Getting Started

If this is your first time using BannedStory or just don't quite understand how it works, this is the place for you. Here you will see a glimpse of the most used features and how they will help you create your masterpiece!

 

Table of Contents

  1. The Beginning
  2. Inside the Interface
  3. Creating the Mob
  4. Creating the Character

 

 

 

 

1. The Beginning

BannedStory is an online program that runs inside a web browser; you cannot use it as a stand-alone desktop application. Once you start it, you will see the following screen:

 

 

You will find two tabs that allows you to choose the different MapleStory clients BannedStory supports and each category inside the game clients. For this tutorial we will be creating a character with some clothing and equipment, and a mob. In the first tab we are just going to use the Japanese version of MapleStory, and in the second tab we will choose "Character and Equipment" and "Monsters and Taming Mobs".

 

 

Hit the "Start" button and wait until all the necessary startup files finish downloading.

 

 

2. Inside the Interface

It will take a while to finish downloading the thumbnails and the data. Once it finishes, you will see an interface similar to this one:

 

 

Lets open the Thumbnail Gallery. Hit 0 (zero) in the keyboard or go to Window > Thumbnail Gallery in the top menu to open the window. The Thumbnail Gallery window will open.

 

 

3. Creating the Mob

Items in the Thumbnail Gallery can be found by navigating through the left panel of the window. But lets try a faster way to find the mob we are going to use. We are going to look for the white wolf from the BannedStory logo, which is actually a lycanthrope. Type in the Search field the word "lycan" and hit enter:

 

 

You will notice that the "Character Items" section dissapeared from the left panel, and a small message will appear in the status bar at the bottom. This will indicate how many matches were found with the word you typed. Navigate through the "Monsters and Taming Mobs" section to find the page where the lycanthrope is and click on him.

 

 

The lycanthrope will show up in the stage, surrounded by a bounding box with some small squares at the corners and sides. By clicking on this squares you can change the dimensions of the image. Don't worry if the bounding box dissapears, just move the mouse over the image to show them again.

BannedStory organizes all images in layers. Think of them like the pages of a book, the front-most layers will be more visible than the bottom ones. Since this is the first image we have created, there will be just one layer inside the "Layer Panel" window with the name "Mob Layer". You can double click on this layer to change its name. As you already have noticed, BannedStory automatically created a new layer for you, and added the mob to that layer.

Now lets change the position of the mob. In the Properties Panel (the large grey window on the bottom of the screen) you will find two text fields named "X" and "Y". Type 150 for X and 250 for Y. This will move the image through the x and y coordinates along the stage. To change the orientation of the image, click on the "Flip Horizontal" button (the first one below the coordiantes text fields). You should have something like this:

 

 

Now lets change the animation state of the mob so that it matches the one of the BannedStory logo. Again in the "Properties Panel" look for the large button named "State". It should say something inside like "move". Click on that button and choose "hit1" from the list. Your mob should now look like this:

 

 

4. Creating the Character

We have created the mob, now lets create the character. To find the items for the character, we must first reset the Thumbnail Gallery since it is currently showing the lycanthrope. In the Thumbnail Gallery, click on the "Reset" button. The window will be back to its default state:

 

 

Now lets look for the character items. In the left navigation, go to Character Items > Body Items > Body. Click on both the body and the head of your character:

 

 

To create the face, go to the Face section. Lets use the first face, the one named "Male 1". After you click on the face, a pop up window will appear showing all the available eye colors for the face:

 

 

Now lets create the hair. We will choose the one named "Metro" as black:

 

 

We will now give the character some clothing. Go to Character Items >Equipment > Top. You will notice two small boxes appearing at the bottom of the window. The left-most box allows you to filter by gender and the other box allows you to filter by jobs. Select the NX Cash job and look for the Vintage Hooded Shirt.

 

 

We will use the Cargo Pants for our character. Go to Character Items > Equipment > Bottom, select the NX job and find the pants:

 

 

And finally, the shoes. Go to the Shoes section and select the Black Baseball Cleats. Your character should look like this:

 

 

Now you are done! you can now try and create whatever situation with the pictures that are on the stage!