WARNO: WARNO – The complete map modding guide

We hope that this guide serves as a great resource and learning tool to help you in your journey in creating some amazing maps for this game. This guide won’t just drop you straight into creating a map, it’s aim is to help you build an understanding of what the files/folders/tools are and what you use them for, helping you get a better understanding of what you have the ability to do.

Even after this guide comes out it will still be a work in progress and we aim to keep it as up to date as possible with new changes that Eugen makes to the map modding suite.

With that out of the way, we hope you all enjoy, lets begin!

This first section contains only two folders that you will need to use, the Mods and Tools folders.

The tools folder contains all of the .bat files that Eugen have provided to help with automatically generate the files needed for your map. Don’t worry about what ones to run when, this guide will let you know when you need to run each one for both initial upload and updating.

This folder contains the ‘packed’ version of your mod. Save for a few more .bat files that will need to be run at certain points, you won’t have to modify anything in these files.

The saved games folder is one that you will have more interaction with early on.

These folders where your generated files from the .bat files are generated prior to the final steps of uploading your mod to Steam.

LevelBuild contains the files like the Heightmap (what defines the terrain heights in game), minimap, overview, preview and others. We’ll go into more detail later about what to modify here how and when.

The mod folder contains the ‘prepacked’ version of your mod, it is where you add the data about the terrain, buildings, zones etc after you’ve finished building it and before you’re ready to build everything and upload.

This folder contains Scenarios that are separate from your maps. To explain the difference between scenarios and maps is simple. A map is the physical terrain and buildings that exist on a given map. A scenario is then built on top of a map and this then adds deployment zones, command zones, spawns and defines the playable area. You can have multiple scenarios per map and is Eugen’s clever way of saving space if you want to have 20 versions of the same map with different zone layouts.

However some of you may just launch into the game directly. If that is the case right click on WARNO -> Properties -> General and select the drop down for Selected Launch Option. Select “Ask when starting game”

Simply then close this modal and relaunch the game, you should then be provided the option and the journey can begin!

You should be initially presented with this odd looking map.

For those of you who have already realised, this is the armoury map!

Take the time to get used to moving the camera around and panning in and out. The controls should be the same as your WARNO controls you are used too. WASD for forward (W), backward (S), right (D) and left (A). Mouse wheel scroll for zoom in and out, and hold mouse wheel + mouse move for camera rotation. For a full list of the default shortcut controls, see the list at the end of this guide.

Now we are going to have a look at some of the Windows that you will be using a lot of when making your map later.

You can either open these windows from the windows pane in the top bar of the page or by pressing the hotkeys 1-6 for each item respectively.

The Unit Creation is the most important window that you’ll use when creating your map. It contains every road, building, terrain layer and many, many more things that will be all very useful to you.

At the top is a drop down box that will only show items of that type. Under that is a filter box which will search through all items of the current type from the box above. If nothing is selected in the top box, then the text search will search through all items.

In the drop down there are the following options:

– Bezier

Beziers, are models that you can choose multiple points and for each new click it will create a line of that item from your last clicked point to the point just before that. This is usually used for roads and fences.

Here you can see a guard rail with several points having been placed.

– Filler

Fillers are a your way of adding textures on top of the base grass texture. You place them like any other object, however, for it to draw you must connect you last point to your starting point (to create a shape) for the texture to apply.

– FX

Currently unknown what these items do or what their function is. This guide will be updated when the information becomes available.

– Impostor

Currently unknown what these items do or what their function is. This guide will be updated when the information becomes available. They do however seem to seem to act the same as models.

– Model

Models are your run of the mill items, they cover everything from static (not interact-able) vehicles, buildings and every other item that makes the maps look alive.

– Navigation

Navigation layers define how a unit will behave when on top of a certain type of terrain. For example by default a forest will have a terrain attached to it to block LOS and make units move slower through it, same goes with roads and buildings. This tab allow you to place terrains on top of items that usually would not have them. So with this you are able to make a field of wheat act like it was a field of trees!

– Pattern

Patterns are groups of Models that have been saved together. These are extremely useful for adding a lot of detail to your map, especially in towns, very quickly and easily.

Later on in the guide there is a section about how you can edit and create your own patterns to use.

– Random

Random items are honestly awesome. They act the same as models, but, when you move them at all, they will quickly cycle between random versions making no two the same.

These 4 items are all the same!

– Selection

This list is currently empty and has no use at the moment. This guide will be updated when the information becomes available.

– Smartline

Smartlines act a bit like the items from random above, however instead of being like models that randomize when you move them, they are Beziers that randomize when you move them and when you place more nodes down.

– Snap

Currently unknown what these items do or what their function is. This guide will be updated when the information becomes available.

– StateDBModifier

Currently unknown what these items do or what their function is. This guide will be updated when the information becomes available.

– Sticker

Stickers are small pieces of decoration that you can add on top of the terrain, such as bomb craters, airport line markings, and road arrow markings. Stickers can be placed on top of terrain that you have already placed.

– Tag

Tags are added to buildings to determine properties around health and what happens when the district takes enough damage. Currently there are only four tags:

– tag_Small_District, 15 health points.
– tag_Mid_District, 45 health points.
– tag_Big_District, 60 health points.
– tag_HLM_District, 90 health points and will stay garrison-able even when destroyed. Designed
for tallest buildings of urban maps.

Every district can also be garrisoned by up to 4 infantry units, regardless of its tag.

To place an item from the Unit Creation menu, select the desired item and then right click on the terrain to place the item. In a later portion of the guide we will cover how to move and place these items around your map easily.

Layer Controls is another important window. It can change what you see on the map and help greatly with identification. We won’t go over each option but will quickly touch upon which ones are useful and what you should have on by default and what ones can be useful.

Below is a list of items that we feel you should have on while making your map:

– Terrain

It shows the terrain, sort of required really!

– LevelBuild – Stickers and LevelBuild – Stickers_LongRange

Shows stickers both close up and far away.

– LevelBuild – Models

Shows all models, when off only the terrain is shown.

– Road

Shows the pathing that the units will take when fast moving along a road. This won’t be entirely accurate, but is a good approximation.

Below is a list of useful layers that can be useful, but aren’t required to be on full time when map making:

– District

District layer shows several things. The red blocks are each building, the green are the zones that you can garrison units in. A green zone must contain at least one building.

– Navigation

Shows a green/red highlight over terrain that has an effect on units. Red is non traversible and green is forest.

– Snap Grid

Shows the snap grid in world over your mouse.

The selection menu shows what items you are currently selecting and the number of that item. It has filter options just like that of unit creation.

Transform Rotation tool allows you to adjust the X, Y and Z properties of an object within the world. You can also change the rotation and scale of the objects too.

Item Properties won’t be used at all when you are making your map, however it will be used later on in the process when you are placing down your command zones, deployment zones and the like.

While in the map editor, it can be hard to see the distances between items due to the lack of the LOS tool. This distance displayer is a simple way of seeing this.

Create

The create option is the default one that you will have selected most of the time. While selected it allows you to select items to then edit with other tools, like rotate/reposition, or edit their properties. You also have to have this selected to be able to place new items. If you have any of the other options selected you will not be able too.

Translation / Rotate / Scale

All of these are shorthand options for things you can find within the Transformation window that we have previously discussed.

– Ruler

The Ruler tool allows you to accurately measure the distance between two points, just click and hold to get an in game distance.

– Knife

The Knife tool allows you to sub divide a filler easily without having to delete and replace the whole filler.

Start the knife tool outside the desired filler you wish to cut. The plot a course crossing the filler and ending outside the desired filler.

The press enter to “cut”. This will divide the filler.

Notice as well that the fields here changed after the cut. That is due to this field being a “random” field and it changing due to the cut. This is very helpful to introduce variety easily.

– Destruction

The Destruction tool allows you to destroy buildings while in the editor.

The buildings are not actually destroyed, it just gives you a useful idea of what it would looks like after the town/cities are fought over. To have ruins, you will have to place the ruin version of the building.

Follow these simple steps to make your own map:

– Go to File -> Create New Map
– Enter the name of your map
– Enter the size of your map under the Case X and Case Y sections, this determines how big your map will be. For example, Urban Frontlines is a 1×1, Deathrow is a 1×2 and Rocks is a 3×3. I do not recommend (and neither does the game) going above a 3×3 as the map will be too large and lag horribly for lower end computers as well as taking an age to finish.
– Choose which decors set, this determines what assets you will have access too. Fulda + CommonSet is a good one to start with for now.

After hitting create you should be presented with a clear blue screen. This may seem like something has gone wrong but it’s all to be expected. If you zoom in, then the ground will appear. In the next few steps we will perform the steps to correct this.

Now go out of the editor and open your documents folder and navigate to Saved Games\EugenSystems\WARNO\LevelBuild\{YOUR_MAP_NAME}

Inside should be a number of default images and documents.

Div_map.png: RGB used as base color influencing terrain, fillers and vegetation color.
– HeightMap.png: 16-bits grayscale used for terrain elevation. If you edit it, make sure you save
it in 16-bits grayscale, or you shall suffer a heavy precision loss, making your slopes look like
stairs.
– Minimap.png: RGB used for in-game minimap.
– Overview.png: RGBA interface texture used in skirmish and multi lobby menu when selecting
this map.
• Preview.png: RGB interface texture used in advanced map selection mode as a map top-view.
– sdb.png: RGB mask erasing items depending of its color: magenta erases some trees, yellow
erases all trees, blue erases everything.
– Splat_map.png: RGB mask selecting base texture for ground : red selects rock, green selects
semi-rock, black selects grass.
– Waterflow.png: RGB NormalMap representing water flow direction

When modifying any of these files, you need to run a generation with LaunchGeneration.bat in your
SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\WARNO\Tools directory, then restart the editor to see your changes. Additionally, when you edit HeightMap.png you will also need to run LaunchMapBaking.bat to see the changes.

For now we do not have to modify anything here for now and will come back to modify these later in the process.

Now navigate back to SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\WARNO\Tools and run LaunchGeneration.bat then LaunchMapBaking.bat. Depending on your PC specs these processes may take a while, this is normal. Additionally when baking, the game will seem like it is starting up and then shrink to a small box, DO NOT CLOSE THE GAME. This is all normal and could take a few minutes to more than a hour, depending of your map size, map complexity and your CPU/GPU’s capabilities. While this is running you can just have it minimised and running in the background, it does not need to be focused.

Once these two processes have finished load up the editor again, load your map through File -> Open Map and you should be presented with a nice flat ground like so!

Maybe give an example height map? that they can just use as is

There isn’t much we can offer in terms of help here, it’s up to you to let your creative skills run wild. If you need help with what the items are then please refer back to the How to use the editor (Part 1) section of this guide.

Don’t forget to save often! Either with Ctrl + S or File -> Save

But first, we should probably explain what a scenario is.

In short a map mod is split into two parts:

1. The terrain, roads, buildings etc all of this is considered the map.

2. The deployment zones, capture points and reinforcement zones as well as defining the playable area, this is ‘a’ scenario.

For your map mod, you will have one map, and then one or more scenarios that you can define.

Your 2 player, 4 player and 6 player versions, lets say, will all use the same base map, but can have widely different zones and playable areas. It is done this way to minimise the amount of duplicated data and thus make the mods smaller and quicker to download.

Now, lets make a scenario!

Go to File -> New Scenario

The Name field can be anything, but I would name it something like _{PLAYER_NUMBER}P_{MAP_NAME} for ease of tracking

So for example, the map name would be Fulda and the different versions would be _2P_Fulda, _4P_Fulda etc

Note: You cannot have a map starting with a number, hence the underscore at the start

Once that process is complete you can then open your scenario

Go to File -> Open Scenario -> {YOUR_SCENARIO_NAME}

Once you load in you should see your map in all it’s glory!

If things keep disappearing or not looking right, remember to double check you have performed the correct steps in the previous section at running the .bat files.

You can see it here, my roads are disappearing which means I need to run the map baking bat to get it to load properly.

Once all baked and working properly, it now time to add the details to this scenario to make it playable!

Firstly, we need to define a playable area that the players are allowed. If you wish for the whole map to be playable, then you can skip this portion.

TODO: How to define playable area here pls future me

Next we will define the capture zones, starting zones and spawn points.

To place down capture points simply search for Command_Zone and place it down like you would a Filler or Bezier.

Once placed it’ll looks something like so. With the Window -> Open Item – Properties window open and the zone selected we can also modify the number of points that this zone will be worth when captured. Leave all other properties unchanged.

Open Unit Creation by pressing 1 or by going to Window -> Open Unit – Creation

The search for Deployment Zone and draw your desired deployment zones for each side. The arrows within the deployment zone defines what way the units face when a player is initially deploying.

To rotate just the arrows (and thus the units starting rotation) you need to select and rotate the AutoName that is created for every zone. I find the easiest way is to select the whole deployment zone, then use the Keep Highlighted on just the AutoName and then rotate it to whatever direction you require.

Once we have the deployment zone that we want, now we need to edit it’s details.

Open Window -> Open Item – Properties and select the zone. it should look like so.

All you need to do is define one of the deployment zones to AllianceNum = 0 and one to AllianceNum = 1. It is that simple!

Leave all the other fields as they are for now. We will come back to changing them later.

Now we need to define air and ground spawn lines, these are the places that the units that you buy after the start of the game will appear.

Interestingly, initial deployment zones don’t need groundspawn lines for the players to place ground units at the start of the game, but do need an air spawn for player start the game with planes.

To place a ground or air spawn, simply search for Tag_ReinforcementLand or Tag_ReinforcementAir and place them in the world. One part must start outside the zone and then end within the zone for it to work automatically as the details from the zone are inherited by the spawn lines.

You can also do the same to Command_Zone, the spawns will activate when the zone is captured by either side.

One last thing to set up in the editor is the camera start positions. This is just telling the game where each players camera (depending on what team they are on) should start when they first load in.

Open Window -> CameraPath Editor. It should look like so.

You will need to create two camera paths (a camera path can be a number of points, but for this scenario it will be a single point) one for each side.

Firstly create two new camera paths with the Add button : one for each alliance, giving them two unique names. In my case I have named them Dire and Radiant.

Select one of your items in the drop down list, move your camera to where you want the players camera to start and hit Add Key.

Then using Window -> Open Item – Properties and having the desired zone selected, add the name of your path to the WarmupCamPath field. Repeat for the other side in the same fashion.

And that is it for changes in the editor! You are nearly there but there are a few more things to change outside in the files before it is playable and publishable to the Steam Workshop!

There is one last step and that is to export the scenario, this exports it to your machine and can take a few minutes depending on your PC specs. There is no visual indicator that it has completed, but when you are able to move again it will have completed.

Go to File-> Export-> Scenario to export.

Navigate to C:\Users\{USER}\Saved Games\EugenSystems\WARNO\Scenario\{SCENARIO_NAME}. You should see a number of files and folders including a Scenario.ndf file.

Create a new text file underneath called MapPack.ndf and add the following

and another file called SCENARIO_DEFINITION.csv

Note: You do not need a program like Microsoft Excel to do this, creating a new file using notepad and then going File -> Save As -> SCENARIO_DEFINITION.csv works just as well and easier.

• ScenarioName: must be the exact same name than the one you entered in Map Editor.
• Description: Localisation token linked to your scenario display name
• DefaultNbSlotsOpened: recommended player number (both teams combined, so 4 for a 2v2)
• Gamemode: Must be EDeploymentMode/Skirmish.
• CombatRule: Defines the game mode, must be either CombatRule/Conquest or CombatRule/Destruction
• EnvironmentSettings: The list of graphic settings (ColorGrading, Skybox, Lighting etc) available for this scenario. You can use any settings listed in Graphic Settings → Environment Settings window.
• MapSize: Localisation token for size indication in detailed scenario list view. Must be one of the following:
  ◦ SIZESMA (small)
  ◦ SIZEMED (medium)
  ◦ SIZELAR (large)
• Density: Localisation token for density indication in detailed scenario list view. Must be one of the following:
  ◦ DENSLOW (low)
  ◦ DENSMED (medium)
  ◦ DENSHIGH (high)
• HasRivers: Indicates in the detailed scenario list view if your scenario contains rivers
• TOKENNAME: Custom token name, must be 9 characters or lower. NOTE: This value and Description must be the same.
• DisplayNameOfYourScenario: Display name of the map to be shown in the lobby.

And here’s one I made earlier! This is for Setons Clutch (You should totally check it out wink wink)

MackPack.ndf

SCENARIO_DEFINITION.csv

Once you have completed this step, navigate to SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\WARNO\Tools and run LaunchDataPacking.bat.

Simply navigate to SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\WARNO\Tools and run LaunchGameWithLocalData.bat. The game will start and you should find your mod within the skirmish list like so.

Repeat the steps for getting this far if any changes are made to either the map or scenario. Once satisfied with your map. There are some last steps to that technically are optional before publishing to the Steam Workshop, but will make all the difference quality wise!

Navigate to Users\{USERNAME}\Saved Games\EugenSystems\WARNO\LevelBuild\{MOD_NAME}. There are 3 files here that

The LOS tool uses data make from the map baking and packing processes to be able to work. While you are making your map, it is it’s raw form and the data hasn’t been generated yet for it to be able to work.

Errors when trying to run bat files – (ie run auditor and fix)
Error code 413 when uploading.
Error code 9 (I’ve seen this but need to find out exactly what it is)
Buildings not enterable?
Tall building can’t shoot over short buildings
Why does the buildings/roads disappear when I zoom out?
Maximum number of lakes reached error
Spawn points on minimap going off screen

Background image layering
Snap modes
Snapping roads together to auto create junctions
Copy/pasting from other maps
Water placement (water tech tag vs placing water filler + navigation mesh)
Editing and creating your own pattern groups