If you hadn't played this game much in the day or you just never knew because whatever reason then i'm happy to inform you that outlaws supported simple modding and full mapping with very nice fan made tools that were adapted from dark forces.

This includes single and multiplayer custom maps which having just tested (briefly) seems to work perfectly fine with the gog version! Which it should no matter what but i had to make sure because custom maps can help extend the value of the game by giving you more to play.

For those of you that knew that these existed prepare to live some tear jerking nostalgia, you might recognizes these links.

http://www.paleface.net/index.html

http://www.theoutlawdad.com/ (will play audio upon opening)

http://olhideout.net/ (Another link someone had given me)

These are pretty much the only two sites i know of that are dedicated to outlaws and still up. They have a treasure trove of outlaws related things like maps, files, tools, art skins, sound replacements and etc. If you're interested in mapping the sites also contain the map editor download and file editors to edit art and sound. Both sites should contain tutorials and how to's for tools and the map editor.

Far as i'm aware these sites don't contain anything that could be perceived as piracy or against any ones terms of service but i'll remove both links if needed to.

Anyone else got any links to share outlaws related?

Edit: Added a new link

If only olmaps was still around. In my opinion, they had the best selection of maps. They also had oleditor.dll for the ingame editor. Still, I'm glad these three great sites are still up and running.

I remember reading about that, you might want to check this out here.

http://theoutlawdad.com/outlaws_lawmaker_in_game_editor.html

I might give it a try myself!

How do you load these custom levels? I've tried olman.exe and it just doesn't read any of the maps from the above sites. I've extracted the files to the root Outlaws directory.



Has anyone had luck getting the editor fully functional? I used to spend hours with the editor, and decided to try it out for 'ol nostalgia sake. Perhaps even publish a few new maps. It would be awesome to see a resurgence of the modding community :)

Anyway, the editor seems more or less functional, just a few minor quirks. I haven't dabbled too much in the editor to see if there are serious bugs... Aside from one. When booting the editor regularly, the Test button does absolutely nothing aside from the spinning circle cursor. I tried booting the editor in compatibility mode, which gave more test functionality. Now when hitting Test, it boots Outlaws, but colors are messed up and doesn't actually load the level. Would love to have the editor fully operational again, if for nothing else than a trip down memory lane :)

You should only need to extract them into your outlaws root directory.

If you're downloading single player maps you just hit single player then go to main game and pick your difficulty mode then you should see "Outlaws" and whatever else you installed.

Now biggest thing in the community back in the day was mp maps because this had a strong and thriving mp community, if you download any of those you won't have much fun by yourelf but they're really neat to look at! To access those you need to go set up a multiplayer game through the menu system and pick the map you downloaded. I encourage you to give it your best! I'd love to see some new single player maps to play until a reasonable means of multiplayer is found.

I don't think the test button works, last time this was updated it was functional for retail version, colors are screwed up because it's trying to run it by the original executable while outlaws now uses gog's own executable to accomplish this. Only way i can think around this is to finish and save each time you want to see your changes and manually load it through the game itself. Guess this would make things harder but still work if you don't mind doing so.

I'm going to see if i can't track down one of the few active outlaw map makers still around since the old days and see if they have any goodies to share, i'm sure ONE of them must at least also have the in game editor file still around as well.

If all else fails i guess someone will have to painstakingly find the source code to OLmaker and or make a new one but something tells me this game is so old and kind of obscure that nobody would be willing to do that. It wasn't nearly as popular as other games of the time like Doom, duke nukem, blood, shadow warrior and etc.

Thanks for the reply! It has been so long since I last booted up LawMaker, so I forgot that there really isn't any publishing (i.e. compiling) to test the map. All you need to do is set up the correct check boxes in the map info and make sure it has a valid name. So I am able to quickly test the maps by saving and booting up the GOG launcher with no problems whatsoever, don't even need to close the map in LawMaker. I just have to deal with skipping the intro cutscene and selecting the level, but it's just a minor inconvenience.

To be quite honest, I am surprised LawMaker is still functional after all these years. Running it in compatibility mode and it runs like a charm. I am trying to see if there are any bugs with a modern machine. My main concern is that any major bugs probably don't have a means of fixing at this point, unless folks find a small workaround.

Slowly working through the tutorials, which is nostalgia all by itself :P I found one moderate problem. The Resource Picker (i.e. to select textures) pretty much brings my system to a crawl. Hopefully there is some kind of workaround, otherwise I will just have to suffer through it.

Np! I'm really excited to see people involved with this game again. Figured promoting customization and mapping would help it get a bit of a second wind at popularity!

I haven't used law maker in a loooonnnggg time either, last time i tried it though which was last week it worked and i was surprised as well! Good to see you found a work around! Feel free to share your work! I'd be happy to playtest some new content!

I posted in a FB group of people that still play outlaws and i think there's mappers involved in that, waiting to see if anyone drops me a reply, it's doubtful but hopefully i'll yield some results if anyone has the time or has what i had asked for. Hopefully if anything comes out of it, it might be a decent fully functional version of Lawmaker.

I don't remember that being a thing back when i was using a windows 95 computer and this game was still new so that might be exclusive to new operating systems or it's an issue with your computer but so long as it's playable it's all good!

In future i might do more to help advance the community with mapping by making some basic guides to help people along getting started with some of the basics because i remember back in the day even with tutorials using the software as a bit frustrating lol

Well, I have good news to report! I finally fixed the problem with the resource picker slowing my system to a crawl. I ran the compatibility troubleshooter with Win7 and recommended running the program in WinXP (Service Pack 2) compatibility mode... and if fixed the problem! I tested it out and this is the ONLY compatibility mode that doesn't cause slow downs with the resource picker. I also checked the box to run the program as an Administrator.

Another handy tip, go to the nGlide Configuration and disable the 3dfx Splash Screen. This allows you to get to the main menu that much quicker to test any changes. As I dive deeper into LawMaker, I may be interested in helping create a "Starter Guide" to help folks start creating maps with the GOG release... if there is enough interest. Surprisingly, it takes very little work to get everything working. I am running a Win7 64bit OS, not sure if folks on Win8 will have the same luck I've had.

Anyway, gonna go further into the tutorials and see if I run into any other issues.

I've gotten Lawmaker to work on my system. The test button in the toolbar doesn't work however going to one of the drop down menus and selecting test there works just fine. Other than that it seems to work however it is a much more confusing editor than I'm used to. Especially since I had to decompile the help file since it doesn't open in Windows 8.1.

I'm using windows 8.1 and i did the same steps as you and it works perfectly fine as you've described so your solution works perfectly well! Only issue i'm seeing is the window where you change values of things and textures and etc is hidden behind the main window. I dunno if that's exclusive to windows 8 or a bug in general.

I think there's interest in it, the information just needs updating for the gog release to generate more interest and to get people actually doing it since all the old stuff is hidden behind file types windows 8 doesn't support unless you go out of your way to make it support it.

Keep up the good work!

I see, that's good to know! I'll need to try the drop down menu test button see if that works. If so that makes things a bit more easier.

If you decompiled it do you think you can put it into a pdf format and share it so everyone can use it? I think you can get .hlp file support for windows 7 and 8 through microsoft but i think that would be a deterrent for most people if they wanted to learn. Modern file pretty much anyone could read would be nice.

Glad to hear the solution works for Windows 8.1 as well. On Windows 7, I also had the issue with the property dialog boxes hiding behind the main window. For me it was a simple solution of not maximizing the editor window, squeeze it up a bit on the right side of the screen, and then relocate the dialog boxes to the edge of the window. As far as I can tell, the editor remembers window sizing and location from the last time, so you don't have to do this every single time.

That's a great idea. I found a decompiler so that I could load the .hlp files in Windows 7. The tutorial .hlp file worked fine, but the editor documentation still had some issues. I may try to play around with it some more. Once it gets working, I don't think it would be too much work to print the pages to PDF. I'll see what I can do.

I kept running into the same problem and finally figured out that was the issue. i kept seeing the property dialogue showing up whenever i'd do things but then it'd disappear. It wasn't like that back in the day and anyone that doesn't know that would be at kind of a loss. I think an updated guide would be really necessary! Especially since i think there's a lot of first time players of this game or people that only ever played the demo.

That would be awesome! I'm not messing with it too much since 1 i can't test my maps since latest update broke the game and 2 without documentation i'm a little lost as to what to do. But i did re-discover the basics! Like how to add floor sounds, bad guys, turn up the lighting, change texture maps and adjust ceiling hight. Most important things i've seemingly forgotten is things like how to make sectors within a sector and etc.

Think i might go and start playing with some of the other editing software a bit until then, see if i can't figure out what needs to be done for adding custom art and etc to the game and i guess most importantly see what works and what doesn't with windows 8.

I can confirm that this worked for me too. Going to File --> Test, as opposed to hitting the quick button on the toolbar. This was with the GOG version of the game. Several duplicate error messages pop up for me, but hitting ESC through all of them (I just hold it down for a few seconds) and the map boots up just fine. Seeing as I get an error message, this strategy may be hit or miss for some folks.

Anyway, I've managed to successfully create a searchable PDF file for both the editor help files and the tutorials. I've even gone through the trouble of adding in bookmarks and links between pages. I need to find a reliable free file hosting service before I can share it with everybody else.

Honestly, I'm not too committed to creating a GOG starter guide until I garner support from more than one person :P There just might not be enough interest to create custom content for an old (half-obscure) game, even with a GOG reboot.