Tutorial Two- That First Room

 

You ask any mapper and they will fondly remember their first room. I used some useless tutorials to help me (namely the WC 2.0 ones) but that is why I and countless others write tutorials.

Ok enough reminiscing…

So you read the help file it gave you a slight grip on what is going on. Ok lets see how you get on with the first room.

So we are here aren't we:

Ok the top left box is the camera view, (help file explains this go read) top right is a birds eye view, bottom left is the front view and bottom right is the side. In the camera view be sure to click on the word camera and change it to 3D textured.

Ok before we go on, everything, on the screen at the moment, all the menus and icons are all explained in the help file. Make sure you read this because I don't want you falling behind. :p. Good

Also on the top icon bar near the right is a little icon that has TL on it. This is texture lock, click this down so that when we rotate all our textures stay aligned.

Now go into the texture browser and choose a floor texture. Choose 64x64 in the bottom left corner to display them easier

To make it simple I will choose one and tell you it's name. Hmmm lets have..

C1A3FLOOR02

You can type this into the filter box to bring it up on it's own or you can search. Feel free to use a different texture if you spot a nicer one.

Ok I will just mention about grid size. Use [ and ] to make the grid smaller or bigger. Now I don't know about you but I work with the smallest grid size I can. I know a lot of people will frown on it but it's what I'm used to and I can be more precise when making my rooms. All the following designs will have a smallest grid size. Go ahead and experiment there are no rules.

Zoom in a bit before you start, You can:

1. Use a mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the 2D views.

2. Use the 1-9 keys on the keyboard to go to different levels of zoom.

3. Use the + and - on the numpad

4.Or you can use the MAGINIFY icon to zoom in. (left-click to zoom in and right-click to zoom out)

Your choice.

 

IMPORTANT: Make sure you save as often as you can (CTRL+S) because VHE sometimes does crash and if you lose the last hour of your work you will go mental! I have lost count the number of times I have!

 

Righty O click on the BLOCK TOOL

Now Drag a box out in the top-down view (the top-right one). This will be the floor so make it quite big and set the height of it in the the front and side views. You use the little drag handles to do it. Make sure it lines up correctly on the grid.

Once you have done this make sure the mouse cursor is over the 2D views and press enter. This will make the dotted outline into a solid, textured block. Like so:

Ok this is our floor. Well we need to know how small this is going to be in relation to the player. So what we will do is put in a player start point. This will be a green block that will show us the height and width of a player and stop the error of many people that make maps too small or too big.

So click on the ENTITY ICON.

And in the entity list on the bottom right of the screen choose INFO_PLAYER_START.

Ok click on the floor in the 3D view to place this entity. For some reason I do not know it is half in the floor. There is only a couple of entities that do this. Any way you know how to raise it. Left click on the green player start so it goes red then drag it into position in the side view.

(Another way to place entities is to left-click on the 2D view and move the green cursor into position using the Top AND Side view, it takes longer though)

As you can see the floor looks quite small in relation to the player. This is why this is useful. Anyway left-click on the floor (either the 3D view or the 2D view) and drag one of the corner anchors out till you think it is big enough. Your choice here.

Thats much better. Proportion is one of the most important things in level design. Ok now you are probably thinking about the walls and ceiling. Well deselect the floor (click off of it) and then select the block tool. Now drag a box along one side of the floor and make it about 32 units wide. (each tiny grid square is 4 units so that is 8 of the units on the grid that I use). Line up the floor and drag it up as high as you wish. About 32 units above the player will be fine for now. Just leave him some head room!

Hit enter again and the wall should appear with the floor texture on it. Leave that for now. Ok now you have made this block left click on it so it goes red and then HOLD shift and move the mouse over to the right. Did you see that it cloned the brush. If it didn't hit undo CTRL-Z and try again as it sometimes doesn't work. Ok now move you newly created brush over to the other side and now we have another wall! So simple.

Ok now what about the other walls? Well we need to rotate one of the existing walls. So left-click on one of the walls we have and clone it by using the shift key. Right, now if you click on the new wall while it is red (selected) then you will see different anchors. They are four circles. This is rotate mode. If you keep left clicking you will see it cycle through the modes. Now in rotate mode HOLD shift and drag one of the anchors round. You will notice the block spin at certain angles until it gets to 90 degrees. Stop here and let go.

These pictures may help.

Once you have done that move the wall into place and stretch it if you must so it fits exactly. As you may know you are not allowed any gaps at all not matter how small, these are called leaks. If you have one it will ruin the compile and you will have to go back and find them. There are ways to find them but neat design to start with will help a lot believe me.

Ok once you have done that clone the wall and do the same so that you now have 4 walls all perfectly aligned.

Now all we need is a roof. All you have to do is clone the floor and move it up and position it neatly. Like so:

Great now we have finished the first room!! Give yourself a pat on the back. Next tutorial we will do some texturing to make it look the business.

By Blink