Shadowrun level editor - creating a new project

1. Starting the editor
2. Creating a new project or content pack
   1. First steps
   2. Choosing dependencies
   3. What to do if you can’t chose dependencies, some, or all are missing
   4. Avoiding conflicts when selecting dependencies

Today, we’ll look at how to get the shadowrun editor running and create a new project. First of all, you need a copy of the shadowrun turn based role playing game. If you don’t have it yet, I’d recommend getting hong kong directly as it is the third iteration on the game and it offers more user friendly features, though it has fewer assets.

Starting the editor

Start up the editor from the content menu, after you launched the game.

Here, you can see the content packs available to you when editing, and the content you got online as well as your own projects if you have any.

The editor main window should be blank when it opens for the first time.

Unlike on my screenshot, there wouldn’t be anything at all instead of the blue item in the top left column.

If you’re using Hong Kong, you will also have a promp that gives some links to official tutorials. I am writing this one because I feel the official wiki covers the basics, but I had to do a lot of trouble shooting and digging around just to get started.

This series of articles aims to centralise all info that helped me. The official tutorials also describe the features and functionnality very well, and give a global approach on level editing. For my part, I’ll have a more step by step approach as I did with my Axure tutorials.

Creating a new project or content pack

First steps

To create a new project in the editor, you need to create a content pack for your project. To do so, Click on file > New content pack. It’s the first option, you can’t miss it.

In the next dialog, give your project a name, author and short description. Don’t spend too much time on this as you will be able to change it later.

Choosing dependencies

The next screen requires you to chose dependencies. They basically define what assets (visuals, audio, scripts…) you will be able to use. If you’re lucky, your install will have all the correct defaults and it will be a walk in the park. See this?

If you select a content pack that requires another as a dependency, it will automatically be selected, and you won’t be able to remove it. It shouldn’t be able to break dependencies as a result.

What to do if you can’t chose dependencies, some, or all are missing

If the list appears empty, you need to edit the path to the original content packs first.

Avoiding conflicts when selecting dependencies

If you have several games installed, they can conflict. Loading content packs from Hong Kong together with older ones in the Hong Kong editor will work, but chances are the game won’t start when you try to test your level. There’s no error message to tell you this, it will just look like it’s starting, then nothing will happen. Or you may not be able to launch the level editor alltogether.

Here’s what to do if you’re in that situation. Using Shadowrun Returns with Dragonfall together using the Dragonfall editor was no problem though.

Better yet, just don’t add a path to the older asset packs and keep them for the older editors. It’s possible to work with Shadowrun returns and Dragonfall editor at the same time, but not so with Hong Kong. If you’re using Hong Kong, dont’ try the others, or you’ll have to fix things.

Assuming everything went fine, you should now have a new, empty content pack, with in the left column of the editor a list of assets, that you can use when you create your first map in the Shadowrun Editor.