A Worms Armageddon Map Tutorial, by Neo
So since it’s been asked about and there are apparently many a picky detail that can cause custom maps in Worms Armageddon to not show up (and even then, they can be tricky to find), Neo has put together a tutorial on how to make them work. I thus turn you over to our guest lecturer.
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Hello there, Neo speaking, I’m the one that actually made the maps used in Roahm’s videos, so I’ll be the one guiding you to get your new map working for the game
I presume you have the map already made, but I have to assume all possible reasons as to why the map may not work, so forgive me for writing it down as a tutorial.
Now then, first up, making the map. I won’t tell you how to make it, as I’m sure you can figure out the drawing/image editting process to do so, but I do need to address a few things about the maps.
1) Map size is important: the game allows for ludicrous sizes of .png images to be used for maps and although there is a min and a max for sizes you usually wouldn’t run into problems here since the size isn’t usually an issue. But there is a caveat: the pixel count on either horizontal or vertical axis must be divisible by 8. This means that if your map is, say, 803 pixels wide, it won’t work, it needs to be a number divisible by 8.
2) Transparency: when working on a map, I recommend using transparency to figure out where your worms will be walking on, and if you’re gonna have a lot of worms in one match (6 teams of 8 worms each, for example) you need a lot of space to work with, so the fields should be pretty open.
For instance, whatever falls into the checkered background (which indicates transparency) is something your worm will be able to walk, jump or jump rope across. Whatever is the solid color will be used as part of the ground or walls that make up your map.
As a result, be careful with stray pixels, as those can be an annoyance for players to find a sudden unseeable thing that impedes their progress.
The alternative to transparency is having the background colored in pure black (RGB 0, 0, 0) and have the color black be a different shade of color (RGB 1, 1, 1) if you need it, but honestly that seems a bit too complicated, so I just let transparency do the work.
3) Anti-aliasing: Worms can’t do anti-aliasing. In case you don’t know, its how the outline of an object is smoothed out for the sake of the picture on a PNG. When the game runs anti-aliasing, its interpreted as a bunch of random stray pixels.
Make sure the outline of the map is jagged and pixelated before you load it up.
4) Color: A reason of why the map may not load is that it has too much color, as Worms has an upper limit of how many different colors are on the palette This doesn’t mean you need to count the pixels, just that you need to run it through an automatic filter.
A program like Gimp will run your png through a color limiting filter automatically.
just hit Image > Mode > Index…
And just set the color palette to something similar to this, color max that Worms has is 112 colors.
Assuming you save the map and its ready to use (or that you downloaded one from the net) then to load up the map you do the following.
This is the steps that I presume you’ve already done, but no harm in going over where to put them at. Basically, just go to where your folder files of Worms Armaggeddon are located, you can do so (assuming you’re using steam) through the client itself or by following a similar URL to the one I have on my folder
Go to the User folder and inside of that you’ll find “SavedLevels”, that’s where they should be in to be able to load in the game. Presuming that the criteria of color, transparency and size are met, anyway.
To load up the map in-game, simply start up a match and this is the devious bit, the maps won’t load on this drop down menu since these are the default ones to the game, they cannot be changed.
Instead, left click on the map so that it auto-generates one at random and then right click it to bring up the custom map menus.
Once you do, this menu will pop up, and in this dropdown menu you will find your custom map files.
Just click exit and the game will be ready to go.
Just keep in mind: if you’re making a custom map the requirements of color, size and transparency must be met, otherwise the map will not work.
I apologize for making it long winded, but this should more or less help guarantee you can use it.
Oh by the way, if you’re playing online with friends only the host needs the map. Since its a png file the game can simply share it with every other player every time its loaded up. Voice packs and fanfares however need to be in every player’s computer, but that’s besides the point here
