1 General
- You can only reserve tiles, release tiles or delete an entire map from the Map-Editor and only when the Map-Editor is online.
- You can only do these things if you can open the map in the Map-Editor. This means that the map is (still) available locally. If you cannot open the map in the Map-Editor (no source files or no permission) you cannot change the reservation.
- If you start your map as a single-player map you cannot change it into a multi-player map afterwards. Exception: because of the quality of your map, permission may be granted. However, the map needs to be placed correctly in the world and created with DEM enabled.
2 Starting a new map
First (and obviously) the question whether you want to create a multi-player map must be answered with Yes.
After informing you that you can only create fictitious multi-player maps the Map-Editor loads the existing reservations on the fictitious map:
Then the screen is shown where you can choose which tiles to reserve for your maps:
Because the fictitious map is shown, the colours on the map indicate the height of the different areas. In the larger scales already reserved maps are shown only as points with a description.
If you want to make a semi-fictitious map, you can switch to the real map underlay by right-clicking on the map.
Using the mouse wheel you can zoom in and out. You can move the map by holding down the mouse wheel. If you zoom in close enough the tile grid appears with the reserved areas:
- Tiles reserved by other people are shown in dark red. Tiles you have reserved yourself are shown in yellow. Around all maps a one tile buffer zone is shown. Between two maps there is for now at least one tile in between.
- If you zoom in further the tiles are shown with their coordinates.
- Under the map you can always see on what tile coordinates and world coordinates your cursor is placed.
- The number of tiles you can reserve is limited. Everyone can only reserve 500 tiles for the time being. If needed we can raise that limit on an individual basis. Because of this limitation it is shown
- how many tiles are already reserved for this map (in this example none, so 0);
- how many tiles you can reserve in total for this map (80813) and
- how many tiles you can reserve in total (100000)
- By clicking on "Remove all reservations" you can deselect and release all tiles selected for this map. No tiles are released for other maps!
You can select or deselect tiles by clicking and dragging the selection or by simply left clicking on a single tile.
- You can place the first tile anywhere you want (except for occupied tiles or too close to an occupied tile). Do note carefully that the pin showing your description will be placed here and that your map will be centered on this tile.
- Following tiles or areas of tiles need to be connected to the already selected tiles.
- By clicking on a not-selected tile you select it. By clicking on a selected tile you deselect it.
- When the image is still being generated it may sometimes take some time to show your selection.
Selected tiles are shown in green:
Here you can also see the yellow marking of another map that is reserved by me. You can see that the mentioned buffer zones can overlap. At the motorway you can see this gives exactly a one tile buffer between the maps.
After clicking "OK" you enter the name and description for your map.
A window shows the map and reservations are being saved:
And then you will get a confirmation that your map has been saved.
Finally the main screen of the Map-Editor opens and you can start work.
3 Changing reservations
Before we can change reservations we first have to load the map as usual. Click the button (top left), which is followed by saving the map.
You now get a similar window to when you create a new map. We now zoom in to where our map is:
Similar to creating a map we can now select tiles we want to reserve and deselect tiles we want to release. However, the colouring scheme is a bit more complex:
First we notice the green colour of the tiles in the current map are more pale.
I have changed my reservation by adding more tiles in the northeast (by selecting them). These are now same lush green colour as when we created the map. This means that after clicking on "OK" these will be added to this map.
I have deselected the bottom row of tiles (by clicking on them again). These tiles have turned pink indicating that the reservation will be released after clicking "OK" and the tiles are emptied and deleted. This deletion is not reversable, even if you have already been building.
You can undo both markings by clicking again. The lush green tiles turn transparent again and the pink tiles turn pale green again.
After clicking "OK" you are warned (if you selected any (pink) tiles for deletion) that that deleting is final and cannot be reversed. Following that a check is performed, the map is saved and the Map-Editor is closed. When starting the Map-Editor the next time the updated reservation is used: deleted tiles are no longer displayed and you are now able to build on added tiles.
4 Removing the reservation of an entire map
Important: Do not delete the map source files before releasing the reservation!
To release the reservation for an entire map you first load the map in the Map-Editor. Click again on to get the window we have seen before.
Now click the "Remove all" button.
After getting a clear warning and confirming that two things will happen:
- The reservation of the entire map on the fictitious world is released. Other players can again use these tiles.
- The map itself is set to single-player.
If you also want to delete the source of the map then you can do this by removing the corresponding folder from the Map-Editor working directory and the container from the MyContent directory.
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Translation kindly provided by jjasloot - Thank you very much!