Wonderland Adventures Editor Manual

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Contributions

The guide was originally created by Emerald141 who has since redacted their entire forum existence. Thank you for the foundation nonetheless.

Slight edits by Midnight Synergy and Aryan.

New sections written for OpenWA and MNIKEditor by Epicord Online.

The document is now a wiki page that anybody can edit.

Introduction

Welcome

Hello, I’m PCPuzzle, and I’m one of the forums on the forum. Welcome to the MODERN AGE, you little worm. This document is to serve as your updated guide on MODERN adventure design for MODERN Wonderland Adventures. The Wonderland Adventures Editor (WAE) as originally released by Midnight Synergy was but an acorn, and today we readily swing amongst the branches of a large and rather esoteric tree grown via decades of passive-aggressive forum posting.

With the release of the WA source code in 2019, we have a much better understanding of the game’s inner workings. We have since reverse-engineered many components of the game to our advantage. This guide shall describe these inner workings in eye-watering detail, as well as provide some more general explanations, tips & tricks, and whatever else the community decides to include here.

History

The current state of WA Custom Adventures is a little confusing, so we’ll try and get you up to speed on what the situation is.

Midnight Synergy released the Editor & Player for the Planet of the Z-Bots version of Wonderland Adventures in 2014. The source code for the series was made public in 2019. From here, the community created OpenWA, a version of WA modified from this source code with various quality-of-life improvements, bug fixes, and even some new gameplay features. Currently, this is the preferred version of the player. One important thing to note is that OpenWA is not fully backwards-compatible with the vanilla WAE player, but it is the preferred version of the game because of its useful fixes and tweaks. We will note OpenWA features where applicable.

Forum user MNIK has also made a souped-up version of the editor called the MNIKEditor. This guide will favor the MNIKEditor as it adds many additional options for new and advanced users to make the editing experience more pleasant and exposes intricate game features. Although MNIKEditor works best with OpenWA, it can still create vanilla-compatible adventures.

Installation

The modern WAE setup has multiple components. Here is how to get what you need:

  1. Download the official Wonderland Adventures Editor and extract it.

    This contains the base game and all its resources.

  2. Download OpenWA and extract it on top of the official WAE.

    OpenWA is a version of the game maintained by the community with various quality-of-life improvements, bug fixes, and even some new gameplay elements (more on that later).

  3. Download the MNIKEditor and extract it on top of that.

    This is the preferred editor due to its advanced features and delicate flavor. If desired, you can rename the original editor and keep that around too.

More Resources

The WA Player

The Player is the counterpart to the Editor. It lets you play the custom adventures.

This is a guide about how to use the Wonderland Adventures Editor, not a guide about how to play Wonderland Adventures. Therefore, the Player portion of this guide is rather brief.

Creating Your Stinker

The first time you fire up the Player, click on the text at the bottom of the screen to create your profile. You can choose a character or make your own. Left-click to advance through the various physical traits and right-click to go backward through the list. Choose your Stinker wisely, as you’ll be playing as him/her/it for all your adventures to come!

Downloading Adventures

Under the main Editor folder, you’ll see a folder called "User Data". Under that folder, there’s another folder called "Custom". Under that folder, there’s another folder called "Downloads Inbox". This is where the .wa3 files you download should go. Once you start the Player, they’ll be unpacked and ready to play. If you're wanting to install a Hub, there should be installation instructions in the Hub's forum thread. Generally, Hubs go in UserData\Custom\Hubs\NameOfTheHub\TheHub'sAdventureAndHubFolders.

Uploading Adventures

Under UserData\Custom, there’s another folder called Downloads Outbox. Once your level is compiled, there should be a copy of your adventure under whatever filename you chose. Upload that file to the forum so people can play your adventure!

Editor Screens Overview

Adventure Select Menu

This menu shows the adventures that you've made. You can select one to edit, archive, or delete. Archiving an adventure means it will be moved into a separate Archive folder to avoid cluttering the main view. Deleting an adventure is permanent.

MNIKEditor Exclusive: Click the (Adventures) text to switch to viewing custom adventures you've made, adventures you've downloaded, or custom hubs.

To create a new adventure, just type a filename here. One popular filename format is YOURNAME001, as this lets people sort your adventures by the order you created them.

Once you begin editing an adventure, you will be taken to the...

Adventure Summary Screen

This screen shows basic information about a selected adventure like its title, description, starting coordinates, and other properties that apply to the adventure as a whole. On the bottom, there are action buttons to save and test.

Settings on this screen are saved into the “master.dat” file. Hence, you might hear this screen referred to as the “master.dat editor” or “master editor”.

TODO: click here to jump to the full section

On the right of this screen are two columns, LV for levels and DG for dialogs. This is a list of levels and dialogs that are part of the adventure. Clicking on one of the numbers will take you to the...

Level Editor

This screen has a camera view, tile editor, and object editor. It's the most important part of the editor and you will spend most of your time here. Exiting will take you back to the Adventure Summary Screen.

Most of the rest of the chapters in this guide involve this screen.

Dialog Editor

This screen has a large text editing field and text effects at the right side. TODO: you can click here to learn more about dialogs. Exiting will take you back to the Adventure Summary Screen.

Number Editing Controls

Most numbers in the editor can be changed with the following controls:

Action Result Notes
Left-click +1 Hold shift for +10
Right-click -1 Hold shift for -10
Scroll wheel Adjust +1/-1 Hold shift for +10/-10
Ctrl+click Type a number MNIKEditor exclusive

The Adventure Summary Screen

Template:Note

Starting Coordinates

Once you’ve made your first area, you can set the starting coordinates of the adventure. To find out what the coordinates of the spot you want are, just mouse over the spot and look at the coordinates at the bottom of the screen.

The "Dir" coordinate is the rotation that the player Stinker will initially be facing. 180 (default) is south, 270 is west, 0 is north, and 90 is east.

The starting location is always in Level 01. There is no way to change this, it is hardcoded into the program.

Gates/Keys

You can choose whether you want to use the gates and keys textures from WA1, MoFI, or PotZ. This is a cosmetic change only; it doesn't affect gameplay at all.

Version 1 is from WA1. Colour 13 is Mushroom. Version 2 is from MoFI. Colour 13 is Fabric. Colour 10 keys appear as lockpicks. Version 3 is from PotZ. Colour 13 is Spooky. Colour 14 is Gold.

Custom Icons

If you go to UserData\Custom\Icons, you’ll see a few icon sets which can be used for “Custom” items. If you want to create your own custom items, take the ‘Standard’ file, slap your icons onto the end, and put it in the directory as 'icons [NAME]'. Click on the field on the Editor screen to change the icon set - if the file you’re looking for doesn't exist, the Editor will just revert back to the standard set.

For more information, see the TODO custom content section.

Hub Commands

If you end up featuring this adventure in a Hub project, you can use this panel to help it interact with the rest of the Hub. If the adventure is won, the player will be deposited at the coordinates specified in WonExit; if the adventure is lost, the player will come out at the LostExit coordinates instead. Additionally, when the adventure is won, up to three commands may be executed; unlike other commands, these can be executed in any hub level you want! "LV" is the level that the commands will be executed in, "C" is the command to be executed, and the four "D"s are, in order, Data1, Data2, Data3, and Data4.

Ways to Exit

From the adventure summary editor, “cancel and exit” and “save and exit” will both return you to the main screen. You can also “compile and exit”, which saves and then copies the adventure into the player, or “save and test”, which is described below.

Note that clicking cancel or save here will not affect levels or dialogs since those have already been saved.

Note that clicking a level or dialog to edit will save changes on this screen.

Advanced Options (OpenWA Only)

OpenWA exclusive: In the top right corner, click “(Adv. Options)” to get to the advanced options. Click “(Main Options)” to get back to the main screen again.

The following settings are available in Advanced Settings:

Starting items (Advanced / OpenWA)

Below “Adventure Title” should be “Starting items”. Here, you may toggle whether or not the player starts with gloves, the glowgem, or a spy-eye when the adventure starts.

Widescreen Spell Range (Advanced / OpenWA)

OpenWA adds a widescreen feature to the player. This option allows you to toggle the player’s ability to cast magic onto tiles that are only visible in Widescreen.

For most adventures, allowing this will either give widescreen users a way to potentially “cheat” the adventure’s intended solution, or otherwise allow an adventure to only be beatable with Widescreen mode. For some other adventures, this option may improve enjoyment in widescreen mode without compromising the integrity of the adventure. Think about it before turning this option on.

ShardCMD (Advanced / OpenWA)

Shards by default take you to a fixed .lvl at a fixed coordinate, as they do in the original Wonderland Adventures game. OpenWA allows you to change what function the selected shard will do. Clicking # will allow you to cycle through each shard, with 0 being red, 1 being orange, and so on until 6, being purple. C lets you change the command, while the four Ds from left to right let you change Data1, Data2, Data3 and Data4 of that command.

Unfortunately, even when activating shards with command 114, shards will not be able to be used until you have a .lvl saved for each coordinate the shards would ordinarily take you. As such, while is feature may be used, CMD-modified shards are an advanced feature, which normal custom items can replicate.

GlyphCMD (Advanced / OpenWA)

Much like ShardCMD, GlyphCMD allows you to adjust the commands of what glyphs do when activated by a Magic Mirror. By default, Custom Items with “Glyph” function, which have a texture ranging from 16 to 20, will act as glyphs do in WA: MOFI; that is, once used by a Magic Mirror, they will activate the mirror, turning it to a specific color; if the player’s standing in front of the mirror, it will then send the player to a specific .lvl file to a specific coordinate. However, OpenWA allows you to edit what commands run instead when activating and standing by the Magic Mirror.

Much like with ShardCMD, the number next to # tells what glyph the command will be applied to. Clicking on this number will cycle through the various glyphs, and allow you to edit each one individually. The numbers 0-4 represent custom icons with “glyph” function that have the textures 16-20. I.e. adjusting #0 will affect a glyph item with texture 16; #1 affects texture 17, #2 texture 18, #3 texture 19, and #4 texture 20.

Just like ShardCMD, C affects what command will run, while the leftmost D affects the command’s Data1, the second D Data2, the third D Data3, and the rightmost D Data4.

Similar to ShardCMD, GlyphCMD is an advanced feature that does not serve much use that other custom items couldn’t perform.

Custom Map Name (Advanced / OpenWA)

Custom Map Name is an advanced option that allows you to change the map displayed by custom items with “map” function.

Disclaimer: For maps, you will need nine files: a mappiece0.bmp texture for the slot when the current map has no collected map slots, and mappiece1.bmp to mappiece8.bmp for each map slot. Place them all in a UserData\Custom\Maps\[NAME] folder (where [NAME] is whatever you wish to name your map). Then type [NAME] in the Custom Map Name field, and the game will read those files, allowing you to piece together a custom map.

See the UserData\Custom\Maps\Fire Island as an example. Fire Island is used as the default map.


Appendices

  • Commands
  • Object presets
  • Object adjusters?
  • Tile attributes?

Content to be transferred

Content to be written

Custom Content

???

Hubs

  • History, what tools currently exist, etc
  • How to properly create and manage hubs?
  • (MNIKEditor) How to edit adventures within existing hubs?
  • How to publish hubs?

File Structure

  • explain the convention of the Custom folder and why you might use it opposed to the built-in custom content system
  • describe the different folders and point out that custom music/accessories go in Data and not UserData/Custom
  • Brief overview of different file types such as .wlv, .dia, .wop(?)
  • master.dat is currently explained down below
  • Perhaps a recommended way to package your adventure with custom content (or this could live in a section dedicated to that)
  • I think this would make sense in a broader “custom content” section
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