The mapper's guide

Hello everyone, I've just made a guide for who wants start to mapping with a simple and easy guide.
To admins : Sorry if I posted in the wrong forum, but I think it is the good one.

I. Tools
A good mapper haves good tools to make maps.
I currently use Paint.NET. You can download it on a lot of websites. For ores, I use the Pyrochild's plugin. You can find it on Paint.NET forums.

Paint.NET is really enough to make good maps.

[ Q ] WTF? Paint.NET is a image editor, isn't it!?
[ A ] Exactly. KAG uses .png files for maps. Every pixel is a block or a blob ( ~=Entity ). To select those blocks, those are different colors. For example, #3B1406 is dirt. #A5BDC8 is sky.

II. Color palettes
You can find color palettes on this wiki article : https://wiki.kag2d.com/wiki/Map .

You have two choices for selecting the colors into Paint.NET . First, you can use RGB values. Click on 'Advenced >>' in color window in Paint.NET. You can place manually RGB colors. But it is a bad way to do this : Just copy paste the hexa value ( But without the '#' ). The new color should be selected and you can use the brushes to design your maps. Let's do it! But first, some tips.

III. Important tips.
Your antialiasing on all your brushes must be disabled. I recommend you use the second color as a totally transparent one. Then, set alpha mode to replace.

Like this.
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Then, with right clicks, you can remove stuff from layers.

IV. Designing your first map
As a pixel in a .png file is a block in KAG, create a new file with the size you want. The best is 200*150. Not too big, not too small.
On the background layer, select the color A5BDC8 ( Sky ) and fill it all.
Create a new layer.

The layer window. Just don't care about the french words.
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Now, select the color 844715 ( Dirt ) and create the terrain. Here's mine :

There were a color error in wiki, I used dirt background.. x)
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It is not beautiful, for now.
Create a new layer, under terraforming. Let's add some grass ( 649B0D ), trees ( 0D6722 ), bushes ( 5B7E18 ) and grains ( A2B716 ) on it! Oh, and, sorry bison, we forgot you! B75646 .

Create a new layer, above ground stuff. Place water for lakes, or oceans ( 2E81A6 ) . If you want to place water underground, use the color 335566 ( Water on dirt background ) .

It gives me this :

Much better!
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Create a new layer, above all. It will be for tunnels.
Select the dirt background ( 3B1406 ) and make tunnels. Make caves. A bit like this :

Warning. Two much caves sucks. It's enough as this.
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Create a new layer, under the tunnel one. It will be for gold ore.
Select the gold ore ( FEA53D ) and place spheres underground, at random positions. Then, use the Pyrochild's stitcher. Modify the values for the best results.

Create a new layer, under the gold ore one. It will be for concentrated stone ore.
Select the concentrated stone ore ( 42484B ). Place sphere everywhere, more than gold. Stitch again.

Create a new layer, under the concentrated stone one. It will be for simple stone ore.
Select the simple stone ore ( 8B6849 ). Like the previous ones, place spheres everywhere. But a lot. Stitch again.

Maybe do it with less gold.
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Wow! It is almost finished.

Create a new layer, above all. It will be for halls, etc.
Select hall ( D3F9C1 ). Place it on a plane area. Make some structures with wood ( C48715 ) ( background : 552A11 ), stone ( 637160 ) ( background : 313412 )... There are more colors in https://wiki.kag2d.com/wiki/Map .

I let you do it, I imagine you have the skills to.

I finished my map, and I added even more stuff.

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Screenies of the map!

Spoiler

Here the tutorial ends! I wish you liked it.

 

ok, when i downloaded the pain.net program, and then i launched the download thingy to download it for me, but it said then Paint.NET Setup Front-End has stopped working...WHY?

 

I dunno, check pdn forums

 

and where is that?

 

https://www.google.fr/search?client=opera&q=paint.net+forums&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

didnt find anything that helped me

 

emm... which effect is that? to randomize ores?

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 7, 2013, Original Post Date: Sep 7, 2013 ---

oh, i see, stitcher...

 

oh, this method is ugly for me :S easier to make by pixel-to-pixel mode

 

ok...is it possible to make maps with just paint?

 

yes

 

ok, when i create a map, a normal png map with paint, and then save it, and i loaded it, it didnt load, and i edited the map again, but it changed alittle bit, it had some weird grey whiteish color on the bottom, and as i removed the errors again, and tried loading, still didnt work...and i edited again, it had that weird color in the bottom again... help?

 

When I edit maps with paint, the way to fix that problem i had with yours george, is that I would make the map, copy the entire map (Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C), and then create a fresh new paint canvas. Paste (Ctrl + V) and crop and then itll work like before. I should probably eventually download paint.net. Eventually.

 

I have a feeling you may not be saving in 24bit possibly?