WorldForge Tutorial
Part 1) Introduction to WorldForge                     
Part 2) Freezing and Melting Items                    
Part 3) MapMaking - The Basics of WorldCreation
Part 4) Making and Applying Patches                  

- Xuri, Self-appointed WorldForge Guru

Part 2)Freezing and Melting Items

Now that you know the background information for using WorldForge,
you should understand a bit more about how things work, thus it will
be easier to learn what I'm now going to tell you.

During this tutorial I will be assuming that you, the user, have
the latest version of WorldForge, which is version 6.0a,
so make sure you have that version before proceeding.

Alternatively, use Xuri's custom version of WorldForge, CustomWorldForge 6x.

First, I will tell you how to freeze items from your
UOX3 worldfile into the STATICS0.MUL & STAIDX0.MUL files...
FREEZING

When freezing items from your uox3 worldfile and into
the two .MUL files mentioned above, WorldForge will delete those items
from the worldfile(items.wsc), so make sure you take
backups of both that AND the .MUL files (STATICS0.MUL and STAIDX0.MUL)

There are two ways of freezing items into the client:
-By using the "TYPE 255"-method, and
-By using the "AUTOfreeze"-method

The TYPE 255-method is where WorldForge freezes only the items
that you have set to type 255 using the 'SETTYPE 255 command ingame.

The AUTOfreeze-method is where WorldForge freezes all items
that don't have a # infront of them in the file AutoSelect.txt
that comes with WorldForge.
This file does by default have most items that have
no real use, such as walls, floors, roofs, trees, stairs etc. set to be frozen.
Likewise most items that CAN be used, such as flasks, containers, signs, etc,
have a # infront of them in that file, indicating that they are NOT to be frozen.
-
First of all, shut down your UO client completely if that is
currently running, as well as your UOX3(or other emu) server.
Then start up WorldForge and enter the file paths
at the bottom of the window, in the red boxes.
If the red text boxes turn green, you know the filepaths are correct.
The first one is "staidx0.mul", the second one is "statics0.mul" and both
of those are located in your Ultima Online folder.
(If you used default installation of UO that will be something like
"c:\program files\ultima online\staidx0.mul".)

The items.wsc file is the UOX3 worldfile, and it is located in your UOX3 folder.
-
Make sure that WorldForge is set to NORMAL mode, not SIMPLE mode.
Restart WorldForge if you changed it from SIMPLE to NORMAL.
-
Now choose which method of freezing the items you want to use,
TYPE 255 or AUTO.
(*NOTE* If you only plan on doing changes to the STATICS0.MUL/STAIDX0.MUL files,
and not touch the MAP0.MUL at all, you can select the Write PAT
option underneath the "freeze-method-selector-box" to let WorldForge generate some
patches when freezing, that actually are some new worldfiles containing nothing but the
items you froze. If you do this each time you freeze something, you can send off these
worldfile patches as you make them and tell your users to freeze them into their own
.MUL files.)
-
Click the GetStaticsIndex button once.
After the blue bar has gone from left to far right, click the Freeze button.
Once.

That's it, all you have to do now is wait until the blue bar has gone from left to
right again, and then you're done.
Remember you have to restart WorldForge if you want to freeze more items,
and it's a nice rule to have that you restart WorldForge between each seperate
operation, be it freezing, melting or mapmaking.

Thought freezing was hard? Wait 'til you try melting *grins*

MELTING

Melting items from the STATICS0.MUL & STAIDX0.MUL files and into the
UOX3 worldfile(items.wsc) is a bit harder than the other way around(freezing).

The problem lies here: You can only melt 8x8 tiles (a block) at a time.
And to do that you need to enter the coordinates of the BLOCK, not the items.
The coordinates for blocks are different from the normal ones, you can find them
by dividing a normal coordinate by 8.

For instance let us say you have a big rock you want to Melt at the
normal coordinates 2300 1200 10. To find out which block that rock lies in,
you have to divide the X and Y coordinates by 8 (the two first,
ignore the Z coordinate).
So, 2300/8 = 287.5 = 287 while 1200/8 = 150.
That means the rock is inside block 287, 150.
You always take the whole number for the blocks, ignore any decimals that appear
when you divide by 8.

*NOTE* Your UO client and UOX3 server must both be shut down before melting.

After making sure the paths are all green, click the GetStaticIndex button
and wait for the blue bar to finish.
Then enter the block coordinates into the X and Y text fields,
before clicking the GetStaticBlock button.

Now a list of all items that are inside that block will appear in the frame to the
left, and to melt these items(all or none, you can't choose) into
the UOX3 worldfile, click the Melt button.
When the blue bar has finished, close WorldForge and
start up UOX3. The items should now be in the items.wsc file and
ready for manipulation by you.

All items that are melted from the client to the UOX3 worldfile
automaticly get TYPE 255 added to their item sections.

*NOTE* You can melt more than one block per session, just change the block
numbers in the X and Y fields and click GetStaticBlock again,
then Melt once more.


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