The Guardian's Tutorial to

The IslandEditor (c) by Sir Henry

(please watch the copyright)

PART 1

After you started the editor, click into the center of the editing window, in order to call the field-editor menu...

Now click the directory ' coast ' and move on to the 'Böschung gerade' ('embankment even'), and select there the first tile (# 1011)
In order to let an embankment in the south attach ashore, the embankment must possess ' orientation 0 ', i.e., in the upper there is still a bit of land, then follows the embankment, which changes into the beach then. We will deal with orientation later, now first set a number of the embankment tiles to the lower end of the land surface, which you have created just before...
 

Now again click on ' turn ', on which the tile now has orientation 2, and set a row of it to the top margin of the land surface.
The same again with orientation 3 and we surrounded our land surface with a series by embankment tiles.
Obviously now here still the ' corners ' are missing...

We set the other corners similarly. Click on ' turn ' and we have correct orientation for the left lower corner. Another click on ' turn ' and we can set the upper left corner,and in the end after repeated ' turn ' set the upper right corner.

At the latest now we should remember that one should SAVE regularly :)

Not bad at all... but now back to the islandeditor...

Next the 'Strand' ('beach') is set.
To do so we click in the directory 'Wasser und Strand' ('water and beach'), look for 'Strand' ('beach') and select the tile 'Strand gerade 1' ('beach even 1') (# 1205). It may be a little irritating at first that the ' orientation 0 ' at the beach-tile is that on the right part is water and on the left a part beach. But with more training you will soon get the hang of it...

Similarly to the previous actions we thus first attach a series of beach tiles in ' orientation 1 ' to right edge of our island,
then the lower series, the left and the upper ones...

Now we come to the beach corners...
Select (the onliest) 'Strand Ecke außen' ('beach corner outside') tile (# 1207).
Orientation 3, which should be active at the moment, is the tile for the right, lower corner.
As used we turn and set the other three corner tiles, too

In order to round the edges of shallow and middle water a little, we use the mixed tile 'seichtes/mittleres Wasser' ('shallow/middle water' # 1202)
and 'mittleres/tiefes Wasser' ('middle/deep water' #1209). You should be able now to set these tiles yourself...
a tip, in orientation 2 the tile fits into the left, lower corner.

And thats how our island looks like in the ANNO editor:

Nice... not awefully nice, but ... well, let's go on!

Now we come to the most important characteristic of the editor (in my eyes) and this is: copy and paste.
Our still square island achieved the extents of 16x16 fields in the meantime.We now mark the upper, left 8x8 section.
That can be done either through clicking and pulling (drag&draw) or by setting the left upper point, hold the shift key and setting the right lower point.
A right-mouse-click calls the context menu. Select 'kopieren' ('copy') there.
 

Now we mark the point of 4 fields above our island and orient ourselves at the lefthand side of our artwork.
Another right-mouse-click and select 'Einfügen' ('paste')...

In the sublist 'Wasser und Strand' ('water and beach'), in the directory 'Strand' ('beach') we select the first 'Strand Ecke innen' ('beach corner inside') tile (# 1206)
The orientation of the tile must be ' 2 '.

We wanna have a look at it in the ANNO editor (save first!)
 

Ahha... already better! However - it still is too "smoothly"...

Therefore we will have a look at a few alternative tiles now...
We select the directory ' beach ' and there we select 'Strand gerade 2' ('beach even 2'). This tile we place at the right edge of our island, as the second, even beach field. As the third we set ' beach even 3 '... and so on until we set ' beach even 6 '. Then we go upward in the selection again setting 'beach even 5 ' and then ' beach even 4 ', ' beach even 3 ' and finally ' beach even 2 '.
Now it already looks " more naturally " in the islandeditor...
 

We are now anxious to see the result in the Anno editor...

hmmm... yeah... not bad, isn't it? :)

To change the remaining tiles of the beach, we use the feature "Orientierung beibehalten" ('orientation maintained').
We select thus e.g. ' beach even 4 ' (# 1216), activate the function "orientation maintained" and set a tile to the bottom edge. The next three we set to the lefthand side and then two of these even beach tiles to the top margins of our island.

You see, without caring about the orientation of the tiles, it turned out to be set correctly.
It obviously functions like this: with activated feature "orientation maintained", when setting the new tiles, the editor checks out which orientation its neighbours have and take over their value...
 

After we've now found out this, nothing can hold us anymore... similarly to the "irregular" beach fields we also arrange the embankments again...
Therefor we select 'Böschung gerade' ('embankment even'), choose from the 10 different embankment structures and set them with the function "orientation maintained" activated

Note! Watch out so that you do not replace a ' corner ' in the eagerness of combat! :)

Now that we are gathering so nicely, we should make another small modification to remain in training...

In the next three images I show how I copied three corners of the island to assemble it to an extend at the left lower corner...
A little trial&error should enable you to easily reconstruct this...

I replaced embankment and land in the new island with the tiles 'sand beach' (# 1231 + # 1232).
 

Let's have a look at it in the ANNO editor...

In order not to let this new island appear so angular now, some detailed work is necessary ...
I indicated the fields, which I replaced with 'sand beach', with red spots in the following picture. Each time corrections at the edges become necessary,
which should be checked carefully. (one overlooks all too easy e.g.. ' beach corner outside # 1207)

I also tried to give the island a "more natural" look by adding irregular shallow waters...

We want to set a few trees now, and at the latest now we must decide whether it  becomes a "southern" or "northern" island, because accordingly the appropriate trees must be selected...

Since the default setting is 'northern', we do not need to change the "island preferences" now. If we wanted a southern type with palmtrees and the specific resources we must select "southern tree types" and change the preferences, too.

(note: here it would be nice, if the program automatically or optionally change the trees according to the characteristic. So one could create two versions from each island without having to modify each tree individually.)

We want to look at it again in the ANNO editor... (this time from another point of view...)
Aha, so it proved to be of some use at all :)

That's it for now. I leave it up to your fantasy to organize the coasts... the more wound and the less statically the better the result. But don't forget, normally islands do also need a few even coastal places, in which warehouses and shipyards can be built.

In further parts of this tutorial we will look at further basic things like setting mountains, rocks and rivers, and some more decorative tiles.

This is, if I get any feedback at all... otherwise it won't be needed I guess...:)

August 2000 (C) The Guardian

(c) August 2000, The Guardian