round when this happens.

== Map Details ==
There are obstacles on this map such as bridges that can only be constructed by [[Engineer|Engineers]], wooden blockades that can be built and destroyed and a wall near last flag that must be destroyed to allow vehicles to pass. There are at least two paths to every flag, allowing Brenodi to attack on two fronts and requiring the defenders to split their attention. ''(Gate information needs to be updated with map changes in version 1.05)'' There is a corridor connecting flags #2 and #4 protected by a dual-gate system that can be lowered and raised only on the NF side. Once the Brenodi capture flag #4 they can keep this corridor open indefinitely to allow the vehicles to get to the front lines a lot faster.

== Tips for the Brenodi Empire Team ==
* Vehicles are one of the few BE's strengths on this map, so use them wisely. It might be fun to take a Jeep for a joyride, but you are hindering your team by wasting the precious resource units. Same goes for tanks: keep them alive as long as you can. There is plenty of cover on this map to duck behind for a quick fixer-upper from a friendly Engineer.
* The above point especially applies to APCs since they provide your team with extra spawn points. Place them in key positions near the front lines, but away from direct enemy fire.
* Protect your base (especially the Vehicle Factory) at all costs! Keep the front gate closed when not in use to prevent rogue [[Engineer|Engineers]] and [[Grenadier|Grenadiers]] from sneaking in and sabotaging the buildings.
* Artillery with HE shells is useful for keeping areas near the flags clear of enemy infantry when your team mates go in for the capture.
* It's always a good idea to separate your team into two forces (squads) to approach each flag from different directions.
* Speed is good strategy to winning this map. Capturing a flag and moving on to the next one before the NF team has a chance to fall back is a sound tactic.
* If you find yourself behind the enemy lines, don't try to cap any flags and try to secure the corridor instead.
* When your team gets to the very last flag expect to find a farm of fully upgraded turrets waiting for you. This is especially true if you notice little to no resistance from the NF team on the 3rd 4th and 5th flags - they fell back to the last flag and are fortifying it while you're moving through the rest of the flags.
* Destroying the wall at the last flag is usually crucial to winning the map, since without tanks it will take too long to disable the myriad of turrets that NF has most likely set up in anticipation of the last attack.
* You can take down the wall quickly by having at least two Grenadiers perform the 9th mine trick: both of them should lay down 8 mines next to the wall and then one Grenadier should drop their 9th mine. The resulting explosion should destroy the wall, since one grenadier can bring it down to 20% health.
* Northern Faction will mine every chokepoint they can find. With this in mind, it's always a good idea for Grenadiers piloting the vehicles to have Defuse skill activated, so that they do not set off the mines when driving over them. Engineers should follow the tanks at a safe distance, giving them space to fall back for repairs.
* ''(This bullet point should be re-written to incorporate the map changes in version 1.05)'' Keep an eye on the gate near the second flag. Often a NF soldier will unknowingly lower both gates of the corridor without realizing it. Make sure to take advantage of such a blunder to get behind the enemy lines. Be careful though, as it might be a trick to lure you into a level 3 turret around the corner.

== Tips for the Northern Faction Team ==
* The key to winning this map is not so much killing the enemy, as slowing them down and holding them until their tickets run out.
* Engineers with Revive skill are crucial on this map. Even though NF team cannot lose all of their tickets, when the count reaches 1 the soldiers will not be able to respawn and the BE team will get a free ride to the last flag.
* Keep in mind that the "ceiling" on this map is very low, and your shots will disappear if fired at too high of an angle. A flat trajectory takes some practice to get used to.
* To quickly gain the skill you need at the very begining of the round: join a squad (or form your own and invite someone in), go to a friendly flag (a box saying "Captured" will show up), and pick the upgrade for your bonus skill. Make sure you pick your skill at a flag or it won't work.
* When your team is down to approximately 50-70 tickets - fall back to the last flag and start fortifying it with Level 3 turrets and mines. You should have enough time to do so while the BE team is moving through the rest of the flags.
* While defending the last flag have at least 3 Engineers continuously repair the wall against attacks from enemy Artillery, Engineers and Grenadiers' 9th mine tricks. It's also useful to blockade this wall with useless junk such as satellite dishes, remote cameras, ammo boxes, etc. to slow the enemy down for when they finally breach it.
* Mine everywhere. Even if you don't destroy the enemy, you will slow them down. There are many chokepoints on this map that can be mined to stall the enemy long enough for your team mates to set up a proper defence around the flags.
* ''(This bullet point needs to be re-written to accomodate for map changes in version 1.05)'' Be careful with the gate system of the corridor! The controls activate gates on both ends of the passage simultaneously, so you might be letting an entire enemy team into this "shortcut" and not even realize that.
* Try to sneak into the BE base with an Engineer or a Grenadier and sabotage their Vehicle Factory. Without Tanks, APCs and Artillery, the Brenodi team will be slowed down to a crawl.

[[Category:Maps|emp_escort]]

Basic Mapping

2006-07-12T20:53:01Z

Mloc:

{{Sitenav|[[Mapping]] > Basic Mapping}}
[[image:Mapping.JPG|thumb|right|An example of an Empires map in Hammer.]]

After you've [[Configuring Hammer for Empires|configured Hammer to run with Empires]], you're ready to start making maps.

== Step 1: Build a large room ==
Build a huge room that will represent your level. If you're doing an outdoors map with vehicles, make sure to allow lots of room. Your map will need to be '''at least''' 10000 units square and that will be a small map.
If you want to have a sky instead of a solid roof, then use the Tools/SkyBox texture on those walls that will be the boundary to the sky

== Step 2: Add Entities ==
You're going to need one of each of these:
* [[Emp_info_params]] (Required)
* [[Emp_info_map_overview]] (Required)
* [[Emp_building_imp_barracks]] '''OR''' [[emp_info_player_Imp]]
* [[Emp_building_nf_barracks]] '''OR''' [[emp_info_player_NF]]
* [[Emp_nf_commander]] Norhern Faction command vehicle (Optional)
* [[Emp_imp_commander]] Imperial command vehicle (Optional)

== Step 3: Create your map's resource file ==
The best way to do this is to go to your empires directory and look under the ''resources/maps'' directory. Copy one of the existing map's files there and rename the copy to match the name of your map (plus the .txt extension). Edit it and make adjustments as needed.
This will let players select spawns when ingame

More Detailed Guide: [[Setting Up Map Resources]]

== Step 4: Set up your map's materials directory ==
Go to your ''Empires\materials\maps'' directory and copy a pair of any two .vtf and .vmt files (must be the from the same map). Rename them to emp_<yourmapname>.<vtf/vmt>. These will serve as placeholders for your map's overhead view until later. Untill you have created your own minimap picture and .VTF file, your map will use the minimap from the map files you just copied.

This is no problem for testing things out so do not worry about your minimap untill the map is nearly ready to go.

More Detailed Guide: [[Setting Up Map Resources]]

== Step 5: Flesh it out ==
=== Deciding Gameplay ===
Empires suports a few quite interesting gameplay types, with more to be added later.
==== Classic ====
The standard (Classic) [[Gameplay_Types|gameplay type]] involves capturing [[Resource Node|resource nodes]] and building bases. It is used on maps such as [[Map:emp_duststorm|emp_duststorm]] and [[Map:emp_crossroads|emp_crossroads]]. The objective is for the players to destroy the opposing faction's [[Command Vehicle]].

For it to work you need a [[barracks]] ([[emp_building_imp_barracks]], [[emp_building_nf_barracks]]) for each team, a [[Command Vehicle]] per faction ([[emp_imp_commander]], [[emp_nf_commander]]) and also at least two [[Resource Node|resource nodes]] ([[emp_resource_point]], preferably marked by an [[emp_resource_point_prop]] so that one can actually see the point) to be able to play properly.

None of the above entities are absolutely required, the game will work as long as there is a way for people from both teams to spawn.

==== Conquest ====
The second one is as seen in Battlefield and other games, involving capturing and holding flags. While it is possible to have a [[Commander]] and a [[Command Vehicle|Command Vehicle]], it is not required. This gameplay is slightly featured on [[Map:emp_escort|emp_escort]], on which it has been converted into a push type of gameplay by not having the flags to be recapturable by the [[Northern Faction]].

To be able to spawn at a flag, you need to place spawn points. These are called [[emp_info_player_Imp]] for the [[Brenodi Empire|Imperials]] and [[emp_info_player_NF]] for the [[Northern Faction]].

=== Adding Buildings ===
Buildings are in the form of entities. See the [[Entity Index]] for a complete list. Buildings are the entities with ''building'' in their names.

== Step 6: Compile/Run ==
Hit F9 and run with the default options if you don't mind waiting several hours for the map to compile.

If you just want to quickly check something, you can compile without making lighting calculations, this saves an awful lot of time over the development of a map. Make sure your compile options are Normal, (not advanced mode), then under Run Vis and Run Rad, check the no box.

This is not to be used when you are checking water as that needs the Vis calculations in order to appear in game. This is also obviously not to be used for final compiles or your lighting will look pretty pants!

Check your developer console by pressing tilde (~ or ^) in-game and look for obvious problems.

{{See|[[Gameplay_Types|Gameplay Types]], [[Entity Index]], [[Setting Up Map Resources]], [http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Level_Design Advanced Tutorials from the Valve Wiki]}}
[[Category:Mapping|Basic Mapping]]