Undertow Games Forum

This tutorial will cover the basics of the submarine editor in Subsurface, and teach you how to make a box that players can breathe in.

When you launch the game, press F3 to open the console and type "edit": The editor will look like this: You can zoom in and out with the mousewheel, and move the camera around with WASD.

The first thing you want to do is to open the structures menu and find the walls and platforms. bottomwall looks ugly so you shouldn't use it. Once you select a structure to add, click and drag from top-left to bottom-right. Dragging in any other way can be confusing. You should completely seal the map unless you want to add exits. Once you're done adding walls, ceilings, floors and platforms, you will need to add "hull" objects and "gap" objects. These objects are used by the game to determine where air is, how to distribute water when the ship is flooding, etc.
If you added any platform objects, you should split hulls that the platforms are in and use gaps between each hull: Now you will need to add waypoints, these are the players' spawnpoints. Each waypoint is for specific jobs, so you have a waypoint for the captain and waypoints for engineers or mechanics.
Make sure you set the waypoint to spawn a Human.
The ID card tag for the captain is "com", and the ID card tag for engineers and mechanics is "eng". The second tag is PX, where X is the player number.

Regalis wrote:Actually you can use whatever ID card tags you want to: when you select a button, you can choose which tags are needed to activate it by switching the "ID Card" text in "required items" to the desired tag or item name (and you should do this if you want the ID Card tags to have any effect). For example, in the default map all the buttons that open the doors to the spawning rooms require the same tag as the ID card tag of the spawnpoint inside the room (P1, P2, P3 etc), meaning that only the player who spawned inside that room has access there, and the buttons at the radar room require the "com" tag.

The required item/tag doesn't even have to be related to ID cards, you could set it to "screwdriver" for example to make it possible to activate the button using a screwdriver.

At this point the map should already be playable, so you should save it. A̶l̶w̶a̶y̶s̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶"̶.̶g̶z̶"̶ ̶e̶x̶t̶e̶n̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶s̶a̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶m̶a̶p̶s̶.̶ (not needed anymore) However, there aren't any electrical devices in the submarine, so the players will eventually suffocate. You will need to add these electrical devices, which are located in the Items menu.
The most important items are the Nuclear Reactor, Fuel Rod(s), Junction Box(es), Wires, Oxygen Generator(s) and the Screwdriver. I'll also add some lamps and a ladder. Now you need to rewire these electrical devices so they actually work. To do this, there is the Character mode. In character mode, pick up the wires and the screwdriver by pressing E on them. Drag the screwdriver and a wire to your hands. Press E on the electrical devices to rewire them. Now, exit Character mode and re-enter it. Any items that were in your inventory will disappear (get rid of the screwdriver this way). Now pick up a fuel rod and put it in the nuclear reactor. Exit Character mode. Add some vents. You can find the vent in the Items menu. Click on your oxygen generator. You can tweak some parameters. While the oxygen generator is selected, hold space and click on your vents. This will link them, distributing oxygen around the submarine. Once your submarine is finished and ready to be played, you can add a background. Backgrounds are in the Structures menu. Save the map, restart the game and test it. If everything was done correctly, turning on the Nuclear Reactor will activate your electrical devices.

Here's the tutorial map I made to take images. You can see how the wiring works with it.
I'll write a tutorial on pumps, engines and navigation terminals s̶o̶o̶n̶.

Nice work, the editor is kind of confusing so I'm sure this will come in handy.

Now you will need to add waypoints, these are the players' spawnpoints. Each waypoint is for specific jobs, so you have a waypoint for the captain and waypoints for engineers or mechanics.
Make sure you set the waypoint to spawn a Human.
The ID card tag for the captain is "com", and the ID card tag for engineers and mechanics is "eng". The second tag is PX, where X is the player number.
Note: you need to deselect everything by clicking on the void before selecting a waypoint, this is likely a bug.

Actually you can use whatever ID card tags you want to: when you select a button, you can choose which tags are needed to activate it by switching the "ID Card" text in "required items" to the desired tag or item name (and you should do this if you want the ID Card tags to have any effect). For example, in the default map all the buttons that open the doors to the spawning rooms require the same tag as the ID card tag of the spawnpoint inside the room (P1, P2, P3 etc), meaning that only the player who spawned inside that room has access there, and the buttons at the radar room require the "com" tag.

The required item/tag doesn't even have to be related to ID cards, you could set it to "screwdriver" for example to make it possible to activate the button using a screwdriver.

Some other notes:
- You can change the color of the wires (or any item actually) by selecting them and changing the value in the color-field. It should be formatted as R,G,B,A where each value is between 0.0 and 1.0
- When you add a door, a gap is automatically added to its position (no need to add one separately)
- Most of the items have a bunch of settings that can be configured when the item is selected, things like the amount of power generated by the reactor or the power consumption of various devices

EDIT:
Oh, and another thing: the collider of the submarine (the one that collides with the level) is currently calculated from the corners of the hulls using the gift wrapping algorithm, so the shape of the sub should be roughly convex. Otherwise there will be spots outside the submarine that collide with the level even though there's nothing there.

Pic related:

How long until we get a proper systems tutorial?
I have a basic ship with wiring identical to the default ship, but the drive on the engine stays stuck at -2.

EDIT: Here's a link to it. (I hid non-important wiring with magic!)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nbwq1nhawdtzo ... ud.gz?dl=0

asialsky wrote:How long until we get a proper systems tutorial?

I'll write one as soon as I decide to take my time to fully understand the rest of the items.

asialsky wrote:How long until we get a proper systems tutorial?
I have a basic ship with wiring identical to the default ship, but the drive on the engine stays stuck at -2.

EDIT: Here's a link to it. (I hid non-important wiring with magic!)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nbwq1nhawdtzo ... ud.gz?dl=0

fixed

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikqsdj5qilgcs ... II.gz?dl=0

removed some wires that were causing your junction boxes to overload

dont put a gap over the door to open water in your airlock. it floods the airlock when you start

i like your sub. really nice simple design and the balance between the ballast tanks and overall size makes it easy to dive and surface. all except for using the airlock as a ballast tank too. it'll make it hard to get in and out of the sub without throwing you off balance

Must have missed it.
My copy of Subsurface isn't entirely safe to edit in because of a failing HDD that keeps corrupting things.

Anyways, we also need a tutorial for multiplayer.
Noobs may not know how to port forward, or what bugs to expect.

Thanks very much for this tutorial! I can imagine it too you a great deal of time to conjure up! Thanks really appreciate it.

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I'm having some trouble with my sub, whenever i play the sub in singleplayer, it floods. Can someone help?

http://www.mediafire.com/download/o962b ... rk+III.sub

shamalin wrote:I'm having some trouble with my sub, whenever i play the sub in singleplayer, it floods. Can someone help?

The hulls in the sub weren't working properly.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mi75oqze4zwta ... I.sub?dl=1
Here is the sub with properly placed hulls and gaps. Every separate room needs its own hull object, otherwise the water will flow through the walls.