Worms Clan Wars Editor and Steam Workshop

Overview

Fancy creating your own content for Worms Clan Wars’ Steam Workshop: The Worms Workshop? Then check out this handy guide below which will tell you all about the Worms Clan Wars Editor!

Introduction

Steam Workshop – User Generated Content Tool
Ever wanted to make your worms truly unique? With Steam Workshop integration you can create 3D items for use in Worms™ Clan Wars. Hats, glasses, moustaches, trinkets and gravestones are entirely creatable by you, and can be shared with the community! Provided is a tool that can be used to get your creations into the game. You can download and install the tool via your Steam client under the tools section of your library; it is named Worms™ Clan Wars Editor. We have also given you a set of template ‘OBJ’ files that can be used in your preferred modelling package to get the correct scale and positioning of items. The template files will be in your steam apps folder, located where you installed the game to:

SteamsteamappscommonWorms™ Clan Wars Editor

Requirements & Guidelines

• ‘FBX’ or ‘Collada’ format for the geometry.
• The polygon count can be a maximum of 675.
• The vertex count can be a maximum of 5000.
• The texture resolution should be no more than 256×256.
• Limited to normal and diffuse maps. The model gains its specularity from the alpha channel of the normal map.
• Textures should be in ‘TGA’ format.
• Items must have a Blinn shader with normal and diffuse maps assigned before exporting.
• You can create items in the following categories; hats, glasses, moustaches, trinkets, tall trinkets and gravestones.
• When making an item you must make 4 versions of it. This is due to there being 4 different kinds of worm, each one with a different shape and size. You can make an item once and resize it to fit all the worms, or alternatively you can make variations of an item suitable to each class.
• The item must fit within the bounding box ‘OBJ’ provided; this represents the maximum size of any item.

Setting up your item and exporting

1) Decide which kind of item you want to make.
2) Open up your preferred 3D modelling package.
3) Import one of our provided worms ‘OBJ’ file templates to use as a base to model your item around to get the correct size and position.
4) Model your chosen item using the 3D modelling package of your choice.
5) Unwrap and texture your model. The available maps for use are normal and diffuse.
6) Apply a Blinn shader to your model with your normal and diffuse maps assigned to it. If you are unable to assign Blinn shader in your 3D software then you can manually supply your textures in the tool.
7) Make sure in your 3D modelling package that all translations are set to zero and that the scale is set to 1. This will mean that your exported model will appear correctly in the tool.
8) Select and export you textured model as either an ‘FBX’ (recommended) or a ‘Collada’ file with default settings.
9) You need to create 4 versions of your model in total, each one fitting the different Worm classes. You can do this by resizing and positioning your model on each different class of Worm using the templates provided.
10) Repeat step 8 for the remaining 3 items until you have 4 ‘FBX’ or ‘Collada’ files, each individually named. Name them something memorable so you can differentiate between the class of worm and type of item.

Importing, coverting and previewing your mesh

1) First open up the Worms™ Clan Wars Beta Editor via tools in Steam.
2) Next under the “Import Mesh” tab choose an “Output File Name”.
3) Select 1 of your previously exported ‘FBX’ files in “FBX Source File”.
4) If exported correctly your ‘FBX’ should have carried over its texture files, but if not then you can manually supply the texture files here.
5) As a default the “Export Directory” sets to wherever your ‘FBX’ came from, this can be changed here if desired.
6) Hit convert to change your ‘FBX’ into a file type native to Worms™ Clan Wars called ‘XOM’. If it was successful then the preview window will display the item on the worm.
7) Now repeat the process of importing and converting each individual ‘FBX’ file you previously created for each class of worm. You should end up with 4 ‘XOM’ files in total ready to be built into a usable game asset.
8) You can use the “Model Preview” section to load in different converted ‘XOM’ files and try them out on different worm types and model types.

Building your asset

1) Click on the “Build Asset” tab in the tool. This process will get your models ready to be used in game.
2) Fill in the “Asset Name” with a suitable name for your items.
3) Select the type of asset from the “Asset Type” drop down list. This informs the game what kind of items you have made and positions them correctly on the worm in game.
4) The “Build Directory” will be automatically filled in as the place your ‘XOM’ files came from, you can change it here if desired.
5) Under “Customisation Panel Offsets” You can specify Translation, Rotation and Scale for how the preview of your item appears in the customisation screen in game.
6) Under “Asset Data” click on “Select Mesh” next to each class of worm and specify the ‘XOM’ file that matches up to that class of worm. 4 ‘XOM’ files are required which you converted from your ‘FBX’ files in the previous section.
7) Hit “Build Asset” this enables the tool to build all 4 of your items into a single package that will be used in game. It builds it into a single ‘UGC’ file.

Publishing content

1) Click on the “Publish Content” tab in the tool.
2) As a default it will be set to “New” on the right hand panel of “Published Files”. You can update existing content if you have previously published anything by selecting its file name from the list.
3) Fill in the “Title” this is what you want your content to appear as on the Steam Workshop.
4) Select a “Preview File”. This is a preview image of your content to be displayed on the Steam Workshop; it can be either a ‘JPEG’ ‘BMP’ or ‘PNG’.
5) If you press the “S” button it creates a ‘BMP’ image of the preview worm and your item. It takes this from the preview window at the top of the tool, making it easy to create a preview file to use.
6) Next you can fill in “Description” giving an overview of what your content is.
7) Now select “Asset File” and specify which asset you want to use. This defaults to the previously built ‘UGC’ file asset. This is the file that goes into game; it gives each of the 4 classes of worm their respective item when selected through the in game customisation.
8) “Visibility” can be set on your item so it appears on the Steam Workshop as either public, private or friends only.
9) You can “View Workshop Agreement” on this page before agreeing to the terms of service.
10) Finally click the tick box to agree to the Workshop terms of service and press the “Publish” button. If successful you will be taken to the steam page where your newly uploaded content is.