Level Master 3/LM3.BIN/dosrun/DREADME.TXT

Text File | 1996-10-06 | 8.8 KB | 464 lines

                    Level Master[tm] III for WarCraft[tm] II



          Welcome to Macmillan Digital Publishing USA's Level

          Master[tm] III for WarCraft[tm] II! This product provides

          you with everything you need to modify WarCraft II worlds

          and create your own. It also provides an excellent

          "construction" guide written by WarCraft pros, sample levels

          to illustrate the concepts covered in the guide, and

          hundreds of free levels that you can use to experiment with

          and play. This document describes the contents of the CD and

          helps you get started. It's a good idea to open this file in

          your word processor and print it for easy access.







          CONTENTS



          ***Level Master[tm] III for WarCraft[tm] II Construction

               Guide



          This electronic guide, by Cordell Falk and David Teran,

          covers all the ins and outs for editing and creating

          WarCraft pud files. The authors provide overall map-design

          philosophy, as well as easy-to-follow instructions for

          actual map editing and construction. They cover both single-

          player missions and multiplayer maps and provide 30 custom

          maps that illustrate all the key concepts covered in the

          guide. (These custom maps are located in the /maps/promaps

          directory.) As a bonus, Cordell and David also include

          general information and tips about WarCraft II gameplay and

          strategy.



                Note: This guide is provided in TXT format,

                which you can view with any word processor, and

                also in HTML format, so you can choose to view

                it with the Web browser of your choice

                (including the one on this CD). The HTML version

                has hot links for easy navigation. You can find

                the TXT version is in the /guide/txt directory,

                and the HTML version in the /guide/html

                directory.



          ***30 Instructional Maps from the Pros



          These maps illustrate the important concepts covered in the

          construction guide, in addition to being excellent levels to

          play. These maps are in the /maps/promaps directory.











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          ***Deluxe Five-Mission, Single-Player Campaign: The Legend

               of Alexstraza



          This outstanding campaign was designed and implemented by

          the authors of the construction guide and represents some of

          the finest WarCraft II editing seen to date. See the

          readme.txt file in the /maps/legend directory for more

          commentary on this campaign and then see what true "Level

          Masters" can do in WarCraft II!



          ***Over 320 Other WarCraft II PUD Files



          These levels come from WarCraft II enthusiasts from around

          the world. This collection of free levels includes over 200

          single-player missions and multiplayer maps for 2 through 8

          players. The levels are organized in the /maps directory by

          number of players: /1player, /2player, /3player, etc. There

          are also directories for levels only for the WC2 expansion

          (/expansn) and another mission series that provides

          interesting multimedia plot development (/revenge). Of

          course, the /maps directory contains all the authors' levels

          (see above).



                Note: To play custom levels in WarCraft II, you

                need to have the levels and any related files

                that come with them (such as sound or graphics

                files) in your /warcraft directory. Choose the

                Custom option when starting a game, then choose

                the Select option, and select the level you want

                to play from the list.







          PROGRAMS



          ***WAR2XED.EXE (/programs/war2xed)



          War2xEd is an unofficial WarCraft II PUD editor. Using

          War2xEd, you can edit PUDs to an amazing degree: give mages

          dragon breath, make bridges that both land units and sea

          units can cross, use the swamp terrain and all the Expansion

          Set heroes, and select among nearly a hundred AI types! If

          you want to make an exceptional PUD, War2xEd is for you.



          War2xEd is a 32-bit windows program written for Windows 95.

          To use War2xEd, you need Windows 3.11, Windows 95, or

          Windows NT. If you are using Windows 3.11, be sure to

          install Win32s 1.3.









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          To install War2xEd, copy "war2xed.zip" into your WarCraft II

          directory, and decompress it with subdirectories. You can do

          this with pkunzip by typing "pkunzip -d war2xed.zip", or

          with WinZip 6.0 or above by clicking on "war2xed.zip" and

          then the "extract" button.



          To run War2xEd, click on War2xEd.exe in your WarCraft II

          directory using Windows 95 or the Windows 3.11 program

          manager.



          ***STRED.EXE (/programs/stred)



          This is one of the most interesting utilities that we've

          ever seen for WarCraft II. This file extracts a text file

          from the game files themselves, which contains the listing

          of names for every unit in the game. You can modify this

          list to your liking and then reintroduce it into the game,

          thus changing the name of the unit as it appears in the

          game. It does not, however, change the text that appears

          when building a unit, as in "train grunt".



          ***TERRAIN.EXE (/programs/terrain)



          This is a program you can run from the command prompt that

          allows you to change the terrain type of a mission. If you

          own the WarCraft II expansion CD, it also lets you use the

          swampland terrain. Of course, you cannot use the editor to

          modify a swampland mission without first changing it back to

          normal.



          ***WC2CRACK.EXE (/programs/wc2crack)



          This file will alter the resource levels in a saved game to

          two billion of each resource type.



          ***PUDEDIT.EXE (/programs/pudter)



          This utility loads up a .pud file by breaking down each

          "square" of the map into hexadecimal codes pertaining to

          various things, such as terrain type and unit A.I.  This can

          be confusing to work with at times and requires a strong

          knowledge of placement on a particular mission. In fact, I

          would recommend writing down the X, Y coordinates of the

          areas that you wish to change before toying around. While

          this utility does have some interesting uses, it requires a

          lot of time to make extensive edits.













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          ***PEACE.EXE (/programs/peace)



          This file contains an executable that can be used to

          "decompile" the files in the game with the .war extension

          (those in your /warcraft/data directory).



          ***Editing Tools



          A handful of graphic and sound editors round out your level

          editing toolbox.



          Alchemy Mindwork's Graphics Work Shop (programs\gws) allows

          you to easily view and convert graphic images, while GIF

          Construction Set let's you test out graphic animations.

          There are three versions of Graphics Work Shop on the CD,

          one for DOS (in the DOS directory), one for Windows 3.1 (run

          the GWSWIN11.EXE setup program), and one for Windows 95 (run

          the GWSW95.EXE setup program).


          Andrew Bulhak's WHAM (Waveform Hold and Modify) sound editor

          (\programs\wham) let's you professionally master new sounds

          for your new levels.




          OTHER STUFF


          ***Keyboard Shortcuts


          The /misc/keyshort directory contains two files: humans.txt

          and orcs.txt. These two files contain listings for every

          keyboard shortcut that is usable during the game. If you

          prefer to use the keyboard play method, you should print out

          these files and keep them close at hand.


          ***Altering the Color of Your Name


          The colors.txt file (/misc/colors) contains instructions for

          how to alter the color that your name will appear in during

          multiplayer games. Alterations must be made through DOS, not

          through Windows, and involves a change to the WAR2.INI file,

          so be careful!





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