Click the
Layout box. You’ll see a bunch of objects added to the list. Now, we can edit all of those, and the game will remember the changes we make. This is really important, because otherwise, you may find yourself moving a building or something, only to come back later and find that the change wasn’t saved because it was a
Layout object. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me!
Alright, now you understand the interface. Now for the cool bit! Click on “Edit In-Game” and FFEdit will start the map editor, which uses the game engine to let you change and move stuff around on the actual, 3D map. The game will load up the map, and you’ll see it much like you would in the game itself, except that all of the objects have names visible. It should look like this:
Now, the controls for the editor are very simple and easy to use. Using the different commands, you can add objects to the map, delete them, rotate them, turn them upside down, do pretty much whatever you want to do! The camera will control just like in FF itself, and you can select objects by clicking on them. Their names will turn red, and the item’s details will show up in the editor window too.
Objects can be moved in editor mode by dragging them around. If you make a mistake moving something you can undo by pressing ctrl-z. Ctrl-y will re-do changes.
Here are the different commands from the manual:
Shift left click + drag objects to move them up and down, vertically
Hold Z, left click + drag objects to rotate on Z axis (yaw)
Hold X, left click + drag objects to rotate on X axis (pitch)
Right click + drag positional markers to define radius
T – Snap object to terrain
F – Move object one level towards floor
U – Move object one level upwards
R – Toggle positional marker radius display
E – Switch edit mode
G – Toggle snap-to-grid (for placing things precisely)
H – Toggle snap-to-terrain
P – Dumps current camera coordinates to the screen (useful when scripting cut-scenes)
J – Toggle visibility of objects marked to not be “visibleInEditor” (usually fog of war)
C – Open Create Object Browser
Shift + F1 to F10 – Assign current object browser directory to a shortcut key
F1 to F10 – Jump to object browser directory
Space – Quick create last selected object
ESC – Quit the map
What’s most important to us at the moment is the Object Browser, which lets us add new objects and markers to a map. Hit C to bring it up. Once you do, you’ll see a list of different options. Yours will look slightly different than mine, because I have all of the FF1 maps added into my game, thanks to the Map Pack, so I’ve got an extra area_specific directory and some other stuff. But you should see something like this: