Editor: Environment Front View Guide

Overview

This is a visual guide to aid Monaco Mission makers in selecting the best possible environment for their respective missions.

Introduction

This is a visual guide to aid Monaco Mission makers in selecting the best possible environment (called Weather in-game) to fit their respective missions by giving them a visual view of each environment and it’s affect on buildings and foliage without having to navigate back and forth through menus to see the result.

Each environment view (Empty Environment) will be supplemented with a sample of one of my Workshop missions (World Filled) to show how each environment differs in terms of lighting and presentation. The World Filled view in particular has 2 underground levels, 2 building levels, and 1 roof level made up of barriers for a total of about 4.5 levels in height; I mention this just to give an idea of just how high each level rises in proportion to the background. Additionally, any artificial lighting added to the World Filled view is purely white, so the color effects seen on the map’s Front View are the result of the Weather chosen.

Note: For those unfamiliar with the Mole’s Workshop Editor, I suggest reading up on Differ3nce’s and AndyN’s comprehensive Editor guide before continuing:

[link]

Side-note: I know I mispelt Environment in the images; my bad.

Additional Tips:

Keep an eye on how the environment alters the colors of walls and especially windows. Take that into account when adding additional lighting to flair up the level.
A few environments have abstract buildings in addition to the background. You’ll notice this only in the Front View of course, but keep it under consideration when designing your map (if that sort of things bugs you that is).
For any and all missions you make, I highly suggest making the first floor a solid wall. This allows the missions “true” first floor to have the proper perspective that is aligned with the Front View.
It stands to reason that there is no single proper way to create a Monaco Workshop mission. With that being said however, I still highly recommend selecting an environment in early mission development to work along side the environment’s tone and pallet, rather than suffer from lighting headaches afterwards.