New to editing.
 

I'm a new map maker since I only found the editor a few weeks ago. I've got an 8 player map that I'm hopefully going to be able to upload in a few days. Had the game 5 years and never knew. I'm hoping to be able to put out a few new maps. Also wondering what would be a good place to start on making a map pack. Any advice and help anyone can give about debugging and whatever else would be appreciated. Read the FAQ but any advice outside of that will be appreciated.

Re: New to editing.
 

I think this page is probably the best resource remaining for mapping:-

ModCentral - Your Source for Armada Mods

Other than that, if your looking for ideas then Starbase A1 is probably a good place to look. (Starbase A-1: Alpha One -Central Core-)

I hope this helps, but if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Re: New to editing.
 

Those sites helped some thanks. One of my main questions is this, how do I add a station or ship that I want the AI and/or players to be able to take over at the start such as the borg transwarp portal or the cardassian quantom facility. I'm not sure how to do that on an 8 player map. Also is there anyway to download new races such as the dominion and add them to the editor? I have no experience at downloading new races or anything like that to the game.

Re: New to editing.
 

That's actually quite a good question. I used to know, but last time I created a map from scratch for multiplayer must have been five years ago.

I think that you can do that by setting the ship to one of the teams that's not being used. (ie, if its a 4 player map then choose team 5 for the stations) It might be worth grabbing yourself a copy of a map that already has some stations in them and just reverse engineering them. The Ultimate map pack has a bunch with ships in it.

ANy addon race should have complete instructions for installing it, but it probably won't include the map editor instructions. Basicially, if you open the "ODF/OTHER" folder then the files starting with ej are the map editor menu files. You add the ODF name of the ship you want to build into whichever menu you want (you can create your own) and it then gets that entry in the map editor.

Re: New to editing.
 

I tried downloading that map pack you told me about and it had some maps in there with ships on the map but none of them were 8 player that did. The one 8 player map I saw didn't have ships already placed like what I'm wanting to do. The thing you said about using an unused team number is correct for 7 player maps and below. As far as 8 player that's my problem. I tried using the team zero number but for some reason it still didn't work. It was set like a planet is. Planets are set to team 0 and I figured that would work for the stations but it didn't. Idk what else to try. Would you know of any map specificaly that's 8 players and has a ship or station on the map already that I could look at? Sorry to keep bothering you with this but that's the only hold up to me uploading my first map.

Re: New to editing.
 

I beleive I have seen maps with derelict ships owned by a team that is in the game. I can't remember the name of any of the maps that do this and its not something I have done myself.

Re: New to editing.
 

Well I'll keep looking around for now. If nothing else I can make it a 7 player map and upload the 8 player version later. If you don't care and if you know of anything else please message me or something. Thanks.

Re: New to editing.
 

forgot to ask. You wouldn't happen to know where I can find a good program to zip the file for my new map that's free would you?

Re: New to editing.
 

ah, that I do know.

7zip (http://www.7zip.org) is the best archiving program out there, and its free.