Prepare the project

C&C Generals export is available for a Project V2 project whose game is Command & Conquer: Generals. 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. You may place player starts, supply objects, and oil derricks from the Generals Gameplay Zones collection. Any gameplay family you leave empty receives the automatic fallback, so a map remains testable without manual placement. The exporter also creates Center, Flank, and Backdoor AI approach routes for every active start. It samples five destinations from an obstacle-aware plan for each route, and Generals pathfinds between them. This is not a balance or complete game-pathfinding guarantee; review and finish the map in WorldBuilder before sharing it.

Understand automatic roads, ground, buildings, and water

Road LineStrings use built-in Generals road pieces. Paved roads, gravel or 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 are painted with native alpha transitions instead of hard square borders. Isolated one-cell ground specks and notches that Generals cannot blend cleanly are merged into the surrounding higher-priority material. A rare sparse pattern that the native format still cannot blend is left intact and reported as an omitted blend cell for WorldBuilder review; `maptoplay.json` reports both counts. Native road pieces supply their own soft edges over the underlying ground, so ordinary road lines are not also painted as blocky asphalt terrain.

Each building polygon is matched to a conservative stock collision footprint. A building is placed only when the model fits inside its source polygon with clearance and does not overlap an already placed building. If no suitable placement exists, that footprint is skipped rather than filled with an unrelated or colliding model; the generated `maptoplay.json` reports placed and skipped counts.

Water LineStrings become native rivers at their mapped buffer width; very narrow inputs are raised to the smallest reliable native width, and unsafe sharp bends are split into safe strips joined by small corner surfaces. Water polygons become standing water 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. Long sloping lines are divided into flat game-compatible reaches. If `omittedWaterSectionCount` is above zero in the generated `maptoplay.json`, inspect each missing tiny section in WorldBuilder. Also inspect levels, steps, and shorelines.

Holes inside water polygons are not cut out automatically yet. Check `ignoredWaterHoleCount` in the generated `maptoplay.json` and correct any reported water shapes in WorldBuilder.

Review the rectangular dimensions

Generals export does not ask you to choose a square output size. It uses 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 Generals grid at 3.048 m per cell, and the stored terrain dimensions. 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 Generals Gameplay Zones collection is also visible on the dashboard Collections page. In the Editor, open Layers, click +, choose Gameplay Zones, and create the layer. Select that layer, open Collections → Gameplay Zones, choose a Generals preset, and click once on the terrain to place its footprint. Move it with the Transform tool; rotation applies to resource and tech structures, while start waypoints use position only. Manage every placement later from Objects.

For authored starts, place Player 1 Start and Player 2 Start first, then add the next numbered slots without gaps. Generals accepts two through eight authored starts. Supply Dock, Small Supply Pile, and Oil Derrick presets are repeatable. Their footprints reserve that space from automatically generated buildings.

Fallback is evaluated separately. With no authored starts, export creates the current four corner starts. With no authored Supply Dock or Small Supply Pile, it creates four automatic supply pairs. With no authored Oil Derrick, it creates two automatic derricks. As soon as you place an object in one family, export uses only your objects for that family and does not add more automatically.

AI routes follow the resolved start set automatically. If you place authored starts, their centres guide the generated Center, Flank, and Backdoor routes for those player slots. If you leave starts empty, the same four fallback starts guide the fallback routes. No separate AI-route drawing step is required. 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`.

Generals performs its own pathfinding between each directed pair of destinations. A straight connector shown in WorldBuilder 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 Generals settings in the export dialog to find Autoscale. It is off by default. With Autoscale off, terrain above the game's representable height range is clipped, which preserves more detail at lower elevations.

Turn Autoscale on to compress the complete elevation range into the range Generals can store. This keeps the highest terrain instead of clipping it, but reduces vertical detail across the map. The choice affects only the export and does not change the saved Editor terrain.

Run and download the export

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

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

Add the map to Generals

Copy the complete generated map folder into `%USERPROFILE%/Documents/Command and Conquer Generals Data/Maps`. If the game data or `Maps` folder does not exist yet, launch Generals once or create the missing `Maps` folder.

Start C&C Generals, open Solo Play and then Skirmish, and select the map from the custom-map list. Test the generated terrain, texture transitions, paved and unpaved roads, boundaries, player starts, resources, buildings, forests, water, and AI movement. A successful load does not mean authored or fallback gameplay objects and routes are balanced for play.

Open the map in WorldBuilder

Run `WorldBuilder.exe` from the C&C Generals Steam installation. Choose File > Open, then open `%USERPROFILE%/Documents/Command and Conquer Generals Data/Maps/<map-name>/<map-name>.map`.

Inspect terrain height and clipping, ground-material transitions, paved and unpaved road curves and junctions, water, building clearance, skipped-building counts, tree placement, playable boundaries, starts, supplies, oil derricks, and the five destinations in every generated 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 in WorldBuilder, reopen the map, and test it again in 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 Generals `Maps` directory.
• The playable and stored grid dimensions 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 WorldBuilder.
• The map opens and completes a fresh Generals Skirmish test.