Tutorial Four- Lighting And Compiling

 

Well you have made it to the final stage of the first room lesson! It is a basic but VERY vital lesson so pay attention!

Ok then we have our textured room but if we were to compile it it would not let us because we have no lights! So first I am going to describe the three main types of lighting you have on offer.

As you may have noticed VHE cannot render the lighting in the 3D view, this makes it harder to judge lighting and that will be the thing you alter the most. With experience you will be able to know what it will look like.

 

ENTITY LIGHTING- This kind of lighting is the most crude looking but also very flexible. The light can be found in the entity list and amazingly is called LIGHT.

Once you have chosen this one place it in the level by left-clicking in the 3D view. Again to be annoying it will stick in the wall. Move it to the centre of the room and then you should be able to see it in the 3D view.

Now click on the light to select it and then press ALT+ENTER to bring up the properties of the light. (Every entity has properties but they differ between all of the enitities)

You should see a small box appear:

Ok this is everything the entity can do.

Target- Used in scripted sequences really only in single player maps so ignore for now.

Name- This is if you want the light to turn on and off. You would give it a name here.

Brightness- On here if you click PICK COLOR then you can change the light to any colour. The 3D light will change to that colour as well.

Appearance- Here you can choose flashing effects for your light. That is what Imeant by flexible.

Custom Appearance- Never used it so don't worry, I think you type in a string of letters and numbers to make an effect like in Quake 3 but for now ignore it.

The angle won't affect the light because it lights all-around but things like your INFO_PLAYER_START will, you can change the way the player faces for example

Right after that choose FLAGS:

Not much here but for example if you wanted the light to come on you would tick INITIALLY DARK. Other entities will have flags so bear that in mind.

 

LIGHT_ENVIRONMENT- Not important for now but when you make outside areas this lights it all for you instaed of making like 90 lights! I will explain this in a future tutorial.

LIGHT_SPOT- This light is similar to the normal light except that is light a spotlight that shines down. Again I will explain that in a future tutorial. Lets just get our map going shall we.

Ok then, choose pure white for the light and then clone the light (shift remember?) and put two of them, one at each end of the level.

Right then, we are all set for a compile and a test then. Make sure you save the map and then hit F9 and a small compile window will appear. Make sure yours looks the same as this:

Don't worry I will do a tutorial soon on what all those things mean. Now click OK and a COMPILE PROCESS WINDOW will appear and the different tools that you set-up will begin their jobs. This is where we will get told about leaks. Refer to the leak tutorial for how to solve this.

If all went well then you will see this:

It no doubt went quick but larger levels will take longer. Now you must make sure that in your options you set the map directory to wherever your CSTRIKE->MAPS is.:

See the bottom line? That must be CSTRIKE->MAPS so make sure and then save your map again and minimise VHE and boot-up CS.

Look for whatever you called your map under LAN GAME-> CREATE and then click it. Mine was called example.bsp.

BEHOLD YOUR MAP!!!!

 

Note: You will notice you cannot join Terrorist, to do this you need to place an INFO_PLAYER_DEATHMATCH as well. But be warned you MUST have an INFO_PLAYER_START otherwise for some incredibly annoying reason it will not show up in the LAN GAME list. I found that out the hard way lol!

Well Done! If you are still begging for more then you are a mapper for life! What I suggest now is that you go back and try to do as much as this tutorial as you can without looking. Change the textures, change the light colour and even the room size. Then you will know you have learnt it completely and you can go on to other tutorials confidently.

By Blink