The DarkMod Wiki - User contributions [en]

Spiral Staircases

2017-09-15T19:32:39Z

AluminumHaste:

{{Original_Reference|bikerdude|125}}
== The aim of this tutorial is to show a mapper 3 different ways to create a spiral staircase ==

==== A tutorial by R Soul ====
===== Step 1 =====
Create a hollow cylinder to form the inside of the tower. That could be an empty cuboid with patches to make the curved walls, or a prism brush with many sides. If the outside of the tower should also be visible, you can use the technique in this video:
https://youtu.be/mDJqeCod0qQ?t=231

===== Step 2 =====
The next thing you need is a solid cylinder (prism) to form the central pillar.

http://i.imgur.com/DMkn6Aw.jpg

===== Step 3 =====
Create the first step like this (a height of 8 is used here), it goes all the way through the tower, and they share a common centre point (X and Y).

http://i.imgur.com/nzIAHmC.jpg

===== Step 4 =====
Apply a basic material, and use the surface inspector to align the textures. You should also align the texture on the bottom face, even though it cannot be seen; this step is going to be cloned many times, so it's wise to do it while texture alignment is fresh in your mind.

===== Step 5 =====
Make a clone of this step, move it up so it's stacked on the previous one, and use Modify > Rotate and Scale. Choose a Z rotation amount, say 10 degrees:

http://i.imgur.com/eVMMxYg.jpg

===== Step 6 =====
Check the steps' sizes to make sure they fully overlap each other and that there are no gaps between their ends and the tower's walls.

===== Step 7 =====
Repeat the process to build up the staircase. Here's an example with 10 steps, 90 degrees, with the first and last steps highlighted and the central pillar hidden:

http://i.imgur.com/Apk8L4N.jpg

Notice that there are effectively two spiral staircases in this tower. The second one will eventually be deleted.

===== Step 8 =====
Keep going until the staircase gets to the desired height. If you go past 350 degrees it may be easier to clone the bottom steps, or the whole thing. and move them up.

===== Step 9 =====
Once the stairs are as high as necessary, use the clipper to delete the un-required part of each step. In the example below, only a few steps are being used, which makes it easier to show the procedure.

http://i.imgur.com/5YW3s8Q.jpg

This staircase goes anticlockwise from the floor, and you'll notice that the 0 - 1 of the clipper also goes anticlockwise. Pressing Enter deletes the lower part of the brush:

http://i.imgur.com/uu1ugaw.jpg

===== Step 10 =====
Do the same for the other steps. Here's an example of the second step being clipped:

http://i.imgur.com/vAlKxDg.jpg

Once again the clipper is going anticlockwise, and there's no need to be too fussy about its angle as long as the whole cut is inside the central pillar.

After repeating the clipping process for the remaining steps you should end up with something like this:

http://i.imgur.com/SEyEDgB.jpg

Here's an ingame screenshot after adding a few more stairs and some lighting:

http://i.imgur.com/ZkrnMoz.jpg

You may find the stair texture is very repetitive, almost like a hall of mirrors effect, because the same features (a knot in a plank, or a crack in stone) repeats for every step. Some manual texture adjustment may be necessary to make it less obvious.

==== A tutorial by AluminumHaste ====

I still prefer this method as it allows you to have perfectly aligned steps with no z fighting.

===== Step 1 =====
Draw out a 192x192 brush

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-42510600-1501591998.jpg

===== Step 2 =====
With the top down view active, go to Patch->Create Bevel

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-74360000-1501593840.jpg

===== Step 3 =====
Delete the brush. Open Patch Inspector, set subdivisions to 8.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-72811600-1501594232.jpg

===== Step 4 =====
Copy the patch, shrink it down to 64x64 and invert it.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-58152900-1501594313.jpg

===== Step 5 =====
Draw out a brush from top to bottom, set grid size to 1 (1 on my keyboard). Switch to clipper tool and set clip points to align with the patch:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-05281200-1501594401.jpg

===== Step 6 =====
Do the same but clip from bottom to top, again setting the clipper point on the grid where the patch meets:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-37833800-1501594454.jpg

===== Step 7 =====
Continue clipping on grid points that match with the patch

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-03096600-1501594508.jpg

===== Step 8 =====
Rinse and repeat for each step until you get to the end of the patch curve:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/monthly_08_2017/post-529-0-06407900-1501594855.jpg

Since these are aligned to grid 1, I would convert them to func_static when moving them around, then revert to worldspawn just before dmapping, to avoid vertex drift (if that's still a thing)

==== A tutorial by Sotha ====
===== Step 1 =====
choose sizes. Pay attention to the fact that the staircase must go down so that right handed swordman has an advantage defending the staircase (easy to make it go the wrong direction).

===== Step 2 =====
Make a step and cut it half ways.

http://i.imgur.com/wzeo0DA.jpg

===== Step 3 =====
Cut it further by eye so that the steps are roughly the same size. I stay in grid 8 with few steps cut with grid 4. It does not matter if it is not mathematically 100% correct division. It is enough if it looks good by eye!

http://i.imgur.com/QVnLoSK.jpg

===== Step 4 =====
Move the steps so that a staircase quadrant is formed:

http://i.imgur.com/XNyeveo.jpg

===== Step 5 =====
Apply texture on the steps. Align it perfectly.

===== Step 6 =====
Now clone the ready made quadrant to make as long a staircase as you want! The cloned quadrants are super easy to place because they all meet at the center.

===== Step 7 =====
Make the entire staircase room modular and place a copy of it in an unused area of your map. This means that you never need to make spiral staircases again. If you need one, just make a copy of the one you already have. You could even make the staircase room with full decorations: windows, lights, decals, and store that. Now you can get a copies of fully fleshed out staircases at will. Just remember that the staircase room must be surrounded by a wordspawn room if it containts entities in order to avoid leaks.

[[Category:Editing]]
[[Category:Tutorial]]

File:Step1.jpg

2017-09-15T19:30:26Z

AluminumHaste:

Fan Missions for The Dark Mod

2013-05-28T12:19:07Z

AluminumHaste:

__NOTOC__
{{infobox|<center>'''Big Ugly Disclaimer:'''</center> '''The Dark Mod''' team does not necessarily support or endorse content listed here, and only hosts missions listed on the [http://www.thedarkmod.com/ official TDM website]. This is a community maintained list, and an ongoing work in progress. Mission entries which are suspected to violate copyright must be text-only, and cannot contain links. Report and/or remove links found in violation of this rule.}}

* For details about editing this table, see [http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod#Editing_This_Table below].
* For details about how to install Fan Missions please visit: [[Installing and Running Fan Missions]]
* To sort by a different criterion, click the [[Image:Sort none.gif]] icon in the relevant column header.

{|class="wikitable sortable" border=1 style="border-collapse: collapse;" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 width=100%
|-
!bgcolor=#d0d0e0 width="30%"|Fan Mission Title
!bgcolor=#d0d0e0 width="23%"|Author(s)
!bgcolor=#d0d0e0 width="10%" class="unsortable"|Links
!bgcolor=#d0d0e0 width="10%"|First Release
!bgcolor=#d0d0e0 width="7%"|Size (MB)
!bgcolor=#d0d0e0 width="20%"|Series
|-



|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|69|The Lich Queen's Demise}}
|Sotha
|{{Mirrorlink|https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17706561/lich_queens_demise.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14826-fan-mission-the-lich-queens-demise-by-sotha-20130520/unread/}}
|2013-05-20
|97.6
|Thomas Porter 6 CUC 13
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|68|The Builder's Blocks}}
|Jesps
|{{Mirrorlink|https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17706561/builders_blocks.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14592-unusual-gameplay-contest-fm-the-builders-blocks-by-jesps/}}
|2012-03-18
|2.85
|CUC 13
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|67|Crystal Grave}} (v.2.0, 2013/02/09)
|ERH+ Bikerdude
|{{Mirrorlink|https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17706561/crystalgravev2.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14510-fan-mission-crystal-grave-v2-by-erh-and-bikerdude-20130209/unread/}}
|2011-11-15
|12.4
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|66|The Builder Roads}}
|Obsttorte
|{} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14449-fan-mission-the-builder-roads-by-obsttorte-20130119/}}
|2013-01-19
|?
|-
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|65|William Steele 1: In the North}}
|grayman
|{{Bloodgate|ws1_north.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14214-fan-mission-in-the-north-by-grayman-20121020/}}
|2012-10-20
|39.8
|William Steele 1
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|64|Old Habits}}
|Obsttorte
|{{Bloodgate|mc.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?andes2xnsonssfj}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14206-fan-mission-old-habits-by-obsttorte-20121019/}}
|2012-10-19
|12.8
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|63|Deceptive Shadows}}
|ShadowHide
|{{Bloodgate|DeceptiveShadows.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.sendspace.com/file/jzr9s7}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14103-fan-mission-deceptive-shadows-by-shadowhide-16sep12/}}
|2012-09-16
|22.4
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|62|Vengeance for a Thief: Part 1}}
|Sir Taffsalot
|{{Bloodgate|VFAT1.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17706561/VFAT1.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14068-fan-mission-vengeance-for-a-thief-part-1-by-sir-taffsalot-06092012/}}
|2012-09-06
|20.9
|VFAT 1
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|61|The Phrase Book}}
|Sotha
|{{Bloodgate|phrase_book.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17706561/phrase_book.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13799-fan-mission-the-phrase-book-by-sotha-20120512/}}
|2012-05-11
|24
|Thomas Porter 5
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|60|In Remembrance of Him}}
|RPGista
|{{Bloodgate|remembrance.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17706561/remembrance.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13749-fan-mission-in-remembrance-of-him-by-rpgista/}}
|2012-04-22
|27.6
|CBC 12
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|59|Rightful Property}}
|jysk
|{{Bloodgate|rightful.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17706561/rightful1.1b.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13711-fan-mission-rightful-property-by-jysk-20120413/}}
|2012-04-12
|22.5
|CBC 12
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|58|Sneak and Destroy}}
|SeriousToni
|{{Bloodgate|kneipe24.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://minus.com/mVcf61n3G/1f}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13706-fan-mission-sneak-destroy-by-serioustoni-beginners-contest-2012/}}
|2012-04-11
|158
|CBC 12
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|56|House of Theo}}
|Theothesnopp
|{{Bloodgate|houseoftheo.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.gamefront.com/files/21053391/houseoftheo__2__2.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13242-fan-mission-house-of-theo/}}
|2011-12-04
|6.2
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|53|Dragon's Claw}}
|Bikerdude, Flanders (map assets)
|{{Bloodgate|claw.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://www.gamefront.com/files/20948800/claw.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|claw.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13181-fan-missiondragons-claw-by-b1k3rdude-31102011/}}
|2011-10-31
|98
|HSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|52|A Night to Remember}}
|Fieldmedic
|{{Bloodgate|antr.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?d4hch59m4nef3dc}} {{Taffers Paradise|antr.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13177-fan-mission-a-night-to-remember-by-fieldmedic-20111030/}}
|2011-10-31
|32
|HSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|51|The Creeps}}
|Mortem Desino
|{{Bloodgate|thecreeps.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://www.gamefront.com/files/20939925/thecreeps.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|thecreeps.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13176-fan-mission-creeps-the-20111030-by-mortem-desino/}}
|2011-10-30
|61
|HSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|50|House in Blackbog Hollow}}
|Stumpy
|{{Bloodgate|blackbog.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://www.bookofages.co.uk/doom3/mods/blackbog.html}} {{Taffers Paradise|blackbog.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13172-fan-mission-house-in-blackbog-hollow-by-stumpy-20111028/}}
|2011-10-28
|12
|HSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|49|Let Sleeping Thieves Lie}}
|Sir Taffsalot, Bikerdude
|{{Bloodgate|lstl.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?zkd1jn4lpwgioh9}} {{Taffers Paradise|lstl.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/13153-let-sleeping-thieves-lie-by-sir-taffsalot-bikerdude-20102011/}}
|2011-10-20
|13
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|48|Samhain Night on Bone Hill}}
|PranQster
|{{Bloodgate|samhain.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://jdchoate.mcn.org/games/darkmod/samhain.zip}} {{Taffers Paradise|samhain.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/13127-fan-mission-samhain-night-on-bone-hill-by-pranqster-20111009/}}
|2011-10-09
|10
|HSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|47|A Score to Settle}}
|Springheel
|{{Bloodgate|score_to_settle.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?f3o7hm4h4ew7o3l}} {{Taffers Paradise|score_to_settle.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12894-fan-mission-%2348-a-score-to-settle-by-springheel-20110701/}}
|2011-07-01
|135
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|46|Siege Shop}} (v1.2 2011/09/21)
|PranQster
|{{Bloodgate|siegeshop.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|http://jdchoate.mcn.org/games/darkmod/siegeshop.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|siegeshop.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12874-fan-mission-the-siege-shop-by-pranqster-20110626/}}
|2011-06-26
|13
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|44|Alberic's Curse}}
|Bikerdude
|{{Bloodgate|alberic.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.gamefront.com/files/20459738/alberic.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|alberic.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12850-fan-mission-alberics-curse-by-b1k3rdude-20062011/}}
|2011-06-20
|29
|CSC 11 (Winner), T2 FM homage
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|45|Reap as you sow}}
|Fieldmedic
|{{Bloodgate|reap.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|reap.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12849-fan-mission-reap-as-you-sow-by-fieldmedic-20110619/}}
|2011-06-19
|52
|CSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|43|Rake Off}}
|Jesps
|{{Bloodgate|rake_off.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|rake_off.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12846-fm-rake-off-19-06-2011/}}
|2011-06-19
|8
|CSC 11, Selis Woderose 2
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|42|Winter Harvest}} (v2.0 2011/07/24 with Bikerdude)
|ShadowHide
|{{Bloodgate|winterharvest.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|winterharvest.pk4}} {{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12690-seasons-contest-entry-winter-harvest-by-shadowhide/}}
|2011-05-08
|10
|CSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|41|Fiasco at Fauchard Street}}
|Melan
|{{Bloodgate|fauchard.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|fauchard.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|https://rapidshare.com/files/460141132/fauchard.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12655-fan-mission-fiasco-at-fauchard-street-by-melan-20110501//}}
|2011-05-01
|62
|Talbot 3
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|40|Mandrasola}}
|Sotha
|{{Bloodgate|mandrasola.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|mandrasola.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?2ox2nbhh796ne71}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12575-fan-mission-mandrasola-by-sotha-20110410/}}
|2011-04-10
|10
|Thomas Porter 0, CSC 11
|-

|-
!align=left|[http://www.gamefront.com/files/20167184/yantdm1.1.pk4 Q4 Conversion: Yan's Test]
|Bikerdude
|{{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?2nona089nzi00sv}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.gamefront.com/files/20167184/yantdm1.1.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12506-fan-mission-q4-map-conversion-yantdm1-280311/}}
|2011-03-28
|28
|
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|38|The Transaction}}
|Sotha
|{{Bloodgate|transaction.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|transaction.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?ux7mx79wumnvcb6}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12408-fan-mission-the-transaction-by-sotha-20110304/}}
|2011-03-04
|10
|Thomas Porter 4
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|13|Return to the City}} (v2.0 2011/03/01)
|Melan, Bikerdude
|{{Bloodgate|ReturnToTheCityV2.pk4}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10509-fan-mission-return-to-the-city-by-melan-20100110/}} {{Forumlink|1=http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130519/}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12390-fan-mission-return-to-the-city-v2-01032011/}}
|2010-01-10
|26
|Version 1.0, GCC 09 (Winner); Talbot 2
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|39|Lockdown}}
|GameDevGoro Bikerdude Fidcal
|{{Bloodgate|lockdown1_2_1.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|lockdown1_2_1.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/lockdown1_2_1.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/12064-fm-lockdown-part-1-by-gamedevgoro-and-bikerdude-20101224/}}
|2010-12-25
|3
|Lockdown 1
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|37|Flakebridge Monastery}}
|Jesps
|{{Bloodgate|flakebridge.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|flakebridge.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.file-upload.net/download-3024426/flakebridge.pk4.html}} {{Mirrorlink|http://rapidshare.com/files/434997519/flakebridge.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11991-fm-flakebridge-monastery-by-jesps/}}
|2010-12-05
|16
|Selis Woderose 1
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|36|Knighton Manor, The}}
|Sotha
|{{Bloodgate|knighton_manor.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|knighton_manor.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.mediafire.com/?xrdts3j4t2qxre2}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11898-fan-mission-the-knighton-manor-by-sotha-20101109/page__view__getnewpost}}
|2010-11-09
|21
|Thomas Porter 1
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|35|St Albans Cathedral}} (v1.6 2011/03/13)
|Bikerdude
|{{Bloodgate|stac160.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|stac160.pk4}} [[http://www.bloodgate.com/fms/stac142.pk4 Classic]] {{Mirrorlink|http://www.filefront.com/17464439/stac141.pk4}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11872-fan-mission-st-albans-cathedral-01112010/}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_St_Alban's_Cathedral_-_Bikerdude}}
|2010-11-01
|67
|St Alban
|-

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|33|Swing}}
|Komag
|{{Bloodgate|swing_v1.2.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|swing_v1.2.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11660-vertigo-contest-entry-swing-by-komag-20100825/}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Swing_-_Komag}}
|2010-08-25
|3
|SVC 10

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|32|The Caduceus of St. Alban}} (v.1.5.5 2010/08/26)
|Bikerdude
|{{bloodgate|stalban.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|stalban.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.filefront.com/17237609/stalban.pk4/}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11644-the-caduceus-of-st-alban-vertical-fm-contest-entry-aug-8th-2010/}}
|2010-08-23
|11.3
|SVC 10/St Alban

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|30|Somewhere Above the City}} (v1.1 2010/08/27)
|Grayman
|{{Bloodgate|somewhere1.1.pk4}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11619-vertical-contest-mission-somewhere-above-the-city-by-grayman-aug-20-2010/}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Somewhere_Above_the_City_-_grayman}}
|2010-08-20
|11
|SVC 10

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|29|Betrayal}} (v.1.1, 2010/09/01)
|Fieldmedic
|{{Bloodgate|betrayal.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|betrayal.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11605-betrayal-by-fieldmedic-20100817-summer-fm-vertical-contest-entry/}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Awaiting_the_Storm_-_HappyCheeze}}
|2010-08-17
|12
|SVC 10

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|31|Rift, The}}
|Baddcog
|{{Bloodgate|rift.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|rift.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11599-vert-contest-mission-the-rift-by-baddcog-aug-15-2010/}}
|2010-08-15
|10
|SVC 10

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|34|Illusionist's Tower}}
|stumpy
|{{Bloodgate|holetower.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|holetower.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11541-illusionists-tower-by-stumpy-201085-summer-fm-vertical-contest-entry}} {{Forumlink|1=http://www.bookofages.co.uk/doom3/mods/holetower.html}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Illusionist%27s_Tower_-_stumpy}}
|2010-08-05
|9
|SVC 10

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|28|Mad's Mountain}}
|Jesps
|{{Bloodgate|madmountain.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|madmountain.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11510-fan-mission-mads-mountain-by-jesps-20100731}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Lord_Dufford%27s_-_stumpy}}
|2010-07-31
|2
|SVC 10

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|27|Glenham Tower, The}}
|Sotha
|{{Bloodgate|glenham_tower.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|glenham_tower.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11423-fan-mission-the-glenham-tower-by-sotha-20100717}}
|2010-07-17
|5
|Thomas Porter 3, SVC 10 (Winner)

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|25|Pandora's Box}}
|Jesps, Fidcal
|{{Bloodgate|pandoras_box.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|pandoras_box.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11381-fan-mission-pandoras-box-by-jesps20100711}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Pandora%27s_Box_-_Jesps}}
|2010-07-11
|7
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|23|Beleaguered Fence, The}}
|Sotha
|{{Bloodgate|beleaguered_fence.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|beleaguered_fence.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11298-fan-mission-the-beleaguered-fence-by-sotha-20100623}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_The_Beleaguered_Fence_-_Sotha}}
|2010-06-23
|11
|Thomas Porter 2

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|22|Special Delivery, A}}
|Silencium18
|{{Bloodgate|delivery.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|delivery.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11247-fan-mission-a-special-delivery-by-silencium1820100612}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_A_Special_Delivery_-_Silencium18}}
|2010-06-12
|2
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|21|Alchemist, The}} (2010/06/04)
|Sotha, Fidcal
|{{Bloodgate|alchemist.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|alchemist.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11170-fan-mission-the-alchemist-by-sotha-fidcal20100601}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_The_Alchemist_-_Sotha_%26_Fidcal}}
|2010-06-01
|27
|Thief's Den 4

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|20|Awaiting The Storm}}
|HappyCheeze
|{{Bloodgate|storm.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|storm.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11095-fm-awaiting-the-storm-by-happycheeze-20200522}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Awaiting_the_Storm_-_HappyCheeze}}
|2010-05-22
|4
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|18|No Honor Among Thieves}}
|Goldchocobo, RailGun, Mortem Desino
|{{Taffers Paradise|NHAT.zip}} {{Mirrorlink|http://tinyurl.com/2a9mdcs}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10993-fan-mission-no-honor-among-thieves-20100429}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_No_Honor_Among_Thieves_-_Goldchocobo}}
|2010-04-29
|144
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|17|Heart of Lone Salvation, The}} (v.2.0, 2010/04/12)
|Fidcal, Baddcog
|{{Bloodgate|heart.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|heart.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10878-fan-mission-the-heart-of-lone-salvation-by-fidcal-baddcog-20100402/}} {{Walkthrough|FM:TDM_The_Heart_of_Lone_Salvation_-_Fidcal_%26_Baddcog}} {{loot|FM:TDM_The_Heart_of_Lone_Salvation_-_Fidcal_%26_Baddcog}}
|2010-04-02
|41
|Thief's Den 3

|-
!align=left|[http://www.bookofages.co.uk/doom3/mods/dufford.pk4 Lord Dufford's]
|stumpy
|{{Taffers Paradise|dufford.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10868-fan-mission-lord-duffords-20100331}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Lord_Dufford%27s_-_stumpy}}
|2010-03-31
|22
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|16|Builder's Influence, The}} (2010/03/23)
|Railgun, Springheel
|{{Bloodgate|builders_influence.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|builders_influence.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|http://www.fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/builders_influence.pk4}}{{Forumlink|http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10811-fan-mission-the-builders-influence-20100320/}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_The_Builders_Influence_-_Railgun%26Springheel}}
|2010-03-20
|15
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|14|Business as Usual}} (v2.0 2011/09/24)
|Bikerdude
|{{Bloodgate|business.pk4}}{{Mirrorlink|1=http://rapidshare.com/files/335299431/business.pk4.html}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10533-fan-mission-business-as-usual-by-b1k3rdude-14012010-christmas-fm-contest-entry/page__view__findpost__p__207055}}
|2010-01-14
|4
|GCC 09

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|12|Sons of Baltona 1, The}}
|Carnage
|{{Bloodgate|sons_of_baltona_1.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|sons_of_baltona_1.pk4}} {{Mirrorlink|1=http://www.mediafire.com/?m4ywobjodm0}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10498-fan-mission-the-sons-of-baltona-1-by-carnage-20100109}}
|2010-01-09
|3
|GCC 09 / Baltona 1

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|11|Living Expenses}}
|Sonosuke
|{{Bloodgate|living_expenses.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|living_expenses.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10451-fm-living-expenses-by-sonosuke-2-jan-10/page__view__findpost__p__205386}}
|2010-01-02
|6
|GCC 09

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|10|Trapped!}}
|RailGun
|{{Bloodgate|trapped.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|trapped.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10442-fm-trapped-by-railgun-dec-30/page__view__findpost__p__205092}}
|2009-12-30
|6
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|8|Parcel, The}}
|Xonze
|{{Bloodgate|parcel.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|parcel.pk4}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10404-fm-the-parcel-by-xonze-dec-24/page__view__findpost__p__204459}}
|2009-12-24
|7
|GCC 09

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|9|Too Late}}
|Nielsen74
|{{Bloodgate|too_late.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|too_late.pk4}}{{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10400-fm-too-late-by-nielsen74-24-dec-09/page__view__findpost__p__204396}}
|2009-12-24
|4
|GCC 09

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|7|Thieves}}
|Silencium, RailGun, Fidcal
|{{Bloodgate|thieves.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10286-fm-the-thieves-nov-2509/}}
|2009-11-26
|9
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|6|Patently Dangerous}}
|demagogue
|{{Bloodgate|patently_dangerous.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|patently_dangerous.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10125-fm-patently-dangerous-oct3109/page__view__findpost__p__199324/}}
|2009-10-31
|24
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|5|Dark Mod Training Mission, The}}
|TDM Team
|{{Bloodgate|training_mission.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|training_mission.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/9932-fm-training-mission-17-oct-09/}}
|2009-10-17
|6
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|2|Crown of Penitence, The}}
|Jesps
|{{Bloodgate|crow_of_penitence.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|crow_of_penitence.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/9934-fm-crown-of-penitence-by-jesps-17-oct-09/}}
|2009-10-16
|12
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|3|Chalice of Kings, The}}
|Fidcal
|{{Bloodgate|chalice.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|chalice.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/9935-fm-chalice-of-kings-by-fidcal-17-oct-09/}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Chalice_of_Kings_-_Fidcal}}
|2009-10-15
|3
|Thief's Den 2

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|1|Outpost, The}}
|angua, greebo
|{{Bloodgate|outpost.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|outpost.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/9937-fm-the-outpost-by-angua-greebo-17-oct-09/}}
|2008-12-23
|2
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|15|Tears of Saint Lucia, The}} (v.1.01, 2010/04/29)
|TDM Team
|{{Bloodgate|saintlucia.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|saintlucia.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/10579-fan-mission-the-tears-of-st-lucia-20081021/page__view__findpost__p__207972}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_The_Tears_of_Saint_Lucia_-_jdude}}
|2008-10-21
|18
|

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|57|Closemouthed Shadows}} (v.2.0, 2012/01/15)
|LordSavage, Bikerdude
|{{Bloodgate|closemouthed_shadows.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13383-fan-mission-closemouthed-shadows-2008-reworked-for-tdm-107-20120115/}}
|2008-09-21
|2
|Closemouthed Shadows 1

|-
!align=left|{{TDM-FM|24|Thief's Den}} (v.2.0, 2010/07/04)
|Fidcal, greebo
|{{Bloodgate|thiefs_den.pk4}} {{Taffers Paradise|thiefs_den.pk4}} {{Forumlink|1=http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/topic/11347-fan-mission-thiefs-den-re-release-by-fidcal20100704}} {{Walkthrough|FM:TDM_Thief's_Den_-_Fidcal}} {{Loot|FM:TDM_Thief%27s_Den_-_Fidcal}}
|2008-01-18
|3
|Thief's Den 1
|}

If the aforementioned download links are down, [http://www.southquarter.com/downloads/missions_view.php South Quarter] has every TDM mission as well as a link to it's TTLG forum thread. Just click the 'game column' to sort the list with TDM.

To see a speculative list of Upcoming Fan Missions please visit: [[Upcoming Fan Missions]]

'''Series Key'''

GCC 09: Grand Christmas Contest 2009

SVC 10: Summer Vertical Contest 2010

CSC 11: Community Seasons Contest 2011

HSC 11: Halloween Speed-Build Contest 2011

CBC 12: Community Beginner Contest 2012

CUC 13: Community Unusual Contest 2013

'''Links Key'''

{|class="wikitable" border=1 style="border-collapse: collapse;" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2

|-
|[http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/images/b/be/Icon_forum.png http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/images/b/be/Icon_forum.png]
|Link to discussion in Forums

|-
|[http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/images/b/be/Icon_mirror.png http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/images/b/be/Icon_mirror.png]
|Misc. dowload mirror

|-
|{{Bloodgate|}}
|Bloodgate download mirror

|-
|{{Taffers Paradise|}}
|Taffer's Paradise download mirror

|-
|{{Loot|}}
|Loot list

|-
|{{Walkthrough|}}
|Walkthrough

|}

== Editing This Table ==
* Please only include playable missions that are fully released, not those currently in development or testing. Tutorials, demos, prefabs, etc. should be listed elsewhere.
* A mission title may be listed in plain text as a record of release, or preferably a link to an information page or primary direct download.
* List by release date descending (newest at the top).
* If a fan mission only has a single mirror/host please consider adding additional mirrors.
{{general|sort=Fan Missions}}
[[Category:Fan Missions]]

Starting to Model for TDM

2013-05-20T15:12:56Z

AluminumHaste: /* Naming Conventions */

== Modeling Software ==

Most modelers on the team use [http://www.lightwave3d.com/ Lightwave] or [http://www.blender.org/ Blender]. Anything that can save in either .lwo (prefered) or .ase format is acceptable. However, there is an ASE exporter available for Blender at the [http://www.doom3world.org/ Doom3World] forums, and [http://www.katsbits.com/tools/ katsbits.com] has some import/export scripts for Blender, otherwise ask somebody in the Dark Mod Forums.
[http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-3ds-max/overview/ 3ds Max] can be used to model and import/export .ase files.

== Making the Model ==

You will need to make, for each individual object:
* a highpoly model. There's no poly limit to this--make it as detailed as possible.
* a lowpoly version of the same size and basic shape (see dimensions below).

The detailed version is used, by Doom 3, or another tool such as ORB or xnormals, to generate a normalmap with all the details on it. This normalmap is then used with the lowpoly model to fake higher detail. See [[Renderbump]] for more information on using D3 to generate normalmaps.

* Lightwave: Your model needs to be tripled before being used in game ({{key-shift}}+{{key|T}}), or D3 will spit out tons of warning messages.
* Blender: The ASE exporter will automatically convert all your faces to triangles.
* 3dsMax: turn to poly, max sides 3, turn to edit mesh before export.

== Model and Texture Dimensions ==

Aim for less than 5000 polys for significant AI, and less than 500 for most common objects. Testing has shown that rendering polys does not slow down FPS much if they don't cast shadows. It is therefore ok to have a higher poly model if you create a low-poly shadowmesh built into it (a 1000 poly model can often have a decent shadowmesh for 300 polys). Generally, objects that might only be used once in a scene (like a well) can have higher polys, but objects that might appear many times (like lights or chairs) should have less than 500. Round objects (vases, plates, etc) should have a minimum of 8-10 sides (depending on the size of the object) to appear fairly smooth. Less important parts of an object (like the legs of a stool) can have fewer sides to keep polys down.

About 200-300 polys is the average for most smallish size props, like weapons or lights. Even our wide bookshelf model is less than 250 polys, so it's not always dependent on size.

You don't generally need to sacrifice detail just to get a model less than 300 polys, however.

Texture sizes go in powers of two: 2, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048. D3 will automatically rescale TGA textures that are not in powers of two, which could stretch your texture and waste processing time (and look blurry as well). Note that the dimensions of DDS textures '''absolutely have to''' match powers of two, otherwise they appear black in-game.

== Naming Conventions ==

The following convention should be used for naming all new model additions to TDM (many existing models do not follow this convention, and over time effort will be made to update them). Following this convention will make it easier for mappers to find the models they want in a long list--if they are looking for a chest, they want to look under "c" for chest, not "w" for wooden_chest.

# '''Object Type''' descriptor first. Mappers are generally going to search by object, so they will want to find all objects of a similar type grouped together. It's a window, a plate, a chest, etc. Don't bother duplicating the name of the folder, however. If your object is inside the "lights" folder, then you don't need to call it "light_torch_wood".
# '''Material''' descriptor next. This may be appropriate, but remember that different textures can be used on the same model, so calling something "statue_marble" could be misleading if it also has a metal texture.
# '''Size''' descriptor next. This is primarily useful if there are multiple versions of the same mesh, like "statue_lion_large" and "statue_lion_small".
# '''Quality''' descriptors next. Optional. Remember that skins might exist. However, descriptors like ornate, plain, etc, can help mappers.
# '''Number Increment''' next. Adding a number to the end is useful if there are likely to be more versions of the same kind of object.

If establishing precedent (creating a new '''Size''' descriptor, e.g., "huge"), try to avoid ambiguity and unnecessary overlapping with other descriptors (e.g., "enormous"), and set a good example others will follow.

'''Examples:'''

1. ''apple_001''

This name omits all but the mandatory descriptors. If valuable information about the object can help differentiate it from others, optional descriptors may be added. If it is indeed generic, this name is fine.

2. ''chest_wood_battered_005''

This highly descriptive name omits a '''Size''' descriptor.

It should be noted that a given descriptor can use more than one word if needed, for example, lamp_wall_ (uses two object descriptors), as long as it either follows precedent or establishes a good one.

== Where to Save your Model and Textures ==

Models should be saved in the models/darkmod tree. See [[Model Folder Structure]] for specific information about where to put things.

== Grid Alignment and Origin ==

Please make sure your models are grid-aligned (the bottom of the object rests on a grid line in your modelling software). If they don't, it can be difficult to get the model to sit on the floor or other surfaces in the editor. If the object is likely to have other things placed on top of it (tables, shelves, etc) then it is also helpful if the top surface is grid-aligned as well.

Keep this in mind for all objects. The back of a door handle should sit very close to flush with the grid so it'll align well with doors. The back of a torch should be right on the grid so it doesn't sink into or float away from a wall. objects like chests are made of three different models; A chest, a lid and a lockbar. The chest can be flush to the floor, but the top might not align to the grid, it's best to move the verts to the closest grid line in this case. The lid's pivot needs to be at 0 in the z plane, so the bottom of the lid also needs to hit a grid line so it can sit flush with the top of the chest and not leave a gap. The lock bars pivot also need to be flush with 0 in the z plane (for rotation pivot) but it need sto also align on the grid so it'll match up closely to the lockbox.

Re:'''Grid size''', testing in your 3d program:
An easy way to check your grid is to open a new file in DarkRadiant, choose a large grid size and drag out a cube brush, choose the next smaller grid size and drag out another brush, do this with 3-4 grid sizes. Make each cube as small as possible for that grid size. No need to texture them, place them all close to each other.
Now select all of them and choose '''file/export as obj''', this will make them an obj file that can be imported into most 3d programs, if not you can convert it with a program like Accutrans into a 3ds mesh and import that.
Now these cubes are in your 3d program, do they align to the grid? Don't move them, if they don't align, instead adjust your grid size to match them. In 3ds Max you do this by choosing the customize ''menu/grid and snap settings/home grid tab/'' and for ''grid settings'' use a number in the power of 2, 4, 8,16... (you can use 1, or .5, or0.25 for smaller grids). This sets the alignment equal to DR's grid. 3ds Max is natuarally set at 10 which doesn't DR grid at all. You can set the ''major grid lines'' to something you are comfortable with, 4, 8, ect...That just makes a darker grid line every 4 or 8 lines.
Now any verts placed on a grid line will match the grid in DR.

Re: '''Origins'''. D3 uses the origin of the model to determine physics for movement--moveable objects will rotate around the origin when they are bouncing around. Any model that will likely be made into a moveable object (basically any unattached object smaller than a chair) should have its origin where its center of gravity would be. The frob trace is also done to an object's origin. Typically a player will look at the center of an object to frob it, not the bottom, so having the origin in the center of moveables makes them easier/more realistic to frob.

Large objects that are not likely to be moveables, like desks or wardrobes, can have their origin at the bottom of the object, for easy placement on the floor. An exception would be something like trees that an author might possibly sink into the ground far enough to reach outside the world. In this case have a centered origin would be best so the origin stays inside world.

Objects that might be designed to swing or rotate (like a hanging sign) should have their origin at the point of rotation.

== Collision Meshes ==

Collision models should be used on most objects for several reasons. They can help simplify pathfinding databases for AI and weapons, they also simplify the shape of the object so it can be moveable. If an object is going to be static and not move, like a pillar, it's collision model can be as complex as you want, however this defeats the purpose of a collision mesh. Generally you want to make the collision mesh as simple as possible while retaining the basic shape of the model. This will guaranty that arrows will bounce off of it, or stick to it in a realistic way. If the mesh doesn't match the original object close enough you will get things like arrows bouncing off the air next to the model, or arrows that go through the model.

Collision models must be exported with the original object mesh. This makes them hard to see in the editor, but the collision surface can be toggled so it's not a problem. Collision meshes won't be seen in game, nor will their effects if done properly.

A static object can use one or more collision models, the purpose of this is to apply different materials to the colllision model. For instance, the generic Doom collision sounds like stone when an arrow bounces off of it, and arrows will always bounce off of it. However Dark Radiant allows the use of material specific collision shaders. So a chest can be made of metal and wood, an arrow will bounce of the metal parts and stick into the wood parts. The number of collision meshes on a static object is undetermined but should be limitless.
This is a good way to simplify collision while retaining the objects material types. A collision model overrides an objects shader properties (the image will be the same but noise and collision props will not work), so if you export with collision try to seperate it into materials.
Examples of collision shader names: //base/tdm_collision_wood, //base/tdm_collision_ceramic

Moveable objects ''must'' have collision models unlike static objects. These meshes have to be very simple. Currently the exact specs of a moveables collision mesh are under debate. You will often see these specs stated as less than 16 polys, no concave polys, ect... But it is possible to make workable collision models with both of the above rules broken, however it is very unlikely and you are lucky if it works. Most of the time if you do break those rules you will get an unstable mesh that will fly across the room when frobbed, sometimes even resulting in SHAS (Sudden Heart Attack Syndrom) when the player dies without warning. So sticking to those guidlines is usually best and can still result in a decent collision model in most cases. Multiple collision meshes have been successfully exported also, however they only use the material type of the first collision model loaded, this can also lead to instability. Generally simple shapes work best, just try to make it fit your object as close as possible.

Shapes that work well for moveable collision models are cubes, pyramids and cylinders (up to 7 sides seems to work well). An L-shape of 2 collision meshes has proven to work with chairs (basically 2 cubes).

For an idea what will work look at models in the model viewer. Of course a crate has a cube, a gear will have a cylinder, a lamp might have a pyramid. Objects that use unconventional shapes that defy the rules above are keys and the silver teapot.

== Shadow Meshes ==

Shadow meshes are similar to collision meshes. Basically they are just to simplify shadow casting, this can have great benefits to maps, especially if there are multiple lights hitting the object. Doom 3 can handle an enormous amount of polys on screen without flinching, however throw in a couple lights and you can bring it to its knees. This is where the importance of shadow meshes really counts. Doom3 calculates how each triangle is hit by a light and what shadow that triangle will cast, this is no big deal with one triangle, or one light but in a map you are sure to have many lights and many polys. These calculations are done every frame.

We have done tests with 100,000 polys and one light, FPS will be around 60. Add a second light and the FPS will drop to 45, add a 3rd light and FPS will drop to 30 (rough estimates)... So if your objects are 100,000 polys but your shadow meshes only equal 50,000 polys you have already cut the lag in half.

All materials and/or objects (including game created func_static meshes) can have noshadows set to 1. While this really helps performance it can look very bad and have bad effects on gameplay. Darkmod is a game set in very shadowy places and the player uses shadows for stealth, the major gameplay component, hence the importance of shadow meshes once again.

When modeling the shadow mesh try to match the basic shape of your object as close as possible while using as few triangles as possible. Say you have a pipe object that has 20 sides and is very round. You could make a shadow mesh with only 4 sides and for the most part the shadow would look the same, the noticable difference would be that the ends would cast sharp corners, but often times these can be hidden within another shadow and wont be noticeable in game at all. Even the shape of the pipe going into a wall would mask the bad edges of the shadow.

Shadow meshes must be exported with objects and their collision models. Unlike collision shaders the shadow shaders do ''not'' override the objects shadows. So when making a model that uses a shadow mesh you need to use material shaders for the object with noshadows on it, this has to be set in the material file (materials/.mtr). However do not go and start adding ''noshadows'' to all the materials as some objects or terrain might need shadows. Instead copy/paste the shader deffinition into a new .mtr file, give it a new name and add noshadows to it, that way the original material doesn't change. You should also use ''NoSelfShadow'' which will stop the material from casting shadows on itself.

There are 2 material shaders for shadow meshes, they can be combined and both used for one model at the same time. They are '''textures/common/shadow''' and '''textures/common/shadow2'''. ''Shadow'' material casts shadows and self shadows (on the object the mesh is exported with, it is all considered one object although the collision and shadow meshes are not seen in game). Shadow2 casts shadows (on terrain and other objects) but does not cast shadows on itself. This is very handy for things like apples where the player really won't notice if the stem casts a shadow on the apple. Remember, this is one of the most important considerations for performance so if an object can live without shadows, or without casting shadows on itself then use that option first.

Weird lighting issues due to shadow meshes. .Ase files from 3ds max have an issue with shadow meshes clipping outside of an objects mesh which can cause weird shadow fragments on the objects they belong to. The cure for this is to make sure that the shadow mesh is entirely inside the objects mesh. If it sticks out anywhere you will get a weird shadow. A workaround I have found that works good is to model large parts of a shadow mesh that are easy to hide, this can cut down alot of shadow casting polys on an object. Then I will split small details off of the object and give them a material that has shadows, then I don't have to mess with the very hard areas but have still done some good. (example: a small pot with tiny handles, the pot will cast no shadows but will have a shadow mesh to do that, The tiny handles will themselves cast shadows so there is no weird shadow mesh clippling - both use the same base material, but the noshadows and noself shadow lines are removed from a copy of the original shader).
There seems to be no issue with lwo files, I am not sure why this is, but if you are making these files it seems you can be a bit more lax in the overall shape/clipping of your shadow mesh.

{{tutorial-models}}

Starting to Model for TDM

2013-05-20T15:10:45Z

AluminumHaste: /* Modeling Software */

== Modeling Software ==

Most modelers on the team use [http://www.lightwave3d.com/ Lightwave] or [http://www.blender.org/ Blender]. Anything that can save in either .lwo (prefered) or .ase format is acceptable. However, there is an ASE exporter available for Blender at the [http://www.doom3world.org/ Doom3World] forums, and [http://www.katsbits.com/tools/ katsbits.com] has some import/export scripts for Blender, otherwise ask somebody in the Dark Mod Forums.
[http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-3ds-max/overview/ 3ds Max] can be used to model and import/export .ase files.

== Making the Model ==

You will need to make, for each individual object:
* a highpoly model. There's no poly limit to this--make it as detailed as possible.
* a lowpoly version of the same size and basic shape (see dimensions below).

The detailed version is used, by Doom 3, or another tool such as ORB or xnormals, to generate a normalmap with all the details on it. This normalmap is then used with the lowpoly model to fake higher detail. See [[Renderbump]] for more information on using D3 to generate normalmaps.

* Lightwave: Your model needs to be tripled before being used in game ({{key-shift}}+{{key|T}}), or D3 will spit out tons of warning messages.
* Blender: The ASE exporter will automatically convert all your faces to triangles.
* 3dsMax: turn to poly, max sides 3, turn to edit mesh before export.

== Model and Texture Dimensions ==

Aim for less than 5000 polys for significant AI, and less than 500 for most common objects. Testing has shown that rendering polys does not slow down FPS much if they don't cast shadows. It is therefore ok to have a higher poly model if you create a low-poly shadowmesh built into it (a 1000 poly model can often have a decent shadowmesh for 300 polys). Generally, objects that might only be used once in a scene (like a well) can have higher polys, but objects that might appear many times (like lights or chairs) should have less than 500. Round objects (vases, plates, etc) should have a minimum of 8-10 sides (depending on the size of the object) to appear fairly smooth. Less important parts of an object (like the legs of a stool) can have fewer sides to keep polys down.

About 200-300 polys is the average for most smallish size props, like weapons or lights. Even our wide bookshelf model is less than 250 polys, so it's not always dependent on size.

You don't generally need to sacrifice detail just to get a model less than 300 polys, however.

Texture sizes go in powers of two: 2, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048. D3 will automatically rescale TGA textures that are not in powers of two, which could stretch your texture and waste processing time (and look blurry as well). Note that the dimensions of DDS textures '''absolutely have to''' match powers of two, otherwise they appear black in-game.

== Naming Conventions ==

The following convention should be used for naming all new model additions to TDM (many existing models do not follow this convention, and over time effort will be made to update them). Following this convention will make it easier for mappers to find the models they want in a long list--if they are looking for a chest, they want to look under "c" for chest, not "w" for wooden_chest.

# '''Object Type''' descriptor first. Mappers are generally going to search by object, so they will want to find all objects of a similar type grouped together. It's a window, a plate, a chest, etc. Don't bother duplicating the name of the folder, however. If your ojbect is inside the "lights" folder, then you don't need to call it "light_torch_wood".
# '''Material''' descriptor next. This may be appropriate, but remember that different textures can be used on the same model, so calling something "statue_marble" could be misleading if it also has a metal texture.
# '''Size''' descriptor next. This is primarily useful if there are multiple versions of the same mesh, like "statue_lion_large" and "statue_lion_small".
# '''Quality''' descriptors next. Optional. Remember that skins might exist. However, descriptors like ornate, plain, etc, can help mappers.
# '''Number Increment''' next. Adding a number to the end is useful if there are likely to be more versions of the same kind of object.

If establishing precedent (creating a new '''Size''' descriptor, e.g., "huge"), try to avoid ambiguity and unnecessary overlapping with other descriptors (e.g., "enormous"), and set a good example others will follow.

'''Examples:'''

1. ''apple_001''

This name omits all but the mandatory descriptors. If valuable information about the object can help differentiate it from others, optional descriptors may be added. If it is indeed generic, this name is fine.

2. ''chest_wood_battered_005''

This highly descriptive name omits a '''Size''' descriptor.

It should be noted that a given descriptor can use more than one word if needed, for example, lamp_wall_ (uses two object descriptors), as long as it either follows precedent or establishes a good one.

== Where to Save your Model and Textures ==

Models should be saved in the models/darkmod tree. See [[Model Folder Structure]] for specific information about where to put things.

== Grid Alignment and Origin ==

Please make sure your models are grid-aligned (the bottom of the object rests on a grid line in your modelling software). If they don't, it can be difficult to get the model to sit on the floor or other surfaces in the editor. If the object is likely to have other things placed on top of it (tables, shelves, etc) then it is also helpful if the top surface is grid-aligned as well.

Keep this in mind for all objects. The back of a door handle should sit very close to flush with the grid so it'll align well with doors. The back of a torch should be right on the grid so it doesn't sink into or float away from a wall. objects like chests are made of three different models; A chest, a lid and a lockbar. The chest can be flush to the floor, but the top might not align to the grid, it's best to move the verts to the closest grid line in this case. The lid's pivot needs to be at 0 in the z plane, so the bottom of the lid also needs to hit a grid line so it can sit flush with the top of the chest and not leave a gap. The lock bars pivot also need to be flush with 0 in the z plane (for rotation pivot) but it need sto also align on the grid so it'll match up closely to the lockbox.

Re:'''Grid size''', testing in your 3d program:
An easy way to check your grid is to open a new file in DarkRadiant, choose a large grid size and drag out a cube brush, choose the next smaller grid size and drag out another brush, do this with 3-4 grid sizes. Make each cube as small as possible for that grid size. No need to texture them, place them all close to each other.
Now select all of them and choose '''file/export as obj''', this will make them an obj file that can be imported into most 3d programs, if not you can convert it with a program like Accutrans into a 3ds mesh and import that.
Now these cubes are in your 3d program, do they align to the grid? Don't move them, if they don't align, instead adjust your grid size to match them. In 3ds Max you do this by choosing the customize ''menu/grid and snap settings/home grid tab/'' and for ''grid settings'' use a number in the power of 2, 4, 8,16... (you can use 1, or .5, or0.25 for smaller grids). This sets the alignment equal to DR's grid. 3ds Max is natuarally set at 10 which doesn't DR grid at all. You can set the ''major grid lines'' to something you are comfortable with, 4, 8, ect...That just makes a darker grid line every 4 or 8 lines.
Now any verts placed on a grid line will match the grid in DR.

Re: '''Origins'''. D3 uses the origin of the model to determine physics for movement--moveable objects will rotate around the origin when they are bouncing around. Any model that will likely be made into a moveable object (basically any unattached object smaller than a chair) should have its origin where its center of gravity would be. The frob trace is also done to an object's origin. Typically a player will look at the center of an object to frob it, not the bottom, so having the origin in the center of moveables makes them easier/more realistic to frob.

Large objects that are not likely to be moveables, like desks or wardrobes, can have their origin at the bottom of the object, for easy placement on the floor. An exception would be something like trees that an author might possibly sink into the ground far enough to reach outside the world. In this case have a centered origin would be best so the origin stays inside world.

Objects that might be designed to swing or rotate (like a hanging sign) should have their origin at the point of rotation.

== Collision Meshes ==

Collision models should be used on most objects for several reasons. They can help simplify pathfinding databases for AI and weapons, they also simplify the shape of the object so it can be moveable. If an object is going to be static and not move, like a pillar, it's collision model can be as complex as you want, however this defeats the purpose of a collision mesh. Generally you want to make the collision mesh as simple as possible while retaining the basic shape of the model. This will guaranty that arrows will bounce off of it, or stick to it in a realistic way. If the mesh doesn't match the original object close enough you will get things like arrows bouncing off the air next to the model, or arrows that go through the model.

Collision models must be exported with the original object mesh. This makes them hard to see in the editor, but the collision surface can be toggled so it's not a problem. Collision meshes won't be seen in game, nor will their effects if done properly.

A static object can use one or more collision models, the purpose of this is to apply different materials to the colllision model. For instance, the generic Doom collision sounds like stone when an arrow bounces off of it, and arrows will always bounce off of it. However Dark Radiant allows the use of material specific collision shaders. So a chest can be made of metal and wood, an arrow will bounce of the metal parts and stick into the wood parts. The number of collision meshes on a static object is undetermined but should be limitless.
This is a good way to simplify collision while retaining the objects material types. A collision model overrides an objects shader properties (the image will be the same but noise and collision props will not work), so if you export with collision try to seperate it into materials.
Examples of collision shader names: //base/tdm_collision_wood, //base/tdm_collision_ceramic

Moveable objects ''must'' have collision models unlike static objects. These meshes have to be very simple. Currently the exact specs of a moveables collision mesh are under debate. You will often see these specs stated as less than 16 polys, no concave polys, ect... But it is possible to make workable collision models with both of the above rules broken, however it is very unlikely and you are lucky if it works. Most of the time if you do break those rules you will get an unstable mesh that will fly across the room when frobbed, sometimes even resulting in SHAS (Sudden Heart Attack Syndrom) when the player dies without warning. So sticking to those guidlines is usually best and can still result in a decent collision model in most cases. Multiple collision meshes have been successfully exported also, however they only use the material type of the first collision model loaded, this can also lead to instability. Generally simple shapes work best, just try to make it fit your object as close as possible.

Shapes that work well for moveable collision models are cubes, pyramids and cylinders (up to 7 sides seems to work well). An L-shape of 2 collision meshes has proven to work with chairs (basically 2 cubes).

For an idea what will work look at models in the model viewer. Of course a crate has a cube, a gear will have a cylinder, a lamp might have a pyramid. Objects that use unconventional shapes that defy the rules above are keys and the silver teapot.

== Shadow Meshes ==

Shadow meshes are similar to collision meshes. Basically they are just to simplify shadow casting, this can have great benefits to maps, especially if there are multiple lights hitting the object. Doom 3 can handle an enormous amount of polys on screen without flinching, however throw in a couple lights and you can bring it to its knees. This is where the importance of shadow meshes really counts. Doom3 calculates how each triangle is hit by a light and what shadow that triangle will cast, this is no big deal with one triangle, or one light but in a map you are sure to have many lights and many polys. These calculations are done every frame.

We have done tests with 100,000 polys and one light, FPS will be around 60. Add a second light and the FPS will drop to 45, add a 3rd light and FPS will drop to 30 (rough estimates)... So if your objects are 100,000 polys but your shadow meshes only equal 50,000 polys you have already cut the lag in half.

All materials and/or objects (including game created func_static meshes) can have noshadows set to 1. While this really helps performance it can look very bad and have bad effects on gameplay. Darkmod is a game set in very shadowy places and the player uses shadows for stealth, the major gameplay component, hence the importance of shadow meshes once again.

When modeling the shadow mesh try to match the basic shape of your object as close as possible while using as few triangles as possible. Say you have a pipe object that has 20 sides and is very round. You could make a shadow mesh with only 4 sides and for the most part the shadow would look the same, the noticable difference would be that the ends would cast sharp corners, but often times these can be hidden within another shadow and wont be noticeable in game at all. Even the shape of the pipe going into a wall would mask the bad edges of the shadow.

Shadow meshes must be exported with objects and their collision models. Unlike collision shaders the shadow shaders do ''not'' override the objects shadows. So when making a model that uses a shadow mesh you need to use material shaders for the object with noshadows on it, this has to be set in the material file (materials/.mtr). However do not go and start adding ''noshadows'' to all the materials as some objects or terrain might need shadows. Instead copy/paste the shader deffinition into a new .mtr file, give it a new name and add noshadows to it, that way the original material doesn't change. You should also use ''NoSelfShadow'' which will stop the material from casting shadows on itself.

There are 2 material shaders for shadow meshes, they can be combined and both used for one model at the same time. They are '''textures/common/shadow''' and '''textures/common/shadow2'''. ''Shadow'' material casts shadows and self shadows (on the object the mesh is exported with, it is all considered one object although the collision and shadow meshes are not seen in game). Shadow2 casts shadows (on terrain and other objects) but does not cast shadows on itself. This is very handy for things like apples where the player really won't notice if the stem casts a shadow on the apple. Remember, this is one of the most important considerations for performance so if an object can live without shadows, or without casting shadows on itself then use that option first.

Weird lighting issues due to shadow meshes. .Ase files from 3ds max have an issue with shadow meshes clipping outside of an objects mesh which can cause weird shadow fragments on the objects they belong to. The cure for this is to make sure that the shadow mesh is entirely inside the objects mesh. If it sticks out anywhere you will get a weird shadow. A workaround I have found that works good is to model large parts of a shadow mesh that are easy to hide, this can cut down alot of shadow casting polys on an object. Then I will split small details off of the object and give them a material that has shadows, then I don't have to mess with the very hard areas but have still done some good. (example: a small pot with tiny handles, the pot will cast no shadows but will have a shadow mesh to do that, The tiny handles will themselves cast shadows so there is no weird shadow mesh clippling - both use the same base material, but the noshadows and noself shadow lines are removed from a copy of the original shader).
There seems to be no issue with lwo files, I am not sure why this is, but if you are making these files it seems you can be a bit more lax in the overall shape/clipping of your shadow mesh.

{{tutorial-models}}

Starting to Model for TDM

2013-05-20T15:09:54Z

AluminumHaste: /* Modeling Software */

== Modeling Software ==

Most modelers on the team use [http://www.lightwave3d.com/ Lightwave] or [http://www.blender.org/ Blender]. Anything that can save in either .lwo (prefered) or .ase format is acceptable. However, there is an ASE exporter available for Blender at the [http://www.doom3world.org/ Doom3World] forums, and [http://www.katsbits.com/tools/ katsbits.com] has some import/export scripts for Blender, otherwise ask somebody in the Dark Mod Forums.
3dsMax can be used to model and import/export .ase files.

== Making the Model ==

You will need to make, for each individual object:
* a highpoly model. There's no poly limit to this--make it as detailed as possible.
* a lowpoly version of the same size and basic shape (see dimensions below).

The detailed version is used, by Doom 3, or another tool such as ORB or xnormals, to generate a normalmap with all the details on it. This normalmap is then used with the lowpoly model to fake higher detail. See [[Renderbump]] for more information on using D3 to generate normalmaps.

* Lightwave: Your model needs to be tripled before being used in game ({{key-shift}}+{{key|T}}), or D3 will spit out tons of warning messages.
* Blender: The ASE exporter will automatically convert all your faces to triangles.
* 3dsMax: turn to poly, max sides 3, turn to edit mesh before export.

== Model and Texture Dimensions ==

Aim for less than 5000 polys for significant AI, and less than 500 for most common objects. Testing has shown that rendering polys does not slow down FPS much if they don't cast shadows. It is therefore ok to have a higher poly model if you create a low-poly shadowmesh built into it (a 1000 poly model can often have a decent shadowmesh for 300 polys). Generally, objects that might only be used once in a scene (like a well) can have higher polys, but objects that might appear many times (like lights or chairs) should have less than 500. Round objects (vases, plates, etc) should have a minimum of 8-10 sides (depending on the size of the object) to appear fairly smooth. Less important parts of an object (like the legs of a stool) can have fewer sides to keep polys down.

About 200-300 polys is the average for most smallish size props, like weapons or lights. Even our wide bookshelf model is less than 250 polys, so it's not always dependent on size.

You don't generally need to sacrifice detail just to get a model less than 300 polys, however.

Texture sizes go in powers of two: 2, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048. D3 will automatically rescale TGA textures that are not in powers of two, which could stretch your texture and waste processing time (and look blurry as well). Note that the dimensions of DDS textures '''absolutely have to''' match powers of two, otherwise they appear black in-game.

== Naming Conventions ==

The following convention should be used for naming all new model additions to TDM (many existing models do not follow this convention, and over time effort will be made to update them). Following this convention will make it easier for mappers to find the models they want in a long list--if they are looking for a chest, they want to look under "c" for chest, not "w" for wooden_chest.

# '''Object Type''' descriptor first. Mappers are generally going to search by object, so they will want to find all objects of a similar type grouped together. It's a window, a plate, a chest, etc. Don't bother duplicating the name of the folder, however. If your ojbect is inside the "lights" folder, then you don't need to call it "light_torch_wood".
# '''Material''' descriptor next. This may be appropriate, but remember that different textures can be used on the same model, so calling something "statue_marble" could be misleading if it also has a metal texture.
# '''Size''' descriptor next. This is primarily useful if there are multiple versions of the same mesh, like "statue_lion_large" and "statue_lion_small".
# '''Quality''' descriptors next. Optional. Remember that skins might exist. However, descriptors like ornate, plain, etc, can help mappers.
# '''Number Increment''' next. Adding a number to the end is useful if there are likely to be more versions of the same kind of object.

If establishing precedent (creating a new '''Size''' descriptor, e.g., "huge"), try to avoid ambiguity and unnecessary overlapping with other descriptors (e.g., "enormous"), and set a good example others will follow.

'''Examples:'''

1. ''apple_001''

This name omits all but the mandatory descriptors. If valuable information about the object can help differentiate it from others, optional descriptors may be added. If it is indeed generic, this name is fine.

2. ''chest_wood_battered_005''

This highly descriptive name omits a '''Size''' descriptor.

It should be noted that a given descriptor can use more than one word if needed, for example, lamp_wall_ (uses two object descriptors), as long as it either follows precedent or establishes a good one.

== Where to Save your Model and Textures ==

Models should be saved in the models/darkmod tree. See [[Model Folder Structure]] for specific information about where to put things.

== Grid Alignment and Origin ==

Please make sure your models are grid-aligned (the bottom of the object rests on a grid line in your modelling software). If they don't, it can be difficult to get the model to sit on the floor or other surfaces in the editor. If the object is likely to have other things placed on top of it (tables, shelves, etc) then it is also helpful if the top surface is grid-aligned as well.

Keep this in mind for all objects. The back of a door handle should sit very close to flush with the grid so it'll align well with doors. The back of a torch should be right on the grid so it doesn't sink into or float away from a wall. objects like chests are made of three different models; A chest, a lid and a lockbar. The chest can be flush to the floor, but the top might not align to the grid, it's best to move the verts to the closest grid line in this case. The lid's pivot needs to be at 0 in the z plane, so the bottom of the lid also needs to hit a grid line so it can sit flush with the top of the chest and not leave a gap. The lock bars pivot also need to be flush with 0 in the z plane (for rotation pivot) but it need sto also align on the grid so it'll match up closely to the lockbox.

Re:'''Grid size''', testing in your 3d program:
An easy way to check your grid is to open a new file in DarkRadiant, choose a large grid size and drag out a cube brush, choose the next smaller grid size and drag out another brush, do this with 3-4 grid sizes. Make each cube as small as possible for that grid size. No need to texture them, place them all close to each other.
Now select all of them and choose '''file/export as obj''', this will make them an obj file that can be imported into most 3d programs, if not you can convert it with a program like Accutrans into a 3ds mesh and import that.
Now these cubes are in your 3d program, do they align to the grid? Don't move them, if they don't align, instead adjust your grid size to match them. In 3ds Max you do this by choosing the customize ''menu/grid and snap settings/home grid tab/'' and for ''grid settings'' use a number in the power of 2, 4, 8,16... (you can use 1, or .5, or0.25 for smaller grids). This sets the alignment equal to DR's grid. 3ds Max is natuarally set at 10 which doesn't DR grid at all. You can set the ''major grid lines'' to something you are comfortable with, 4, 8, ect...That just makes a darker grid line every 4 or 8 lines.
Now any verts placed on a grid line will match the grid in DR.

Re: '''Origins'''. D3 uses the origin of the model to determine physics for movement--moveable objects will rotate around the origin when they are bouncing around. Any model that will likely be made into a moveable object (basically any unattached object smaller than a chair) should have its origin where its center of gravity would be. The frob trace is also done to an object's origin. Typically a player will look at the center of an object to frob it, not the bottom, so having the origin in the center of moveables makes them easier/more realistic to frob.

Large objects that are not likely to be moveables, like desks or wardrobes, can have their origin at the bottom of the object, for easy placement on the floor. An exception would be something like trees that an author might possibly sink into the ground far enough to reach outside the world. In this case have a centered origin would be best so the origin stays inside world.

Objects that might be designed to swing or rotate (like a hanging sign) should have their origin at the point of rotation.

== Collision Meshes ==

Collision models should be used on most objects for several reasons. They can help simplify pathfinding databases for AI and weapons, they also simplify the shape of the object so it can be moveable. If an object is going to be static and not move, like a pillar, it's collision model can be as complex as you want, however this defeats the purpose of a collision mesh. Generally you want to make the collision mesh as simple as possible while retaining the basic shape of the model. This will guaranty that arrows will bounce off of it, or stick to it in a realistic way. If the mesh doesn't match the original object close enough you will get things like arrows bouncing off the air next to the model, or arrows that go through the model.

Collision models must be exported with the original object mesh. This makes them hard to see in the editor, but the collision surface can be toggled so it's not a problem. Collision meshes won't be seen in game, nor will their effects if done properly.

A static object can use one or more collision models, the purpose of this is to apply different materials to the colllision model. For instance, the generic Doom collision sounds like stone when an arrow bounces off of it, and arrows will always bounce off of it. However Dark Radiant allows the use of material specific collision shaders. So a chest can be made of metal and wood, an arrow will bounce of the metal parts and stick into the wood parts. The number of collision meshes on a static object is undetermined but should be limitless.
This is a good way to simplify collision while retaining the objects material types. A collision model overrides an objects shader properties (the image will be the same but noise and collision props will not work), so if you export with collision try to seperate it into materials.
Examples of collision shader names: //base/tdm_collision_wood, //base/tdm_collision_ceramic

Moveable objects ''must'' have collision models unlike static objects. These meshes have to be very simple. Currently the exact specs of a moveables collision mesh are under debate. You will often see these specs stated as less than 16 polys, no concave polys, ect... But it is possible to make workable collision models with both of the above rules broken, however it is very unlikely and you are lucky if it works. Most of the time if you do break those rules you will get an unstable mesh that will fly across the room when frobbed, sometimes even resulting in SHAS (Sudden Heart Attack Syndrom) when the player dies without warning. So sticking to those guidlines is usually best and can still result in a decent collision model in most cases. Multiple collision meshes have been successfully exported also, however they only use the material type of the first collision model loaded, this can also lead to instability. Generally simple shapes work best, just try to make it fit your object as close as possible.

Shapes that work well for moveable collision models are cubes, pyramids and cylinders (up to 7 sides seems to work well). An L-shape of 2 collision meshes has proven to work with chairs (basically 2 cubes).

For an idea what will work look at models in the model viewer. Of course a crate has a cube, a gear will have a cylinder, a lamp might have a pyramid. Objects that use unconventional shapes that defy the rules above are keys and the silver teapot.

== Shadow Meshes ==

Shadow meshes are similar to collision meshes. Basically they are just to simplify shadow casting, this can have great benefits to maps, especially if there are multiple lights hitting the object. Doom 3 can handle an enormous amount of polys on screen without flinching, however throw in a couple lights and you can bring it to its knees. This is where the importance of shadow meshes really counts. Doom3 calculates how each triangle is hit by a light and what shadow that triangle will cast, this is no big deal with one triangle, or one light but in a map you are sure to have many lights and many polys. These calculations are done every frame.

We have done tests with 100,000 polys and one light, FPS will be around 60. Add a second light and the FPS will drop to 45, add a 3rd light and FPS will drop to 30 (rough estimates)... So if your objects are 100,000 polys but your shadow meshes only equal 50,000 polys you have already cut the lag in half.

All materials and/or objects (including game created func_static meshes) can have noshadows set to 1. While this really helps performance it can look very bad and have bad effects on gameplay. Darkmod is a game set in very shadowy places and the player uses shadows for stealth, the major gameplay component, hence the importance of shadow meshes once again.

When modeling the shadow mesh try to match the basic shape of your object as close as possible while using as few triangles as possible. Say you have a pipe object that has 20 sides and is very round. You could make a shadow mesh with only 4 sides and for the most part the shadow would look the same, the noticable difference would be that the ends would cast sharp corners, but often times these can be hidden within another shadow and wont be noticeable in game at all. Even the shape of the pipe going into a wall would mask the bad edges of the shadow.

Shadow meshes must be exported with objects and their collision models. Unlike collision shaders the shadow shaders do ''not'' override the objects shadows. So when making a model that uses a shadow mesh you need to use material shaders for the object with noshadows on it, this has to be set in the material file (materials/.mtr). However do not go and start adding ''noshadows'' to all the materials as some objects or terrain might need shadows. Instead copy/paste the shader deffinition into a new .mtr file, give it a new name and add noshadows to it, that way the original material doesn't change. You should also use ''NoSelfShadow'' which will stop the material from casting shadows on itself.

There are 2 material shaders for shadow meshes, they can be combined and both used for one model at the same time. They are '''textures/common/shadow''' and '''textures/common/shadow2'''. ''Shadow'' material casts shadows and self shadows (on the object the mesh is exported with, it is all considered one object although the collision and shadow meshes are not seen in game). Shadow2 casts shadows (on terrain and other objects) but does not cast shadows on itself. This is very handy for things like apples where the player really won't notice if the stem casts a shadow on the apple. Remember, this is one of the most important considerations for performance so if an object can live without shadows, or without casting shadows on itself then use that option first.

Weird lighting issues due to shadow meshes. .Ase files from 3ds max have an issue with shadow meshes clipping outside of an objects mesh which can cause weird shadow fragments on the objects they belong to. The cure for this is to make sure that the shadow mesh is entirely inside the objects mesh. If it sticks out anywhere you will get a weird shadow. A workaround I have found that works good is to model large parts of a shadow mesh that are easy to hide, this can cut down alot of shadow casting polys on an object. Then I will split small details off of the object and give them a material that has shadows, then I don't have to mess with the very hard areas but have still done some good. (example: a small pot with tiny handles, the pot will cast no shadows but will have a shadow mesh to do that, The tiny handles will themselves cast shadows so there is no weird shadow mesh clippling - both use the same base material, but the noshadows and noself shadow lines are removed from a copy of the original shader).
There seems to be no issue with lwo files, I am not sure why this is, but if you are making these files it seems you can be a bit more lax in the overall shape/clipping of your shadow mesh.

{{tutorial-models}}

Starting to Model for TDM

2013-05-20T15:08:56Z

AluminumHaste: /* Modeling Software */

== Modeling Software ==

Most modelers on the team use Lightwave or [http://www.blender.org/ Blender]. Anything that can save in either .lwo (prefered) or .ase format is acceptable. However, there is an ASE exporter available for Blender at the [http://www.doom3world.org/ Doom3World] forums, and [http://www.katsbits.com/tools/ katsbits.com] has some import/export scripts for Blender, otherwise ask somebody in the Dark Mod Forums.
3dsMax can be used to model and import/export .ase files.

== Making the Model ==

You will need to make, for each individual object:
* a highpoly model. There's no poly limit to this--make it as detailed as possible.
* a lowpoly version of the same size and basic shape (see dimensions below).

The detailed version is used, by Doom 3, or another tool such as ORB or xnormals, to generate a normalmap with all the details on it. This normalmap is then used with the lowpoly model to fake higher detail. See [[Renderbump]] for more information on using D3 to generate normalmaps.

* Lightwave: Your model needs to be tripled before being used in game ({{key-shift}}+{{key|T}}), or D3 will spit out tons of warning messages.
* Blender: The ASE exporter will automatically convert all your faces to triangles.
* 3dsMax: turn to poly, max sides 3, turn to edit mesh before export.

== Model and Texture Dimensions ==

Aim for less than 5000 polys for significant AI, and less than 500 for most common objects. Testing has shown that rendering polys does not slow down FPS much if they don't cast shadows. It is therefore ok to have a higher poly model if you create a low-poly shadowmesh built into it (a 1000 poly model can often have a decent shadowmesh for 300 polys). Generally, objects that might only be used once in a scene (like a well) can have higher polys, but objects that might appear many times (like lights or chairs) should have less than 500. Round objects (vases, plates, etc) should have a minimum of 8-10 sides (depending on the size of the object) to appear fairly smooth. Less important parts of an object (like the legs of a stool) can have fewer sides to keep polys down.

About 200-300 polys is the average for most smallish size props, like weapons or lights. Even our wide bookshelf model is less than 250 polys, so it's not always dependent on size.

You don't generally need to sacrifice detail just to get a model less than 300 polys, however.

Texture sizes go in powers of two: 2, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048. D3 will automatically rescale TGA textures that are not in powers of two, which could stretch your texture and waste processing time (and look blurry as well). Note that the dimensions of DDS textures '''absolutely have to''' match powers of two, otherwise they appear black in-game.

== Naming Conventions ==

The following convention should be used for naming all new model additions to TDM (many existing models do not follow this convention, and over time effort will be made to update them). Following this convention will make it easier for mappers to find the models they want in a long list--if they are looking for a chest, they want to look under "c" for chest, not "w" for wooden_chest.

# '''Object Type''' descriptor first. Mappers are generally going to search by object, so they will want to find all objects of a similar type grouped together. It's a window, a plate, a chest, etc. Don't bother duplicating the name of the folder, however. If your ojbect is inside the "lights" folder, then you don't need to call it "light_torch_wood".
# '''Material''' descriptor next. This may be appropriate, but remember that different textures can be used on the same model, so calling something "statue_marble" could be misleading if it also has a metal texture.
# '''Size''' descriptor next. This is primarily useful if there are multiple versions of the same mesh, like "statue_lion_large" and "statue_lion_small".
# '''Quality''' descriptors next. Optional. Remember that skins might exist. However, descriptors like ornate, plain, etc, can help mappers.
# '''Number Increment''' next. Adding a number to the end is useful if there are likely to be more versions of the same kind of object.

If establishing precedent (creating a new '''Size''' descriptor, e.g., "huge"), try to avoid ambiguity and unnecessary overlapping with other descriptors (e.g., "enormous"), and set a good example others will follow.

'''Examples:'''

1. ''apple_001''

This name omits all but the mandatory descriptors. If valuable information about the object can help differentiate it from others, optional descriptors may be added. If it is indeed generic, this name is fine.

2. ''chest_wood_battered_005''

This highly descriptive name omits a '''Size''' descriptor.

It should be noted that a given descriptor can use more than one word if needed, for example, lamp_wall_ (uses two object descriptors), as long as it either follows precedent or establishes a good one.

== Where to Save your Model and Textures ==

Models should be saved in the models/darkmod tree. See [[Model Folder Structure]] for specific information about where to put things.

== Grid Alignment and Origin ==

Please make sure your models are grid-aligned (the bottom of the object rests on a grid line in your modelling software). If they don't, it can be difficult to get the model to sit on the floor or other surfaces in the editor. If the object is likely to have other things placed on top of it (tables, shelves, etc) then it is also helpful if the top surface is grid-aligned as well.

Keep this in mind for all objects. The back of a door handle should sit very close to flush with the grid so it'll align well with doors. The back of a torch should be right on the grid so it doesn't sink into or float away from a wall. objects like chests are made of three different models; A chest, a lid and a lockbar. The chest can be flush to the floor, but the top might not align to the grid, it's best to move the verts to the closest grid line in this case. The lid's pivot needs to be at 0 in the z plane, so the bottom of the lid also needs to hit a grid line so it can sit flush with the top of the chest and not leave a gap. The lock bars pivot also need to be flush with 0 in the z plane (for rotation pivot) but it need sto also align on the grid so it'll match up closely to the lockbox.

Re:'''Grid size''', testing in your 3d program:
An easy way to check your grid is to open a new file in DarkRadiant, choose a large grid size and drag out a cube brush, choose the next smaller grid size and drag out another brush, do this with 3-4 grid sizes. Make each cube as small as possible for that grid size. No need to texture them, place them all close to each other.
Now select all of them and choose '''file/export as obj''', this will make them an obj file that can be imported into most 3d programs, if not you can convert it with a program like Accutrans into a 3ds mesh and import that.
Now these cubes are in your 3d program, do they align to the grid? Don't move them, if they don't align, instead adjust your grid size to match them. In 3ds Max you do this by choosing the customize ''menu/grid and snap settings/home grid tab/'' and for ''grid settings'' use a number in the power of 2, 4, 8,16... (you can use 1, or .5, or0.25 for smaller grids). This sets the alignment equal to DR's grid. 3ds Max is natuarally set at 10 which doesn't DR grid at all. You can set the ''major grid lines'' to something you are comfortable with, 4, 8, ect...That just makes a darker grid line every 4 or 8 lines.
Now any verts placed on a grid line will match the grid in DR.

Re: '''Origins'''. D3 uses the origin of the model to determine physics for movement--moveable objects will rotate around the origin when they are bouncing around. Any model that will likely be made into a moveable object (basically any unattached object smaller than a chair) should have its origin where its center of gravity would be. The frob trace is also done to an object's origin. Typically a player will look at the center of an object to frob it, not the bottom, so having the origin in the center of moveables makes them easier/more realistic to frob.

Large objects that are not likely to be moveables, like desks or wardrobes, can have their origin at the bottom of the object, for easy placement on the floor. An exception would be something like trees that an author might possibly sink into the ground far enough to reach outside the world. In this case have a centered origin would be best so the origin stays inside world.

Objects that might be designed to swing or rotate (like a hanging sign) should have their origin at the point of rotation.

== Collision Meshes ==

Collision models should be used on most objects for several reasons. They can help simplify pathfinding databases for AI and weapons, they also simplify the shape of the object so it can be moveable. If an object is going to be static and not move, like a pillar, it's collision model can be as complex as you want, however this defeats the purpose of a collision mesh. Generally you want to make the collision mesh as simple as possible while retaining the basic shape of the model. This will guaranty that arrows will bounce off of it, or stick to it in a realistic way. If the mesh doesn't match the original object close enough you will get things like arrows bouncing off the air next to the model, or arrows that go through the model.

Collision models must be exported with the original object mesh. This makes them hard to see in the editor, but the collision surface can be toggled so it's not a problem. Collision meshes won't be seen in game, nor will their effects if done properly.

A static object can use one or more collision models, the purpose of this is to apply different materials to the colllision model. For instance, the generic Doom collision sounds like stone when an arrow bounces off of it, and arrows will always bounce off of it. However Dark Radiant allows the use of material specific collision shaders. So a chest can be made of metal and wood, an arrow will bounce of the metal parts and stick into the wood parts. The number of collision meshes on a static object is undetermined but should be limitless.
This is a good way to simplify collision while retaining the objects material types. A collision model overrides an objects shader properties (the image will be the same but noise and collision props will not work), so if you export with collision try to seperate it into materials.
Examples of collision shader names: //base/tdm_collision_wood, //base/tdm_collision_ceramic

Moveable objects ''must'' have collision models unlike static objects. These meshes have to be very simple. Currently the exact specs of a moveables collision mesh are under debate. You will often see these specs stated as less than 16 polys, no concave polys, ect... But it is possible to make workable collision models with both of the above rules broken, however it is very unlikely and you are lucky if it works. Most of the time if you do break those rules you will get an unstable mesh that will fly across the room when frobbed, sometimes even resulting in SHAS (Sudden Heart Attack Syndrom) when the player dies without warning. So sticking to those guidlines is usually best and can still result in a decent collision model in most cases. Multiple collision meshes have been successfully exported also, however they only use the material type of the first collision model loaded, this can also lead to instability. Generally simple shapes work best, just try to make it fit your object as close as possible.

Shapes that work well for moveable collision models are cubes, pyramids and cylinders (up to 7 sides seems to work well). An L-shape of 2 collision meshes has proven to work with chairs (basically 2 cubes).

For an idea what will work look at models in the model viewer. Of course a crate has a cube, a gear will have a cylinder, a lamp might have a pyramid. Objects that use unconventional shapes that defy the rules above are keys and the silver teapot.

== Shadow Meshes ==

Shadow meshes are similar to collision meshes. Basically they are just to simplify shadow casting, this can have great benefits to maps, especially if there are multiple lights hitting the object. Doom 3 can handle an enormous amount of polys on screen without flinching, however throw in a couple lights and you can bring it to its knees. This is where the importance of shadow meshes really counts. Doom3 calculates how each triangle is hit by a light and what shadow that triangle will cast, this is no big deal with one triangle, or one light but in a map you are sure to have many lights and many polys. These calculations are done every frame.

We have done tests with 100,000 polys and one light, FPS will be around 60. Add a second light and the FPS will drop to 45, add a 3rd light and FPS will drop to 30 (rough estimates)... So if your objects are 100,000 polys but your shadow meshes only equal 50,000 polys you have already cut the lag in half.

All materials and/or objects (including game created func_static meshes) can have noshadows set to 1. While this really helps performance it can look very bad and have bad effects on gameplay. Darkmod is a game set in very shadowy places and the player uses shadows for stealth, the major gameplay component, hence the importance of shadow meshes once again.

When modeling the shadow mesh try to match the basic shape of your object as close as possible while using as few triangles as possible. Say you have a pipe object that has 20 sides and is very round. You could make a shadow mesh with only 4 sides and for the most part the shadow would look the same, the noticable difference would be that the ends would cast sharp corners, but often times these can be hidden within another shadow and wont be noticeable in game at all. Even the shape of the pipe going into a wall would mask the bad edges of the shadow.

Shadow meshes must be exported with objects and their collision models. Unlike collision shaders the shadow shaders do ''not'' override the objects shadows. So when making a model that uses a shadow mesh you need to use material shaders for the object with noshadows on it, this has to be set in the material file (materials/.mtr). However do not go and start adding ''noshadows'' to all the materials as some objects or terrain might need shadows. Instead copy/paste the shader deffinition into a new .mtr file, give it a new name and add noshadows to it, that way the original material doesn't change. You should also use ''NoSelfShadow'' which will stop the material from casting shadows on itself.

There are 2 material shaders for shadow meshes, they can be combined and both used for one model at the same time. They are '''textures/common/shadow''' and '''textures/common/shadow2'''. ''Shadow'' material casts shadows and self shadows (on the object the mesh is exported with, it is all considered one object although the collision and shadow meshes are not seen in game). Shadow2 casts shadows (on terrain and other objects) but does not cast shadows on itself. This is very handy for things like apples where the player really won't notice if the stem casts a shadow on the apple. Remember, this is one of the most important considerations for performance so if an object can live without shadows, or without casting shadows on itself then use that option first.

Weird lighting issues due to shadow meshes. .Ase files from 3ds max have an issue with shadow meshes clipping outside of an objects mesh which can cause weird shadow fragments on the objects they belong to. The cure for this is to make sure that the shadow mesh is entirely inside the objects mesh. If it sticks out anywhere you will get a weird shadow. A workaround I have found that works good is to model large parts of a shadow mesh that are easy to hide, this can cut down alot of shadow casting polys on an object. Then I will split small details off of the object and give them a material that has shadows, then I don't have to mess with the very hard areas but have still done some good. (example: a small pot with tiny handles, the pot will cast no shadows but will have a shadow mesh to do that, The tiny handles will themselves cast shadows so there is no weird shadow mesh clippling - both use the same base material, but the noshadows and noself shadow lines are removed from a copy of the original shader).
There seems to be no issue with lwo files, I am not sure why this is, but if you are making these files it seems you can be a bit more lax in the overall shape/clipping of your shadow mesh.

{{tutorial-models}}

Starting to Model for TDM

2013-05-20T15:08:07Z

AluminumHaste: /* Modeling Software */

== Modeling Software ==

Most modelers on the team use Lightwave or [http://www.blender.org/ Blender]. Anything that can save in either .lwo (prefered) or .ase format is acceptable. However, there is an ASE exporter available for Blender at the [http://www.doom3world.org/ Doom3World] forums, and [http://www.katsbits.com/tools/] has some import/export scripts for Blender, otherwise ask somebody in the Dark Mod Forums.
3dsMax can be used to model and import/export .ase files.

== Making the Model ==

You will need to make, for each individual object:
* a highpoly model. There's no poly limit to this--make it as detailed as possible.
* a lowpoly version of the same size and basic shape (see dimensions below).

The detailed version is used, by Doom 3, or another tool such as ORB or xnormals, to generate a normalmap with all the details on it. This normalmap is then used with the lowpoly model to fake higher detail. See [[Renderbump]] for more information on using D3 to generate normalmaps.

* Lightwave: Your model needs to be tripled before being used in game ({{key-shift}}+{{key|T}}), or D3 will spit out tons of warning messages.
* Blender: The ASE exporter will automatically convert all your faces to triangles.
* 3dsMax: turn to poly, max sides 3, turn to edit mesh before export.

== Model and Texture Dimensions ==

Aim for less than 5000 polys for significant AI, and less than 500 for most common objects. Testing has shown that rendering polys does not slow down FPS much if they don't cast shadows. It is therefore ok to have a higher poly model if you create a low-poly shadowmesh built into it (a 1000 poly model can often have a decent shadowmesh for 300 polys). Generally, objects that might only be used once in a scene (like a well) can have higher polys, but objects that might appear many times (like lights or chairs) should have less than 500. Round objects (vases, plates, etc) should have a minimum of 8-10 sides (depending on the size of the object) to appear fairly smooth. Less important parts of an object (like the legs of a stool) can have fewer sides to keep polys down.

About 200-300 polys is the average for most smallish size props, like weapons or lights. Even our wide bookshelf model is less than 250 polys, so it's not always dependent on size.

You don't generally need to sacrifice detail just to get a model less than 300 polys, however.

Texture sizes go in powers of two: 2, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048. D3 will automatically rescale TGA textures that are not in powers of two, which could stretch your texture and waste processing time (and look blurry as well). Note that the dimensions of DDS textures '''absolutely have to''' match powers of two, otherwise they appear black in-game.

== Naming Conventions ==

The following convention should be used for naming all new model additions to TDM (many existing models do not follow this convention, and over time effort will be made to update them). Following this convention will make it easier for mappers to find the models they want in a long list--if they are looking for a chest, they want to look under "c" for chest, not "w" for wooden_chest.

# '''Object Type''' descriptor first. Mappers are generally going to search by object, so they will want to find all objects of a similar type grouped together. It's a window, a plate, a chest, etc. Don't bother duplicating the name of the folder, however. If your ojbect is inside the "lights" folder, then you don't need to call it "light_torch_wood".
# '''Material''' descriptor next. This may be appropriate, but remember that different textures can be used on the same model, so calling something "statue_marble" could be misleading if it also has a metal texture.
# '''Size''' descriptor next. This is primarily useful if there are multiple versions of the same mesh, like "statue_lion_large" and "statue_lion_small".
# '''Quality''' descriptors next. Optional. Remember that skins might exist. However, descriptors like ornate, plain, etc, can help mappers.
# '''Number Increment''' next. Adding a number to the end is useful if there are likely to be more versions of the same kind of object.

If establishing precedent (creating a new '''Size''' descriptor, e.g., "huge"), try to avoid ambiguity and unnecessary overlapping with other descriptors (e.g., "enormous"), and set a good example others will follow.

'''Examples:'''

1. ''apple_001''

This name omits all but the mandatory descriptors. If valuable information about the object can help differentiate it from others, optional descriptors may be added. If it is indeed generic, this name is fine.

2. ''chest_wood_battered_005''

This highly descriptive name omits a '''Size''' descriptor.

It should be noted that a given descriptor can use more than one word if needed, for example, lamp_wall_ (uses two object descriptors), as long as it either follows precedent or establishes a good one.

== Where to Save your Model and Textures ==

Models should be saved in the models/darkmod tree. See [[Model Folder Structure]] for specific information about where to put things.

== Grid Alignment and Origin ==

Please make sure your models are grid-aligned (the bottom of the object rests on a grid line in your modelling software). If they don't, it can be difficult to get the model to sit on the floor or other surfaces in the editor. If the object is likely to have other things placed on top of it (tables, shelves, etc) then it is also helpful if the top surface is grid-aligned as well.

Keep this in mind for all objects. The back of a door handle should sit very close to flush with the grid so it'll align well with doors. The back of a torch should be right on the grid so it doesn't sink into or float away from a wall. objects like chests are made of three different models; A chest, a lid and a lockbar. The chest can be flush to the floor, but the top might not align to the grid, it's best to move the verts to the closest grid line in this case. The lid's pivot needs to be at 0 in the z plane, so the bottom of the lid also needs to hit a grid line so it can sit flush with the top of the chest and not leave a gap. The lock bars pivot also need to be flush with 0 in the z plane (for rotation pivot) but it need sto also align on the grid so it'll match up closely to the lockbox.

Re:'''Grid size''', testing in your 3d program:
An easy way to check your grid is to open a new file in DarkRadiant, choose a large grid size and drag out a cube brush, choose the next smaller grid size and drag out another brush, do this with 3-4 grid sizes. Make each cube as small as possible for that grid size. No need to texture them, place them all close to each other.
Now select all of them and choose '''file/export as obj''', this will make them an obj file that can be imported into most 3d programs, if not you can convert it with a program like Accutrans into a 3ds mesh and import that.
Now these cubes are in your 3d program, do they align to the grid? Don't move them, if they don't align, instead adjust your grid size to match them. In 3ds Max you do this by choosing the customize ''menu/grid and snap settings/home grid tab/'' and for ''grid settings'' use a number in the power of 2, 4, 8,16... (you can use 1, or .5, or0.25 for smaller grids). This sets the alignment equal to DR's grid. 3ds Max is natuarally set at 10 which doesn't DR grid at all. You can set the ''major grid lines'' to something you are comfortable with, 4, 8, ect...That just makes a darker grid line every 4 or 8 lines.
Now any verts placed on a grid line will match the grid in DR.

Re: '''Origins'''. D3 uses the origin of the model to determine physics for movement--moveable objects will rotate around the origin when they are bouncing around. Any model that will likely be made into a moveable object (basically any unattached object smaller than a chair) should have its origin where its center of gravity would be. The frob trace is also done to an object's origin. Typically a player will look at the center of an object to frob it, not the bottom, so having the origin in the center of moveables makes them easier/more realistic to frob.

Large objects that are not likely to be moveables, like desks or wardrobes, can have their origin at the bottom of the object, for easy placement on the floor. An exception would be something like trees that an author might possibly sink into the ground far enough to reach outside the world. In this case have a centered origin would be best so the origin stays inside world.

Objects that might be designed to swing or rotate (like a hanging sign) should have their origin at the point of rotation.

== Collision Meshes ==

Collision models should be used on most objects for several reasons. They can help simplify pathfinding databases for AI and weapons, they also simplify the shape of the object so it can be moveable. If an object is going to be static and not move, like a pillar, it's collision model can be as complex as you want, however this defeats the purpose of a collision mesh. Generally you want to make the collision mesh as simple as possible while retaining the basic shape of the model. This will guaranty that arrows will bounce off of it, or stick to it in a realistic way. If the mesh doesn't match the original object close enough you will get things like arrows bouncing off the air next to the model, or arrows that go through the model.

Collision models must be exported with the original object mesh. This makes them hard to see in the editor, but the collision surface can be toggled so it's not a problem. Collision meshes won't be seen in game, nor will their effects if done properly.

A static object can use one or more collision models, the purpose of this is to apply different materials to the colllision model. For instance, the generic Doom collision sounds like stone when an arrow bounces off of it, and arrows will always bounce off of it. However Dark Radiant allows the use of material specific collision shaders. So a chest can be made of metal and wood, an arrow will bounce of the metal parts and stick into the wood parts. The number of collision meshes on a static object is undetermined but should be limitless.
This is a good way to simplify collision while retaining the objects material types. A collision model overrides an objects shader properties (the image will be the same but noise and collision props will not work), so if you export with collision try to seperate it into materials.
Examples of collision shader names: //base/tdm_collision_wood, //base/tdm_collision_ceramic

Moveable objects ''must'' have collision models unlike static objects. These meshes have to be very simple. Currently the exact specs of a moveables collision mesh are under debate. You will often see these specs stated as less than 16 polys, no concave polys, ect... But it is possible to make workable collision models with both of the above rules broken, however it is very unlikely and you are lucky if it works. Most of the time if you do break those rules you will get an unstable mesh that will fly across the room when frobbed, sometimes even resulting in SHAS (Sudden Heart Attack Syndrom) when the player dies without warning. So sticking to those guidlines is usually best and can still result in a decent collision model in most cases. Multiple collision meshes have been successfully exported also, however they only use the material type of the first collision model loaded, this can also lead to instability. Generally simple shapes work best, just try to make it fit your object as close as possible.

Shapes that work well for moveable collision models are cubes, pyramids and cylinders (up to 7 sides seems to work well). An L-shape of 2 collision meshes has proven to work with chairs (basically 2 cubes).

For an idea what will work look at models in the model viewer. Of course a crate has a cube, a gear will have a cylinder, a lamp might have a pyramid. Objects that use unconventional shapes that defy the rules above are keys and the silver teapot.

== Shadow Meshes ==

Shadow meshes are similar to collision meshes. Basically they are just to simplify shadow casting, this can have great benefits to maps, especially if there are multiple lights hitting the object. Doom 3 can handle an enormous amount of polys on screen without flinching, however throw in a couple lights and you can bring it to its knees. This is where the importance of shadow meshes really counts. Doom3 calculates how each triangle is hit by a light and what shadow that triangle will cast, this is no big deal with one triangle, or one light but in a map you are sure to have many lights and many polys. These calculations are done every frame.

We have done tests with 100,000 polys and one light, FPS will be around 60. Add a second light and the FPS will drop to 45, add a 3rd light and FPS will drop to 30 (rough estimates)... So if your objects are 100,000 polys but your shadow meshes only equal 50,000 polys you have already cut the lag in half.

All materials and/or objects (including game created func_static meshes) can have noshadows set to 1. While this really helps performance it can look very bad and have bad effects on gameplay. Darkmod is a game set in very shadowy places and the player uses shadows for stealth, the major gameplay component, hence the importance of shadow meshes once again.

When modeling the shadow mesh try to match the basic shape of your object as close as possible while using as few triangles as possible. Say you have a pipe object that has 20 sides and is very round. You could make a shadow mesh with only 4 sides and for the most part the shadow would look the same, the noticable difference would be that the ends would cast sharp corners, but often times these can be hidden within another shadow and wont be noticeable in game at all. Even the shape of the pipe going into a wall would mask the bad edges of the shadow.

Shadow meshes must be exported with objects and their collision models. Unlike collision shaders the shadow shaders do ''not'' override the objects shadows. So when making a model that uses a shadow mesh you need to use material shaders for the object with noshadows on it, this has to be set in the material file (materials/.mtr). However do not go and start adding ''noshadows'' to all the materials as some objects or terrain might need shadows. Instead copy/paste the shader deffinition into a new .mtr file, give it a new name and add noshadows to it, that way the original material doesn't change. You should also use ''NoSelfShadow'' which will stop the material from casting shadows on itself.

There are 2 material shaders for shadow meshes, they can be combined and both used for one model at the same time. They are '''textures/common/shadow''' and '''textures/common/shadow2'''. ''Shadow'' material casts shadows and self shadows (on the object the mesh is exported with, it is all considered one object although the collision and shadow meshes are not seen in game). Shadow2 casts shadows (on terrain and other objects) but does not cast shadows on itself. This is very handy for things like apples where the player really won't notice if the stem casts a shadow on the apple. Remember, this is one of the most important considerations for performance so if an object can live without shadows, or without casting shadows on itself then use that option first.

Weird lighting issues due to shadow meshes. .Ase files from 3ds max have an issue with shadow meshes clipping outside of an objects mesh which can cause weird shadow fragments on the objects they belong to. The cure for this is to make sure that the shadow mesh is entirely inside the objects mesh. If it sticks out anywhere you will get a weird shadow. A workaround I have found that works good is to model large parts of a shadow mesh that are easy to hide, this can cut down alot of shadow casting polys on an object. Then I will split small details off of the object and give them a material that has shadows, then I don't have to mess with the very hard areas but have still done some good. (example: a small pot with tiny handles, the pot will cast no shadows but will have a shadow mesh to do that, The tiny handles will themselves cast shadows so there is no weird shadow mesh clippling - both use the same base material, but the noshadows and noself shadow lines are removed from a copy of the original shader).
There seems to be no issue with lwo files, I am not sure why this is, but if you are making these files it seems you can be a bit more lax in the overall shape/clipping of your shadow mesh.

{{tutorial-models}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-11-08T01:22:59Z

AluminumHaste: /* ambient_world helps performance */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* {{RMB}} menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combination by selecting it, and hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* {{RMB}} inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Light Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-09T15:26:16Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* {{RMB}} menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combination by selecting it, and hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* {{RMB}} inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-09T15:20:13Z

AluminumHaste: /* Static Models */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* {{RMB}} menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-09T15:19:33Z

AluminumHaste: /* Static Models */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-09T15:13:43Z

AluminumHaste: /* Dmap: Compiling the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com The Dark Mod] website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid ({{key|CTRL}}+{{key|G}}) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{key|~}} (US Keyboards) or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{key|'}} (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

{{tutorial-editing}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-09T15:12:36Z

AluminumHaste: /* Dmap: Compiling the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com The Dark Mod] website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid ({{key|CTRL}}+{{key|G}}) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|ALT}}+ ~ (US Keyboards) or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|ALT}}+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

{{tutorial-editing}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-09T15:11:55Z

AluminumHaste: /* Creating a Light */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com The Dark Mod] website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid ({{key|CTRL}}+{{key|G}}) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is CTRL+ ALT+ ~ (US Keyboards) or CTRL+ALT+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

{{tutorial-editing}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-09T15:11:14Z

AluminumHaste: /* Preparing to Build */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com The Dark Mod] website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid ({{key|CTRL}}+{{key|G}}) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* Ctrl+TAB to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is CTRL+ ALT+ ~ (US Keyboards) or CTRL+ALT+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

{{tutorial-editing}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-01T01:07:32Z

AluminumHaste:

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com The Dark Mod] website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid (Ctrl + G) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* Ctrl+TAB to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is CTRL+ ALT+ ~ (US Keyboards) or CTRL+ALT+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

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A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T01:07:11Z

AluminumHaste: /* 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T01:06:56Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T01:06:27Z

AluminumHaste: /* Adjusting the Light */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T01:05:55Z

AluminumHaste: /* Functioning Entities */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

{{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T01:04:16Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF ({{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|T}} or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-01T01:01:22Z

AluminumHaste: /* Installation */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com The Dark Mod] website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid (Ctrl + G) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* Ctrl+TAB to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a Ctrl + S to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is CTRL+ ALT+ ~ (US Keyboards) or CTRL+ALT+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

{{tutorial-editing}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-01T00:54:46Z

AluminumHaste: /* Installation */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to http://www.thedarkmod.com website for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid (Ctrl + G) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* Ctrl+TAB to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a Ctrl + S to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is CTRL+ ALT+ ~ (US Keyboards) or CTRL+ALT+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

{{tutorial-editing}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!

2010-10-01T00:52:59Z

AluminumHaste: /* Installation */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}
'''''PLEASE NOTE: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE "THIEF'S DEN" DEMO MISSION RELEASED JAN 18TH, 2008.'''''

== Introduction ==

Since writing this I've created a [[Startpack Mappers' Guide]] which is a ready made FM template with a set of ready made components to make it even easier to make a Dark Mod FM because it already includes things like objectives, briefing, readables, etc. etc and you just modify them and concentrate on building. However, I recommend you first follow this guide so you have some understanding of the basics and then the startpack will make more sense.

This is an easy guide for complete beginners to Dark Mod. It will lead you from start to finish, 'push that button, click that menu' and at the end you will have a fully working (but tiny) Dark Mod mission with all the main essential features including objectives all zipped up. You will be able to include variations of your own as you progress if you wish. Links to more detailed info is included but ignore those first time if you wish. Creating this mission is a learning process: although others will be able to play it, it will be too simple for that purpose - though it might be fun to see how varied the results might be from different players following the same instructions! When finished you can modify it and customise it to learn more or just shelve it for reference while you start your ''real'' mission!

This tutorial does not describe how to make your mission architecturally beautiful - just the opposite; the build may be as crude, quick, and ugly as you like. Nor does it advise how to design for good gameplay, etc. For that you should go to [[Mission Design Tips]] after you have mastered the basics. This is a ''method'' tutorial, not a ''design'' tutorial. Nor can it answer every question. It will merely present the most basic information for making a complete mission.

Feel free to experiment, add to, or even skip parts you already know or seem obvious, especially if you have a background producing Doom or Quake maps.

This guide was inspired by Komag's famous tutorial which helped a great many Dromeders (including myself) to get started producing Thief 2 FMs. If you are or were a Dromeder then you might first like to browse quickly through [[Dromed - Dark Mod Differences]] before proceeding - though it is not essential for this tutorial as I am trying to make few assumptions of prior knowledge. It will refer to default keys/mouse settings in Dard Radiant (editor - see later) so if you have changed any hot keys in Dark Radiant's help menu then keep that in mind. Also note that any screenshots might be in a different colour to your settings of course.

== Installation ==

This tutorial assumes that you have Dark Mod already installed. If not, please refer to [http://www.thedarkmod.com/|The Dark Mod website] for information.

Alternatively you can use the limited Dark Mod resources provided by the pre-release demo mission [[Thief's Den]]

== The Dark Mod Editor ==

To edit Dark Mod missions you will need a game editor. '''This tutorial is based on the [[Dark Radiant]] editor''' (hereinafter may be called DR) but you can possibly follow most of it in other editors like DoomEd. Variations might be shown where possible but it will mainly assume Dark Radiant. If you haven't got Dark Radiant yet, consult the [[Dark Radiant]] sections, install it and set it up how you like it. If you want to use DoomEd then you need to look elsewhere first. DoomEd of course is supplied with Doom.

You might wish to open the [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse|DR Controls]] page in a new window in your web browser for quick reference while following this tutorial. I'll try to make it so you don't need to!

Make sure you can run Dark Mod and your editor before proceeding. In particular remember you can undo your last step(s) (edit menu or {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Z}})

== Your First Mission ==

Let's get started.

* Open Dark Radiant (hereinafter DR) and also open Dark Mod for quick testing.
* If you have a mission already open in DR then select File menu > New Map to clear it.
* Save it now as any suitable name. You might prefer to save later but I always do it immediately. All missions must go (with exceptions I will describe later in [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 5#Managing your Mission Files|Managing your Mission Files]]) in the darkmod\maps folder or a folder within that. I urge you to create a new folder for each project within that maps folder. In this case:
# Open File Menu > Save As
# Make sure you are in the 'maps' folder.
# Select 'Create Folder' and type in say 'tutorial'. You might prefer 'Tut' or even 'T' because you have to keep typing it over and over in the Dark Mod console when testing!
# Select that folder
# Enter the name of your mission at the top.
* The game will be saved as a 'map' file with a .map suffix and is commonly called a 'map' in Doom circles. But I will use the term 'mission' or 'FM' (Fan Mission) or maybe 'game' for the map file to try to avoid confusion with actual 'city' or 'treasure' maps within the mission.

First, let's consider our rough storyline so we have some idea what to build...

== Story, Briefing ==

Formal mission objectives will be described much later in this tutorial. But before you begin your mission you will obviously need to have at least some idea of storyline and plot else you will have no idea what to build. You might have a detailed story or just some simple ideas which you can develop later.

Ultimately, you will need to brief the player with information about the story, characters, and the main purpose of the mission. It probably makes sense to write that fully when you are nearly finished the mission because new ideas or even technical difficulties might make you change your story. However, in this tutorial I'll describe it early so as you build the mission the layout and objects make sense.

Your briefing text should eventually be entered as described at [[Briefing]] but temporarily you might just write it in a plain text document for reference.

This mini tutorial mission is called 'Thief's Den' so here is an example briefing ('''not''' in correct format for the gui or .xd file):

"I had a nice haul the other night including a grand scepter from Lord Frothley. But a low-life named Creep who had given me the info, then stole it from ME! Never trust a thief I say. But I know where he lives...

I also still have his message in his own hand, giving the low-down. If I can dispose of Creep and drop the message nearby then he should take the heat for the heist diverting all suspicion from me.

Creep is a nasty piece of work who is handy with a blade. He can be dangerous and may be expecting me - may even have recruited a thug or two as back up - but he has badly underestimated my stealth skills..."

== Preparing to Build ==

When you open Dark Radiant it will default to a grid size (in the XYZ orthoview) of 8 units by 8 (changeable from version 0.9.5 onwards.) These [[Conversion of Game Units|units]] are 1.1 inches. Check your preference (default key P) in DR as it will be easier during this tutorial if you have the following checked (ticked) in Preferences > Orthoview...

* Show Grid
* Show Size Info
* Show Coordinates

'''Important:''' It is recommend you generally build with the grid set reasonably to a large size such as the default 8 or 16 for all walls, floors, etc. This makes alignment easier. You can reduce this in the grid menu for fine placement but don't leave it like that generally or you will have complexity problems. Snap to grid (Ctrl + G) will re-align a selection to the current grid size.

We'll mostly be working in the XYZ grid orthoview but if you have room for the camera view at the side so much the better. The camera view does a rough render in 3D (F3 toggles a better rendering with lighting etc but keep that off if it slows things down which it is likely to and just use it now and again.)

* Note the origin icon of the 'world' at 0,0,0 in the grid view
* Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
* Right mouse drag the grid view to scroll around (zoom out further to scroll around faster)
* Use {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to rotate from top, front, and side views (or you might have three windows open from the view menu)

The blank windows in the grid and camera views can be regarded as empty void - the space in which we shall build. We have to build in bubbles sealed off from that void like an airtight spaceship or a submarine. Any gaps will cause leaks and crash your game so it's obviously the first major rule to learn: always build inner spaces sealed off from the outer void

Apart from special materials like water and weather, all the raw material you will use is 'solid' to form different shapes. So we can make panels and place them together to form lots of floating airtight boxes and these can be linked together. The entire game then takes place inside those boxes. One box can hold a tiny cupboard or an entire cathedral and a lot of boxes can hold a city. Inside those boxes you cannot see the void.

A shortcut to putting panels together is to make one solid block and hollow it out to form a box and this is what we are going to do now to form our first room.

== Making Your First Room ==

First we make a rough solid block...

* Select the top view in the grid view.
* Left mouse drag out a rectangle any few grid units across in the middle somewhere.
* This rectangle is called a 'brush' and used to define raw shapes for walls, floors etc.
* Left drag ''within'' that brush to drag the brush around
* left drag ''outside'' that brush to resize it.

Now we adjust its top view area...

* left drag outside that brush to resize it to 256 across left to right (X direction) by 192 up and down (Y direction in top view.) You should see those dimensions at the sides of the rectangle if you have 'Show Size Info' set in Edit > Preferences > Orthoview. The position of the top left corner is in brackets at top left.
* Left drag within the brush to move it so its sides fit on the bigger grid. If all sides don't fit then check your dimensions and that you are still in grid size 8 (see grid menu.)
* I prefer to build up in the top right corner from the world 0,0,0 so none of the values are negatives but you decide for yourself. Move it where you want but ideally so the sides are on the big grid.

Now we adjust its height to get our finished block (brush)...

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to side or front view and left drag outside the brush to change its height to 128
* Left drag inside the brush to move it up and down so its sides are on a big grid same as you did in the top view.
* You should now have brush 256 x 192 x 128 (see [[Conversion of Game Units#Tips|Unit Tips]])

<center>[[Image:AZblock.jpg]]</center>

== Selecting and DEselecting ==

We only have one item in our view but eventually many. Operations only work on what is currently selected. When you have just created something as we just have it is automatically the current selection and should be highlighted in your views (see DR Preferences for colour.)

* To DEselect it, point your mouse at it in either the grid or camera view and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} (or just press the {{key|Esc}} key.)
*To select it again, point your mouse at it and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} again.

Selecting is something you'll do a lot of so get familiar with that {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. It's an exclusive select to get just one item. There are other selects I'll describe later. The {{key|Esc}} key always deselects and it is vitally important to get into the habit of DEselecting before you select or create something new or in some cases you will have multiple selections without knowing it and can delete or change something you didn't want to. This is why the {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}} is the safest select as it is exclusive and will automatically DEselect anything else that was left selected. But it won't protect an item when creating. Yes, it is possible to have say a brush selected, forget it is selected, then create say, a new light. Oh! what happened to the brush? It's gone - replaced by the light. Develop a nervous habit of keep hitting {{key|Esc}} to deselect when you go to create!

From now on I'll use LMB, MMB, and RMB to refer to the mouse buttons.

== Camera View ==

You should be able to see this block in the camera view. If the camera view is just black remember {{key|F3}} toggles true light rendering and we don't yet have a light so hit {{key|F3}} to get a constant bright test light throughout. I won't go into details of all the camera controls suffice to say use the arrow keys and {{key|D}} and {{key|C}} to move vertically. But scroll down to 'camera' in [[Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse]] and you will see a fantastic amount of control you have in DR's camera view - especially with the mouse. It will take time to get used to them all so for now perhaps just learn enough to move around to see what you've done so far.

If you can see your block(brush) in the camera view then it is likely not to have any particular texture unless you were doing something before this tutorial. Close up you may see it is covered in a checkered blue 'shader not found' message. Don't worry if it's covered in something else like stone or wood though. Since it will eventually be hollowed out to form a room, let's paint it now with some material more suitable to the Dark Mod universe...

== Materials, Textures, Painting the Block ==

This is the tiny home of a cheap thief so we'll use some old stonework.

I've mentioned 'textures', 'shaders', and 'materials'; what do these terms mean? A 'material' or 'shader' is the properties of a surface, including (but not necessarily) texture, sound, and others. To 'paint' our block we...

* Select the Media Browser. This is one of the tabs on a panel. Pressing N or T hides/shows the whole panel but I guess most people leave the panel showing all the time and just select the tab they want.
* Allow a few seconds for DR to read in the media first time and then you should see 'textures' listed
* Click 'textures' and it opens up to show all available textures. Many of the ones you see are Doom textures. Scroll down and select 'darkmod' which reveals the ones most suitable for our use. Scroll down to stone, open it, then cobblestones and select blocks_mixed_multicolour. Right click it and select 'Apply to selection'. This covers all surfaces of the block because we have still got selected the whole block not just one surface. You should see this in the camera view. Use this throughout the house (and eventually on its outside surface for consistency.)
* Select the Texture Browser. This is one of the tabs on the same panel as Media Browser. The Texture Browser only shows recently used textures. You should see only the one texture you selected so it's handy for future use. Odds are you will want to re-use the same textures. It will also show other textures if you clicked on them in the media browser plus any others if you were using DR before this tutorial. You can also copy and paste textures onto single or multiple surfaces (see later.)
* Hover the mouse over the four little buttons at the top of the Texture Browser and read the text so you have some idea of what features are there for the future. For now, click on the one that says 'Flush and Reload Shaders' and it should clear all of them except the one we put on our brush. As we add others they will appear in the texture browser so you can get to them more quickly.
* Now, press S for Surface Inspector (or View menu)
* In both Horiz and Vert scale enter 0.3. This makes it harder for the player to see any pattern repetition (this situation and my opinion - use your own judgement with other textures and wall sizes.) Whatever scale you use, generally you should be consistent with it for the same texture wherever used in a mission. If you use copy and paste then it will transfer the scale as well which is far easier.
* There will be more on texture adjustment later in this tutorial.

== Hollowing out a Room from the Block ==

Building to a large grid size helps performance. The outside of our block will never be seen in the game. Once we hollow it out then the player will only see the inside so that is the surface that is rendered and that we need to align to the large grid. There are two tools to hollow out a block, both activated by a button on the left button bar: one called 'hollow' and the other 'room'. Don't use 'hollow' as it reduces the internal sides so they don't fit the big grid AND it overlaps the corners which can cause rendering errors like so....

<center>BAD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZhollow.jpg]]</center> 

Instead use the 'room' button which does the job right (note the increased size so the ''internal'' dimensions will be the same as our original block and align to the big grid... 

<center>GOOD!</center> 
<center>[[Image:AZroom.jpg]]</center> 

All brushes in Doom must be convex. They cannot have any inward angles (like an L shape which would have to be two brushes together) and cannot actually be hollow. The above tools really create new side panel brushes to replace the original brush. In the case of our six-sided block that is six new brushes positioned as walls, floor, and ceiling. ''The walls they create are one small grid line wide so their width will vary depending on your grid size setting.''

Examine the block in the camera view and zoom right inside so you can see it internally which is where it will be seen in game. Note the texture aligns nicely because we stuck to a big grid size. The stone is appropriate for all four walls (which is why I textured the whole block in one go rather than one surface at a time) but now we need different textures for floor and ceiling...

== Selecting and Texturing Individual Surfaces ==

'''You cannot select a surface in the grid view''' so move inside the room in the camera view.

'''To texture the floor...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the floor and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}. Repeat a few times and you will see it selects/DEselects the surface. Keep it selected.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say stone/cobblestones or maybe you would like some wood/boards/worn_01 ? You choose but something like carpet might need special alignment so stick with stones or boards maybe for now? Remember - RIGHT click the texture name and select 'Apply to Selection'
* Alternatively you can click on several possibles then select them with one LMB in the Texture Browser on the other tab. In the Texture Browser you can enlarge the textures if preferred to see them better.
* Esc to DEselect so you can see it better in camera view.

'''To texture the ceiling...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at the ceiling and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Select the Media Browser again (on the tabbed panel)
* In the darkmod section select say plaster/plaster01 and apply it.

'''If you change your mind about the walls you can change them to something else...'''

* Press Esc to make sure everything is DEselected
* Point at one wall and use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again to select its surface.
* Point at another wall use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} again so now both surfaces are selected
* 'Accidentally' select the ceiling. No problem. Just use {{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}} on it again to DEselect it but the walls are still selected. In this way you can select which surfaces you want to select.
* Select the Media Browser again and just apply another type of stone, perhaps brick, to the walls if you want or just leave it as it is.

Now press {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|S}} to resave the mission or use the File menu. Get into the habit of doing this often unless you have autosave set. Now and again you can also save with a new name so you can go back to an earlier one if you totally mess up. Note: There is also a backup file made automatically by DR.

== Adding the Player's Start Point ==

One more thing is ''essential'' to play this in Dark Mod and that is the Player's starting position.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the middle of the room and RMB to get a pop up menu. This menu is important so glance at some of the other items on it while you're here. 'Entities' are special function items and the player start is amongst them but there is a shortcut on the menu so instead...
* Select "Create Player Start here" on the menu. This will create the playerstart entity (red box) and put it where you clicked. Drag the entity around to the point where you want the player to start.
* You should see an arrow on the red box indicating the way the player will face at the start. If you cannot see the arrow then menu View > Show > Show Angles will reveal it.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|Tab}} to get a side view and LMB drag down ''inside'' the player start box so its base is on the floor of the room. Make sure you do not go below or the floor or the player might be stuck with his feet in concrete! Tip: In Thief games it was common to start just dropping over a wall with this player start a few feet above the ground. You might note that entities do not directly resize like brushes so LMB drag ''outside'' the box does nothing.
* RMB in the grid view again and you will there is now a 'move player start here' so you can quickly move its position while testing different areas of your mission. But always keep in mind the vertical as well as top view when moving things around (and note that this does not ''select'' the player start - you will need to select it if you need to adjust its position by dragging.)
* With the player start still selected you can select the Entity Inspector (on the panel, else N to hide/show it) and see the properties of your first entity.

The game could now be played but it will be totally dark so we need to create at least one light.....

== Creating a Light ==

* Press Esc to DEselect everything.
* In the TOP grid view, point the mouse in the ''middle'' of the room and RMB to get the pop up menu.
* Select "Create Light" on the menu.
* A large red box appears with diagonals representing the light's centre and its rough 'radius'. The default light is more like six pyramids pointing out to their peaks in the centre of each side of the box. This gives a rough impression of a sphere of light and helps performance.
* Ctrl+TAB to get a side view and LMB drag ''right in the centre of the light'' to move it up/down to centre it in the room if it is not already. Just dragging inside the radius box won't move it - you have to point at the centre.

== Resizing a Light ==

Resizing a light is awkward because dragging any side moves the centre (this might be changed in a later Dark Radiant.) Two ways of dealing with this. Just roughly drag it about and keep moving the light back to where you want it. But if you have very precisely positioned a light then you don't want to have to keep doing that so this is what I do...

* Select the Entity Inspector on the panel
* You should see it has a light radius property with three values for XYZ for the three dimensions. They are north and south for Y, east and west for X, and up and down for Z. (those are the compass directions in game by the way.)
* Click on the light radius property to highlight it.
* Note that its values appear in a choice of inputs at the bottom - You can type new values in a line with a space in between then click the check(tick) button or enter them as separate values or even use the little scrolly buttons at the side and then click the Apply button.
* The room interior is 192 x 256 x 128 (in XYZ order) so give the light radius the values 200 260 133 so it just protrudes outside the walls. We may well change this again later if we want the light to spill out through a doorway or something.

The light radius is not just a cut-off point. It can be regarded as a 'fade to zero point'. What this means is that the light is at maximum brightness at its centre and fades to zero at the limit of the radius. So in a big open area, if you extend the radius you will 'stretch the brightness' further. Imagine the scale from max to min compacted in a small radius or expanded in a large one. More on this later when we place wall torches.

== Changing a Light's Brightness ==

The light may be a little bright. To change it...

* Press L (or View menu)* to call up the Light Inspector
* Click on the white rectangle button just below where it says 'Colour'
* The brightness value is called erm... 'Value' and should default to 100. Reduce it to 90. It might not matter. I'm just showing you where the control is for now.
* Fool around with the colours if you want - there are extensive features I won't cover here.

Hey! We should have your first working mission! Do a Ctrl + S to save it and then follow the next sections in Dark Mod itself not in Dark Radiant.....

== Sound ==

There is no need to do anything special about ''hearing'' sounds such as footsteps, collision sounds, etc. at this stage as it will work automatically. Adding custom sounds will be dealt with later.

== Pathfinding ==

Pathfinding data to tell the AI characters where they can move is created by dmap by default when compiling in the next section...

== Dmap: Compiling the Mission ==

* Your mission file cannot be played itself; it is simply the directions to create a game file. To do this...
* From any Dark Mod menu go to the console. By default, the console is CTRL+ ALT+ ~ (US Keyboards) or CTRL+ALT+ ' (UK Keyboards). This key is the top left below Esc and to the left of "1" on all keyboards I believe. But most people set up a shortcut to just use the ~ (` in UK) on its own so:

For single key click to get the console:
In your desktop shortcut to Doom3.exe add this argument to its properties (right click shortcut): '''''+set com_allowConsole 1''''' so the target line would be something like:

'''''C:\Doom3\doom3.exe +set com_allowConsole 1'''''

(plus any other arguments you might want)
* In the console type and Enter dmap Tut/T001 where you should substitute your subfolder name for Tut and your mission filename for T001. So, if you created your mission file directly in the maps folder then you do not need a folder name and can put dmap T001. If you made a subfolder in maps called MyMaps and named your mission MissionImpossible999.map then enter dmap MyMaps/MissionImpossible999. I recommend you do not use upper case in filenames in Doom as I think it can cause problems on other platforms.
* Wait while dmap compiles the mission. This should only be a few seconds with this tiny mission but will be much longer for big missions.
* If you get a 'leaked' error or some other serious red warning then recheck your work; look for gaps in the wall or a wrong texture like nodraw or have you got an entity outside in the void? See [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#How to detect and fix leaks|HERE]] for more about fixing leaks but at this stage of this tutorial it might be easier just to redo. What I have laboured over is basically make a block, texture it, hollow it, stick in a player start and a light. As you get more proficient you can do it in less than a minute.
* Assuming there were no dmap red "ERROR"s then you should be returned to the Dark Mod menus and are now able to play the mission.
* Return to the console.
* Type and Enter map Tut/T001. Tip: Press the up arrow key toggles back through the history of what you have typed before so your dmap should re-appear. Just press the Home key and delete the 'd'. An alternative is to use 'testmap' instead of dmap which does both dmap and map but I prefer to see dmap's results.
* You should now be able to walk around in the room. If you have a player shadow set then you might notice that walking through that light looks odd so keep that in mind for light placement. But most lights you will place close to a visible source like a gaslight or wall torch.

That's the first part done!

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

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A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:48:46Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]])
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:48:14Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[A - Z Beginner Full Guide Start Here!#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

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A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:46:19Z

AluminumHaste: /* Functioning Entities */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects|Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:35:04Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment|Texture Adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:34:33Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room|Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:24:48Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with {{key|SHIFT}}+{{Key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:22:40Z

AluminumHaste: /* New Rooms: Extending the Mission */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|TAB}} to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with {{key|CTRL}}+{{key|SHIFT}}+{{LMB}}
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with Shift + Alt + LMB
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:09:57Z

AluminumHaste: /* Functioning Entities */

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and {{key|SHIFT}}+{{key|ALT}}+{{LMB}}. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* Ctrl + TAB to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* Ctrl + TAB to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with Ctrl+Shift+LMB
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with Shift + Alt + LMB
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

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A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-10-01T00:06:56Z

AluminumHaste:

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables > Containers add an atdm_moveable_crate01_1.
** Under darkmod > moveables > Kitchen > Utensils add an atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental
** Under darkmod > moveables > Furniture add an atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and Shift + Alt LMB. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* Ctrl + TAB to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* Ctrl + TAB to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with Ctrl+Shift+LMB
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with Shift + Alt + LMB
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 2

2010-09-30T23:58:03Z

AluminumHaste:

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

== Backups ==

Many of us have had that sickening feeling when you've worked on a document for a long time (hours, weeks, months) and it gets accidentally deleted. Make regular extra backups say every half an hour. The time varies depending on the type of work you are doing and how hard it would be to do it all again. Dark Radiant has a great feature to save a copy in a different name. This means you can keep your main working copy with the same name throughout. This helps a lot in many ways as you will find out. To save a copy use menu > file > Save Copy as. I suggest you make a new subfolder in your folder named eg, backups and save in there. Number your backup and EVERY time you save a backup copy give it a new number so you have a sequence of backups just in case. You can delete old ones to save space but always keep several backups.

== Adding Objects, AI ==

Later we are going to extend our room to one or two more but first let's add a few objects to our room. There are static objects like tables and beds under RMB menu 'Create Model' and functioning objects like moveable crates and AI under RMB menu 'Create Entity'. That is important to remember : if it is static then use the model list; if it functions, then use the entity list. For instance, do ''not'' select an AI from the static models list or you'll get an error. And even dead AI, eg, ragdolls, have a function (they can be dragged about) so use the entity list. For more info about objects in general, read [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers]].

===Static Models===

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Model > darkmod > furniture > tables > wtable1
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground in the room. Moving brushes or objects always snaps to the current grid so if you can't quite get an object in line with the floor or whatever then decrease the grid size temporarily in the grid menu or you can use the + and - keys. But remember to restore later back to 8 just for consistency with this tutorial.
* Add a few more items of furniture of your choice. Not too many. Later we can shuffle them around when we add a doorway to another room then add more objects. I see this as a rough peasant's house not a grand mansion but choose what you like; put a picture on the wall if you like or a pot on the table. This learning process does not need to make design sense.
* To turn any object you can experiment with the rotate tool button but for simplicity I will only cover the Resize and Rotate dialog (called the Transform Dialog.) This can be opened via the modify menu > Rotate and Scale. I recommend you assign a shortcut key in the help menu if you use it a lot or keep it open. It is fairly self-explanatory. You will mostly rotate around the vertical Z axis as you will more often be turning furniture around rather than turning it over. Use it to turn your furniture if you wish.

===Functioning Entities===
Functioning Entities are not all visible objects so don't worry too much about all the strange items in this list. We'll just pick out a few...

First, it is very '''important''' when placing moveable entities like crates that their collision model '''does not clip into the surface they stand on''' else they will sink down when first nudged (see [[Objects, General Info for Mission Designers#Moveable Objects]].)

Now let's look at an AI character...

* Press Esc to DEselect everything
* RMB menu > Create Entity > darkmod > AI > Townsfolk > atdm:ai_townsfolk_commoner
* Put it where you like in the room and remember Ctrl + TAB to get a side view to place it on the ground.
* Turn him around to face whichever way you like.
* Likewise, under darkmod > moveables, add a atdm_moveable_crate01_1, a atdm:moveable_small_spoon_ornamental, and a atdm:moveable_chair_dining_2_red.

Let's make the man friendly so he doesn't hamper our testing...

* Select the AI by pointing at it and Shift + Alt LMB. This is an exclusive select and automatically deselects everything else.
* In the Entity Inspector on the panel check the 'Show inherited properties' at the top.
* Scroll down to see the word 'team' and select it to highlight it.
* In the box at the bottom change the team from 3 to 0 which is the player's 'team' and click the check button at its right.
* Alternatively you can add/change properties by just typing the name and value in directly - just clear the box and type in team and the value below and click the check button. Yet another way is to right click the classname at the top and select Add property.

That's a beginning of furnishing our room with objects. In a real mission you would take a lot more time and give it a lot more thought.

Ctrl + S to save and feel free to play it in game to see how it's looking. No need to dmap after adding objects - just use the map command as described before. (pathfinding might fail sometimes if you don't dmap so don't worry if the AI characters turn in circles or don't move while testing.)

== Adjusting the Light ==
if you entered the game again with the map command through Dark Mod then you may have noticed the light was a bit too bright - too harsh. This is how to adjust it...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Select the light
* You can just use L to call up the Light Inspector or...
* In Entity Inspector select '_color' (if the _color property is not there you can just type it in at the bottom and 123 in the box below and click the tick(check) button.)
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector is a coloured panel - off-white in this case showing the brightness and colour of the light currently. Click it and the light inspector will appear.
* Reduce the 'Value' (brightness) to about 40 and click OK. Note that this is shown as 0.40 0.40 0.40 in the properties of the light in the entity inspector. The three values are the red, green, and blue components of white and are to adjust the colour. You can tweak that. For example, gaslight might be slightly blue and torch light slightly orange but it's easier to do it in the light inspector in the colour selector.
* With these temporary lights you can also extend the radius beyond the walls to brighten them up (but more on this later when we place wall torches as it can give problems.)
* At the end of the day, just use your judgement to adjust the lights how ''you'' want them to help you navigate and test your game.

Ctrl + S to save and just use 'map' again in DM(Dark Mod) to enter the game - no need to dmap for light changes as they are dynamic in-game. So you can quickly tweak a light value in DR, Ctrl+S to save, then map in DM to immediately see the result.

We'll adjust this room a little later when we have added some more rooms but for now it is done. Save the mission yet again with a NEW name (unless you have snapshot set in the Preferences.) When saving with a new name always first save it in the old name again then the new so both are uptodate. This is a bit over the top for this simple mission but later you will judge when to save - simply estimate how much work you are willing to lose: the last ten minutes? the last hour?

== New Rooms: Extending the Mission ==

Regard the room we've done as a 'back room'. We'll now make a larger front room.

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Ensure the grid size is 8. It shows in the grid menu or in the status bar.
* Ctrl + TAB to the top grid view
* Drag out a rectangle starting on the big grid square to the north (upwards on screen) of the first room 448 x 320. The big grids vary with zoom so here's an image. Don't worry if yours mission varies from this as so long as you follow the principles it should work...

<center>[[Image:AZroom2.jpg]]</center>

* Ctrl + TAB to a side view and ''outside'' drag the floor down to the same internal floor level as the first room and drag the ceiling up one big grid size above the first so it should be 192 high and look something like this....

<center>[[Image:AZroom2B.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect everything
* First go back to your small room and point at ONE surface of a wall ''in the camera view'' then select that surface with Ctrl+Shift+LMB
* In the Edit menu are two forms of copy and paste - the normal Windows one and a Dark Radiant exclusive called Copy Shader. Use this to copy the texture and this will include its scale and other adjustments.
* Set Texture Lock OFF (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.) This will let the texture align correctly in the new place. (more on this a little later under [[#Texture adjustment]]
* Esc to DEselect the surface
* As before, the ''new'' brush is a solid block. Select it again with Shift + Alt + LMB
* With the new block selected, paste in the texture we just copied. An alternative is to just select it from the Texture Browser but remember to set its scale to 0.3.
* By applying this to the whole block it's quicker than doing the walls one by one after it is hollowed out.
* Use the Room button on the left button bar as before to hollow it out then texture the floor and ceiling. Look back to [[#Making Your First Room]] if in doubt what to do.
* Put in a temporary light as before.
* Put a little furniture in as a living room and/or kitchen combo whatever just for quickness and we'll review it later. You can clone (duplicate) any selection, brush or object or combinations by hitting the SPACE bar then drag it away. When you clone ALWAYS immediately move the new selection. If you get distracted for a moment and forget it then it is not obvious it is there and you may forget and leave a table inside a table or a brush inside a brush.
* RMB inside the new room and select 'Move Player Start here' (check height in a side view.)
* Ctrl + S to save and take a look at it in-game. You will need to dmap first to compile the new terrain and then map. You should be in the new room.

How'd it go? You probably found it too dim. Increase the brightness of the light probably to the full 100 100 100. Then SPACE to clone the light and drag the light to one side somewhere in the room. Make three if you like - one high and one low. We are going to completely review and redo the lights later so just make it reasonable for now.

Well now we have two rooms separated by the void so the next step is a doorway between them...

== Doorways ==

There are many approaches to this. This is just one way.

First we need to know the size of our door (an alternate way is guesstimate the doorframe etc. then adjust after if needed.)

* DEselect everything
* RMB in grid view and select Create Model
* Select darkmod/architecture/doors/oversized/old_door_01.lwo
* By default, the door will be aligned with the south wall which is what we want.
* Place it in the small room touching the north wall centred in the second big grid from the right. Drag it down to just touch the ground in a side view, decreasing grid size if needed as shown below...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor01.jpg]]</center> 

<center>[[Image:AZdoor02.jpg]]</center>

This door is static, non-functioning so the next step is to get it to open and close....

== Making the Door Open ==

In most cases in the future you will just create a working door from the create entity menu where there is a wide selection of most common doors already working (or even select a prefab with working handles) but in this case I'm describing how to make this particular model into a working door so you understand the principle.

To make it possible for the player to open the door, this is what you need to do...

* Esc to DEselect everything else
* Select the door
* In the Entity Inspector select the top line 'classname' so it highlights
* At the bottom of Entity Inspector a button will appear marked 'Choose entity class'. Click it and select darkmod/movers/atdm:mover_door then click the check button.
* The door can now be opened and closed.
* The door will rotate by default anti-clockwise (viewed from above) by 90 degrees. Because this door is near a corner one might normally change it to rotate the other way into the corner by changing the rotate property from 0 90 0 to 0 -90 0 but in this case I want to put an elevator in that corner later so instead, make the door rotate more widely then people can get in the room more easily. Add/set the property rotate (not rotation) with a value of 0 150 0.
* This old door has its own pull handle so no need for anything else
* This door will not block sound yet - we'll deal with that later.
* For full details about doors see [[Doors]]

=== Doorframe ===

In a rough hovel, wooden hut, cave, or cellar you might just hang an old door without a frame but mostly in even modest houses it looks better with a frame and definitely in a grander place. This house just about qualifies for a frame and anyway, you need to know how!

* Ctrl + TAB for front view and RMB drag scroll zoom to get the front view of the door clearly in the grid view
* DEselect the door
* Make the grid size to 2 (grid menu or +- keys)
* Drag out a brush units = 64 wide x 12 deep x 8 high and place it over the door as the top of the doorframe aligned to the grid as shown in the image below. Drag out two other vertical brushes each 6 wide x 12 deep x 104 high and place them at the side of the door as shown to form the doorframe sides. They penetrate the wall for now but later we shall open out a corridor. Give all three of those entire brushes the texture darkmod/wood/boards/scratched temporarily (we'll adjust later.)

<center>[[Image:AZdoor03.jpg]]</center>

*Depth-wise it should be exactly over the centre of the door exactly against the face of the wall...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor04.jpg]]</center>

Because the outer edges of the doorframe align to the big grid it aligns reasonably well with the stonework around see below. Note it just fits under the course of bricks above which is good. (You might have a different wall texture.) Try to avoid cutting half way into bricks like that or worse, leaving a thin sliver of bricks or stone. Think structurally.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor05.jpg]]</center>

But you can see the wood texture alignment is pretty bad and we'll fix that next.

==Texture adjustment==

The horizontal top of the doorframe in the picture above is aligned wrongly; the grain of wood should be aligned to the length of a beam. Also, this texture is boards (planking) so will show the gaps between which must be aligned out of sight. Wood never really comes in an endless sheet anyway - it comes from trees! With experience we could have made one vertical of the doorframe (whose texture is aligned vertically) aligned it better, cloned it for the other side, cloned it again, rotated it, and resized it for the horizontal piece.

===Texture Lock===

Texture lock is most important. It is a mode toggle (Shift+T or on S>Surface Inspector or [[image:DRtexLock.jpg]] on the top button bar.)

* When ENABLED it keeps a texture aligned to its surface even when moved or rotated. This means a wooden beam will look just like it would in the real world if you moved or turned it - it would not change relative to the beam.
* When NOT ENABLED then the texture aligns to the world. This means different surfaces will align together when placed together. So if you cloned a wall and moved the duplicate to one side and a little higher, its stonework would align perfectly with the first wall.

I mostly keep Texture Lock enabled but you need to keep it in mind whenever moving textured brushes: do you wish the brush's surface textures to align with the world or the brush?

=== Texture Alignment with Surface Inspector ===

This assumes you used the same texture and constructed the doorframe as I described above. If your alignment is different then use your own judgement where to apply the following.....

'''Rotation...'''
* Esc to DEselect everything
* Move the camera so you can see the front and top of the doorway in the camera view
* In the camera view use Ctrl+Shift+LMB to select the front surface of the top horizontal of the doorframe. Make sure you do not select the whole brush with Shift LMB or Shift+Alt LMB.
* Press S to get Surface Inspector to show/hide or View menu. Tip: Hot keys might not work if you are focused in an input field. Just click somewhere else.
* In the ''step'' input to the right of ''rotation'' type in 90 if it is not already there.
* Click the righthand little arrow button to rotate the texture 90 degrees else you can just type 90 right in the rotation input.

'''Shifting (scrolling)...'''
* Set the step input for Horiz and Vert Shift to about 4.
* Use the arrows for Horiz and Vert to scroll the texture about.
* Note that Vert moves the texture horizontally now because we rotated it.
* Note that the dark lines of the edges of the boards texture scroll in and out.
* Scroll the texture so the dark lines are not showing and the beam looks OK.
* Note for the future: When cloning many beams in a row don't have them all identically aligned but shift for variety.

OK, now in the same way you have to inspect ALL of the visible surfaces of that brush one by one and see how they look. Yes, even on top where the player might never look! (''someone'' will!) Rotate/Shift where needed (small end pieces might be vertical or horizontal grain or even 45 degrees - use your judgement.) The far side of the brushes will also be visible eventually so do that too (see next paragraph.)

Tip: When inspecting, if any model or brush gets in the way of the view just select it with Shift+Alt+LMB and press H to hide it. So you can rise above the ceiling then 'Hide' it below you to look down into the room. Hide the wall so you can get at the back of the doorframe. You can keep hiding more stuff as you go along and use Shift H to reveal them again. Don't forget them! Another way might be Filter menu > Hide all entities to hide all the furniture in one go.

Likewise do the side brushes of the doorframe.

Finally, Shift H to unHide and give the whole doorframe and door one last inspection. Looking good?

== Corridors, Recesses ==

This will be a small recess rather than a corridor but the principle is the same : you just make a corridor like a small room except you won't need the ends which will be open to the rooms either end. You could make a solid and hollow it out and then delete the ends or make walls, floor, ceiling as separate brushes yourself. In this case the recess will be the same textures as the big room so another option is to clone the sides from it and reduce them so let's do that...

* Esc to DEselect everything
* Check grid size is 8
* Set Texture Lock OFF. This will ensure the texture will align to the world not the original brush. In this case it probably would be alright and the worst that can happen is you have to re-align the texture (but you wouldn't want to do that with an entire house.)
* Shift+Alt+LMB to select the left wall of the big room. You may find it easier to make these selections in the camera view. Repeated Shift+Alt+LMB will cycle down through different items if they overlap in the grid view.
* SPACE to clone it. Don't wait... drag it away immediately so you never forget it's there. As you drag it away, check that it really did clone and you are not just dragging the original. If so, use Ctrl+Z to undo the drag and try clone again.
* Drag it in the space between the two rooms near the door.
* Resize it to 48 x 8 and position it so it fits exactly as shown below between the two walls. It should be just to the left of the doorframe and touching it. The height is OK as it is.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor06.jpg]]</center>

* Repeat the above with the other wall and put it to the other side of the door
* Similarly do the same with floor and ceiling. These should become 64 x 56 and fit ''between'' the recess side walls ''touching'' the south wall, but ''intruding'' into the north wall (this will make more sense later.) I have 'deliberately' made a mistake with the floor which we'll correct later so you can see it's no biggy if you get things wrong - you just adjust later. See the red outline of the floor and ceiling in the image below....

<center>[[Image:AZdoor07.jpg]]</center>

Ctrl+S to resave the mission.

== 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms ==

First, a tip: when you are resizing a narrow brush like a wall it sometimes happens that you accidentally move sideways and reduce its narrow width to zero - nothing at all. DON'T LET GO! If you release the mouse at that point it will be deleted! Instead move your mouse to that side so it re-appears. If you are in doubt as to its dimension you might need to Ctrl+Z undo. Get into the habit when resizing to keep your mouse button held down and only release when you know you can see the brush. I personally wish a brush could not be reduced below one grid unit. Later I will describe methods of moving and resizing which stop accidental side movements.

Now, you cannot actually cut holes in brushes - you can only surround a space with smaller brushes so it looks like one big brush with a hole in it. The following is easy but it might sound complicated so just try it and the worst that can happen is you have some undoing or reload your last save. So to cut out our doorway do the following...

* In the small south room face north in camera view looking at your door (this can be done in grid view but it's easier to be sure what you're doing.)
* Shift + H if you have hidden the wall to UNhide it so you can see both door and wall.
* Esc to DEselect everything (wish someone had nagged me with this when I started and maybe I would not have lost so much.)
* Select the door and H to hide it.
* Select the wall.
* In the grid view, press SPACE to clone the wall
* Immediately LMB drag towards the right from ''outside'' the left edge of the wall to reduce its length to just past the right doorframe and touching it.
* I'll clarify that - you are cloning the wall then moving its left side along past the doorframe like opening a curtain from the left.
* In camera view you should now see the ''original'' wall to the left of the doorframe and also inside the doorway. To the right of the doorway are ''both'' walls occupying the same space with just the new clone still highlighted
* Shift+Alt+LMB select the original wall to the left of the door.
* You are going to reduce this starting from the ''opposite''' end on the right...
* LMB drag towards the left from ''outside'' the ''right' edge of this wall to reduce it past the ''left'' edge of the doorway. Again, like opening the other curtain.
* You should now have two walls; one each side of the doorframe and exactly up to it with a gap over the doorframe.

Now we need to repeat the above for the south wall of the big room. I'll just summarise: you need to clone the south wall and reduce it to one side of the gap between the short connecting walls of the recess and the same for the original wall. Remember - like dragging curtains aside.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor08.jpg]]</center>

If you look south in the camera view from the big north room you will see that all that remains is the gap over the door frame...

* Clone one of the north walls of the little south room
* reduce its width to 64 and height to 80 and move it up to fit over the door exactly. It's top corner should just meet the corner edge of the little piece of ceiling we put in the recess. Here is a side view...

<center>[[Image:AZdoor09.jpg]]</center>

* Esc to DEselect the section we just put over the doorway.
* From the north you should see it is the wrong texture for that recess and that big room.
* Shift+Ctrl+LMB to select its north ''face'' in the recess and re-texture it to the same as the other walls in the recess (same as the big room.) You can copy and paste the texture or get it from the Texture Browser by just clicking it there.
* You will also need to re-align/rotate the texture on the doorframe if you didn't do that side before

If you examine what has been done by moving about in the camera view you will see the 'deliberate' mistake in the little piece of floor in the recess. Hide the door and you can see there is a gap. Here is a side view.

<center>[[Image:AZdoor10.jpg]]</center>

Just select that side view in the grid view and resize it to close the gap. The doorway should be complete. Zoom around in camera view and check it out.

I suggest you clone a light in that big room and drag it near the recess for now.

Ctrl + S to save and then Save As with a new name.

You can now dmap (the new name.) If you get a leak error then use File Menu > Pointfile in Dark Radiant to see a red line pointing the track of the leak. Did you leave a gap? (For details on fixing leaks & pointfile see [[Leaking maps]] and [[Performance: Essential Must-Knows#Build Airtight. Seal out the Void. Avoid Leaks]])

Map to play through and check it looks OK.

== Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom ==

Notice how harsh and black the shadows are in this mission? You need shadows for atmosphere and to hide in a stealth game but seeing nothing at all but blackness is not popular among players so we are going to add ambient light.

Ambient light is a steady background low light casting no shadows. The light has a radius but it does not fade from its centre; it's brightness is constant throughout its radius. Except for special cases the ambient light should be present throughout a mission as the minimum light when no other light is present. The ambient can also add a little colour so different ambient lights might illuminate a crystal grotto as pale blue; a lava cave with a ruddy glow, and so on. But unless you have special needs like that then one ambient is sufficient for the whole mission.

* Press Esc to DEselect everything (from now on I'll not mention this. Take care!)
* From the grid view RMB menu, create a light in the centre of the mission. This might be just below the bottom right corner of the big room by the time we are finished but we cannot put an entity or a light in the void; it will cause a leak error. One might create a tiny room there in isolation just for the light but it does not need to be exactly centred so stick it in the bottom right corner of the big room.
* Increase its radius to cover both rooms completely either by dragging or adjusting its radius in the Entity Inspector. Keep its centre roughly in the bottom right corner of that room. It only needs to roughly cover the rooms and can stick out on all sides.
* Check the side view for height.

===ambient_world helps performance===

If the main ambient light is named ''ambient_world'' then Dark Mod provides an option for a virtual ambient light to help performance so it is essential that you do this. It makes a significant difference to low-end system frame rates.

* In the Entity Inspector select the 'name' line
* In the input at the bottom change it to ambient_world. Click the check button
* Esc to DEselect it
* Press J to list entities.
* Click the map in the list and the whole list will open up
* You should see ambient_world in there.
* Click it and your light is selected and its radius reveals it clearly

In this way you can name anything you want for your own convenience both so you can identify and find them easily. The list is in ASCII order so capitals first then lower case,thereafter in alphabetical order.

* with the light selected, press L for the Light Inspector
* Click the white rectangle Colour button and reduce the brightness (Value) to 8 or 10 and click OK.
* Also in the Light Inspector you will see a list headed 'Texture' with 'fog' and 'lights' in the list; click the + sign against 'lights' to open up its list
* In the 'lights' list select 'lights/ambientLightnfo'; this immediately goes in the properties of the light.
* L to close the Light Inspector

The actual brightness is a matter of taste. Players should be able to dimly see texture even in the darkest corners. But don't make the ambient too bright or you get flat, washed out, missions with poor atmosphere and it will be hard for the player to judge where to hide if there are no good shadows. Judge your mission over a few days sometimes on a bright day; sometimes at night before you decide on the best compromise that you like. The player's in-game brightness setting and personal preferences will also affect how the game appears so it is not an easy thing to judge. Review the guidelines at [[Virtual Darkness]]

Generally speaking, an ambient light of below 3 is going to be too dark; 10 or above rather too light. Thief's Den was released with an ambient of 4. Also consider does your mission have lots of dark textures? You might raise the ambient a little if so. Your choice. I shall use 4 for this mission because our main stone walls are quite light. Whatever you choose, reconsider when finished and all the other lights have been placed. I use a brighter ambient in these earlier stages while testing but remember to turn it down when you do the final lighting later.

Tip: Try to avoid large areas of ''only'' ambient light with here and there a 'real' light such as a torch. Instead, think of lighting most of your FM plus some shadows to hide in. Yes, it's not realistic. In real life at night a large house might be completely dark but it's not good stealth gameplay fun and large areas of ambient lighting look flat. There are exceptions of course but generally lots of light with shadows for the player to hide in looks much more atmospheric and lifts the visual quality (of course avoid too many lights especially if they overlap because they reduce performance.)

Check out your mission now in-game. That ambient lifts it tremendously right? You might even want to remove or reduce some of the other lights. Remember, they are all temporary still and we shall do proper lighting later on.

{{A-Z Beginner Guide TOC}}

The Dark Mod Gameplay

2010-03-13T03:47:36Z

AluminumHaste: /* AI Senses */

''author: Springheel''

Updates for 1.01 are listed in red.

Since The Dark Mod is designed to simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief, many things will be very familiar to Thief players. There are some features that work differently, however, and some features are only partially working in the 1.01 version. The following guide will explain how things work (for what doesn't work yet, see [[Known Bugs]]) in The Dark Mod.

If you have never played Stealth Games before, start with the [[Basics of Stealth Gaming]].

Veteran stealth gamers can read the various sections below for more detail:

= The Game Menus =

Your experience with The Dark Mod will start with the Main Menu, where you may wish to adjust some settings before starting your first mission. If you already have saved games from a currently installed mission, you can load them from the Load/Save menu.

Note: While 1.00 missions are fully compatible with 1.01, you can NOT load 1.00 saved games after updating to 1.01. To play 1.00 missions you need to go to the Start Mission button.

== Starting a Mission ==
[[Image:new_mission.jpg|thumb|The New Mission menu.]]

# Select ''New Mission'' from the Main Menu.
# Select a Mission from the list (start with the Training Mission if this is your first time) and click ''Install Mission''.
# TDM will install the mission and restart. Select ''New Mission'' again, and click ''Start Mission''
# You will see a briefing that introduces the mission. Click ''Objectives'' to proceed.
# Read your objectives, and choose your Difficulty Level. Then select ''Buy Equipment'' (or ''Start Mission'' in some missions).
# After purchasing desired equipment, hit ''Start Mission''. (The option to ''Drop'' starting items is available, but use with caution...dropping some items may make a mission impossible to complete)
# The Mission Loading screen should appear. Be patient...loading a mission for the first time can take several minutes.

To call the Main Menu during the game, press {{key|ESC}}) .

See [[Installing and Running Fan Missions]] for more information.

== Changing Settings ==

# Select ''Settings'' from the Main Menu
# Select the type of setting you wish to adjust: ''Audio'', ''Video'', ''Controls'', or ''Gameplay''
# The controls are set to defaults familiar to ''Thief'' players, however there are new keys/features that are worth reviewing.

1.01: New settings for combat have been added, as well as extra volume controls.

== Objectives ==

When you call the Main Menu during a mission (by hitting the ESC key), you will see an option for "Objectives". This is where you can check your progress.

Your objectives are also displayed after the Mission Briefing when you first start a mission.

When you complete an objective, a chime will sound and “Objective Completed” will be displayed at the top of the screen.

When you have completed all objectives, the map will close and a “Mission Succeeded” screen will appear. Likewise, if you fail an objective or are killed, a “Failed Mission” screen will appear. You can restart the map by selecting the "Restart" option or via the Main Menu.

1.01: There is now a way to check your Objectives without going to the menus. Hitting "O" will bring up your objectives on screen. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll up and down. Note that this method ''does not pause the game''.

----

= HUD Display =

[[Image:hud.jpg|thumb|The Game Screen indicators.]]

1. WEAPON ICON: An icon of your currently selected weapon is displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen.

2. BREATH INDICATOR: When you are underwater a small blue bar will appear above the lightgem. This bar measures how much air you have left. When the blue bar runs out, you start to take damage. Surfacing or using a Breath Potion will restore your air bar.

3. LIGHTGEM: The lightgem at the bottom of the screen indicates how easy you are to see. This is primarily due to how much light is hitting you, but also includes things like whether you are crouched, moving, or have a weapon drawn.

1.01: The wings on either side of the gem are a crouch indicator. When you are crouched, the wings 'crouch' down as well.

4. HEALTH INDICATOR: When you are injured, a small red healthbar appears below the lightgem. It will remain visible until you are returned to full health.

5. INVENTORY ICON: Your currently selected inventory object (or your loot total) is displayed as an icon in the bottom right.

== Weapons ==

Weapon hotkeys were changed at the last minute, so this list may need modifying:
* {{key|`}} Put away weapons
* {{key|1}} Blackjack
* {{key|2}} Short Sword
[[Image:arrows.jpg|thumb|A selection of arrows you can choose from.]]
* {{key|3}} Broadheads
* {{key|4}} [[Water Arrows]]
* {{key|5}} [[Fire Arrows]]
* {{key|6}} [[Rope Arrows]]
* {{key|7}} [[Gas Arrows]]
* {{key|8}} [[Noise Arrows]]
* {{key|9}} [[Moss Arrows]]

''(note that there has been a report that linux users cannot use the {{key|`}} as it is mapped to the console. Linux users will need to select a different key for 'Put away weapons'.)''

== Inventory Objects ==
Cycle through your inventory using the Inventory Prev/Next keys (default: {{key|[}} or {{key|TAB}} for next item and {{key|]}} for prev item). Inventory objects are stored in groups, so all keys will be stored together, all readables, etc. You can cycle through groups with the Prev/Next Group keys.

To ‘use’ an inventory object, select it and then hit the Use key (default: {{key|U}}). This will drink potions, throw mines, activate the spyglass, etc. To "use" objects on other objects (like using a key on a door), select the object in inventory, highlight the thing you want to use it on, and hit Use.

You can drop inventory items by hitting the Drop key (default: {{key|R}}) twice. See the section "Holding Junk Objects" for more information. Note that mappers may designate some important inventory items as undroppable.

You can clear the inventory selection by hitting the {{key|BACKSPACE}} key.

To set hotkeys for your inventory items, please see [[Custom Settings for Players]].

=== Inventory Object: Flashbomb ===
[[Image:equipment.jpg|thumb|The tools of a professional burglar.]]
Activate a flashbomb by selecting it in inventory and hitting Use. Flashbombs detonate on impact. A short tap will cause it to fall and go off at your feet. Holding down the Use key will throw the flashbomb further away. If you use the Drop key to put the flashbomb down, it is not activated at all.

An AI must be looking at the flashbomb to be blinded. Don't look at the point of impact or you'll be blinded too.

AI are only blinded for a few seconds, and they are alerted by the flash, so this tool is most useful for getting away when you've been spotted, or stunning an enemy before an attack.

Flashbombs have no affect on the undead.

=== Inventory Object: Holy Water ===

Select your holy water in inventory and hit the Use key. This puts holy water into your water arrows, making them lethal to undead. The effect is temporary (lasts 30 seconds) so use it wisely. (Note that there are no zombies in the beta version of TDM.)

=== Inventory Objects: Keys ===
Some doors or chests require keys to open. To open a locked door, select the appropriate key by scrolling to it in your inventory and hit the Use key (or the Frob key if you wish) while highlighting the door. Note that certain types of door locks (like padlocks) might have to be frobbed separately.

=== Inventory Objects: Lockpicks ===
See [[#Lockpicking|Lockpicking]] for more information on lockpicks.

=== Inventory Objects: Maps and Readables ===

In The Dark Mod, both maps and most readables (books, scrolls, etc) are inventory items. To read them, you scroll to the object in your inventory and then hit the Use key. The map or readable will be displayed on screen. Note that '''this does not pause the game'''. Unlike Thief, events continue to unfold around you, and you can be attacked while reading if not careful. You can see your environment around the edges of the map/readable, but the best suggestion is to find a safe place to read. With multi-page readables (distinguishable by folded corners on the page), use the next/prev inventory or next/prev weapon keys to scroll through pages. Hitting Use or Attack will put the readable away.

The Map key (default: {{key|M}}) will also automatically bring up your map, if you have one.

=== Inventory Object: Mines ===

Place a mine by selecting it in inventory and hitting Use. A short tap will drop the mine at your feet. Holding down Use will throw the mine further away. Once activated in this way, a mine is armed and will go off if stepped on. If you use the Drop key to put the mine down, it is not armed.

Mines are currently not very sensitive and AI can occasionally step right over them or even kick them without setting them off. Note that you can set mines off by shooting them with an arrow.

=== Inventory Object: Player Lantern ===

Light is usually the bane of thieves everywhere, but there are times when you need just a little to make your way around. To this end, some thieves carry a covered lantern with a hood that can be closed to block out the light. To use the lantern, select it in inventory and hit Use. This will lift the cover if the lantern is currently off, or close the cover if it is currently lit. There is also a hotkey for using the lantern; by default this is {{key|L}}. This lantern is clipped to your belt so your hands are free, and it can even be used underwater for short periods.

Obviously using the lantern makes you clearly visible to any nearby opponents.

=== Inventory Object: Potions ===

Potions are used by selecting them in inventory and hitting Use. Healing potions will restore hit points (the effect is somewhat gradual). Breath potions increase the player's breath meter, allowing them to stay underwater longer.

=== Inventory Object: Spyglass ===

A good Thief likes to scout ahead. To use the spyglass, select it in inventory and hit Use. You can use the next/prev weapon keys to zoom in and out. You cannot use weapons or frob objects while using the spyglass.

= Movement =

Movement in The Dark Mod is not that different than Thief. You can run, walk, or creep, as well as do any of the three while crouching. The faster you move, the more noise you make.

== Climbing ==

''needs revising''

Ladder/vine climbing:

Rope climbing:

=== Swinging on Ropes ===

Tapping the "attack" key while on a rope will cause the rope to swing forward. You can actually gain more momentum by continuing to tap it every time you start swinging forward (think of it like swinging your legs forward on a swing). This can allow you to jump off the rope and grab ledges that are otherwise too far away.

Note that the further down the rope you are, the more distance you can travel when swinging (just like a real rope).

== Mantling ==
There are two different ways to mantle (pull yourself up onto ledges) in The Dark Mod. One is by holding down the Jump key, which Thief players will be familiar with. There is also a key specifically for mantling (default: {{key|
C}}), so that failing to mantle will not result in jumping and making noise. Ideally there should be no difference in these methods, but occasionally one method will work when the other will not.
Mantling is affected by where you are looking, so a successful mantle is more likely if you are looking directly at the edge of the object you wish to climb. To climb on a chair, look down at the seat then press the mantle control. By this means you can clamber over relatively low but awkward obstructions and even select one ledge above/below another.

You cannot mantle while carrying a junk object or body.

= Interacting With Your Environment =

The Dark Mod gives you far more flexibility than previous Thief games when it comes to interacting with things.

== Manipulating Junk Objects ==
This is one area that works quite differently from the Thief series. “Junk” objects (anything that you can carry that doesn’t go into inventory, like chairs, candles, or bodies) are held out in front of you when frobbed. Unlike in Thief, they take up physical space, and can be used to push or manipulate other objects. They can also bump into other objects, making noise (or being knocked out of your hands), so be careful.

To grab a junk object, frob it as normal. The object will stop highlighting, and any weapons you have selected will lower. At this point, you can use the next/prev weapon keys (default: mousewheel up/down) to move the object closer/further away from you, and moving your mouse around will move the object (it stays basically in the center of your screen).

The heavier the object, the slower it moves, so you may notice a ‘lag’ if you turn quickly with heavy objects. It can take a while to get used to this.

To drop an object, hit the Drop key (default: {{key|R}}). By crouching and angling your view down gently, you'll find that you can easily set down objects without making noise. You can also throw a held object by hitting the Attack key. Tapping the Attack key throws the object a short distance; holding the Attack key down and releasing it will throw it further.

To rotate a held object, hold down the {{key|Z}} key or middle mouse button, and move your mouse.
(By default, horizontal movement of the mouse yaws the object around the vertical axis, and vertical movement pitches the object up and down. Holding down the Run key makes horizontal mouse movement roll the object around the forward axis.) This can be useful for replacing objects that have been knocked over, or for placing moveable objects in creative ways (like putting a plank over a gap, or stacking chairs).
It is possible to “drop” inventory items into your hands, where they can be manipulated as if they were junk objects. Select the object in your inventory, and hit the Drop key {{key|R}}. The object will appear in front of you like a junk object, and you can rotate it, set it down, etc. To put it back into your inventory, you must "use" the item again ({{key|U}}) or scroll to the next inventory item ({{key|TAB}} or {{key|[}}/{{key|]}}).
[[Image:candles6.jpg|thumb|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=922ArtrKgC4 Click to see TDM candles in action.] ]]
AI will hear junk objects that are dropped or banged around. It takes some skill to pick up objects on a crowded table without knocking them into each other. Remember than an object moves to the center of the screen when you pick it up. If you are looking slightly above the object, it will jump up to center screen (usually a good thing). If you're looking slightly below the object, it will jump down, banging whatever surface it rests on (a bad thing). A little practice may be required to smoothly and quietly sort through objects.

Some objects that are too heavy to lift may still be movable (like large crates). Walking or running into such objects may (mapper's choice) push them along the ground.

=== Junk Objects: Candles ===

Lit candles can be frobbed and carried around to light your way (obviously you will be easily spotted while carrying a lit candle). They can also be used to light flammable objects like other candles or torches. Click the caption on the right for a demonstration.

Candles can be extinguished by water, or you can pinch them out by picking them up and clicking the Use key. (Note that this method can also be used on some movable lanterns).

Be aware that multiple light sources can cause a significant drain on your framerate. If you go around a room lighting six or seven new candles, don't be surprised if your framerate drops significantly.

=== Junk Objects: Bodies ===

Bodies work differently than most other objects. There are two ways to deal with dead or unconscious bodies in The Dark Mod. You can both drag them and carry them.

To drag a body, you must ‘frob’ it (which probably requires crouching), and then back away. The body will drag along with you until you frob it again or the body gets stuck on something.

This is not the most graceful way of moving bodies and is not recommended for long distances. Bodies can catch on things and get pulled out of your hands. It can be useful for quickly shifting a body into a shadow, however. You can even move individual limbs to put a flailing arm back into a shadow.

You can also carry a body over your shoulder. While a body is being dragged, hitting the Use button will lift it up over your shoulder. While carrying a body you move more slowly and cannot use weapons or inventory objects (though you can open doors). When you are ready to drop the body, hit Use again. If there is not enough room, you will hear a grunt and nothing will happen. Back up a bit and try again. When you drop a body, it will be the opposite orientation from the way you picked it up (if a body is face-up when you lift it, it will be face-down when you drop it). This allows you to easily search a body for keys or other objects.

=== Junk Objects: Food ===

Some food can be eaten. When holding a piece of food (such as an apple) hit the "use" key. If the food is edible, you will 'eat' it, and will be healed 1 hit point.

== Doors ==
You can interrupt a door opening or closing by frobbing it again. Frobbing a moving door stops it, allowing you to open a door just a crack to peer beyond.

You can lean into a door (use the lean left/right keys) to press your ear up against it and hear what's on the other side. Note that while you're concentrating on what's beyond the door you'll be less able to hear the sounds in the room you're currently in.

Some doors or chests are locked and require keys (or lockpicks, see below) to open. To open a locked door, select the appropriate key by scrolling to it in your inventory and hit the Use key (or the Frob key if you wish) while highlighting the door. Note that certain types of door locks (like padlocks) might have to be frobbed separately.

== Lockpicking ==
You will definitely want to practice lockpicking in the Training Mission before trying a real map. Just reading the instructions is probably not enough to get the hang of it.

There are two types of lockpicks, 'triangle' and 'snake'. To begin, you must have the correct lockpick selected in inventory. If you do not, you will see a red flash behind the lockpick icon when you frob the locked door. To pick a lock, move close enough to highlight the door and hold the Use key. You will start to hear a sequence of clicks, and see the door handle (or lock pin) jiggle in sync.

The clicks are a random pattern. At the end of the pattern is a brief period of silence, then the pattern will begin again. To be successful you must hit the Attack key (or release the Use key if you prefer) at the start of that silence. If you hit the Attack key at the wrong time there is a dull 'fail' sound and the pattern begins again. Your goal is to learn the sequence of clicks so that you can anticipate when it will end. This requires concentration.

Some locks are more difficult than others and have multiple pins (which may require switching lockpicks). You can make lockpicking harder or easier in the Settings Menu, by adjusting how much silence there is between each pattern (the more silence, the easier it is to react in time). Setting Lockpicking to "Auto" will make locks open automatically after the pattern repeats 3 times.

== Chests ==
It can sometimes be a little awkward frobbing items inside deep chests. Leaning forward (or even sideways) will usually help.

If you get too close to a chest, you can sometimes get in the way of the lid opening or closing. Back up a little if the lid is not moving as expected.

----

= Combat =

There are a number of ways that combat is different in The Dark Mod.

Keep in mind that you are not a warrior. Guards are generally better trained than you are, and while you might win a few one-on-one battles, you will almost certainly die if facing two guards at once.

== Blackjacking ==

Your blackjack is more effective if your opponent is relaxed and not expecting trouble.

You must hit an AI on the head to knock them out. Hitting an AI anywhere else will simply alert them.

'''You can successfully knock out:'''

'''1. Unarmed civilian AI from any direction, any time.'''

'''2. Bare-headed guards from any direction when relaxed, or from behind when alert.'''

'''3. Helmeted guards from behind when relaxed (helmeted guards cannot be knocked out when alert).'''

The blackjack does a small amount of damage, so you could theoretically beat someone to death with it, if you have a lot of time on your hands.

Undead and some animals cannot be knocked out with the blackjack.

1.01: Certain heavy-duty helmets make their wearer immune to the blackjack. These can be identified by a face grill and a low back, which protects the base of the neck. 

'''Note:''' the blackjack makes an overhead swing, so if there is something low in the way (like a doorframe) you might hit it instead of your target, especially if you are looking upwards.

== Melee Combat ==
[[image:combat1.jpg|thumb|A guard winds up for an overhead attack]]
There is a combat arena in the Training Map for practicing combat. After a few rounds you will have a much better feel for how it works.

You can use your shortsword to attack an enemy, as well as block enemy weapons. Attacking a relaxed enemy (ie, backstabbing) does extra damage.
To attack, hit the Attack key. This will make a left-to-right, slashing attack. If you move the mouse while clicking the Attack key, you can select other kinds of attacks. Moving the mouse down will cause an overhead swing. Moving the mouse up will cause a thrust attack. Moving the mouse left or right will cause a right-to-left or left-to-right slash, respectively.

AI can parry your swings (unless they are using a dagger), and they will do this more easily if you keep using the same kind of attack, so you will want to mix it up.

The amount of damage you do varies depending on where you hit. Hitting an AI in the head will do more damage than hitting their arm or leg. Armour also plays a factor. Your sword can't penetrate plate armour, and even chainmail or leather armour will provide the AI some protection.

To block an enemy strike, hold the Parry key. If you have the "Auto Parry" option selected in the Main Menu, you will automatically select the appropriate block. You must hit the block key just as the AI is winding up for their attack--too late and you'll get hit before the block is ready. Too early and the AI will see the block and choose a different attack. Obviously, you must also be facing the AI...holding up a block while looking off to the side won't help.

If you are using Manual Parry (select in the Settings menu), you need to select the appropriate block yourself by moving the mouse while holding the Parry button down.

If you successfully block an attack or damage your opponent the AI will be temporarily "flat-footed". They can still attack and defend, but they will not chase you if you turn to run. The effect lasts only a second or two, but that can sometimes be enough time to give you a head start.

The trick to a successful combat is timing. You need to try to anticipate your opponent's attacks, and then launch counter-attacks before he has a chance to parry.

AI will usually try to flee if they are badly wounded.

1.01: Different AI have different skill levels (novice, trained, skilled) when it comes to combat. An armed commoner will no longer fight as well as an elite guard.
You can also change the overall combat difficulty in the Settings menu.

'''Note:''' It is possible to hit walls or ceilings instead of your target. Keep track of how much space is around you when choosing your swing.

== Missile Combat ==

Your broadhead arrows cannot penetrate plate armour, and will do less damage if they hit chain or leather armour. The best result is to hit unarmoured flesh. A single arrow to the head will kill a relaxed guard. Alert guards are assumed to be taking measures to minimize the damage from incoming arrows.

If you are hit while trying to fire an arrow, your attack will be canceled.

AI will switch to missile combat if they can see you but cannot reach you. If they don't have a missile weapon, they will become angry and start throwing things at you (as of 1.01, this means rocks).

AI archers will fire arrows at you. Some AI are better shots than others. Hitting an AI archer does NOT cancel their attack at the moment, which makes AI archers a challenge to defeat. This will probably change in the future, as AI archers are not fully playtested yet.

----

= AI =

The AI of TDM 1.0 still have some rough edges, but in general they are formidable opponents.

== AI Senses ==

AI can see you if your lightgem is not totally black. The longer you're in their field of vision, the more likely they are to notice you and come and investigate.

1.01: Some AI have hoods, eyepatches, or other things that block their field of vision. These can be exploited by clever thieves.

AI can hear your footsteps, and noise that you make from banging into things or dropping objects.

AI can also feel you if you bump into them, or vice versa.

TDM AI are fairly intelligent about searching. They can identify good hiding spots and will check them out first.

When AI become alert, their acuity increases. A shadow that is sufficient to hide you from a relaxed AI might not be enough for an AI that is alert and actively looking for trouble.

AI do not forget about you after giving up the search. They remain in an alert state, with heightened senses and their weapons out.

== AI Behaviour ==

AI need to see evidence in order to react to it. If a bloodstain or missing loot is in shadow, an AI won't notice it.

AI can react to missing objects or lights being put out, but only if mappers set the objects/lights as noteworthy. AI can potentially relight lights, if a mapper chooses (by default, ALL AI can relight lights that mappers set as important--mappers may want to limit this to only AI with torches).

AI become suspicious if they find a weapon lying around. Finding blood or a body will cause them to go fully alert.

AI can hear broadhead arrow impacts. If you shoot an arrow and it hits a wall nearby, the AI will notice. AI will also react to water arrows if you fire them too close (or if you hit an AI with one).

AI do not yet notice moss arrow impacts, moss patches, ropes from rope arrows, open doors, or mines. These things will likely cause minor alerts in the future.

[[Category:Gameplay]]

The Dark Mod Gameplay

2010-03-13T03:47:01Z

AluminumHaste: /* AI Senses */

''author: Springheel''

Updates for 1.01 are listed in red.

Since The Dark Mod is designed to simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief, many things will be very familiar to Thief players. There are some features that work differently, however, and some features are only partially working in the 1.01 version. The following guide will explain how things work (for what doesn't work yet, see [[Known Bugs]]) in The Dark Mod.

If you have never played Stealth Games before, start with the [[Basics of Stealth Gaming]].

Veteran stealth gamers can read the various sections below for more detail:

= The Game Menus =

Your experience with The Dark Mod will start with the Main Menu, where you may wish to adjust some settings before starting your first mission. If you already have saved games from a currently installed mission, you can load them from the Load/Save menu.

Note: While 1.00 missions are fully compatible with 1.01, you can NOT load 1.00 saved games after updating to 1.01. To play 1.00 missions you need to go to the Start Mission button.

== Starting a Mission ==
[[Image:new_mission.jpg|thumb|The New Mission menu.]]

# Select ''New Mission'' from the Main Menu.
# Select a Mission from the list (start with the Training Mission if this is your first time) and click ''Install Mission''.
# TDM will install the mission and restart. Select ''New Mission'' again, and click ''Start Mission''
# You will see a briefing that introduces the mission. Click ''Objectives'' to proceed.
# Read your objectives, and choose your Difficulty Level. Then select ''Buy Equipment'' (or ''Start Mission'' in some missions).
# After purchasing desired equipment, hit ''Start Mission''. (The option to ''Drop'' starting items is available, but use with caution...dropping some items may make a mission impossible to complete)
# The Mission Loading screen should appear. Be patient...loading a mission for the first time can take several minutes.

To call the Main Menu during the game, press {{key|ESC}}) .

See [[Installing and Running Fan Missions]] for more information.

== Changing Settings ==

# Select ''Settings'' from the Main Menu
# Select the type of setting you wish to adjust: ''Audio'', ''Video'', ''Controls'', or ''Gameplay''
# The controls are set to defaults familiar to ''Thief'' players, however there are new keys/features that are worth reviewing.

1.01: New settings for combat have been added, as well as extra volume controls.

== Objectives ==

When you call the Main Menu during a mission (by hitting the ESC key), you will see an option for "Objectives". This is where you can check your progress.

Your objectives are also displayed after the Mission Briefing when you first start a mission.

When you complete an objective, a chime will sound and “Objective Completed” will be displayed at the top of the screen.

When you have completed all objectives, the map will close and a “Mission Succeeded” screen will appear. Likewise, if you fail an objective or are killed, a “Failed Mission” screen will appear. You can restart the map by selecting the "Restart" option or via the Main Menu.

1.01: There is now a way to check your Objectives without going to the menus. Hitting "O" will bring up your objectives on screen. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll up and down. Note that this method ''does not pause the game''.

----

= HUD Display =

[[Image:hud.jpg|thumb|The Game Screen indicators.]]

1. WEAPON ICON: An icon of your currently selected weapon is displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen.

2. BREATH INDICATOR: When you are underwater a small blue bar will appear above the lightgem. This bar measures how much air you have left. When the blue bar runs out, you start to take damage. Surfacing or using a Breath Potion will restore your air bar.

3. LIGHTGEM: The lightgem at the bottom of the screen indicates how easy you are to see. This is primarily due to how much light is hitting you, but also includes things like whether you are crouched, moving, or have a weapon drawn.

1.01: The wings on either side of the gem are a crouch indicator. When you are crouched, the wings 'crouch' down as well.

4. HEALTH INDICATOR: When you are injured, a small red healthbar appears below the lightgem. It will remain visible until you are returned to full health.

5. INVENTORY ICON: Your currently selected inventory object (or your loot total) is displayed as an icon in the bottom right.

== Weapons ==

Weapon hotkeys were changed at the last minute, so this list may need modifying:
* {{key|`}} Put away weapons
* {{key|1}} Blackjack
* {{key|2}} Short Sword
[[Image:arrows.jpg|thumb|A selection of arrows you can choose from.]]
* {{key|3}} Broadheads
* {{key|4}} [[Water Arrows]]
* {{key|5}} [[Fire Arrows]]
* {{key|6}} [[Rope Arrows]]
* {{key|7}} [[Gas Arrows]]
* {{key|8}} [[Noise Arrows]]
* {{key|9}} [[Moss Arrows]]

''(note that there has been a report that linux users cannot use the {{key|`}} as it is mapped to the console. Linux users will need to select a different key for 'Put away weapons'.)''

== Inventory Objects ==
Cycle through your inventory using the Inventory Prev/Next keys (default: {{key|[}} or {{key|TAB}} for next item and {{key|]}} for prev item). Inventory objects are stored in groups, so all keys will be stored together, all readables, etc. You can cycle through groups with the Prev/Next Group keys.

To ‘use’ an inventory object, select it and then hit the Use key (default: {{key|U}}). This will drink potions, throw mines, activate the spyglass, etc. To "use" objects on other objects (like using a key on a door), select the object in inventory, highlight the thing you want to use it on, and hit Use.

You can drop inventory items by hitting the Drop key (default: {{key|R}}) twice. See the section "Holding Junk Objects" for more information. Note that mappers may designate some important inventory items as undroppable.

You can clear the inventory selection by hitting the {{key|BACKSPACE}} key.

To set hotkeys for your inventory items, please see [[Custom Settings for Players]].

=== Inventory Object: Flashbomb ===
[[Image:equipment.jpg|thumb|The tools of a professional burglar.]]
Activate a flashbomb by selecting it in inventory and hitting Use. Flashbombs detonate on impact. A short tap will cause it to fall and go off at your feet. Holding down the Use key will throw the flashbomb further away. If you use the Drop key to put the flashbomb down, it is not activated at all.

An AI must be looking at the flashbomb to be blinded. Don't look at the point of impact or you'll be blinded too.

AI are only blinded for a few seconds, and they are alerted by the flash, so this tool is most useful for getting away when you've been spotted, or stunning an enemy before an attack.

Flashbombs have no affect on the undead.

=== Inventory Object: Holy Water ===

Select your holy water in inventory and hit the Use key. This puts holy water into your water arrows, making them lethal to undead. The effect is temporary (lasts 30 seconds) so use it wisely. (Note that there are no zombies in the beta version of TDM.)

=== Inventory Objects: Keys ===
Some doors or chests require keys to open. To open a locked door, select the appropriate key by scrolling to it in your inventory and hit the Use key (or the Frob key if you wish) while highlighting the door. Note that certain types of door locks (like padlocks) might have to be frobbed separately.

=== Inventory Objects: Lockpicks ===
See [[#Lockpicking|Lockpicking]] for more information on lockpicks.

=== Inventory Objects: Maps and Readables ===

In The Dark Mod, both maps and most readables (books, scrolls, etc) are inventory items. To read them, you scroll to the object in your inventory and then hit the Use key. The map or readable will be displayed on screen. Note that '''this does not pause the game'''. Unlike Thief, events continue to unfold around you, and you can be attacked while reading if not careful. You can see your environment around the edges of the map/readable, but the best suggestion is to find a safe place to read. With multi-page readables (distinguishable by folded corners on the page), use the next/prev inventory or next/prev weapon keys to scroll through pages. Hitting Use or Attack will put the readable away.

The Map key (default: {{key|M}}) will also automatically bring up your map, if you have one.

=== Inventory Object: Mines ===

Place a mine by selecting it in inventory and hitting Use. A short tap will drop the mine at your feet. Holding down Use will throw the mine further away. Once activated in this way, a mine is armed and will go off if stepped on. If you use the Drop key to put the mine down, it is not armed.

Mines are currently not very sensitive and AI can occasionally step right over them or even kick them without setting them off. Note that you can set mines off by shooting them with an arrow.

=== Inventory Object: Player Lantern ===

Light is usually the bane of thieves everywhere, but there are times when you need just a little to make your way around. To this end, some thieves carry a covered lantern with a hood that can be closed to block out the light. To use the lantern, select it in inventory and hit Use. This will lift the cover if the lantern is currently off, or close the cover if it is currently lit. There is also a hotkey for using the lantern; by default this is {{key|L}}. This lantern is clipped to your belt so your hands are free, and it can even be used underwater for short periods.

Obviously using the lantern makes you clearly visible to any nearby opponents.

=== Inventory Object: Potions ===

Potions are used by selecting them in inventory and hitting Use. Healing potions will restore hit points (the effect is somewhat gradual). Breath potions increase the player's breath meter, allowing them to stay underwater longer.

=== Inventory Object: Spyglass ===

A good Thief likes to scout ahead. To use the spyglass, select it in inventory and hit Use. You can use the next/prev weapon keys to zoom in and out. You cannot use weapons or frob objects while using the spyglass.

= Movement =

Movement in The Dark Mod is not that different than Thief. You can run, walk, or creep, as well as do any of the three while crouching. The faster you move, the more noise you make.

== Climbing ==

''needs revising''

Ladder/vine climbing:

Rope climbing:

=== Swinging on Ropes ===

Tapping the "attack" key while on a rope will cause the rope to swing forward. You can actually gain more momentum by continuing to tap it every time you start swinging forward (think of it like swinging your legs forward on a swing). This can allow you to jump off the rope and grab ledges that are otherwise too far away.

Note that the further down the rope you are, the more distance you can travel when swinging (just like a real rope).

== Mantling ==
There are two different ways to mantle (pull yourself up onto ledges) in The Dark Mod. One is by holding down the Jump key, which Thief players will be familiar with. There is also a key specifically for mantling (default: {{key|
C}}), so that failing to mantle will not result in jumping and making noise. Ideally there should be no difference in these methods, but occasionally one method will work when the other will not.
Mantling is affected by where you are looking, so a successful mantle is more likely if you are looking directly at the edge of the object you wish to climb. To climb on a chair, look down at the seat then press the mantle control. By this means you can clamber over relatively low but awkward obstructions and even select one ledge above/below another.

You cannot mantle while carrying a junk object or body.

= Interacting With Your Environment =

The Dark Mod gives you far more flexibility than previous Thief games when it comes to interacting with things.

== Manipulating Junk Objects ==
This is one area that works quite differently from the Thief series. “Junk” objects (anything that you can carry that doesn’t go into inventory, like chairs, candles, or bodies) are held out in front of you when frobbed. Unlike in Thief, they take up physical space, and can be used to push or manipulate other objects. They can also bump into other objects, making noise (or being knocked out of your hands), so be careful.

To grab a junk object, frob it as normal. The object will stop highlighting, and any weapons you have selected will lower. At this point, you can use the next/prev weapon keys (default: mousewheel up/down) to move the object closer/further away from you, and moving your mouse around will move the object (it stays basically in the center of your screen).

The heavier the object, the slower it moves, so you may notice a ‘lag’ if you turn quickly with heavy objects. It can take a while to get used to this.

To drop an object, hit the Drop key (default: {{key|R}}). By crouching and angling your view down gently, you'll find that you can easily set down objects without making noise. You can also throw a held object by hitting the Attack key. Tapping the Attack key throws the object a short distance; holding the Attack key down and releasing it will throw it further.

To rotate a held object, hold down the {{key|Z}} key or middle mouse button, and move your mouse.
(By default, horizontal movement of the mouse yaws the object around the vertical axis, and vertical movement pitches the object up and down. Holding down the Run key makes horizontal mouse movement roll the object around the forward axis.) This can be useful for replacing objects that have been knocked over, or for placing moveable objects in creative ways (like putting a plank over a gap, or stacking chairs).
It is possible to “drop” inventory items into your hands, where they can be manipulated as if they were junk objects. Select the object in your inventory, and hit the Drop key {{key|R}}. The object will appear in front of you like a junk object, and you can rotate it, set it down, etc. To put it back into your inventory, you must "use" the item again ({{key|U}}) or scroll to the next inventory item ({{key|TAB}} or {{key|[}}/{{key|]}}).
[[Image:candles6.jpg|thumb|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=922ArtrKgC4 Click to see TDM candles in action.] ]]
AI will hear junk objects that are dropped or banged around. It takes some skill to pick up objects on a crowded table without knocking them into each other. Remember than an object moves to the center of the screen when you pick it up. If you are looking slightly above the object, it will jump up to center screen (usually a good thing). If you're looking slightly below the object, it will jump down, banging whatever surface it rests on (a bad thing). A little practice may be required to smoothly and quietly sort through objects.

Some objects that are too heavy to lift may still be movable (like large crates). Walking or running into such objects may (mapper's choice) push them along the ground.

=== Junk Objects: Candles ===

Lit candles can be frobbed and carried around to light your way (obviously you will be easily spotted while carrying a lit candle). They can also be used to light flammable objects like other candles or torches. Click the caption on the right for a demonstration.

Candles can be extinguished by water, or you can pinch them out by picking them up and clicking the Use key. (Note that this method can also be used on some movable lanterns).

Be aware that multiple light sources can cause a significant drain on your framerate. If you go around a room lighting six or seven new candles, don't be surprised if your framerate drops significantly.

=== Junk Objects: Bodies ===

Bodies work differently than most other objects. There are two ways to deal with dead or unconscious bodies in The Dark Mod. You can both drag them and carry them.

To drag a body, you must ‘frob’ it (which probably requires crouching), and then back away. The body will drag along with you until you frob it again or the body gets stuck on something.

This is not the most graceful way of moving bodies and is not recommended for long distances. Bodies can catch on things and get pulled out of your hands. It can be useful for quickly shifting a body into a shadow, however. You can even move individual limbs to put a flailing arm back into a shadow.

You can also carry a body over your shoulder. While a body is being dragged, hitting the Use button will lift it up over your shoulder. While carrying a body you move more slowly and cannot use weapons or inventory objects (though you can open doors). When you are ready to drop the body, hit Use again. If there is not enough room, you will hear a grunt and nothing will happen. Back up a bit and try again. When you drop a body, it will be the opposite orientation from the way you picked it up (if a body is face-up when you lift it, it will be face-down when you drop it). This allows you to easily search a body for keys or other objects.

=== Junk Objects: Food ===

Some food can be eaten. When holding a piece of food (such as an apple) hit the "use" key. If the food is edible, you will 'eat' it, and will be healed 1 hit point.

== Doors ==
You can interrupt a door opening or closing by frobbing it again. Frobbing a moving door stops it, allowing you to open a door just a crack to peer beyond.

You can lean into a door (use the lean left/right keys) to press your ear up against it and hear what's on the other side. Note that while you're concentrating on what's beyond the door you'll be less able to hear the sounds in the room you're currently in.

Some doors or chests are locked and require keys (or lockpicks, see below) to open. To open a locked door, select the appropriate key by scrolling to it in your inventory and hit the Use key (or the Frob key if you wish) while highlighting the door. Note that certain types of door locks (like padlocks) might have to be frobbed separately.

== Lockpicking ==
You will definitely want to practice lockpicking in the Training Mission before trying a real map. Just reading the instructions is probably not enough to get the hang of it.

There are two types of lockpicks, 'triangle' and 'snake'. To begin, you must have the correct lockpick selected in inventory. If you do not, you will see a red flash behind the lockpick icon when you frob the locked door. To pick a lock, move close enough to highlight the door and hold the Use key. You will start to hear a sequence of clicks, and see the door handle (or lock pin) jiggle in sync.

The clicks are a random pattern. At the end of the pattern is a brief period of silence, then the pattern will begin again. To be successful you must hit the Attack key (or release the Use key if you prefer) at the start of that silence. If you hit the Attack key at the wrong time there is a dull 'fail' sound and the pattern begins again. Your goal is to learn the sequence of clicks so that you can anticipate when it will end. This requires concentration.

Some locks are more difficult than others and have multiple pins (which may require switching lockpicks). You can make lockpicking harder or easier in the Settings Menu, by adjusting how much silence there is between each pattern (the more silence, the easier it is to react in time). Setting Lockpicking to "Auto" will make locks open automatically after the pattern repeats 3 times.

== Chests ==
It can sometimes be a little awkward frobbing items inside deep chests. Leaning forward (or even sideways) will usually help.

If you get too close to a chest, you can sometimes get in the way of the lid opening or closing. Back up a little if the lid is not moving as expected.

----

= Combat =

There are a number of ways that combat is different in The Dark Mod.

Keep in mind that you are not a warrior. Guards are generally better trained than you are, and while you might win a few one-on-one battles, you will almost certainly die if facing two guards at once.

== Blackjacking ==

Your blackjack is more effective if your opponent is relaxed and not expecting trouble.

You must hit an AI on the head to knock them out. Hitting an AI anywhere else will simply alert them.

'''You can successfully knock out:'''

'''1. Unarmed civilian AI from any direction, any time.'''

'''2. Bare-headed guards from any direction when relaxed, or from behind when alert.'''

'''3. Helmeted guards from behind when relaxed (helmeted guards cannot be knocked out when alert).'''

The blackjack does a small amount of damage, so you could theoretically beat someone to death with it, if you have a lot of time on your hands.

Undead and some animals cannot be knocked out with the blackjack.

1.01: Certain heavy-duty helmets make their wearer immune to the blackjack. These can be identified by a face grill and a low back, which protects the base of the neck. 

'''Note:''' the blackjack makes an overhead swing, so if there is something low in the way (like a doorframe) you might hit it instead of your target, especially if you are looking upwards.

== Melee Combat ==
[[image:combat1.jpg|thumb|A guard winds up for an overhead attack]]
There is a combat arena in the Training Map for practicing combat. After a few rounds you will have a much better feel for how it works.

You can use your shortsword to attack an enemy, as well as block enemy weapons. Attacking a relaxed enemy (ie, backstabbing) does extra damage.
To attack, hit the Attack key. This will make a left-to-right, slashing attack. If you move the mouse while clicking the Attack key, you can select other kinds of attacks. Moving the mouse down will cause an overhead swing. Moving the mouse up will cause a thrust attack. Moving the mouse left or right will cause a right-to-left or left-to-right slash, respectively.

AI can parry your swings (unless they are using a dagger), and they will do this more easily if you keep using the same kind of attack, so you will want to mix it up.

The amount of damage you do varies depending on where you hit. Hitting an AI in the head will do more damage than hitting their arm or leg. Armour also plays a factor. Your sword can't penetrate plate armour, and even chainmail or leather armour will provide the AI some protection.

To block an enemy strike, hold the Parry key. If you have the "Auto Parry" option selected in the Main Menu, you will automatically select the appropriate block. You must hit the block key just as the AI is winding up for their attack--too late and you'll get hit before the block is ready. Too early and the AI will see the block and choose a different attack. Obviously, you must also be facing the AI...holding up a block while looking off to the side won't help.

If you are using Manual Parry (select in the Settings menu), you need to select the appropriate block yourself by moving the mouse while holding the Parry button down.

If you successfully block an attack or damage your opponent the AI will be temporarily "flat-footed". They can still attack and defend, but they will not chase you if you turn to run. The effect lasts only a second or two, but that can sometimes be enough time to give you a head start.

The trick to a successful combat is timing. You need to try to anticipate your opponent's attacks, and then launch counter-attacks before he has a chance to parry.

AI will usually try to flee if they are badly wounded.

1.01: Different AI have different skill levels (novice, trained, skilled) when it comes to combat. An armed commoner will no longer fight as well as an elite guard.
You can also change the overall combat difficulty in the Settings menu.

'''Note:''' It is possible to hit walls or ceilings instead of your target. Keep track of how much space is around you when choosing your swing.

== Missile Combat ==

Your broadhead arrows cannot penetrate plate armour, and will do less damage if they hit chain or leather armour. The best result is to hit unarmoured flesh. A single arrow to the head will kill a relaxed guard. Alert guards are assumed to be taking measures to minimize the damage from incoming arrows.

If you are hit while trying to fire an arrow, your attack will be canceled.

AI will switch to missile combat if they can see you but cannot reach you. If they don't have a missile weapon, they will become angry and start throwing things at you (as of 1.01, this means rocks).

AI archers will fire arrows at you. Some AI are better shots than others. Hitting an AI archer does NOT cancel their attack at the moment, which makes AI archers a challenge to defeat. This will probably change in the future, as AI archers are not fully playtested yet.

----

= AI =

The AI of TDM 1.0 still have some rough edges, but in general they are formidable opponents.

== AI Senses ==

AI can see you if your lightgem is not totally black. The longer you're in their field of vision, the more likely they are to notice you and come and investigate.

1.01: Some AI have hoods, eyepatches, or other things that block their field of vision. These can be exploited by clever thieves.

AI can hear your footsteps, and noise that you make from banging into things or dropping objects.

AI can also feel you if you bump into them, or vice versa.

TDM AI are fairly intelligent about searching. They can identify good hiding spots and will check them out first.

When AI become alert, their acuity increases. A shadow that is sufficient to hide you from a relaxed AI might not be enough for an AI that is alert and actively looking for trouble.

AI do not forget about you after giving up the search. They remain in an alert state, with higher senses and their weapons out.

== AI Behaviour ==

AI need to see evidence in order to react to it. If a bloodstain or missing loot is in shadow, an AI won't notice it.

AI can react to missing objects or lights being put out, but only if mappers set the objects/lights as noteworthy. AI can potentially relight lights, if a mapper chooses (by default, ALL AI can relight lights that mappers set as important--mappers may want to limit this to only AI with torches).

AI become suspicious if they find a weapon lying around. Finding blood or a body will cause them to go fully alert.

AI can hear broadhead arrow impacts. If you shoot an arrow and it hits a wall nearby, the AI will notice. AI will also react to water arrows if you fire them too close (or if you hit an AI with one).

AI do not yet notice moss arrow impacts, moss patches, ropes from rope arrows, open doors, or mines. These things will likely cause minor alerts in the future.

[[Category:Gameplay]]

Readable Editor

2010-03-11T19:52:03Z

AluminumHaste: /* Features, Tips and Tricks */

--[[User:Stifu|Stifu]] 16:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
[[Image:ReadableEditor.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Readable Editor]]The ''Readable Editor'' is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_you_see_is_what_you_get WYSIWYG-Editor] for the readable entities in ''The Dark Mod'' and it is a feature of ''Dark Radiant'' since version 1.2.0 requiring at least version 1.01 of ''The Dark Mod''. Up until now, the workflow for creating readables was tiresome, especially because you had to keep ''Dark Mod'' running in the background in order to be able to check if linebreaks and pagebreaks look alright et cetera. But those days are over, as we decided to provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface for creating such texts.

== The new workflow ==
Setting up a readable is fairly easy. Just [[Readables|add a readable entity to your map]] and start the ''Readable Editor'' via the Entity-menu. Once you hit either one of the Save-buttons, the [[XData File Creation|XData]] and Inventory Name are stored on your selected entity and the newly written text is exported to an .xd file. If you open the ''Readable Editor'' on that entity again or any other entity which was already setup with an XData definition, the corresponding definition is of course imported automatically.

=== Fine, but where is my new XData Definition stored? ===
The title-bar of the ''Readable Editor'' holds the answer to this question. New XData definitions will be added to an .xd file that is named just like your current map. If you import an existing definition (or again, if you start the Readable Editor on a readable entity already setup with an XData definition) any alterations will be stored in the file the definition originated from. This approach prevents the creation of duplicated XData definitions. '''Important: As soon as you change the XData Name in the editor, a new definition will be created in the file, whose name is again derived from the name of your map.'''

You can specify the storage folder for XData in the Preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'' under "Settings/Readable Editor". The pulldown menu offers options to store the files in the "xdata" subfolder of your Mod or Mod Base directory, as well as in a custom folder which can be specified below. Please note that while you can specify any folder you want for exporting, ''Dark Radiant'' and its ''Readable Editor'' can only import XData definitions that are contained in .xd files located somewhere in the "xdata" subfolder of the Base-, Mod- or Mod_Base-directory. Definitions in "base/xdata/myStuff/SomeXData.xd" for example can be found, but not if they are stored in "base/myStuff/SomeXData.xd".

=== Is the Preview broken? My Title overlaps with my Body! ===
No, it's not, the preview is very precise. The GUIs for readables have intentionally been laid out like this to allow the writing of continuous texts without titles. You just have to add some line-breaks to your body until it looks right. And since we are talking about presumably faulty previews here, please also note that some titles of GUIs do not support multiple lines, resulting in some parts of your title not being rendered.

=== Features, Tips and Tricks ===
The editing process itself is pretty straight forward. At this point I would just like to point out a few not so apparent features.

* '''Appending and prepending pages''': If you're currently editing the first or the last page of your readable and you click on first/previous page respectively last/next page, a small convenient small popup will show up, allowing you to prepend or append a page.
* '''Converting the Page Layout''': No content is discarded when you change the Page Layout of your readable. If you should realize that the letter you just wrote would be much more suitable as a diary entry, feel free to just convert it.
* '''Choosing Guis''': Just like with XData definitions, you can use one gui per page. You can enter a gui by hand or choose one using the Gui-Browser, which directly previews the selected gui. The browser holds two tabs, one for OneSided- and one for Two-Sided guis. Switching the tab will also change the page layout of your readable and update the preview accordingly.
* '''Inserting and deleting pages''': When you're writing a Two-sided readable, clicking on either one of these buttons will result in a popup, asking you whether the respective operation should be applied to the left or right side or the whole page.
* '''Browsing XData definitions''': Well, there's not much to say about this one. Selected definitions are previewed and if you choose to import a definition, which has been defined in multiple files, another dialog will show up, allowing you to select the file to import. While the ''Readable Editor'' supports this duplicated definitions, ''The Dark Mod'' does not, so you should definitely go ahead and fix this by hand. You'd have to open the corresponding files by hand and delete the definition.
* '''The Tools-menu''': When clicking the Tools-button a small popup menu offers you to display an import summary of the last XData import or the gui import, as well as a report of duplicated definitions found in the Virtual File System (All .xd files found in the .pk4 files or in actual folders).
* '''Reloading Readable Guis''': All Readable Guis can be reloaded by clicking on "File/Reload Readable Guis" in the Main-menu. A similar option for XData definition is not necessary, because those are loaded completely afresh every time the ''Readable Editor'' is started.
* '''Automatic Page Layout Determination''': When you start the ''Readable Editor'' on a newly create readable entity, its page layout will be determined automatically. However, the decision poses a rather greedy approach, as it's simply checked whether the entity name contains the string "book". So you might have to adjust the layout manually afterwards.

== Known Issues ==
The ''Readable Editor'' is still Work-In-Progress and there will likely be many changes in the future because of that. But it is pretty much in a very well usable state, so we decided to release it to the public already. Here are some of the issues the editor still has:
* The Readable Editor seems to crash in certain circumstances when compatibility-mode is enabled on DarkRadiant.exe. Make sure to disable it if you run into any problems!
* Some two-sided guis are not yet fully supported.
* Some XData definitions can't be imported, specifically those that feature certain import-statements.

== Planned Features / Ideas for the Future ==
* Notify the user when a character was typed that is not available in the font. Possibly even prevent adding it to the textfield.
* If the end of a page is reached in the preview, the editor should automatically jump to the next textView field and somehow notify the user about the page-break.
* Features for the Tools-menu:
** Resolve conflicts on duplicated definitions.
** Check XData Syntax of a specified file.
* A Readable Editor Dialog specifically for Translators with two previews, one of them for the original.

If you have any other good ideas, feel free to make a suggestion in the [http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/forum/54-tdm-editors-guild/ TDM Editors Guild].

== Advise for pure Translators ==
Here are some steps that will make your life easier:
# '''Creating a .map file and setting up ''Dark Radiant''''':
## In ''Dark Radiant'' right-click on one of the orthogonal views and choose "Create Entity...".
## Browse to "darkmod/readables" and choose a readable entity to add. It basically doesn't matter which one you pick, but it's always useful to have one that is actually visible.
## Move the entity directly in front of the camera by draging it on the orthogonal views. You can select an entity be shift+clicking it, deselect by pressing "Escape".
## Save the map under a convenient filename like "MyAwesomeReadableTranslatingMap.map".
## Press "P" to bring up the preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'', go to "Settings/Map Files" and check "Open last map on startup". Now every time you start your ''Dark Radiant'', your map is loaded and you can directly jump into translating.
# '''Making the original Readables available to ''Dark Radiant'' and starting the translation process''':
## Open the .pk4 file of the FM using winrar or similar and extract the contained "xdata" folder into your "darkmod"-directory. It should say "darkmod/xdata" after that! The alterations you make to the texts will be stored directly in those files, if you don't change the XData Name (which you shouldn't in most cases!).
## In ''Dark Radiant'' select the readable entity and click "Entity/Readable Editor" in the Main-menu.
## Use the XData-browser accessed by the small button in the "XData Name"-row to import the XData definitions of the FM.
## Start translating... It might be useful to cut and paste the original text-part you're going to edit into any random text editor beforehand.
## When you're done, you can click on save and directly open the next definition.

To verify your work, you can just start ''The Dark Mod'' in the end and load the corresponding FM. Because Doom 3 prefers files found in actual folders over files found in .pk4 files, your translation will be visible ingame, without destroying/altering the original FM-package.

Some mappers don't use virtual folders in their XData names, e.g. "readables/MyFM/MyReadable". So, to make the browsing of the XData files easier and quicker, you can open the .xd file(s) of the FM in any texteditor and prepend for example "translation/" before any XData name. All readables you have to translate will then be listed in the virtual "translation" folder in the XData browser of the ''Readable Editor''. But if you want to see those translations ingame afterwards, you'll also have to delete that prefix in all those XData names later again or delete it within the ''Readable Editor''. Please note however, that those definitions will be stored under a different filename then, as explained above. This is no problem though, I just wanted to point it out.

[[Category:Tutorial]]
[[Category:Editing]]

Readable Editor

2010-03-11T19:51:02Z

AluminumHaste: /* Features, Tips and Tricks */

--[[User:Stifu|Stifu]] 16:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
[[Image:ReadableEditor.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Readable Editor]]The ''Readable Editor'' is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_you_see_is_what_you_get WYSIWYG-Editor] for the readable entities in ''The Dark Mod'' and it is a feature of ''Dark Radiant'' since version 1.2.0 requiring at least version 1.01 of ''The Dark Mod''. Up until now, the workflow for creating readables was tiresome, especially because you had to keep ''Dark Mod'' running in the background in order to be able to check if linebreaks and pagebreaks look alright et cetera. But those days are over, as we decided to provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface for creating such texts.

== The new workflow ==
Setting up a readable is fairly easy. Just [[Readables|add a readable entity to your map]] and start the ''Readable Editor'' via the Entity-menu. Once you hit either one of the Save-buttons, the [[XData File Creation|XData]] and Inventory Name are stored on your selected entity and the newly written text is exported to an .xd file. If you open the ''Readable Editor'' on that entity again or any other entity which was already setup with an XData definition, the corresponding definition is of course imported automatically.

=== Fine, but where is my new XData Definition stored? ===
The title-bar of the ''Readable Editor'' holds the answer to this question. New XData definitions will be added to an .xd file that is named just like your current map. If you import an existing definition (or again, if you start the Readable Editor on a readable entity already setup with an XData definition) any alterations will be stored in the file the definition originated from. This approach prevents the creation of duplicated XData definitions. '''Important: As soon as you change the XData Name in the editor, a new definition will be created in the file, whose name is again derived from the name of your map.'''

You can specify the storage folder for XData in the Preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'' under "Settings/Readable Editor". The pulldown menu offers options to store the files in the "xdata" subfolder of your Mod or Mod Base directory, as well as in a custom folder which can be specified below. Please note that while you can specify any folder you want for exporting, ''Dark Radiant'' and its ''Readable Editor'' can only import XData definitions that are contained in .xd files located somewhere in the "xdata" subfolder of the Base-, Mod- or Mod_Base-directory. Definitions in "base/xdata/myStuff/SomeXData.xd" for example can be found, but not if they are stored in "base/myStuff/SomeXData.xd".

=== Is the Preview broken? My Title overlaps with my Body! ===
No, it's not, the preview is very precise. The GUIs for readables have intentionally been laid out like this to allow the writing of continuous texts without titles. You just have to add some line-breaks to your body until it looks right. And since we are talking about presumably faulty previews here, please also note that some titles of GUIs do not support multiple lines, resulting in some parts of your title not being rendered.

=== Features, Tips and Tricks ===
The editing process itself is pretty straight forward. At this point I would just like to point out a few not so apparent features.

* '''Appending and prepending pages''': If you're currently editing the first or the last page of your readable and you click on first/previous page respectively last/next page, a small convenient small popup will show up, allowing you to prepend or append a page.
* '''Converting the Page Layout''': No content is discarded when you change the Page Layout of your readable. If you should once feel like the letter you just wrote would be much more suitable as a diary entry, feel free to just convert!
* '''Choosing Guis''': Just like with XData definitions, you can use one gui per page. You can enter a gui by hand or choose one using the Gui-Browser, which directly previews the selected gui. The browser holds two tabs, one for OneSided- and one for Two-Sided guis. Switching the tab will also change the page layout of your readable and update the preview accordingly.
* '''Inserting and deleting pages''': When you're writing a Two-sided readable, clicking on either one of these buttons will result in a popup, asking you whether the respective operation should be applied to the left or right side or the whole page.
* '''Browsing XData definitions''': Well, there's not much to say about this one. Selected definitions are previewed and if you choose to import a definition, which has been defined in multiple files, another dialog will show up, allowing you to select the file to import. While the ''Readable Editor'' supports this duplicated definitions, ''The Dark Mod'' does not, so you should definitely go ahead and fix this by hand. You'd have to open the corresponding files by hand and delete the definition.
* '''The Tools-menu''': When clicking the Tools-button a small popup menu offers you to display an import summary of the last XData import or the gui import, as well as a report of duplicated definitions found in the Virtual File System (All .xd files found in the .pk4 files or in actual folders).
* '''Reloading Readable Guis''': All Readable Guis can be reloaded by clicking on "File/Reload Readable Guis" in the Main-menu. A similar option for XData definition is not necessary, because those are loaded completely afresh every time the ''Readable Editor'' is started.
* '''Automatic Page Layout Determination''': When you start the ''Readable Editor'' on a newly create readable entity, its page layout will be determined automatically. However, the decision poses a rather greedy approach, as it's simply checked whether the entity name contains the string "book". So you might have to adjust the layout manually afterwards.

== Known Issues ==
The ''Readable Editor'' is still Work-In-Progress and there will likely be many changes in the future because of that. But it is pretty much in a very well usable state, so we decided to release it to the public already. Here are some of the issues the editor still has:
* The Readable Editor seems to crash in certain circumstances when compatibility-mode is enabled on DarkRadiant.exe. Make sure to disable it if you run into any problems!
* Some two-sided guis are not yet fully supported.
* Some XData definitions can't be imported, specifically those that feature certain import-statements.

== Planned Features / Ideas for the Future ==
* Notify the user when a character was typed that is not available in the font. Possibly even prevent adding it to the textfield.
* If the end of a page is reached in the preview, the editor should automatically jump to the next textView field and somehow notify the user about the page-break.
* Features for the Tools-menu:
** Resolve conflicts on duplicated definitions.
** Check XData Syntax of a specified file.
* A Readable Editor Dialog specifically for Translators with two previews, one of them for the original.

If you have any other good ideas, feel free to make a suggestion in the [http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/forum/54-tdm-editors-guild/ TDM Editors Guild].

== Advise for pure Translators ==
Here are some steps that will make your life easier:
# '''Creating a .map file and setting up ''Dark Radiant''''':
## In ''Dark Radiant'' right-click on one of the orthogonal views and choose "Create Entity...".
## Browse to "darkmod/readables" and choose a readable entity to add. It basically doesn't matter which one you pick, but it's always useful to have one that is actually visible.
## Move the entity directly in front of the camera by draging it on the orthogonal views. You can select an entity be shift+clicking it, deselect by pressing "Escape".
## Save the map under a convenient filename like "MyAwesomeReadableTranslatingMap.map".
## Press "P" to bring up the preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'', go to "Settings/Map Files" and check "Open last map on startup". Now every time you start your ''Dark Radiant'', your map is loaded and you can directly jump into translating.
# '''Making the original Readables available to ''Dark Radiant'' and starting the translation process''':
## Open the .pk4 file of the FM using winrar or similar and extract the contained "xdata" folder into your "darkmod"-directory. It should say "darkmod/xdata" after that! The alterations you make to the texts will be stored directly in those files, if you don't change the XData Name (which you shouldn't in most cases!).
## In ''Dark Radiant'' select the readable entity and click "Entity/Readable Editor" in the Main-menu.
## Use the XData-browser accessed by the small button in the "XData Name"-row to import the XData definitions of the FM.
## Start translating... It might be useful to cut and paste the original text-part you're going to edit into any random text editor beforehand.
## When you're done, you can click on save and directly open the next definition.

To verify your work, you can just start ''The Dark Mod'' in the end and load the corresponding FM. Because Doom 3 prefers files found in actual folders over files found in .pk4 files, your translation will be visible ingame, without destroying/altering the original FM-package.

Some mappers don't use virtual folders in their XData names, e.g. "readables/MyFM/MyReadable". So, to make the browsing of the XData files easier and quicker, you can open the .xd file(s) of the FM in any texteditor and prepend for example "translation/" before any XData name. All readables you have to translate will then be listed in the virtual "translation" folder in the XData browser of the ''Readable Editor''. But if you want to see those translations ingame afterwards, you'll also have to delete that prefix in all those XData names later again or delete it within the ''Readable Editor''. Please note however, that those definitions will be stored under a different filename then, as explained above. This is no problem though, I just wanted to point it out.

[[Category:Tutorial]]
[[Category:Editing]]

Readable Editor

2010-03-11T19:41:21Z

AluminumHaste: /* Fine, but where is my new XData Definition stored? */

--[[User:Stifu|Stifu]] 16:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
[[Image:ReadableEditor.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Readable Editor]]The ''Readable Editor'' is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_you_see_is_what_you_get WYSIWYG-Editor] for the readable entities in ''The Dark Mod'' and it is a feature of ''Dark Radiant'' since version 1.2.0 requiring at least version 1.01 of ''The Dark Mod''. Up until now, the workflow for creating readables was tiresome, especially because you had to keep ''Dark Mod'' running in the background in order to be able to check if linebreaks and pagebreaks look alright et cetera. But those days are over, as we decided to provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface for creating such texts.

== The new workflow ==
Setting up a readable is fairly easy. Just [[Readables|add a readable entity to your map]] and start the ''Readable Editor'' via the Entity-menu. Once you hit either one of the Save-buttons, the [[XData File Creation|XData]] and Inventory Name are stored on your selected entity and the newly written text is exported to an .xd file. If you open the ''Readable Editor'' on that entity again or any other entity which was already setup with an XData definition, the corresponding definition is of course imported automatically.

=== Fine, but where is my new XData Definition stored? ===
The title-bar of the ''Readable Editor'' holds the answer to this question. New XData definitions will be added to an .xd file that is named just like your current map. If you import an existing definition (or again, if you start the Readable Editor on a readable entity already setup with an XData definition) any alterations will be stored in the file the definition originated from. This approach prevents the creation of duplicated XData definitions. '''Important: As soon as you change the XData Name in the editor, a new definition will be created in the file, whose name is again derived from the name of your map.'''

You can specify the storage folder for XData in the Preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'' under "Settings/Readable Editor". The pulldown menu offers options to store the files in the "xdata" subfolder of your Mod or Mod Base directory, as well as in a custom folder which can be specified below. Please note that while you can specify any folder you want for exporting, ''Dark Radiant'' and its ''Readable Editor'' can only import XData definitions that are contained in .xd files located somewhere in the "xdata" subfolder of the Base-, Mod- or Mod_Base-directory. Definitions in "base/xdata/myStuff/SomeXData.xd" for example can be found, but not if they are stored in "base/myStuff/SomeXData.xd".

=== Is the Preview broken? My Title overlaps with my Body! ===
No, it's not, the preview is very precise. The GUIs for readables have intentionally been laid out like this to allow the writing of continuous texts without titles. You just have to add some line-breaks to your body until it looks right. And since we are talking about presumably faulty previews here, please also note that some titles of GUIs do not support multiple lines, resulting in some parts of your title not being rendered.

=== Features, Tips and Tricks ===
The editing process itself is pretty much straight forward. At this point I would just like to point out a few features, those of which being not so apparent at first.
* '''Appending and prepending pages''': If you're currently editing the first or the last page of your readable and you click on first/previous page respectively last/next page, a small convenient small popup will show up, allowing you to prepend or append a page.
* '''Converting the Page Layout''': No content is discarded when you change the Page Layout of your readable. If you should once feel like the letter you just wrote would be much more suitable as a diary entry, feel free to just convert!
* '''Choosing Guis''': Just like with XData definitions, you can use one gui per page. You can enter a gui by hand or choose one using the Gui-Browser, which directly previews the selected gui. The browser holds two tabs, one for OneSided- and one for Two-Sided guis. Switching the tab will also change the page layout of your readable and update the preview accordingly.
* '''Inserting and deleting pages''': When you're writing a Two-sided readable, clicking on either one of these buttons will result in a popup, asking you whether the respective operation should be applied to the left or right side or the whole page.
* '''Browsing XData definitions''': Well, there's not much to say about this one. Selected definitions are previewed and if you choose to import a definition, which has been defined in multiple files, another dialog will show up, allowing you to select the file to import. While the ''Readable Editor'' supports this duplicated definitions, ''The Dark Mod'' does not, so you should definitely go ahead and fix this by hand. You'd have to open the corresponding files by hand and delete the definition.
* '''The Tools-menu''': When clicking the Tools-button a small popup menu offers you to display an import summary of the last XData import or the gui import, as well as a report of duplicated definitions found in the Virtual File System (All .xd files found in the .pk4 files or in actual folders).
* '''Reloading Readable Guis''': All Readable Guis can be reloaded by clicking on "File/Reload Readable Guis" in the Main-menu. A similar option for XData definition is not necessary, because those are loaded completely afresh every time the ''Readable Editor'' is started.
* '''Automatic Page Layout Determination''': When you start the ''Readable Editor'' on a newly create readable entity, its page layout will be determined automatically. However, the decision poses a rather greedy approach, as it's simply checked whether the entity name contains the string "book". So you might have to adjust the layout manually afterwards.

== Known Issues ==
The ''Readable Editor'' is still Work-In-Progress and there will likely be many changes in the future because of that. But it is pretty much in a very well usable state, so we decided to release it to the public already. Here are some of the issues the editor still has:
* The Readable Editor seems to crash in certain circumstances when compatibility-mode is enabled on DarkRadiant.exe. Make sure to disable it if you run into any problems!
* Some two-sided guis are not yet fully supported.
* Some XData definitions can't be imported, specifically those that feature certain import-statements.

== Planned Features / Ideas for the Future ==
* Notify the user when a character was typed that is not available in the font. Possibly even prevent adding it to the textfield.
* If the end of a page is reached in the preview, the editor should automatically jump to the next textView field and somehow notify the user about the page-break.
* Features for the Tools-menu:
** Resolve conflicts on duplicated definitions.
** Check XData Syntax of a specified file.
* A Readable Editor Dialog specifically for Translators with two previews, one of them for the original.

If you have any other good ideas, feel free to make a suggestion in the [http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/forum/54-tdm-editors-guild/ TDM Editors Guild].

== Advise for pure Translators ==
Here are some steps that will make your life easier:
# '''Creating a .map file and setting up ''Dark Radiant''''':
## In ''Dark Radiant'' right-click on one of the orthogonal views and choose "Create Entity...".
## Browse to "darkmod/readables" and choose a readable entity to add. It basically doesn't matter which one you pick, but it's always useful to have one that is actually visible.
## Move the entity directly in front of the camera by draging it on the orthogonal views. You can select an entity be shift+clicking it, deselect by pressing "Escape".
## Save the map under a convenient filename like "MyAwesomeReadableTranslatingMap.map".
## Press "P" to bring up the preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'', go to "Settings/Map Files" and check "Open last map on startup". Now every time you start your ''Dark Radiant'', your map is loaded and you can directly jump into translating.
# '''Making the original Readables available to ''Dark Radiant'' and starting the translation process''':
## Open the .pk4 file of the FM using winrar or similar and extract the contained "xdata" folder into your "darkmod"-directory. It should say "darkmod/xdata" after that! The alterations you make to the texts will be stored directly in those files, if you don't change the XData Name (which you shouldn't in most cases!).
## In ''Dark Radiant'' select the readable entity and click "Entity/Readable Editor" in the Main-menu.
## Use the XData-browser accessed by the small button in the "XData Name"-row to import the XData definitions of the FM.
## Start translating... It might be useful to cut and paste the original text-part you're going to edit into any random text editor beforehand.
## When you're done, you can click on save and directly open the next definition.

To verify your work, you can just start ''The Dark Mod'' in the end and load the corresponding FM. Because Doom 3 prefers files found in actual folders over files found in .pk4 files, your translation will be visible ingame, without destroying/altering the original FM-package.

Some mappers don't use virtual folders in their XData names, e.g. "readables/MyFM/MyReadable". So, to make the browsing of the XData files easier and quicker, you can open the .xd file(s) of the FM in any texteditor and prepend for example "translation/" before any XData name. All readables you have to translate will then be listed in the virtual "translation" folder in the XData browser of the ''Readable Editor''. But if you want to see those translations ingame afterwards, you'll also have to delete that prefix in all those XData names later again or delete it within the ''Readable Editor''. Please note however, that those definitions will be stored under a different filename then, as explained above. This is no problem though, I just wanted to point it out.

[[Category:Tutorial]]
[[Category:Editing]]

Readable Editor

2010-03-11T19:39:41Z

AluminumHaste:

--[[User:Stifu|Stifu]] 16:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
[[Image:ReadableEditor.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Readable Editor]]The ''Readable Editor'' is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_you_see_is_what_you_get WYSIWYG-Editor] for the readable entities in ''The Dark Mod'' and it is a feature of ''Dark Radiant'' since version 1.2.0 requiring at least version 1.01 of ''The Dark Mod''. Up until now, the workflow for creating readables was tiresome, especially because you had to keep ''Dark Mod'' running in the background in order to be able to check if linebreaks and pagebreaks look alright et cetera. But those days are over, as we decided to provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface for creating such texts.

== The new workflow ==
Setting up a readable is fairly easy. Just [[Readables|add a readable entity to your map]] and start the ''Readable Editor'' via the Entity-menu. Once you hit either one of the Save-buttons, the [[XData File Creation|XData]] and Inventory Name are stored on your selected entity and the newly written text is exported to an .xd file. If you open the ''Readable Editor'' on that entity again or any other entity which was already setup with an XData definition, the corresponding definition is of course imported automatically.

=== Fine, but where is my new XData Definition stored? ===
The title-bar of the ''Readable Editor'' holds the answer to this question. New XData definitions will be added to an .xd file that is named just like your current map. If you import an existing definition (or again, if you start the Readable Editor on a readable entity already setup with an XData definition) any alterations will be stored in the file the definition originated from. This approach prevents the creation of duplicated XData definitions. As soon as you change the XData Name in the editor - '''this is important''' - a new definition will be created in the file, whose name is again derived from the name of your map.

You can specify the storage folder for XData in the Preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'' under "Settings/Readable Editor". The pulldown menu offers options to store the files in the "xdata" subfolder of your Mod or Mod Base directory, as well as in a custom folder which can be specified below. Please note that while you can specify any folder you want for exporting, ''Dark Radiant'' and its ''Readable Editor'' can only import XData definitions that are contained in .xd files located somewhere in the "xdata" subfolder of the Base-, Mod- or Mod_Base-directory. Definitions in "base/xdata/myStuff/SomeXData.xd" for example can be found, but not if they are stored in "base/myStuff/SomeXData.xd".

=== Is the Preview broken? My Title overlaps with my Body! ===
No, it's not, the preview is very precise. The GUIs for readables have intentionally been laid out like this to allow the writing of continuous texts without titles. You just have to add some line-breaks to your body until it looks right. And since we are talking about presumably faulty previews here, please also note that some titles of GUIs do not support multiple lines, resulting in some parts of your title not being rendered.

=== Features, Tips and Tricks ===
The editing process itself is pretty much straight forward. At this point I would just like to point out a few features, those of which being not so apparent at first.
* '''Appending and prepending pages''': If you're currently editing the first or the last page of your readable and you click on first/previous page respectively last/next page, a small convenient small popup will show up, allowing you to prepend or append a page.
* '''Converting the Page Layout''': No content is discarded when you change the Page Layout of your readable. If you should once feel like the letter you just wrote would be much more suitable as a diary entry, feel free to just convert!
* '''Choosing Guis''': Just like with XData definitions, you can use one gui per page. You can enter a gui by hand or choose one using the Gui-Browser, which directly previews the selected gui. The browser holds two tabs, one for OneSided- and one for Two-Sided guis. Switching the tab will also change the page layout of your readable and update the preview accordingly.
* '''Inserting and deleting pages''': When you're writing a Two-sided readable, clicking on either one of these buttons will result in a popup, asking you whether the respective operation should be applied to the left or right side or the whole page.
* '''Browsing XData definitions''': Well, there's not much to say about this one. Selected definitions are previewed and if you choose to import a definition, which has been defined in multiple files, another dialog will show up, allowing you to select the file to import. While the ''Readable Editor'' supports this duplicated definitions, ''The Dark Mod'' does not, so you should definitely go ahead and fix this by hand. You'd have to open the corresponding files by hand and delete the definition.
* '''The Tools-menu''': When clicking the Tools-button a small popup menu offers you to display an import summary of the last XData import or the gui import, as well as a report of duplicated definitions found in the Virtual File System (All .xd files found in the .pk4 files or in actual folders).
* '''Reloading Readable Guis''': All Readable Guis can be reloaded by clicking on "File/Reload Readable Guis" in the Main-menu. A similar option for XData definition is not necessary, because those are loaded completely afresh every time the ''Readable Editor'' is started.
* '''Automatic Page Layout Determination''': When you start the ''Readable Editor'' on a newly create readable entity, its page layout will be determined automatically. However, the decision poses a rather greedy approach, as it's simply checked whether the entity name contains the string "book". So you might have to adjust the layout manually afterwards.

== Known Issues ==
The ''Readable Editor'' is still Work-In-Progress and there will likely be many changes in the future because of that. But it is pretty much in a very well usable state, so we decided to release it to the public already. Here are some of the issues the editor still has:
* The Readable Editor seems to crash in certain circumstances when compatibility-mode is enabled on DarkRadiant.exe. Make sure to disable it if you run into any problems!
* Some two-sided guis are not yet fully supported.
* Some XData definitions can't be imported, specifically those that feature certain import-statements.

== Planned Features / Ideas for the Future ==
* Notify the user when a character was typed that is not available in the font. Possibly even prevent adding it to the textfield.
* If the end of a page is reached in the preview, the editor should automatically jump to the next textView field and somehow notify the user about the page-break.
* Features for the Tools-menu:
** Resolve conflicts on duplicated definitions.
** Check XData Syntax of a specified file.
* A Readable Editor Dialog specifically for Translators with two previews, one of them for the original.

If you have any other good ideas, feel free to make a suggestion in the [http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/forum/54-tdm-editors-guild/ TDM Editors Guild].

== Advise for pure Translators ==
Here are some steps that will make your life easier:
# '''Creating a .map file and setting up ''Dark Radiant''''':
## In ''Dark Radiant'' right-click on one of the orthogonal views and choose "Create Entity...".
## Browse to "darkmod/readables" and choose a readable entity to add. It basically doesn't matter which one you pick, but it's always useful to have one that is actually visible.
## Move the entity directly in front of the camera by draging it on the orthogonal views. You can select an entity be shift+clicking it, deselect by pressing "Escape".
## Save the map under a convenient filename like "MyAwesomeReadableTranslatingMap.map".
## Press "P" to bring up the preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'', go to "Settings/Map Files" and check "Open last map on startup". Now every time you start your ''Dark Radiant'', your map is loaded and you can directly jump into translating.
# '''Making the original Readables available to ''Dark Radiant'' and starting the translation process''':
## Open the .pk4 file of the FM using winrar or similar and extract the contained "xdata" folder into your "darkmod"-directory. It should say "darkmod/xdata" after that! The alterations you make to the texts will be stored directly in those files, if you don't change the XData Name (which you shouldn't in most cases!).
## In ''Dark Radiant'' select the readable entity and click "Entity/Readable Editor" in the Main-menu.
## Use the XData-browser accessed by the small button in the "XData Name"-row to import the XData definitions of the FM.
## Start translating... It might be useful to cut and paste the original text-part you're going to edit into any random text editor beforehand.
## When you're done, you can click on save and directly open the next definition.

To verify your work, you can just start ''The Dark Mod'' in the end and load the corresponding FM. Because Doom 3 prefers files found in actual folders over files found in .pk4 files, your translation will be visible ingame, without destroying/altering the original FM-package.

Some mappers don't use virtual folders in their XData names, e.g. "readables/MyFM/MyReadable". So, to make the browsing of the XData files easier and quicker, you can open the .xd file(s) of the FM in any texteditor and prepend for example "translation/" before any XData name. All readables you have to translate will then be listed in the virtual "translation" folder in the XData browser of the ''Readable Editor''. But if you want to see those translations ingame afterwards, you'll also have to delete that prefix in all those XData names later again or delete it within the ''Readable Editor''. Please note however, that those definitions will be stored under a different filename then, as explained above. This is no problem though, I just wanted to point it out.

[[Category:Tutorial]]
[[Category:Editing]]

Readable Editor

2010-03-11T17:16:16Z

AluminumHaste: /* Is the Preview broken? My Title overlaps with my Body! */

--[[User:Stifu|Stifu]] 16:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
[[Image:ReadableEditor.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Readable Editor]]The ''Readable Editor'' is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_you_see_is_what_you_get WYSIWYG-Editor] for the readable entities in ''The Dark Mod'' and it is a feature of ''Dark Radiant'' since version 1.2.0 requiring at least version 1.01 of ''The Dark Mod''. Up until now, the workflow for creating readables was tiresome, especially because you had to keep ''Dark Mod'' running in the background in order to be able to check if linebreaks and pagebreaks look alright et cetera. But these days are over, as we decided to provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface for creating such texts.

== The new workflow ==
Setting up a readable is fairly easy. Just [[Readables|add a readable entity to your map]] and start the ''Readable Editor'' via the Entity-menu. Once you hit either one of the Save-buttons, the [[XData File Creation|XData]] and Inventory Name are stored on your selected entity and the newly written text is exported to an .xd file. If you open the ''Readable Editor'' on that entity again or any other entity which was already setup with an XData definition, the corresponding definition is of course imported automatically.

=== Fine, but where is my new XData Definition stored? ===
The title-bar of the ''Readable Editor'' holds the answer to this question. New XData definitions will be added to an .xd file that is named just like your current map. If you import an existing definition (or again, if you start the Readable Editor on a readable entity already setup with an XData definition) any alterations will be stored in the file the definition originated from. This approach prevents the creation of duplicated XData definitions. As soon as you change the XData Name in the editor - '''this is important''' - a new definition will be created in the file, whose name is again derived from the name of your map.

You can specify the storage folder for XData in the Preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'' under "Settings/Readable Editor". The pulldown menu offers options to store the files in the "xdata" subfolder of your Mod or Mod Base directory, as well as in a custom folder which can be specified below. Please note that while you can specify any folder you want for exporting, ''Dark Radiant'' and its ''Readable Editor'' can only import XData definitions that are contained in .xd files located somewhere in the "xdata" subfolder of the Base-, Mod- or Mod_Base-directory. Definitions in "base/xdata/myStuff/SomeXData.xd" for example can be found, but not if they are stored in "base/myStuff/SomeXData.xd".

=== Is the Preview broken? My Title overlaps with my Body! ===
No, it's not, the preview is very precise. The GUIs for readables have intentionally been laid out like this to allow the writing of continuous texts without titles. You just have to add some line-breaks to your body until it looks right. And since we are talking about presumably faulty previews here, please also note that some titles of GUIs do not support multiple lines, resulting in some parts of your title not being rendered.

=== Features, Tips and Tricks ===
The editing process itself is pretty much straight forward. At this point I would just like to point out a few features, those of which being not so apparent at first.
* '''Appending and prepending pages''': If you're currently editing the first or the last page of your readable and you click on first/previous page respectively last/next page, a small convenient small popup will show up, allowing you to prepend or append a page.
* '''Converting the Page Layout''': No content is discarded when you change the Page Layout of your readable. If you should once feel like the letter you just wrote would be much more suitable as a diary entry, feel free to just convert!
* '''Choosing Guis''': Just like with XData definitions, you can use one gui per page. You can enter a gui by hand or choose one using the Gui-Browser, which directly previews the selected gui. The browser holds two tabs, one for OneSided- and one for Two-Sided guis. Switching the tab will also change the page layout of your readable and update the preview accordingly.
* '''Inserting and deleting pages''': When you're writing a Two-sided readable, clicking on either one of these buttons will result in a popup, asking you whether the respective operation should be applied to the left or right side or the whole page.
* '''Browsing XData definitions''': Well, there's not much to say about this one. Selected definitions are previewed and if you choose to import a definition, which has been defined in multiple files, another dialog will show up, allowing you to select the file to import. While the ''Readable Editor'' supports this duplicated definitions, ''The Dark Mod'' does not, so you should definitely go ahead and fix this by hand. You'd have to open the corresponding files by hand and delete the definition.
* '''The Tools-menu''': When clicking the Tools-button a small popup menu offers you to display an import summary of the last XData import or the gui import, as well as a report of duplicated definitions found in the Virtual File System (All .xd files found in the .pk4 files or in actual folders).
* '''Reloading Readable Guis''': All Readable Guis can be reloaded by clicking on "File/Reload Readable Guis" in the Main-menu. A similar option for XData definition is not necessary, because those are loaded completely afresh every time the ''Readable Editor'' is started.
* '''Automatic Page Layout Determination''': When you start the ''Readable Editor'' on a newly create readable entity, its page layout will be determined automatically. However, the decision poses a rather greedy approach, as it's simply checked whether the entity name contains the string "book". So you might have to adjust the layout manually afterwards.

== Known Issues ==
The ''Readable Editor'' is still Work-In-Progress and there will likely be many changes in the future because of that. But it is pretty much in a very well usable state, so we decided to release it to the public already. Here are some of the issues the editor still has:
* The Readable Editor seems to crash in certain circumstances when compatibility-mode is enabled on DarkRadiant.exe. Make sure to disable it if you run into any problems!
* Some two-sided guis are not yet fully supported.
* Some XData definitions can't be imported, specifically those that feature certain import-statements.

== Planned Features / Ideas for the Future ==
* Notify the user when a character was typed that is not available in the font. Possibly even prevent adding it to the textfield.
* If the end of a page is reached in the preview, the editor should automatically jump to the next textView field and somehow notify the user about the page-break.
* Features for the Tools-menu:
** Resolve conflicts on duplicated definitions.
** Check XData Syntax of a specified file.
* A Readable Editor Dialog specifically for Translators with two previews, one of them for the original.

If you have any other good ideas, feel free to make a suggestion in the [http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?/forum/54-tdm-editors-guild/ TDM Editors Guild].

== Advise for pure Translators ==
Here are some steps that will make your life easier:
# '''Creating a .map file and setting up ''Dark Radiant''''':
## In ''Dark Radiant'' right-click on one of the orthogonal views and choose "Create Entity...".
## Browse to "darkmod/readables" and choose a readable entity to add. It basically doesn't matter which one you pick, but it's always useful to have one that is actually visible.
## Move the entity directly in front of the camera by draging it on the orthogonal views. You can select an entity be shift+clicking it, deselect by pressing "Escape".
## Save the map under a convenient filename like "MyAwesomeReadableTranslatingMap.map".
## Press "P" to bring up the preferences dialog of ''Dark Radiant'', go to "Settings/Map Files" and check "Open last map on startup". Now every time you start your ''Dark Radiant'', your map is loaded and you can directly jump into translating.
# '''Making the original Readables available to ''Dark Radiant'' and starting the translation process''':
## Open the .pk4 file of the FM using winrar or similar and extract the contained "xdata" folder into your "darkmod"-directory. It should say "darkmod/xdata" after that! The alterations you make to the texts will be stored directly in those files, if you don't change the XData Name (which you shouldn't in most cases!).
## In ''Dark Radiant'' select the readable entity and click "Entity/Readable Editor" in the Main-menu.
## Use the XData-browser accessed by the small button in the "XData Name"-row to import the XData definitions of the FM.
## Start translating... It might be useful to cut and paste the original text-part you're going to edit into any random text editor beforehand.
## When you're done, you can click on save and directly open the next definition.

To verify your work, you can just start ''The Dark Mod'' in the end and load the corresponding FM. Because Doom 3 prefers files found in actual folders over files found in .pk4 files, your translation will be visible ingame, without destroying/altering the original FM-package.

Some mappers don't use virtual folders in their XData names, e.g. "readables/MyFM/MyReadable". So, to make the browsing of the XData files easier and quicker, you can open the .xd file(s) of the FM in any texteditor and prepend for example "translation/" before any XData name. All readables you have to translate will then be listed in the virtual "translation" folder in the XData browser of the ''Readable Editor''. But if you want to see those translations ingame afterwards, you'll also have to delete that prefix in all those XData names later again or delete it within the ''Readable Editor''. Please note however, that those definitions will be stored under a different filename then, as explained above. This is no problem though, I just wanted to point it out.

[[Category:Tutorial]]
[[Category:Editing]]

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-19T13:28:09Z

AluminumHaste: /* == */

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>

==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.

So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.

Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.

Now we are going to split the patch across the middle. Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[Don't forget this part]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[Don't forget this part]
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant.

After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again.

Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

{{patches}}{tutorial}

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-19T13:26:13Z

AluminumHaste: /* == */

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>

==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.

So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.

Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.

Now we are going to split the patch across the middle. Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant.

After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again.

Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

{{patches}}{tutorial}

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-18T19:36:42Z

AluminumHaste: /* == */

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>

==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.
So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.
Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.
Now we are going to split the patch across the middle.
Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant.

After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again.

Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

{{patches}}{tutorial}

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-18T19:35:08Z

AluminumHaste:

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>
==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.
So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.
Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.
Now we are going to split the patch across the middle.
Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant.

After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again.

Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

{{patches}}{tutorial}

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-18T19:29:04Z

AluminumHaste:

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>
==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.
So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.
Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.
Now we are going to split the patch across the middle.
Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant. After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again. Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

{{patches}}{tutorial}

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-18T19:27:38Z

AluminumHaste:

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>
==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.
So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.
Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.
Now we are going to split the patch across the middle.
Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant. After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again. Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-18T19:27:11Z

AluminumHaste:

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>
==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.
So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.
Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.
Now we are going to split the patch across the middle.
Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant. After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again. Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.

{{tutorial-patches}}

Patch Splitting - Basic Tutorial

2010-02-18T19:23:22Z

AluminumHaste: /* == */

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to manually split patches in your map.

To start off, we need to create a new map file, so go to your darkmod/maps folder and right click and create a new text document.
Call the file whatever you want (example: split.map)

Open up your new map file with your favorite text editor (I use Editplus 3 but notepad is fine), and copy these contents (Minus the equals sign bar):

==================================================================================================================================================================
<code>
Version 2
// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"editor_drLastCameraPos" "-8 -1324 800"
"editor_drLastCameraAngle" "0 90 0"

//Start of Patch Definition=========================
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
//END OF THE PATCH DEFINITION=========================
}
</code>
==================================================================================================================================================================

and paste them into your newly created map file and save the file.
Now open DarkRadiant and open your new map file.

You should have one 5x5 patch in the middle. That patch we will be splitting into two patches.

This is the entry that we will be cutting up.

<code>
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
Row Row Row Row Row
Column ( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
Column ( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
As you can see I've marked the colums and rows of your patch mesh. The easiest way to split the patch is Horizontally because there is less cutting and pasting, and is easier to visualize.
So as of now we have 5 rows and 5 columns. We want the patch to only have 3 columns and 5 rows, and the second patch to have 3 columns and 5 rows.
So first we have to copy and paste the entire patch entry, so do that now.

You want it to look like this:
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
So select the last 2 Columns in the first patchDef2 and delete them, so it looks like this.

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now select the first 2 Columns of the second patchDef2 and delete them so it looks like this
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

Now one last step that's very important or the map will fail to load. Right now we've reduced our 5x5 patch into 2 3x5's. We now have to change the patch's parameters to reflect this change.

So we have to change the Cols for both new patches from 5 to 3.

So for the first patch:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 ) <----------------------------------------[this means 5x5 patch, change this to ( 3 5 0 0 0 ) ]
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
)
}
</code>

And do the same for the second patch. Now save your map file and re-open it in DarkRadiant, you will have your patch split down the middle.
Now to split it horizontally, you will just do the opposite; instead of removing columns, we will remove rows. Now copy the map file above one more time and paste it into your map file to undo our changes.
Now we are going to split the patch across the middle.
Again, we are going to copy and paste the patch definition like so.
<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 5 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
</code>
But instead of reducing the columns we are reducing the rows. So for the first Patch, we want to remove the last two "rows", and also we want to change the patchParams so that it only has 3 rows instead of 5. So delete the points so that your first patch looks like this, and also change the rows to 3:

<code>
// primitive 6
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 320 0 0 ) ( -344 0 560 0 -0.9375 ) ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) )
( ( -144 0 320 0.78125 0 ) ( -144 0 560 0.78125 -0.9375 ) ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) )
( ( 56 0 320 1.5625 0 ) ( 56 0 560 1.5625 -0.9375 ) ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) )
( ( 256 0 320 2.34375 0 ) ( 256 0 560 2.34375 -0.9375 ) ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) )
( ( 456 0 320 3.125 0 ) ( 456 0 560 3.125 -0.9375 ) ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) )
)
}
</code>
Now for the second patch we copied and pasted, delete the first two "rows" so it looks like this:
<code>
}// primitive 7
{
patchDef2
{
"textures/darkmod/metal/detailed/bars_rivets_steel"
( 5 3 0 0 0 )
(
( ( -344 0 800 0 -1.875 ) ( -344 0 1040 0 -2.8125 ) ( -344 0 1280 0 -3.75 ) )
( ( -144 0 800 0.78125 -1.875 ) ( -144 0 1040 0.78125 -2.8125 ) ( -144 0 1280 0.78125 -3.75 ) )
( ( 56 0 800 1.5625 -1.875 ) ( 56 0 1040 1.5625 -2.8125 ) ( 56 0 1280 1.5625 -3.75 ) )
( ( 256 0 800 2.34375 -1.875 ) ( 256 0 1040 2.34375 -2.8125 ) ( 256 0 1280 2.34375 -3.75 ) )
( ( 456 0 800 3.125 -1.875 ) ( 456 0 1040 3.125 -2.8125 ) ( 456 0 1280 3.125 -3.75 ) )
)
}
}
<code>
And you are done. You have now split your patch Horizontally. Now what if I want to split it both horizontally AND vertically so that I have 4 patches made from 1.
Well that's simple and only involves one more step using DarkRadiant. After you have split your patch either Horizontally or Vertically, open the map in the editor. Now for this example I'm going to assume that you have split your patch horizontally. Select the top half of the split patch, and go to Patch->Insert->Insert 2 Rows (pick either beginning or end it doesn't matter). You've now converted the patch back to a 5x5 patch which can now be split again. Remember the minimum matrix for a patch is 3x3, anything less will cause DR to crash or fail to load a map.
Now all you have to do is follow the steps for splitting the patch Vertically or Horizontally if you so wish.