Mountain Lakes

"Deep inside the forests of the Lush Planet is a little mountain oasis, ruled mostly by the wilderness... although humans did attempt to exploit the area for resources - rather unsuccessfully... The nature doesn't seem to be bothered by the bots though."

Mountain Lakes is a Tile created by me in a modified version of the Tile Editor. It features 4 lakes in a mountain (all have functional water and are placed at different heights!), has various cool visual effects, a tiny bit of a backstory/quasi-lore and on top of that, should be completely Survival-Ready with stuff like Animal spawning, Loot Crates, bots and more! (Some stuff, such as Fire or Animal/Bot spawning unfortunately does not work in Creative Mode, it doesn't however detract much from the experience! :D)

The Tile is meant to have a rather chill atmosphere, it should be a decent place to relax a bit! Tune into the sound of the flowing water stream, observe the butterflies stumbling around the gigantic trees, or take a quick swim in one of the lakes lit by the fireflies!

Mountain Lakes however is a tile that was created mainly to show off some of the capabilities of the partially unlocked Tile Editor (more on that later), more precisely, what can be created with NODES!

What are Nodes? You can think of them kind of as the same type of thing as Terrain Assets or Decals! They are however EXTREMELY useful! You can create various visual or sound effects - such as fire, water jets, butterflies, fireflies or outdoor ambience, as well as create navigation paths for bots, create WORKING Water ANYWHERE on the tile (works with other liquids too!), place lootcrates, bot & animal spawn spots and MUCH more!

Why aren't Nodes more popular? The Developers of the game locked them away from the tile editor for unknown reasons, if you try to load up a tile with a node in the Tile Editor with a completely unmodified version of the game, the node will simply disappear from it... You will also be unable to create new nodes. Keep in mind this only affects the Tile Editor and NOT Survival/Creative mode! So you can enjoy this or any other tile using nodes just fine with a completely unmodified game! :D

How do I use Nodes myself? First of all, you probably don't want the Nodes to disappear from your Tiles when you load them in: Step 1: Download SMinjector by HardCoded: https://github.com/Kariaro/SMInjector/releases/tag/v0.1 Step 2: in /Scrap Mechanic/Release/, create a file called "steam_appid.txt", open it in notepad, type "387990" in it and save it. (you can access the Scrap Mechanic folder by right clicking the game on steam and selecting Browse Local Files) Step 3: launch SMInjector.exe (it will launch the game, with the game launched thru the injector it will make nodes not disappear from tiles when you load them in!)

HOWEVER, at the moment, there is no easy way to add Nodes to existing tiles unfortunately, so before you start making your tile that you want to use Nodes in, get yourself a template tile that already has a Node in it! Almost any Survival/Creative tile will do! I also prepared this blank template with just a Node in it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2476652207 Once you have a tile with a node, you can do whatever you want with it! The properties window of the Node will let you change it to whatever kind of Node you want! You can also duplicate the Node within the Tile by trying to move it while holding down SHIFT!

Don't want to use the Injector? You can get a Node in the tile editor by loading in a tile that contains a Prefab with a Node, when you unprefab it, you will get a Node! However, once you leave the Tile Editor you won't be able to go back to the Tile to edit it without destroying the Node... You will also not be able to upload the Tile with the Node to the workshop, because uploading the Tile reloads it (removing the Nodes!) I highly recommend NOT trying to mess around with Nodes without the Injector, it's a waste of time and a huge source of frustration... If you're skeptical about the Injector, you can check it's code and build it yourself if you'd like :D

If you want to mess around with custom water pools, you probably also want to unhide the Water Asset (water in Scrap Mechanic is made of a Node - providing the underwater effect, the water physics, swimming, etc + a water surface Asset that sits at the top of the node and is what you can actually see, the water node by itself is invisible!) You can do that really easily! Go to /Scrap Mechanic/Data/Terrain/Database, open the file "assetsets.json" with Notepad, scroll all the way to the bottom: near a thing saying "Water" you'll see that it says ["hidden": "true"], simply replace the true with false and save the file! Now in the Tile Editor you will see an Asset for Water, Chemicals and Oil! (using those will not prevent you from loading the tile in with an unmodified version of the game, or your friends joining you ingame! So you don't have to worry about that! :D)

This was my first ever ACTUAL Tile, it turned out WAY better than I expected it to and I had a TON of fun creating it! Hopefully you can have too, by playing around with it as well as with Nodes in the Tile Editor! :D ENJOY!

psst, you can sub to me on YouTube too if you want to, I make some really cool content :p https://youtube.com/dartfrogyt/ ALSO a HUGE shoutout to HardCoded (aka Kariaro) for putting a TON of work and effort into unlocking the Tile Editor! :D This would not be possible without her!