HOWTO: Make your own Razanak maps/levels

In Syntensity everything is moddable. That includes Razanak, the game we launched recently. Below is a step-by-step guide to starting your own Razanak-type map.

"Razanak-type map" means: Everything will be exactly the same as in Razanak - gameplay, entity types, HUD, etc. etc. - except for the map itself and entities in it. That means you can create the level however you want: You can add corridors, caverns, water, spawnpoints for the spider robots, rocket turrets, doors, keycards, pickups, and so forth, however you want. You can make levels similar to the existing one, or entirely different ones - it's up to you.

Here are the steps to follow, to prepare a new map based on Razanak:

1. Click on Razanak in the list of running servers and activities. This gets you into the Razanak activity.
2. Click on the map asset. This gets you into the actual asset containing the map. (You could have gone here directly if you had a link, instead of through the activity, so step 1 isn't really needed. But it's how you might usually do things.)
3. Click 'clone'. You now have a copy of the map that you can edit, as its owner. (Note that to do this step you need to be logged in on the master website.)
4. Change the 'location' of the asset. The location is where it will be downloaded to in the asset storage areas on the client and server. If you don't change it, it will stay the same as Razanak itself, which means that you will re-download Razanak and this map if you play one and then the other (since each such download will overwrite the one before it). Instead, change the location to something like base/USERNAME/mapname.tar.gz where USERNAME is your username (you don't need to do it that way, but it is nice and orderly).
5. Click "Create an activity based on this asset" to create an activity. You now have an activity, which you can run on servers (assets by themselves cannot be run).
6. Rename the activity, to something you like.
7. Click "Requisition a server instance to run this activity". One of the Syntensity servers will then run your copy of the map. You should see it in the list of your requisitioned servers.
8. Connect to the running server instance. The simplest way is to run the client, login, enter the lobby, and look in the side room on the right. It will have portals to all the currently running servers. Walk into the one running your new map. You should then see the familiar Razanak map load.
   
9. Press 'e' to enter edit mode. You can't do that on Razanak, but you are an owner of this copy, so you can do it now.
10. Do /clearallents. That will erase all the entities in the map. Razanak has about 1,000 entities, and some of them require CPU to manage, so after doing this you will probably see the frame rate go nicely up.
11. Do /newmap. That will erase all the world geometry. Note that you might not see any ground at all, but don't worry about that right now. Also, the map textures have been erased, so you shouldn't try to actually do any editing right now. Just go on to the next step.
12. Edit the map.js for your new map, as follows. You can edit it with an editor of your choice, the file is in ~/.intensityengine_client/packages/base/LOCATION-OF-YOUR-MAP (that you decided on in step 4). (Note that you should edit the map.js in the directory with the name of the location - and without .tar.gz - and not the archive ending in tar.gz.) (In Windows, replace ~ with C:\Users\USER or C:\Documents and Settings\USER, etc.). Or, you can use the in-game editor, press Escape and then editing commands...->cfg (then do 'load'). The actual editing you need to do is to add these two lines at the *top* of the very short map.js already there:
    
    Global.entitiesFile = './entities.json';
    Global.noCutscenes = true;
    
    The first line tells the map to use your entities data (not Razanak's), and the second tells the map not to use Razanak's cutscenes. Again, be sure to place these two lines *before* the existing line.
    
    
13. Do 'upload map...' (press Escape first for the menu). When the upload finishes, the new version of the map will run on the server and you will be placed in it automatically.

You can now start mapping! More details about mapping and creating in general are on the wiki, and as usual feel free to ask for help on IRC (#syntensity on FreeNode) and the forum.

Tip: To get started, you might want to add a WorldMarker (press F8 in edit mode, and select WorldMarker in the second tab), for which you edit the 'tags' field (rightclick on the entity) to [start_red] (note the [, ] symbols). That will be the position where the players start ('red' is the name of the team, which should really be named something else, but the default team names are 'red' and 'blue').