ahamling27
Empress of Light
A Guide to TEdit 3
Getting Started
First you need to make sure you have the latest version of TEdit. It's constantly being updated so go here to get the latest version. You should see a list of files and the top most file will always be the most up-to-date version.
The Menu Bar
At the top of TEdit is the Menu Bar. Under File you can select New, Open, Save, Save-As, or Exit. Edit has Undo, Redo, Copy, Paste, a check box for Paste Empty Tiles, and Delete. The Display menu has toggles for hiding or showing the various layers of the loaded world. The Plugins drop-down is a menu for just that, plugins. Finally, the Help menu is only there to tease you; currently it has four commands, Wiki, Update, Download New XML Data, and About. We'll get more in-depth with some of the menu options down below, but for the most part, they are pretty self explanatory.
The Toolbar
The first eight buttons on the toolbar are pretty self explanatory and most can all be found under the File and Edit menus. I won't go into much detail about these buttons except for the New button. Clicking New lets you create a new blank world with a custom width and height. The width and height can be anything from 200 blocks to the limits of a large world. There are two other sliders, Surface Level sets the level of the dirt surface and Bedrock Level sets the level the dirt stops and stone starts. The stone layer will then go all the way down to the Hell layer. The Hell layer can not be removed though and it's somewhere between 175-200 blocks depending on the size of your map. Even smaller than a Small sized map will still have some 180 blocks of hell. Keep in mind though, that a generated world in TEdit will only generate a dirt and stone layer. There is no actual hell, just the background wall of hell.
The bottom nine buttons are the meat of the tools and therefore deserve a thorough explanation.
Arrow Tool (Keybinding=E) - The Arrow Tool is easily the simplest tool. When you want to edit a chest or a sign, you need to select the Arrow Tool, then right click the chest or sign. The right side panel will switch over to the Chest-Sign tab and you can edit away.
Selection Tool (Keybinding=S) - The Selection Tool has some great uses. For one, it's the main tool used to copy and paste items. Left click and hold it down then drag your to your desired selection. It's as simple as pressing Ctrl+C to copy and then Ctrl+V to paste that selection. The Selection Tool also lets you the ability to use the Paint Bucket Tool to only fill inside your selection. Finally, with an area selected, you may only edit the map within that selection. To remove a selection you can right click with the Selection Tool or press Esc or Ctrl+D.
Picker Tool (Keybinding=R) - The Picker Tool works like an eye dropper tool you would see in an image editing program. Left clicking with this tool will pick that type of block, wall, or liquid to use with the Pencil Tool, Brush Tool, or Fill Tool. When you pick the Fill Tool you will have an option up top that says Paint Mode, by default it will only pick tiles(blocks) but you can have the picker also pick only walls, tiles and walls together, wires, or liquids. You can also right click with the Picker Tool to select a mask, which follows the same Paint Mode as left clicking. More on Masks and masking below.
Pencil Tool (Keybinding=E) - The Pencil Tool is your basic drawing tool with a one block width. When selected you can determine what you want to draw under Paint Mode. You can draw only tiles(blocks), only walls, tiles and walls together, wires, and liquids. There is also an Eraser button above the Paint Mode selector to erase with the Pencil. Drawing is as simple as picking your tile and/or wall and left clicking and/or dragging the tool around the map. Right clicking with the Pencil Tool will lock the tool into vertical lines, so while holding your right mouse button down you can draw vertical lines no matter if you move the mouse up and down. Holding the left and right mouse button down together will lock it into vertical lines.
Brush Tool (Keybinding=B) - The Brush Tool works just like the Pencil Tool with the exception that it can have a custom height and width. Once selected, at the top of the screen you have options for Width, Height, Outline, and shape. You also have toggles for locking the width and height equally and whether to use an outline or not. Width and Height can be toggled from 2 to 200, though if you are using the brush to paint in a large area, it is advised to use something like a 200 height and 5 width. Using a 200 by 200 brush is very taxing on the editor because you are editing 40,000 tiles at once, compared to 1,000 with a 200 by 5 brush. You can also select whether you want your brush to be a rectangle or an elliptical. The outline section allows you to use the tiles(blocks) as an outline of the brush size you have and the outline can be toggled from a width of 1 tile to up to 10. Combining tiles and walls together with the Outline tool is an easy way to place background walls within a border of tiles. The Brush Tool also paints horizontally if you right click and draw, as well as vertical drawing if you left and right click together and draw. The Brush Tool also follows masking rules and you can decide whether you want to brush only tiles, walls, tiles and walls together, wiring, or liquids.
Fill Tool (Keybinding=F) - The Fill tool fills an area in with the selected tile, wall, liquids, or empty space if the eraser is selected. It works in a contiguous manner, meaning that it will replace all of a selected tile, wall, liquid, or empty space that is clicked continuously until it meets a border. You can limit what gets filled in by using the Selection Tool. By creating a Selection rectangle, only what's inside that rectangle will be replaced contiguously. The Fill Tool has the same menu as the Pencil and Picker Tools to determine if you want to fill with tiles, walls, tiles and walls, wires, and liquids. It will also follow masking rules.
Pointer Tool (Keybinding=P) - The Pointer Tool determines where you want the starting spawn point, where the NPC's call home, and where the Dungeon Entrance and Old Man are. Once the tool is selected, you get the option of selecting who or what you want to place and simply left clicking on the map will place that respected spawn point there. Keep in mind that spawn points can't be placed in blocks, they must be in an open area, they can have background walls or furniture behind them though. If you want to place an NPC and they haven't been spawned in the map yet you can add them from the World Properties tab on the right side panel. Simply clicking add will add them to the map and you can place them where you please then. The Old Man pointer will place the Old Man where you make the dungeon entrance at. Keep in mind that the dungeon entrance must follow the same rules as a regular dungeon. It must contain dungeon brick, but not player placed dungeon brick. The Dungeon pointer should also be placed in the same area, possibly just inside the dungeon itself. The Old Man pointer is new and I admittedly don't know if you can place the Old Man away from the dungeon and keep him there. I would imagine that he might load up where you pointed him to, but he would make his way back to the dungeon entrance anyway.
Sprite Placer Tool (Keybinding=T) - The Sprite Placer tool is used in conjunction with the Sprites tab in the right side panel. Once you have the Sprties tab open on the right, it's as easy as selecting your sprite then clicking the Sprite Placer Tool and then clicking where you want it on the map. The Sprite tab on the right side panel also has a search option. In the Filter box, type in what you are looking for(it will even take partial spellings) and either click the Filter button to the right or press the Tab key to search for it.
Morph Tool (no keybinding yet) - The Morph Tool is a relatively new too. It works much like the brush, but instead of drawing with it, it will morph whatever you are drawing over with the selected biome. It will even work differently at different depths. It leaves tiles like ores untouched but will add the right kind of grass to the surface of the biome.
Masks and Masking
Masking is changing a certain tile and/or wall from one type to another, without changing any surrounding tiles and/or walls. In the example below, I want to paint mud over dirt, but I want to keep the sand from turning into mud.
The Mask Mode has three options to it. Disable Mask turns masking off. Edit Empty Tiles is a little confusing. If you have a complete empty space void of tiles and walls, you can paint there with Edit Empty Tiles selected. If you only have tiles painted and you select Edit Empty Tiles for the wall mask, you will still be painting walls behind the tiles because the wall space is empty. Conversely if you select Edit Empty Tiles for the tile mask and have a bunch of walls drawn, you will still be able to paint over those walls with tiles. Remember they work independently of each other. If you are super confused at this point, just play around with tiles and walls with different masking tools and you will get the hang of it pretty quickly.
Edit Matching Tiles is what the example above shows. The Mask selected under Edit Matching Tiles will be the only tile/wall that can be painted/drawn/filled over. Masks work with all the painting tools, the Pencil, the Brush, and the Fill Tool. This is a great tool for when you build something but hate the color you used. Built a giant green tower but now want it blue? Just select blue brick as your tile, enable Edit Matching Tiles then select green brick as the mask. If you make the size of the brush like 200 by 5 you can paint that green brick blue in seconds. You could even set a mask for the background walls and change the tiles and walls in a single swipe of the brush.
Display and Plugins
Under Display in the Menu Bar, you can change what is being displayed in the main editing window. Your options are Show Textures, Show Grid, Show Walls, Show Tiles, Show Liquid, Show Wires, and Show Points. They are all pretty self explanatory and in the picture below you can see what it looks like when you deselect Show Tiles.
Simple Ore Generator does exactly what it implies. If you generate a world in TEdit you get a pretty plain dirt and stone world. Once it's generated though, you can add ore and other tiles using the Simple Ore Generator. In the picture below you can see from left to right I'm adding in new ores and even mud, clay, and sand. The generator is meant for ores but can actually generate any tile and they'll be in shapes and sizes like ore would be found. Here's a picture of the generator in action, each subsequent frame is another ore, tile, or liquid being added to the map, and if you ask me, it's pretty good at what it does.
There are many more plugins in the latest TEdit, so play around with them as this guide only covers the first couple that were released in TEdit 3.
World Properties Tab
The World Properties Tab in the Utilities side bar contains some useful variables that you can customize to make your world unique. I'll break this up into two sections, the top half and bottom half of the World Properties tab. Here's what the top half looks like:
Starting from the top, World Name is whatever you want to name your world. Your worlds folder always has maps labeled world1, world2, etc. Making the world name unique will help you pick it out quicker and stop you from opening the wrong map. Next up is the World Id and currently you can not edit this. Not much is known about this number as BinaryConstruct has no idea what it actually does.
Up next is a check mark for Blood Moon. Enabling this will cause your world to spawn a Blood Moon when it's loaded the next time. Under that is a slider for the Moon Phase. You can change this from a value of 0 to 7. Terraria has a moon cycle just like the real moon, it goes from a new moon to full moon and back again.
Up next is the time of day. A slider that is colored to match the lighting of the game can be set to whatever time you want. The check box below it determines if it is day time or night time.
The Surface Level and Bedrock Level sliders are up next. They are the same sliders that are in TEdit's World Generator. They change the topmost dirt surface level and the level where the dirt meats the stone level. Adjusting these sliders also adjusts the default background walls underground. This can be useful when you want to get rid of background walls and let some light in deep underground for a custom adventure map. You can always fill in your own dirt walls if needed underground as well. Furthermore, if you pull the sliders all the way to the right(the highest values) the default background walls will be completely removed. I believe they are hidden behind the default hell background that cannot be altered or removed.
The next section contains a couple check boxes and two sliders. Checking the Meteor box will cause a Meteor to spawn at the next appropriate time after the world is loaded into Terraria. The Difficulty check box can turn your world into a Hardmode world. Keep in mind that TEdit doesn't add hallow or corruption into your map, so just checking this box will flag it as hardmode but if you want hallow and a larger corruption biome you must add those tiles in yourself. Although Wyverns and other non-biome specific hardmode enemies will spawn after this box is checked. The next slider determines how many Altars have been smashed. This can be set from 0-3. This determines how many of the new ores are generated, but since these are enabled in an editor and not in-game, the new ores won't be generated. Orbs smashed works the same except it counts how many Shadow Orbs have been smashed. If you set this to anything but 0 you then have a chance for a Meteorite to spawn.
The Bosses Downed section contains all the bosses and whether they have been defeated or not. If the Eye of Cthulhu(EoC) is checked, the game will allow the Dryad to spawn and move in with you, but if it is deselected the EoC has a chance to spawn naturally if your character meets the right criteria. If Eater of Worlds(EoW) is checked, I don't believe there is any difference, except that if you haven't defeated the EoC yet the Dryad can spawn and move in with you. If you check Skeletron, the old man will be removed from your map and you can access the dungeon. You can even load up a map that has defeated Skeletron and deselect this box, doing that can enable the Old Man to come back and you will be able to fight Skeletron again at the dungeon entrance. If Clowns is checked the Clothier will start selling the clown costume. If Frost Legion is checked and you load the map during the holiday season, Santa Claus will move into a spare room. Finally, if Goblin Invasion is checked the Goblin Tinkerer will spawn on the map for you to save.
Here is the bottom half of the World Properties tab:
These sections deal almost entirely with NPC's, with the Invasion Type being the exception. NPC's Saved are boxes that will cause the respected NPC to be able to spawn in the map. Checking these will allow you to place them in homes you made. Now, the really cool part. If you don't have the NPC's Saved boxes checked, and you add one of those NPC's to the map they will sit there all bound up, ready to be saved! This is really neat for custom map makers. You now have the option to set these 3 NPC's in your map, ready to be saved.
Invasion Type will add an invasion to your map when you load the map up in Terraria. Currently there are two options, Frost Legion and Goblin Invasion. Actually enabling Frost Legion will spawn their invasion regardless of whether it's the Holiday Season or not. Invasion size will set the size of the invasion you can have as little as 1 enemy or 1000 enemies. Oddly enough there is a setting for 0 enemies. Invasion X Target sets where the invaders start coming from, not where they migrate too. The invasions will always migrate towards the natural spawn point of the map. If you set the natural spawn point far away from the center of the map, you might have a hard time getting the invasions to show up. Both invasions prefer to invade closer to the center of the map.
The next section is where you can name each NPC and add them to the map if they haven't naturally spawned yet. When adding them for the first time TEdit will set them at your spawn point. You can always change this with the Pointer Tool.
Clipboard Tab
The Clipboard Tab saves everything you copy here. There are three options on top, Empty Clipboard, Import Schematic or Image, and Import False Color Image. With a check box for Paste Empty Tiles. If you deselect Paste Empty Tiles, you can paste objects and leave out the empty space. If this is checked, the empty space will get pasted, overwriting whatever you are pasting over. It's very helpful for pasting structures into new maps without disturbing the area around the structure.
Empty Clipboard is pretty self explanatory, except that in the build I was using and the most current version as of the day this was published, it was greyed out and unusable. You can always just click Remove under any clip in the clipboard to remove them anyway.
Import Schematic or Image is a very useful tool for map makers. Underneath each clip you can click Export and that allows you to save clippings outside of the editor to be imported into another world or just saved for a later date. You can also share Schematics and there are a couple threads on TerrariaOnline.com that have shematics people are sharing.
Import Schematic or Image also allows you to import an image that uses the same color scheme as TEdit as a schematic. The editor will convert the color of the image into the appropriate tile. This works if you take a screenshot of something in the editor and then load it in as a schematic. Watch out for scaling problems though, depending on the scale of the image, it might not scale exactly the same as the way it was made to be. The image imported must be a 24 bit PNG as well.
Import False Color Image is something that I don't fully understand. It's complicated but if you must know how it works I will point you to the official TEdit Wiki here. That link should explain it to you, and if you still don't understand it, don't worry.
More Information
You can go here for a complete list of Shortcuts and Keybindings. There are lots of shortcuts from clearing selections, to zooming in and out if you don't have a scroll wheel on your mouse.
You can also go here to learn how TEdit manages your save files. TEdit makes it's own backups of worlds edited through TEdit and you can go there to learn more about that.
More information can always be found at the official TEdit Wiki here. The wiki is a little outdated, but most tools work as mentioned and only the newest features of TEdit 3 are left out. More importantly, just messing around with TEdit will teach you the most about how it works. Sure TEdit has some quirks, and there might be a few bugs here and there, but overall TEdit is an amazing tool with some awesome potential to make some great maps.
As always, you can find the most up-to-date version of TEdit here.
TEdit is an open source project being hosted at GigHub.com. If you want to help with development check out TEdit's GitHub page here.
Of course, none of this would be possible with out the awesome work of BinaryConstruct for developting such an awesome tool. Big thanks to Aimeryan who works on the TEdit Wiki and Kyphis who works on schematics. Big thanks to SineSwiper for his work on XML settings and Heathtech for his work on Wall, Tile, and Tree textures.
To submit bug reports, please do so on the Github page or in BC's TEdit 3 thread here.
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