Lesson 8: Turning Your Mods Into Maps
When your room is finished and you are ready to see it in the game, it's time to use that background map we created in the beginning lesson. First make sure you have nothing selected on your room. Use Edit -> Copy Visible (Copy Visible copies what you SEE on the screen, not just what is on the active layer.) Now go to your overall background map you created at the beginning of the tutorial and create a layer named "master bedroom tutorial" or something similar (make sure this layer is the top layer.) Zoom to 100% and use Edit -> Paste.


Use the Move Tool to position the room as closely as possible, then zoom in and make sure you are accurate at all edges before anchoring it down. Remember to save your work.

At 50% zoom, you can see which map pieces you will need to copy to get the new room into your game. If you are unsure of the names of these pieces, refer to the image in my Introduction to VF Mods guide. Use the Rectangle Select Tool from the toolbox to select a map square. The guidelines will help you stop exactly on the correct pixels. Again, because we want to copy what is on all layers, we will use Edit -> Copy Visible to copy what we see on the screen that is inside our selection.


Then use Edit -> Paste As -> New Image. Check the top bar to be sure the image size is 512x512. Then use File -> Save As to save your new map piece. Be sure to save map pieces in jpg format. GIMP will tell you that JPEG images can't handle transparency and ask if you want to export. Click Export. Set the quality level depending upon the file size you want and click Save.
Repeat this for each map piece you need for your room. (There are three for our bedroom.)

That's all there is to it!

If you've actually made it this far reading, you've learned almost as much as I have about using GIMP and making mods. There is a lot more for us to learn and a lot of fun to be had in learning it. It can be frustrating as well. I've made some tremendous errors that I end up laughing at later when I finally figure things out. LDW's forum community is wonderful support for those times when you are ready to pull your hair out or just give up. Hang in there and know that we've all felt that way. When you finally get it the way you want it, it's so worth it. I hope you have as much fun with it as I have!

Oh, and one last thing (because I probably haven't said it enough) Don't forget to SAVE YOUR WORK!