The Editor




 

Running the editor in a window

The GRAW editor takes its settings from the main game. in order to run the editor in windowed mode, run the game,  select options,  select video and unselected box shown in the diagram below.  Click Apply and exit the game. Now when you open the editor it will open in windowed mode.

In this mode, it is easy to Alt Tab out of the Editor (or game) to do something else on the same PC, especially if you have second monitor hooked up (which any Graw2 modder worth his salt does!). It makes it a snap to then edit your mission files if you so desire.  When running the game or Editor in a full screen mode it takes what seems forever to get out of it to work with another app. It does help to have those other apps running first so that when you press "Alt Tab" you can select what you want to work with. Sometimes it may take a few times of Alt Tabbing to get into that other app. If you click too quickly, you may go back into the Editor.

 

 

 

Alternatively, you could edit the render settings file.


 

Basic Movement commands

This video was created by AJ and shows the basic movement commands utilized in the GRAW2 Editor.


GRAW2 Editor commands from AJ on Vimeo


 

Free Flight Movement

Space bar       Toggles Free Flight Mode (FFM) that allows the user to move around the map.  When in FFM it is difficult to select any of the menu's that are displayed.
Mouse When in FFM, determines direction movement. When not in FFM, is used to select menus, objects, move units, etc.

 

FFM movement keys: 

W    
Forward
S Backward
A Side step left
D Side step right
E Move up
Q Move down

 

 

N Toggles "snap-to-grid" mode when moving objects
Tab Shows current size of grid spacing
Shift G Decreases grid spacing
G Increases grid spacing

 

 

Placing static and dynamic units in the Editor and moving them.

This video was created by AJ and gives detailed instructions on how to place and manipulate objects in the editor.


Placing and moving units in GRAW2 Editor from AJ on Vimeo

 


 

Generating a Minimap Using the Editor

Creating the minimap to use with your mission is fairly simple, but you can have alignment issues.  The minimap generation requires that you have a screen resolution minimum of 1280 x 1024 as the minimap itself is 1024 x 1024.

 

<texture name="minimap" texture="/data/levels/custom_levels/{your_map}/minimap" uv_rect="0,0,1024,289" width="1024" height="1024" rotation=""/>

 

The blue highlighed corrdinates are the ones that the system generates when you saved your progress.  At this point, you would need to open "minimap.tga" in your favorite graphics editor and save it as a DDS file.  If you change the name of your minimap, assure that you reflect this where it is highlighted in green minus the ".DDS"

 

Tips and Tricks to avoid crashes in the Editor

(more content to follow)