Tribes: Ascend/SDK Guide to Mapping
TA SDK Guide to Mapping[1]
By: dMidgard
First of all, thanks to our god Altimor & company for making this possible.
HiRez said it could not be possible. So it's a miracle, because I got my first test map working (don't judge me for a map without textures and assets, I'm new to Unreal Engine!), here it is: http://youtu.be/Gui4oncgiZg
So this is another step to accomplish Tribes Ascend modding, and I think it's GREAT.
Well, now I'm starting with the GUIDE to MAPPING.
- You will need the UNREAL DEVELOPMENT KIT (UDK) build 7748 BETA (January 2011), you can take it here: http://download.udk.com/UDKInstall-2011-01-BETA.exe (Thanks Epic Games for saving old builds, and ggs to the HiRez new tecnologies researcher).
- You will need the TRIBES ASCEND DEV CLIENT, that is in Altimor's Repo on Github (it's a torrent, that the community is seeding for you): https://github.com/AltimorTASDK/TASDK (it's the 'bin' torrent), or via a direct download here.
- Also, you'll need the Tribes actor scripts (that's for placing things such DS & BE flags, Inventory Stations, etc, interactive assets, I think). You can find it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17736620/TribesGame.rar or here.
- Put the folder 'TribesGame' that is inside the .rar into (for example) C:\UDK\UDK-2011-01\Development\Src.
- Go to (for example) C:\UDK\UDK-2011-01\UDKGame\Config\ and open UDKEngine.ini, search for UnrealEd.EditorEngine an at the end of that section, write ModEditPackages=TribesGame.
- Close & Save.
- Launch the UDK Editor, there will appear a message saying that a few scripts are outdated or something, just press YES and wait for a Console to appear, make something and then display a message with the SUCCESS word. Then CLOSE it.
- Re-Open UDK Editor. Now if you're familiar with the Editor you will know what to do, but if not, just search for videos to learn the basics of this Editor.
-- FOLLOW THESE STEPS WHEN YOU WANT TO TEST YOUR NEW AWESOME MAP --
- In the UDK Editor, go to the "Build" tab & click "Build All", wait for it to finish.
- Once it's finished building save the map into your TRIBES DEV CLIENT previously downloaded (yeah, the torrent client) and SAVE THE MAP INTO "YourAwesomeTribesDevClientFolder\bin\TribesGame\CookedPC\Maps".
- Now execute your Tribes Dev Client "TribesAscend.exe" that can be found in bin\Binaries\Win32\TribesAscend.exe AND execute it like that: TribesAscend.exe YourMapName (don't put the .udk format) -seekfreeloading and profit, you will be testing your map with a SLD loadout if you followed these simple steps.
(For anyone who doesn't understand the execute part, just open the windows execute dialog, then write the directory path of your Tribes Ascend Dev Client like that: C:\Users\Midgard\Desktop\tadev\bin\Binaries\Win32\TribesAscend.exe Midgardmap -seekfreeloading AND press ENTER, and it's done, TA will execute & load your map).
And that's all for the moment, I will be messing up with UDK and TA SDK so I can learn more things to do, even importing assets (yeah, I don't know how to import custom assets right now).
So thanks for reading and if you really want to help TA SDK (or get help), join #tamodding on irc.tribalwar.com