Profile of Brummbær

instead of linking a text-file from another site you could have posted the script.

I guess they use another worldbuilder for the official maps with another set of objects. I checked the city 17 splines and all i looked at had the objects written in capital letters. Those objects must be there in a hidden way, not being selectable on a normal way. It's the same thing with lamps being lighted by night.

Most things are self-explanatory. I advise you to create a map for playing around with the tools, learning by doing.

Some basics that may be handy:

Layer counts and chunks get important when using more than 8 different tiles. If this is the case there must not be more than 8 tiles per chunk. If you add a ninth that tile would become blackend out. That's where the checkable box is very usefull. If you check a layer it will be blackend out and it's easy to find out where which layer was used.

There are two (not counting the possibility of deleting the whole tile) ways of erasing tiles: Use the erase button to get rid of a tile in a specific chunk or paint it over with another tile.

The third button is for merging layers, and this is one that I do not really understand. If I try to merge 3 layers, for example, afterwards 2 of them disappear, which is expected. But the remaining layer is one of the 3 that was already there (not sure how it picks which of the original set to keep) and the look of what was painted changed because the actual texture used in 2 our of the 3 layers is completely lost, replaced by the texture of the single remaining layer. Is that what is supposed to happen? So merging just merges the painted areas, but not the textures themselves?

Merging always merges tiles from top to bottom: The lowermost layer is always the the first layer on a map.

For example:

1. Grass 1
2. Grass 2
3. Soil 1
4. Sand 1
5. Grass 3 (base tile, cannot be deleted)

If you would merge layers 1, 2 and 4 everything would be converted into the 4th layer (Sand 1).

The next section is labeled "Burner" and I have no idea how to use it. I'm sure I'm missing something important here.

No you don't miss anything here. Ignore it. You won't need it.

The next section - "Textures" - is fairly self-explanatory except for the icons (red X, green checkmark, and a combo of both) which I do not yet fully "get". The state of each also changes depending on whether I've been working on the map in a single WorldBuilder session for a long time, or if I just reopened the application. But I don't think there's anything too critical I'm missing here - mostly just curiosity for the sake of completeness.

red x: Texture not in use
green checkmark: Texture in use
combo: bugged, will change to green checkmark when the clicking on the texture again after you used it.

The next (4th) button is apparently for adding layers. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it's greyed out and I can't add any more layers. This has happened when I just have 3 layers total, so I doubt it was hitting the limit (what is the limit on number of layers, by the way?). If I save, exit, restart and reload I can then add layers again, so there's no rhyme or reason to why it sometimes stops working. Bug?

Look's like a bug. Never had problems adding textures. Just tried it out and after a dozen I stopped adding.

I just played a match as Soviet against the ai and the fight was big fun, waving for- and backwards. I did not miss more fuel points and based on the map layout it was not such a big problem the germans had more tanks. But that could become a problem in pvp. Overall: Great map! =)

Some things i came across and maybe i'll repeat something already written:

1. Some of the splats and splines look a bit unrealistic because the textures are to big. That's no problem if you reduce the opacity (for splines it's good to soften their look by reducing their opacity on parts of the whole lenght) or if it's a spline, fix the tilling to the width.
2. Some territories seam to "overlap". Maybe their boarders are a bit to small. No big problem.
3. Some of the cliffs were passable which i think was not your intention. If you want the to be impassable without adjusting their height you can use the impass-editing-tool (trafic light symbol) or by adding "move blockers".
4. Grass. Don't use it to cover whole areas. Instead you could use more splats/splines.
5. I don't know if you intended the map to have no blizzards but I missed 'em.
6. Starting territories are a bit cramped. Because of the map size it's possible to finish off the enemy with artillery, built in your own starting territory - that's what i did.
7. You should place some objects in the non-playable areas. They may be blackend out but the shapes can still be seen. There are some very nice oob-objects under visuals/environment.

What is the reason behind having 3 copies of the same image, _mm, _preview and _high?
Are they used in different places? Where?

If you don't add those the game will use the standard map for all purposes. I wonder why I should create them. They only inflate the sga-file.