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Starters guide to GlPortal Map Creation

JulianThijssen edited this page Nov 7, 2015 · 3 revisions

Starters guide to GlPortal Map Creation

Welcome to the quick starters guide on setting up for map creation.

The first thing you are going to need is the latest version of Blender, which you can download here: https://www.blender.org/download/

After installing Blender you will need the GlPortal Blender Plugin. You can either download the editor repository with Git for which there is a guide in the root of the repository or just go to: https://github.com/GlPortal/map_editor and download the repository as a .zip file.

In this repository you will find a directory called glportal-editor which contains the blender scripts that facilitate the importing and exporting of maps and the map creation tools.

Installation

To install the editor plugin, find the folder containing your blender installation. In this folder you should see another folder that is named after your blender version (e.g. '2.76'). After opening that folder go into 'scripts' then 'addons' and copy paste the glportal-editor folder that you downloaded into this folder.

Example folder:

/Programs/blender-2.76/2.76/scripts/addons/

Now start Blender (or restart if you had it open) and press Ctrl + Alt + U (or alternatively go to File->User Preferences). Click on the tab called Add-ons. This is where you can enable or disable addons. In the search box on the left of the window type: glportal. This should filter your add-ons down to just one result called Import-Export GlPortal XML Format. Now tick the box on the right to enable the map editor.

If you expand the Import-Export GlPortal XML Format add-on with the little arrow on the left you will be presented with two input fields. One of them is called Set up GlPortal data directory, it is important you point this field to a directory containing all the resources needed by GlPortal. You can find this folder by downloading the official game and looking for a folder named 'data' in it. The other option is called Set up GlPortal executable, you can point this field to the executable of the main game if you want to easily test your maps directly in game without exporting (this is optional however).

When you are done specifying these settings, simply click Save User Settings at the bottom of the user preferences window to make sure you don't have to reload the add-on every time you start Blender.

You can now close the user preferences window and you are done installing the map editor.