NILE Profiler Quickstart Guide The NILE profiler allows you to analyze the movements of all the players in a game. This is useful for map builders who want to see what real players do on their maps. This tool is not for seeing what players are doing on maps you did not make, such as NovaWorld maps. For this reason, the source .NPJ or .MIS file is needed to use the profiler. To use the profiler you'll need to have NILE, the source file of the map you are profiling, and an .SPH file. The .SPH file contains the profile information for a given game. To generate a .SPH file, you will need to add a couple things to the shortcut you use to run Joint Ops. Right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties. Make sure you have the Shortcut tab selected. In the text field named Target you will see the path to your Joint Ops executable. You will need to add /profile to the end of the text already in the Targetâ field. For example: "C:\Program Files\NovaLogic\jointops\jointops.exe" /profile myprofile Once you have done this click OK. When you run the game using this shortcut and host a game a .SPH file will be created with the filename you entered. In the example above it would be myprofile.sph. Each time the server cycles a new file will be created: myprofile2.sph, myprofile3.sph, and so on. To view the profile, run NILE. Open the file of the map you are profiling. If you have the .NPJ simply open it. If you have the .MIS you will need to import it. Use the import if you have a .MIS source file Once you have the map file loaded you will need to load the profile. On the right hand side of Nile choose the Play Profiling tab. Click on the Load button and browse to your .SPH file in the popup window. Click on the Open button. You are now profiling the game session recorded by the .SPH file. To load the .SPH file select the Play Profiling tab and then click the Load button The player window will populate with the names of all the players tracked in the file. Options can be set for each player. The checkboxes allow you to choose to see the player's location or location history. The color button allows you to choose the color for a given player or group of players. Using color is important for organizing the information on the screen. The player list shows every player in the game and allows you to adjust how they are displayed The timeline allows you to move through the play-period by clicking and dragging the bar. As you do, the players you’ve selected to be visible will be seen moving around the terrain. The players whose history you have selected to view will leave a line indicating their path of movement. This line will be in the color you have chosen for that player. The timeline adjusts the game-clock The Start Time and End Time fields allow you to input specific times in order to increase the accuracy of the timeline bar. For example, if you set the Start Time to 5 and the End Time to 10, the two ends of the timeline will be 5 and 10 seconds respectively. This allows for a fine level of control with the timeline. This image shows a 3d view of a player who took a short helicopter ride The profiler works both with NILE's 3d mode and NILE's 2d mode. To switch modes, just click on the appropriate button in NILE's toolbar. The same helicopter flight viewed in 2d mode You have now familiarized yourself with the NILE profiler, and are on your way to becoming proficient with NILE. We hope you utilize these tools to make great maps. Good luck! Heres all the Helkp files i copied them into notepad and some other tips from me at the bottom Welcome to Nile! With this help you can learn how to use and get the most out of Nile. If you have questions and aren't able to find them here. Be sure to check out the NovaWorld forums for more information. It's a great place to exchange tips and tricks with other players and mission creators. What is Nile? The NovaLogic Interactive Level Editor (Nile) is an advanced tool for creating and editing game missions for NovaLogic. Nile allows you to rapidly layout and prototype a mission with two dimensional and three dimensional edit modes. Nile is extremely powerful because you can see what you mission will look like, without having to open the game. Nile includes full support for manipulating objects, scripting events, examining playback information, generating AI navigation information, tiling, string management, and much more. Navigating the windows Nile has two main windows. The object data window and the view window. With the object data window you can see what objects you have in the world, information about them, and change modes (more on that later!). The object window is dockable and can be moved and resized to suit your needs. The view window contains one or more 'cameras' into the world. Each camera can be manipulated independently of the others. The cameras can display in numerous 2D or 3D modes. All the toolbars are draggable and can be attached to any side of the main window frame. All of the toolbar windows can also be selectively shown or hidden by toggling them in the 'Tools' menu item. A quick walk through 1 Follow these steps to create your first mission: 2 Select 'Mission | Terrain Variables...' 3 Pick a terrain and environment file from the lists and press 'Ok' 4 In a moment you will see the view render the current terrain. 5 Select the 'Object Palette' tab. 6 Pick an object to place in the world from the tree control. 7 After you pick and object as you drag the mouse over the camera view you will see a representation of where this object will be placed. 8 When you are happy with its location, press the left mouse button to place the object. 9 Choose a player, start marker from the object palette and place it in the world. 10 With the Object Palette tab selected you are in object placement mode. Each click of the mouse button will place another instance of the selected object in the world. To exit this mode, press the 'Objects' tab. 11 Save your mission to the game directory. 12 Exit Nile and run the game. 13 Your mission should appear in the single player mission list. 14 Enjoy! Mission Menu The Mission menu item contains all the items to define your mission. They are: Briefing - You can enter short and long briefings in these edit boxes. These are the briefings accessible via in game keys. Note, these are not the briefings displayed on load screens. Level Properties - This dialog allows you to enter information for the Mission name, and Designer. It also allows you to select the game type. The default game type is Single Player. String Table Editor - Strings used by your level are automatically collected in the String table resource editor. These strings are editable via this dialog box. Terrain Variables - This is where you can pick the terrain and environment files used by your mission. You can alter and override some settings from the environment file like water level, fog attributes, and time of day. Victory Conditions - Waypoint Lists - You can construct waypoint lists via this dialog. A waypoint list is simply a collection of waypoint markers, arranged into a sequence. ---------------------------------------------------------- Continued Camera Settings Each view represents a camera. The cameras are moveable and support many options. To move a camera, two techniques can be used. Even at the same time! The first technique involves the use of the space bar. Holding down the space bar (in any mode) puts the mouse into a special movement mode. In a 2D view pressing the left mouse button while holding the space bar will allow you to pan the camera rapidly. In a 3D mode, the left mouse button allows you to orient the camera. The right mouse button allows you to pan the camera. The mouse wheel works in either view as a method to zoom the camera in. Keys may also be used to move the camera. Under the default key mapping the W,S,A, and D keys will move the camera forward, backward, left, and right respectively. The Q and E keys will move the camera up and down. It is not necessary to press the space bar to move the camera in this way. You can adjust the speed of camera movement can be adjusted via the toolbar. There are buttons for fast movement (rabbit), slow movement (turtle), and a non-linear accelerating camera (both rabbit and turtle). The camera context menu can be accessed by right clicking (without the space bar pressed) in the desired camera view. These options are availble from the context menu: Zoom - Enlarges the selected view to fill the workspace. Picture in Picture - Displays an additional view in a floating window. This is only available when a view is zoomed. The PIP window doesn't support the full feature set available to the full size window. However, moving the mouse over the PIP window will change cursors to indicate that camera movement functions are available through the mouse. Left clicking will pan in 2D modes, and rotate in 3D modes. The mouse wheel will also function as it normally does. The PIP window contains two additional buttons on its caption bar. The arrows will swap the PIP view with the main view. The thumbtack button locks the cameras in the two views to each other. Moving one will move the other. LOD - Level of detail is both statically and dynamically adjustable. The default setting for a camera is 'auto'. This setting will render all objects at their lowest detail setting, except for selected objects. These will be rendered at the highest setting. Any LOD can also be chosen from highest to a simple bounding box. This will affect the LOD of every object in the world, for this view. 2D Camera Modes: (accesible by right clicking and expanding the 2d menu) Colormap - The standard 2D view. Uses the terrain colors to draw the map. Heightmap - Displays height information. The brighter the color, the higher the altitude. Deltamap - Displays height information. Red indicates areas that are not flat. Green indicates flat areas. The brighter the color, the higher the altitude. No Background - No background is displayed. Tile Mode - Indicates that the camera is in tile editing mode. All mouse interactions and commands operate on tiles, not objects. Node Mode - Indicates that the camera is in node editing mode. All mouse interations and commands operate on nodes, not objects. View Elements - Check marks indicate elements that are rendered in the camera view. Note that items that are hidden may still be edited. Grid - 2D only. Displays a grid at the specified granularity. Camera Position - Fixes the camera at a given altitude. No items checked indicate that the camera is free to move anywhere, above or below the terrain. If above terrain is checked, the camera cannot descend below the terrain. Eye height indicates that the camera will be locked at 2m of elevation. Birds eye view locks the camera at 32m of elevation. Maintain FPS - If this item is checked, NILE will try to maintain a frame rate greater than 15 fps (if possible). It accomplishes this by rendering further objects as bounding volumes. You may notice the distance that objects get drawn at will dynamically change depending upon your current framerate. If this is unchecked then all objects are drawn at all times. Time of Day - Use this dialog to change the current time of day. Note that this time is saved as the time of day to use by the game. Shadows - Enable and disable shadows with this item. Brightness - The brightness of objects may be adjusted with this item. ------------------------------------------------- Cursor Modes Editing in NILE is mode based. Within a given mode, mouse and keyboard input is interpreted as input to that mode. The cursor shape will reflect the current operation mode of Nile. Nile supports the following modes: Select (Arrow) Movement (Quad Arrow) Rotate (Circular Arrow + Axis Letter) Select Box (2D only) (Crosshair + Plus/Minus) Magnify (2D only) (Magnifying glass + Plus/Minus) Pan (2D only) (Hand) These modes can be activated in one of two ways. You can click on the toolbar image corresponding to the desired mode. Or you may press the short cut key that correspondes to the desired mode. The default shortcut keys are 1 through 6. The modes may be modified by pressing CTRL or SHIFT keys. The actions of the modes and their modified versions are as follows: Select Magnify (SHIFT) Pan (CTRL) Movement Vertical movement (SHIFT) Rotate Y Rotate Z (SHIFT) Rotate X (CTRL) Select De-Select (SHIFT) Magnify Zoom out (SHIFT) Pan Magnify (SHIFT) ------------------------------------------------------------ The Grid The grid is available in 2D only. By pressing the grid toolbar button or selecting Grid|Size... from the context menu. Sizes are whole numbers only. If zero is entered for either axis the grid will be disabled. You can choose to snap to grid coordinates by selecting the Snap button from the toolbar or from the context menu. Object center points will snap to the nearest grid coordinate as you move them. ------------------------------------------------------------ Tile Mode CRASHES FOR ME By selecting the Tile Palette you will automatically be placed into tile mode. The Tile Palette lets you select your tile image file. You can zoom in on the images by pressing the zoom button. The insert button will put you into tile insert mode. In this mode you can drop new tiles onto the map. If you aren't in insert mode, you can select tiles by clicking on them. Then use the toolbars to rotate, raise/lower, and flip the selected tiles. Note that the tile toolbar is disabled if you are not it tile mode. ------------------------------------------------------------ Toolbars Some additional actions available on the toolbars, but not described elsewhere: Center View - This button appears as a cube with arrows along side. When pressed it will move the active camera to the center point of a select object or group of selected objects. Camera Tie - This button appears as a necktie. This button opens a dialog that allows you to tie cameras together. Click in the spaces between cameras to toggle a tie between two cameras. A checkmark indicates that the cameras are tied together. An X indicates they are not. If two cameras are tied together the cameras will move to the location of the camera whose button that appears pressed. Default Tool - This button appears as a hammer. Pressing this button will launch the tool that you have designated as the default tool. You can edit the tool settings via the Tool menu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Extensions Nile supports the concept of plugin extensions. Any extensions added to Nile will appear in the Extensions menu item. Extensions should have their own help. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Updating Nile There are two ways to make sure that you have the latest version of Nile. From the Help menu you can select Update. This will close Nile and run the update utility. Or you can run the update utility directly. If you choose to run the update utility by hand, then please close Nile before doing so. Failure to close Nile may result in the update failing.