I just learned how to make a server and host and all of the basic stuff. but I have a couple questions for experienced people.

how do you access the menu while in the map that turns off damage, building, etc

can you lock a server to keep others out temporarily.

can you save an edited server to make it reset to the edited version instead of te original.

I want to make a map with 2 giant castles on hills and a village at the bottom, but I either need map with no water or a map that is already like that.

If anyone can tell me how I could do these things I would be very appreciative

1) uh do you mean while you're running pyspades?
2) when you start a server, it asks you if you want to advertise on the master server, just say "n"
3) You can save any map state by hitting F1, I dunno how you set up a map reset with pyspades yet
4) You need a height map editor! Try http://hme.sourceforge.net/

The editor isn't perfect, because

-it saves maps as 1024x1024 by default, you'd have to resize them to 512x512
-it saves maps as 8-bit bitmaps, you definitely have to resave them as a 24-bit bitmap (I use MS PAINT)
-you may or may not want to run the final map through a guassian blur

Once you have a greyscale heightmap you can turn it into a .vxl file by using the bitmap converter. You'd have to have a texture-map too, of course.

http://ace-spades.com/forums/topic.php?id=1023

Hope this helps (except for the pyspades stuff which I haven't played with yet)!