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How to Create a Zombies Map
Even after reading the guidelines, I see some people still having problems with how to create your very own map for zombies. This guide describes (almost) all you need to know about how to create a zombies map, including all the information from the guidelines in one big package.
Pre Stage
Requirements
Before anything, you must :
- Have Crew
- Not be as lazy as me or have someone else that can help
- Be moderately online so your submission can pass through
- Have a definite theme for your map
- Have a definite idea for your items
- Use a nice application to write things on
- Have no existing in-progress submissions
Once you’ve got / did all of these, you can now get started with building.
Building
With your new Crew privileges, you can now build outside of the sandbox (read : no - rule box of chaos). This means that you have open space (not counting all of the countless builds) to build your map. The first thing you want to do is find a nice open spot for your map. The size, well it depends on your idea and theme for map building. What do you want to build? Just a little open space? Go a bit medium, not too small, yet not too big. An arena with lots of content? Go big. A single room - like thing with high inside detail and stuffed content? Go small. You can try to make the room you want, preferably outline it with asphault, adamantite beam with black paint, or anything that’s visible enough and looks like a definite border.
Next, first of all, you need to get a ground that matches your theme. You may need some help finding the right blocks that make the base of your map, but once you’ve done that, you can start building the terrain or base out of those blocks. For nice open maps, just terrain the ground. For small or medium sized maps, try surrounding the entire arena with the terrain. This makes it so that you can build off of the ground and use the terrain to get ideas for your houses / forests / whatever your building in the space. You then start building the actual content and builds in your map, and finish the building for this.
Once you’ve did all of these, you can now get started with your Class Breakdown.
Class Breakdown
You have to have a detailed list of :
- Classes and their respective items
- Spawn locations for players and enemies
Lets start with spawn locations. You decide where mobs and players will spawn. You have to define a list of mob spawns, exactly where those mob spawns are. You also need to define what place players will spawn in. They can’t each spawn in different places like mobs; they are not duplicated like mobs for mob spawns.
Now you get on to the items.
To accomplish this, you need to know all of these chests :
Weapon Chests
Weapon Chests are chests that have tiers. They obtain different weapons that are bought seperately one after another. They have a max tier if there are no more items left to buy.
Ammo Chests
Ammo chests are chests that repeatedly give their contents with a set amount of score. They don’t ever give different items then they did the first time.
Accessory Chests
Accessory chests are ammo chests that equip the item in the accessory slot, and have a max buy limit of three.
Armor Chests
Armor chests are weapon chests which handle (as in give and take away) their content in the armor slots.
Life Chests
Life Chests are any chest with Life Crystals. Instead of giving the number of life crystals, they give the health which is the number of Life crystals put in the chests. They can be Ammo Chests or Weapon Chests.
Mana Chests
Mana Chests are any chest with Mana Crystals. Instead of giving the number of mana crystals, they give the mana which is the number of Mana crystals put in the chests. They can be Ammo Chests or Weapon Chests.
All of these chests will be of use for your Class Breakdown.
Now you go on to making your class breakdown.
You first start with your classes. What actual Terrarian class / classes do you want your zombie map class to be? Maybe Melee? Or Ranged? Or all classes? What name do you want your class? Try going for something creative and unique.
Now you put the items in the class. Use a type of list of your own! Nobody is telling you what type of organizing you should put. Just maybe format it so other people can read.
You decide where items go, maybe this item after this item for this score in a weapon chest, or whatever. You decide what items go in what chests, and it’s all up to you. Just make sure the map is like playable and doesn’t have zenith as a starting weapon. Or else it won’t get added to the map pool.
Once you’ve defined all these, you can now go on to paint your chests.
Chest Painting
Here are the chest color standards (credit to Rofle) :
Class Chest
Painted Deep Blue.
Armor Chest
Painted Deep Pink.
Accessory Chest
Painted Deep Sky Blue.
Health Chest
Painted Deep Red.
Mana Chest
Painted Blue.
You should not paint any other chest. (If you’re curious, these standards exist so new players can identify chests.)
You then need to go to your map, place down the amount of chests required, and then paint them to the directed paint.
Once you have painted all of your chests, you are ready to submit your map.
Submitting your map
You then need to follow the directed format in the guidelines. You need to make a new post in the Zombie Map Submissions category using this format. After following the format, you can hit + Create Topic and submit it.
Moving to the Next Stage
Your map has been submitted. To get into the next stage, your zombies map has to be moved from build, over to the zombie dimension. How do you do this? Well, you don’t. Someone else does it for you. If you and the other person (currently either popstarfreas or Tejdxa) are online, then you can go ask them to move your map. If they are not busy doing anything, then they will probably move your map. Once your map is moved, it will enter a new stage. On your map submission, you will see the “in-progress” tag. This indicates the next stage. (Unless the Zombies Manager decides to not move it but still put the tag so he/she doesn’t actually have to do it or something)
Stage One (in-progress)
This indicates that your map has been moved to the zombie dimension, but doesn’t have any content.
Map Builders Lobby
To make things easier for map builders, there is now an exclusive lobby for map builders which can make build changes and adding items easier. You’ll have to request for it though, because nobody wants to waste time giving someone permissions if that someone probably won’t even use them. Check via /inlobbies if there is an ongoing map builders lobby. If there is a map builder lobby (indicated by: Zombies - id: xxxx (map builder), ping someone of the ongoing lobby on Discord to get an invite. If there is no ongoing map builder lobby, use /j z -mb to join the map builder lobby. This is just a normal custom lobby that map builders have. It will get it’s own features later.
Adding the Content
You need to add the content yourself with a bunch of cmds. This is why you are required to not be lazy or have another person do it. Because this takes a while… After your map is moved, you should be granted access to the Zombies Map Builder category in Zombies . There you can find a list of CMDs and also have conversations related to map building. You can add this content whenever.
Making Build Changes
Just in case you need to make build changes, you can contact a Zombies Manager and set up a time and date, at that time and date go into a lobby (preferabbly the designated map builder lobby because it will be 20x easier there), and make your changes. Then wait for the Zombies Manager to come and save the world (because it doesn’t save automatically).
Testing your map
To make sure your map is balanced it is highly recommended to test it with others. The recommended method of testing is following: ping the @Zombies role in the #zombies-general channel in Discord with the text of the announcement of the testing. During or after the test note down the suggestions of balance which the testers have made.
If many map builders plan to test, Tejdxa will make a centralized map testing at the weekend as an event in Discord.
Getting approval for getting your map published
If you think, your map is ready for publishing, contact Tejdxa. They will look over the map and if necessary order to test your map. Tejdxa needs to approve your map to get “green lights” for your map to get published.
Finalizing Your Map
Once you have the time and put in the effort and your map does get all its items (and is also balanced enough to not break Zombies, you should probably test that with others), you have even more things to do. But dw, you’re almost done.
You will need to add an entry for your map in Zombies Maps Overview (make sure the map has been well tested!). You can do this however you like. After that, you will need to contact the Zombies Manager handling the map (the one who moved your map) to add it into the pool. After that,
Completed
Now your map is completed and any player can play it. You can now celebrate your very own map being added to zombies!