Ultimate Retro Project

Tanks for the Memory Map Guide

How to make your own Tanks for the Memory Maps!

Page Last Updated: May 3, 2006

Now that you can download a copy of Tanks for the memory, you may want to create your own maps. The neat part of this process is that the tools needed to create a map already exist on your computer. The tool that needs to be used is called a text editor. I personally use JEdit for my quick and dirty text editing, but there are many excellent free text editors available if you don’t like the one that comes with your computer.

The map file format is a very simple text file. The first line is the width of the map and must be 20. The second line is the height of the map and must be 20. The next twenty lines contain the map data and consist of 20 text characters (plus the line return). The characters represent different types of land and are the same as those used in the text based version of the game:

Symbol	Description
.	Road
-	Dirt
,	Grass
%	Forest
^	Hills
~	Water (Can't enter)
*	Mountain (Can't enter)
f	Factory
A	Player 1 base
B	Player 2 base
C	Player 3 base
D	Player 4 base

Tanks should not be placed on the map and there should only be one base per player. The map does not have to be symmetrical, though a symmetrical map will be easier to play balance. Map files work with both versions of the game.

Once you have the map created, you need to make the game aware of it. This is done in the configuration file for the game. For the text version, this file is res/urv1/tftm/classictftm.txt. This file has a block of variables that define the map name and the actual file location of the map.

• 11MAPNAME[#] describes the name of the map.
• 11MAPURL[#] is the location of the map relative to the html file.

The modern version configuration file is res/urv1/tftm/moderntftm.txt. Instead of a description, you are placing a button on the title screen. The second entry is the file location as with the text game.

• 12TITLE_BUTTON[#]=Description,x,y,width,height,TFTM_START #
• 12MAP[0]=location of map relative to the html file.

That is all that is to it. I definitely recommend backing up the configuration files before you change them. Right now the number of maps allowed is four, so you will have to replace existing maps (or change the source code or wait for me to change the source code, which I probably do when I write and release the making of Ultimate Retro book).

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