The Homeworld Excel Mapper (v1.2)
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The Excel Mapper consists of 5 Excel sheets linked together. If you are familiar with Excel these sheets will be of boundless and speedy help when placing rings and strands of asteroids, player start positions or just checking distances on your maps. 

Consists of;

Strand creator
Tilting Ring Maker
Distance Editor
Resourcesphere  (Prepared for Resourcesphere_#.missphere files)
Levelfiles (Prepared for Levelname#.Level files)

Written by Dylov and TAKER.

email us at; dy.lov@techemail.com and taker@lords.com (you can take a wild guess at whos email is whos...)

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For those of you unfamiliar with Excel, and an explanation of each sheet;

**Using Excel to aid in your Map Making Efforts**
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Before you begin to use this program you will need to have at least some idea of what you want the finished map to look like. 

I suggest using graph paper to show a top down view of your map (a 2D view), where the centre of your map is the co-ordinate x=0, y=0 or (0,0). The y-axis is the vertical axis, and the x-axis is the horizontal axis bisecting at 90 degrees to the y axis. 

The centre point is actually point x, y, z, (The co-ordinate 0,0,0,). Positive x values to the right of co-ordinate 0,0,0, and positive y co-ordinates above 0,0,0, on your 2D map. The positive z co-ordinates are the 3D points above and below the plane of the map (Up/Down).

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Strands (Dylov)
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Used to generate the required co-ordinates for the 'Resourcesphere_1.missphere' file for continuous chains of cylinders. This sheet will carry out all the required calculations when placing the various cylinder asteroid-clusters end to end and have them all facing the correct way. 

Draw out your strand on the map marking where the turns, and/or ends of the individual cylinder asteroid-clusters are, and copy these co-ordinates into the relevant positions on the sheet, (shown in Light-Yellow). The Strand sheet will generate the co-ordinates of the cylinder, the length of the cylinder, and the angles of rotation so that a cylinder will be placed BETWEEN the two co-ordinates you have entered, beginning at the first one entered and ending at the second one and so on.

The generated lines will be passed on to the Resourcesphere sheet preformatted to save as a '.csv' file.
(See the Notes on the Resourcesphere file below).

A note on Strands;
Any empty co-ordinate lines will be read as 0,0,0 and Excel will still use this co-ordinate to generate a cylinder. For example; say you enter a number of co-ordinates, but not enough to fill the table (Which is set up to input 33 co-ordinates (& generate 32 continuous cylinders). If you have an empty box (for example, you only want a stand made up of 10 co-ordinates (or 9 cylinders end to end), Excel will read any empty boxes as co-ordinate 0,0,0 and will generate a cylinder between your last inputted co-ordinate and 0,0,0, so pay attention to the lines you copy into your Resourcesphere file.

There are three separate tables where you can input co-ordinates, these all perform exactly the same function, I just found I wanted more space so I could manipulate a number of strands at the same time without have to delete everything all the time, the third one labelled resources is no different other than it generates the data in the preformatted '.csv' sheet which correct labelling of the '.dist' files to produce resource clusters. You can easily change what cylinder consists of what in the resourcesphere sheet, just dont change the lengths, coordinates and angles of rotation (see Below)

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Tilting Ring Maker (*TAKER*)
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This easy to use sheet will generate a set of 24 cylinders of the required length and rotation to form a ring around the required co-ordinates.

The central point of the ring is designated in the boxes labelled Shift x, Shift y and Shift z. input the co-ordinates here. 

The radius will generate the size of the ring, (where 2r is the diameter!), and is measured from the inputted x, y, z, co-ordinates which is 0,0,0, by default.

The tilt of the ring (box labelled 'Tilt X (deg)'), will generate the 'y-rotation' value (Up/down where the angle is measured (or pivots) about the x-axis). 90 degrees will generate a vertical ring.

All the data generated is passed onto the Resourcesphere sheet (See Below).

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Distances (Dylov)
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Quite complicated to look at but hopefully easy to use. Contains several elements;

Resource Clouds or other points of reference table
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You can input your own co-ordinates for the positions of resource spheres, cylinders, derelicts or other points of note and the sheet will calculate the distances between them. This information is displayed on the adjacent table, and the co-ordinates you input will be passed on to the 'Player Start Co-ordinate Table' as well as the relevant section in the Resourcesphere sheet (See below).

Player Start Co-ordinates; Optional Player Start Co-ordinates
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You can input your own co-ordinates for the positions where each player starts on the map and the sheet will calculate the distances between each player. This information is displayed on the adjacent table, and the co-ordinates you input will be passed on to the 'Player Start Co-ordinate Table' as well as the relevant section in the Levelfile sheet (See below).

Player Start Co-ordinates; Player Distribution Parameters
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Player Start Positions are generated for maps, using the Global Position Settings to set the radius of the ring of player, any shift in y rotation (up/down) or z rotation (left/right) of the ring of players. You can use these settings to generate equal distances about the co-ordinates 0,0,0, or modify these co-ordinates in the Co-ordinates Shift table.

Each individual Player number game type can be individually modified to produce the best fit for your map.

Team Game Distribution parameters
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Team game set up will group players together in groups of 2, 3 or 4 depending on the amount of teams required, all players will start in a ring about the co-ordinates 0,0,0, (modify with the co-ordinates Shift table) only grouped closer together. 

Each individual Team number game type can be individually modified to produce the best fit for your map.

The Player Start Co-ordinates Table
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This table has been optimised for use with the Excel 'Autofilter' function. Select (or highlight) anywhere on the table, then from the menu choose 'Data' then 'Filter' then 'AutoFilter'. Used the little arrows above the 'Type' button and the 'Number' button and it will reduce the lists to show only selected game type calculations.

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The Resourcesphere Sheet
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This is a ready formatted sheet that will input the co-ordinates from the Strands sheet and from TAKERS Tilted Ring sheet. From the Distances sheet the Resource cloud co-ordinates are inputted.

Do not change the x, y and z co-ordinates, do not change the y and z rotations as they are all imported data.  All the cells of imported date are coloured do not touch these coloured boxes.

Save this sheet as a text file; Select 'File', 'Save As' and in the 'Save as type' box select 'CSV (Comma delimited (*.csv)'. Then, open the *.csv file with a text editor (such as notepad) and just copy this (or relevant lines) into your ResourceSphere_1.missphere file.

Saving in .csv will save you data in text exactly as required by Homeworld, its a simple matter of copying and pasting what you want into your existing resourcesphere file, or saving the whole shebang, it will work as long as its named right.

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The Levelfile Sheets (FFA and TEAM)
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These are pre-formatted sheets that will input the player start co-ordinates from the Distances sheet. 

Do not change the player start co-ordinates as these cells contain imported data from the Distances sheet.  Save this sheet as a .csv file and copy the data into the relevant areas of your '.level'  and '.missphere' file.


