In this guide, I aim to provide you with ideas, the know-how, and multiplayer requirements needed to, for instance, change the desert on the Summer’s Heat Map to snow!
I assume you have either Rise of Legends Demo 1 or 2 installed. If you don’t, you can get help at Open the Shortcut, and you will find yourself in a folder with 3 files in. Go up one stage (to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Rise Of Legends Demo), and select the maps folder. Copy and paste it, naming it backup maps, or something to tell you what it is. Next, open (Demo)Summer's Heat. If it opens in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox etc, then close it, right click on the file, move your mouse down to ‘open with’ and click Choose Program. Otherwise, skip the next paragraph. In this pop-up, select Notepad, and check the box at the bottom that says ‘Always use the selected program to open this type of file’. Click ok, and then try opening the file again. Notepad will open with the file displayed. The bit we are currently concerned with is: tileset="desert" environment="Desert_Final" You can find that by pressing Control+F, and entering tileset into the search box. It is not far down at all, on the first few lines, but searching is easier. Right now, the map is a desert, so it says desert for tileset and Desert Final for environment. There are many different ground textures to choose: To make the map like grassy plains, copy the one you want from above, highlight tileset="desert" environment="Desert_Final" and press Control+V. Please note that Desert Eye Candy (Bones to the left of the Western Player on Summer's Heatm for example), are unchanged. We may address this in a later tutorial. [This message has been edited by Evolved (edited 05-01-2006 @ 02:11 PM).]
Go to your computer Desktop, right click, select new, and then select shortcut.
A pop-up will appear, asking for the name for the shortcut. Enter RoL Maps (you can change it later), and click next. The next screen will ask you to enter the location the shortcut will take you to. Enter C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Rise Of Legends Demo\maps. Then press Finish.
Now we have made a quick shortcut, set the file to open properly, and made a backup, we can begin.
tileset="desert" environment="Desert_Final" - Desert
tileset="steppe" environment="Steppe_Final" - Steppe
tileset="arctic" environment="Arctic_Final" - Arctic
tileset=" jungle_dish" environment=" Jungle_final_CC9" - Jungle like in Battle for the Core (2nd Demo Only)
tileset="bavarian" environment="Bavarian_Final" - Bavarian
tileset="jungle" environment="Jungle_Final" - Jungle (Looks like grass really)
tileset="dark_glass" environment="Dark_Glass_Final" - Description Unknown
tileset="dark_glass_2" environment="Dark_Glass_Final" - Description Unknown
tileset="dark_glass_3" environment="Dark_Glass_Final" - Description Unknown
tileset="dark_forest" environment="Dark_Forest_Final" - Description Unknown
tileset="volcanic" environment="Volcanic_Final" - Volcanic
tileset="bavarian_miana" environment="Bavarian_Final" - Volcanic
There may be more that I have missed, but this list is likely to be just about complete now.
If you are going to use a Map with a modified Ground Texture, it may cause the Multiplayer to Crash. This has yet to be tested, so please make sure you and a someone else on Multiplayer have the same files.
If you wish to see some examples of this process, go to
This is part one of the 4 Tutorials on Modding Scenarios without the Scenario Editor. In Part 2, we will look at adding custom descriptions for scenarios, and guards for neutral sites.
If you have any problems or questions, for instance you need a backup, or you can’t understand anything, get help at
This guide is exclusive to RoN Oracle, MikiMetropolis.com (my site) and Rise of Legends Heaven.
You can also get a tutorial on Heroes at