I have mentioned before in this guide that coding a map is more important than how good your map looks for playability. Well I will now explain two EASY ways to make your map coded more realistically, and thus BETTER!

I'm going to show you how to use two of 3Cs features to achieve better coding: Adding Leaves and randomize.

 

First lets ADD LEAVES.

Lets pop open 3C and look at a map I have coded 'basically'

You see the pink on this coding is the element 'field', the yellow is 'wooden fence' the other single elements are all fall trees. Notice on the shot I have the cursor over 'Big Fall tree 3'

Now were going to add leaves. First of all note that for summer trees you may NOT want to add leaves, and maybe for carniforous' trees you also don't want to add leaves. But really, if you go around a tree most times of the year, you'll find debris from it to various degrees lying around it. So whether you want to use this feature is up to you, as it happens the map I am showing is in particular a fall map and has only trees with leaves, no carnif trees, so REALLY needs leaves around the trees!

 

Go to edit/add leaves (shown below)

Now you will see the following

Now pretty straight forward screen you'll see.On the left I can choose particular trees to put leaves around, up to 5 at a time. so if I do have carniforous trees mixed in with other seasonal trees, I can avoid putting leaves around them by just selecting which ones I want to put leaves around.

So If I wanted to use just specific trees to have leaves around it, Id fill out these drop downs as you see below!

In the right hand column the top drop down menu you can select what type of leaf element to use. Were going to use plain old 'Leaves' in our example. But just for an interesting thought, you CAN pull down other elements. So if you take things other than trees in the left drop down menu, you can surround them with any other element on the right hand. But really, lets not go abstract. were here to garden, I mean add leaves!

Here's the example of Leave type drop down!

Below that drop down is a check box there you can simply surround ALL the trees on your map with leaves. This way you can skip selecting particular ones in the left column one by one. So if your map has the right type of tree to use this feature, it makes the task easier!

In our example I WILL want all tress to get leaves so I check the box off.

Now look above again and you'll see the next area on the right you have to decide 'CROSS' or ' SQUARE'. This is how the leaves will be arranged around your trees. When you have decided which one you want, check it off and hit 'OK', Voila, you will have leaves as you specified.

Below shows what this looks like once implemented.

CROSS STYLE

SQUARE STYLE

That's was easy! Plus now your map have more realistic coding! But notice the pink is all coded as 'field' we have added leaves which is better, but if you have ever taken a walk in the wood, especially in the fall, it isn't like walking on the fairway of a golf course! Lets now move on!

 

Lets RANDOMIZE

Select edit/randomize as shown below

You will then see this menu. Man this is so easy to do, to make your map better, you will laugh!

On the left you will see 'original element' this is the one we will randomize. Lets skip the presets, its only a shortcut that saves randomize settings once you have made them, but if your reading this, you don't know how to do this, so dont need to know that!

On the right is what you will randomize your selected element to. You can use upi to 5 different ones.

Now its your map, so you decide what you want to do as far as chopping the element into other elements.

in our example I am going to keep 3/5 of it field still, for 1/5 I will use 'LEAVES AND MUD' and the last 1/5 'LEAVES AND BRUSH'. It is the fall on my map, had it been summer maybe plain old mud and brush would have been better, but I think you guys get the idea!

So my set up screen looks like this.

As you see on the graphic above I am hitting RANDOMIZE button once my settings are what I want.

I then get what you see below!

A far more realistic map! (Note both ADD LEAVES and RANDOMIZE have been shown with this picture!)

Lets compare this to the original coding again.

No comparison, your new coding is far better! I have done many tests with types of coding and the map will play MUCH BETTER with the coding you have leanred to do on this page!

 

NOW SAVE YOUR WORK!

Now you know how.