Prepare the project

Zero Hour export is available for a Project V2 project whose game is Command & Conquer: Generals — Zero Hour. Import the DTM and vectors into the Editor and save before exporting. Imagery is not required for this target.

Road lines and building, forest, ground-material, and water shapes become game content automatically; you do not need a separate building-model collection. Player starts, supply objects, and oil derricks are optional authored placements. Any gameplay family you leave empty receives its automatic fallback, and every active start receives Center, Flank, and Backdoor AI approach routes. It samples five destinations from an obstacle-aware plan for each route, and Zero Hour pathfinds between them. This does not guarantee balance or complete game pathfinding; review these placements and routes in World Builder.

Understand automatic roads, ground, buildings, and water

Road LineStrings use built-in Zero Hour road pieces. Paved roads, gravel roads, dirt roads, narrow paths, wide motorways, cobblestone streets, and railways are matched to the nearest supported stock road type. Keep centerlines clean and joined where roads should connect; remove duplicate or very short fragments before export.

Mapped ground materials use native alpha transitions. Isolated one-cell specks and notches that Zero Hour cannot blend cleanly are merged into the surrounding higher-priority material. Rare blend omissions remain visible in `maptoplay.json` for World Builder review. Native road pieces provide their own soft edges instead of painting a second blocky asphalt strip below them.

Each building polygon is matched to a conservative stock collision footprint. A building is placed only when the model fits inside the source polygon with clearance and does not overlap an earlier placement. If nothing suitable fits, the polygon is skipped instead of receiving a colliding or unrelated model; `maptoplay.json` reports the placed and skipped counts.

Water LineStrings become native river surfaces at their mapped width. Very narrow inputs use the smallest reliable width, long slopes are divided into flat game-compatible reaches, and unsafe sharp bends are split into safe strips with small corner joins. Water polygons become standing surfaces, and concave outlines are split into safe native pieces instead of filling across their notches. Water height comes from the footprint rim, so applying Water Depth lowers the bed without pulling the exported surface down with it. Inspect levels, steps, and shorelines in World Builder, especially when `omittedWaterSectionCount` or `ignoredWaterHoleCount` in `maptoplay.json` is above zero.

Review the rectangular dimensions

Zero Hour export does not force a square or a fixed 256 × 256 map. It preserves the saved playable width and height independently, so a non-square project remains non-square.

The export dialog shows the saved playable area in metres, the nearest whole Zero Hour grid at 3.048 m per cell, and the stored terrain dimensions. The stored terrain adds a 70-cell non-playable border on every side. Review all three values before starting the export.

Place starts and resources when you want control

This step is optional. The built-in Zero Hour Gameplay Zones collection appears on the dashboard Collections page. In the Editor, open Layers, select +, choose Gameplay Zones, and create the layer. Select that layer, open Collections → Gameplay Zones, choose a Zero Hour preset, and click once on the terrain. Move its footprint with Transform; rotation applies to supply objects and oil derricks, while player starts use position only. Placements remain available in Objects.

For authored starts, place Player 1 Start and Player 2 Start first, then add numbered slots without gaps. Zero Hour accepts two through eight authored starts. Supply Dock, Small Supply Pile, and Oil Derrick presets can be placed repeatedly, and their footprints reserve that space from automatically generated buildings.

Fallback is evaluated by family. With no authored starts, export creates four corner starts. With no authored supply objects, it creates four automatic Supply Dock and Small Supply Pile pairs. With no authored oil derricks, it creates two automatic derricks. As soon as one family has authored placements, export uses only those placements for that family.

AI routes follow the resolved starts automatically. Authored starts guide their Center, Flank, and Backdoor routes; otherwise the four fallback starts guide them. You do not need to draw separate AI routes. The same saved inputs produce the same paths, and the three route families keep different approaches near their target. Every route contains exactly five ordered waypoint destinations.

The exporter builds the full obstacle-aware native-grid plan after exported terrain, water, buildings, and oil derricks are finalized. It treats active water and placed building and oil footprints as obstacles, normally keeps up to two terrain cells of clearance, narrows that margin when only a tighter passage is available, and prefers gentler terrain. Five sparse destinations are sampled from that plan. If a far-side start is disconnected, the route remains inside the target's modeled connected area. The generated `maptoplay.json` reports these cases as `aiRouteReducedClearanceCount` and `aiRouteDisconnectedSourceCount`.

Zero Hour performs its own pathfinding between each directed pair of destinations. A straight connector shown in World Builder is only a link; it may cross an obstacle on screen and is not a promised collision-free movement segment.

Choose the terrain height mode

Open Zero Hour settings in the export dialog to find Autoscale. It is off by default. With Autoscale off, heights above the game limit are clipped, preserving more vertical detail at lower elevations.

Turn Autoscale on to compress the complete terrain relief into the range Zero Hour can store. This keeps the highest terrain instead of cutting it, but reduces vertical detail across the map. The option changes only this export and never changes the saved Editor terrain.

Run and download the export

Open the project page, choose Export, confirm the rectangular grid and Autoscale setting, then choose Run export. The job appears on Exports while it is queued or running.

When it completes, open the export and download the archive. Extract it and keep the generated map folder intact; do not copy only the `.map` file.

Add the map to Zero Hour

Copy the complete generated map folder into your Windows Documents known folder at `Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour Data\Maps`. Windows may use `%USERPROFILE%\Documents` or redirect Documents to a location such as `%USERPROFILE%\OneDrive\Documents`. If the game-data folder or `Maps` folder does not exist yet, launch Zero Hour once or create the missing `Maps` folder.

Start Zero Hour, open Solo Play and then Skirmish, and select the map from the custom-map list. Test terrain, blended ground materials, paved and unpaved roads, water, buildings, forests, starts, resources, oil derricks, and AI movement.

Open the map in World Builder

Run `WorldBuilder.exe` supplied with the Zero Hour installation. Choose File > Open, then open `<Windows Documents>\Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour Data\Maps\<map-name>\<map-name>.map`.

Inspect terrain height and clipping, ground transitions, road curves and junctions, water, building clearance, forests, playable boundaries, starts, supplies, oil derricks, and the five destinations in every Center, Flank, and Backdoor route. A straight route connector is only a link between destinations, so judge actual movement in Skirmish rather than expecting that line itself to be collision-free. Pay particular attention to narrow passages, bridges, and any native cliff or AI perimeter work you add: export does not create bridges or AI perimeter zones, and native cliff-state authoring remains separate. Save deliberate corrections, reopen the map, and test the same map again in Zero Hour Skirmish before distributing it.

Final check

Check the exact folder you intend to keep or share, not a different extracted copy.

• The complete generated folder is inside the Zero Hour `Maps` directory, not the base Generals directory.
• The playable and stored width and height match the export summary.
• High terrain looks correct for the chosen Autoscale setting.
• Ground transitions, roads, building clearance, forests, water, starts, resources, and AI routes were reviewed in World Builder.
• The map opens and completes a fresh Zero Hour Skirmish test.