A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 3

written by Fidcal

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Beams, Trim, Room Design

As said in the intro, I am not going to help with every architectural detail. In future missions that you make, consider using brushes as trim, decoration; try varying the shape of rooms to give interest and avoid the same old rectangles. Walls can be divided in two horizontally with different textures, panels, paints, wallpapers, stone. Recesses can be added just like we did for the door. Search the internet and other fan missions for inspiration. Here I shall just describe how to make a few very easy beams. Note that as we progress I am giving less and less detail of what we have covered before so just skip back if you need to remind yourself.

• Set grid size to 8
• In the big room, drag out one long brush the long length of the small room
• Make its section dimensions 16 units high and 8 deep
• Place it flush against the ceiling and against a big grid line somewhere in the middle of the room
• Look through the darkmod textures for some suitable wood and texture the entire brush
• Check the alignment of the texture only on the three visible surfaces; remember wood grain should align along the length

What about the surfaces that can't be seen?...

Hidden Surfaces, Caulk Texture

The hidden surfaces will be rendered unnecessarily even though the player cannot see them. This will affect performance if there are many such surfaces. It is good practice to retexture such surfaces with caulk texture which never gets rendered.

• Hide the walls and ceiling so you can see the hidden surfaces of the beam or just drag it into the big room and put it back later.
• Retexture the top surface and ends of the beam with Media Browser > Textures > Common > Caulk.
• No need to align!
• I would not worry about the section of the wall and ceiling that gets covered by the beams. I have a theory that in a typical room, caulk texturing is not worth the effort unless there is a lot to do. Definitely do it in a large area where there are lots of hidden surfaces especially if you can detect a slow down in the game with frame-lag.

Tip: Double click the top title bar of camera view is a quick way to go full screen and back again. Likewise with the other windows.

We have one beam in place; now what?...

Cloning the Beams, Single-plane Shifting

• Set Texture Lock ON (top button bar)
• Select the beam, clone it, and drag the clone 3 grid squares (24 units) to the side. There should be two grid square between it and the first beam.
• These beams are easy to move but while we're here, try instead Alt + the arrow keys to move. This nudges them along with no chance of sideslip. This is more useful when you want to drag something a long way. Another way to do it is LMB THEN Shift THEN drag (not Shift first) and the beam will stay in the first direction you drag. There is a knack to this. Practice it now for the future. You can drag right across a huge mission without any deviation from a line. Yet another way is a mode switch that locks in one plane or another on the button on the top button bar. See 'Move (Drag, Translate) in one plane (Mode)' on the Dark Radiant Controls, Keys & Mouse wiki.
• Repeat until you cannot get another beam in - don't put one right against the wall. Then repeat from the original beam the other side so the whole ceiling has seven beams evenly spaced. There is one space with three grid squares but it's near enough.
• Look at the texture surfaces. Every beam is identical. Consider selecting surfaces and shift them along the length quickly to get a different look on some of them.

Proper Lighting

We put in temporary lights for quickness. Now we must consider how we are really going to light the mission. Some game developers make an entire mission and do this last; some do it as they go along at every stage; I do it section by section and this mini-mission is what I call a small section.

Let's add some torches...

Inventory, Tools, Weapons, Shop

Compass

doors

link to doors wiki

Story

Another thief stole my loot. Get it back.

Zipping up

link to zip up wiki

Your own Build Design

link to build design wiki

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