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Getting Started With Doom 3


Ratty

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Hi guys! I've been psyched about the Dark Mod since I first heard about it. Your goals are well-focussed and not too large, the chances for success as a project are really good when so many other projects of this type fail for one reason or another. I feel confident you're going to make something really great and in fact I'm getting involved now.

 

I watched all of the Doom3 editing videos I could find and they really make a difference. It's so much easier learning the editor by watching a video than by reading even the most graphically beautiful, detailed, well-organized text or HTML tutorial. So I'm going to start my first ever room tonight, then move on to joining two rooms with a hallway, then see what I can do from there. I want to be ready when you release your toolset.

 

I guess I have the ultimate Thief modder's dream in mind. A huge, single level city. I have had most of it planned out for a few years, actually. Streets and rooftops both. It may take me a couple of years but that's my goal. It would be great if you someday added an automap to TDM. The downside of a big city is that it's easy to get lost and confused. My idea is to organize the city into distinctive sections, each connected to one another by only one or two "chokepoints." Not only would this make it harder to get lost or confused, but it would probably be good for framerates too. I've planned the basic architecture pretty carefully so as to avoid really long lines of sight, even did a few mockups in Dromed with good results (stumbled across some tricks to make a thieve's highway easy too).

 

These sections would be visually distinctive (slums, taverns and restaurants, a business district, civic center with lots of marble, docks, a park). That way you'd always know immediately where you were just by looking at the style of everything. And if that isn't enough, there would be plenty of very unique landmarks to keep you oriented. Sewer exit points would be labelled too so you knew where you were coming up (most of the time, heh).

 

And of course lots of secrets. Big, meaty secret areas, rooftops and neighborhoods.

 

From what I know about Doom 3 I could create something pretty enormous with lots of actual usable buildings with people and rooms in them and such (and not have to resort to the Dark Engine way of most building being empty fakes) and, provided it was well-planned and divided up, it wouldn't take too long to load. In reality I may not go that far due to gameplay considerations, but it's nice to know it's possible.

 

So I imagine I can start on the geometry and that at least will be usable in TDM eventually. I'm resigned to retexturing, re-AIing, and probably relighting eventually, but that's okay.

 

I'll probably screw the lighting up the first time anyway and want to redo it eventually when I know a lot more. Lighting sounds really tricky in Doom 3. Don't overlap light volumes, don't illuminate a single brush face with too many lights. Plus Doom 3 has no ambient lights! Yikes. That sounds like the biggest drawback to the engine.

 

One question for now. Does anybody know of a source of decent quality medieval style textures? Either a free source, or a paid source, or even another game whose textures I can "borrow" just while I'm working. I know I'll have to retexture everything eventually anyway. I can't think of any games. Thief 3 city textures weren't really my cup of tea but I plan to look at them again. Maybe Hexen 2. As I remember it kind of had some textures like that. Oh, and I still have Daikatana around someplace, it had some good textures as I recall. Any other ideas?

 

I'll post some newbie map pics soon.

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Maybe Hexen 2. As I remember it kind of had some textures like that. Oh, and I still have Daikatana around someplace, it had some good textures as I recall. Any other ideas?

hey there Ratty!

 

you're not really planning on using textures from Hexen 2 or Daikatana now, are you?

 

apart from the terrible quality/resolution you'll find them pretty much unusable as Doom 3 uses diffuse-, specular-, normal- and height-maps in all possible combinations.

 

if you haven't already i'd take a look at the excellent tutorials right here:

 

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2659

 

kind regards

gleeful

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Hi gleeful,

 

I only want to work on geometry for now (and simply learn the editor) without worrying about textures. But I don't want to have to stare at Doom 3 metal textures for the next year or so until TDM is released. Eventually I'll just use TDM's textures to minimize filesize if for nothing else, plus I imagine they'll be a MUCH better quality than anything I could hope to ever create. I can't imagine trying to build my city without *some* idea of what things will look like properly textured. I was hoping I could just convert some textures from some other game, like Hexen 2, into .tga, maybe I have to convert to a Doom 3 palette or something, I don't know. Do you think that would work? I mean if I have to apply all of the stuff mentioned in those tutorials you listed just to get it to work, then I'm in trouble cause there's no way I could learn the editor AND spend my time fussing with textures. Even if it technically worked, displayed in the game and all, would they look so awful as to be next to useless? For now I don't care if they look bad, but if they look downright awful then I'll just have to be satisfied with Doom 3 metal for quite awhile.

 

BTW, those links were great. I've gotten competent at creating tiled textures from my own digital photos and munging with the palette to get them to look good in games, but I've NEVER learned a thing about the various kinds of mapping artists apply to textures in modern games. I imagine when I do a level with the TDM tools I'll need to include a few of my own textures at least, and those tutorials are going into my bookmarks!

 

But anyway, knowing what my intention is--creating something just good enough to help me visualize what I'm doing--would my approach work do you think?

Edited by Ratty
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I was hoping I could just convert some textures from some other game, like Hexen 2, into .tga, maybe I have to convert to a Doom 3 palette or something, I don't know. Do you think that would work? ...

no i don't - for the reasons mentioned above.

 

i don't even have my copy of Hexen 2 anymore, but imagine the results to be most horrible to look at.

 

if you are somewhat savvy with textures (ie their creation) as you have said you could make yourself a basic set to work with.

 

a few stone and brick walls, a few wooden floors, grass, earth and a bit of metal and you're ready to go. i imagine the results would still look better than those Hexen 2 textures.

 

just take a look at the various tutorials - making textures for Doom 3 is not all that hard (especially if they don't have to be of professional quality).

 

kind regards

gleeful

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Hey, thanks sxotty! I guess I need to spend some more time checking out doom3world. That's where I got those great video tutorials. I should have known they'd have texture resources. They have a LOT of texture resources. Whee! On with learning the editor!

 

I wish you guys had a using-the-editor forum. Doom3World's is very nice and the people are polite and helpful but I'd like to hang with my own kind (Thiefy people). Plus some questions may, even unwittingly, be Dark Mod specific. For example I'm curious about scale. I've heard some speculation that the scale of things may change. I.e., some people think the player POV is too low. One of the first things I need to do with learning the editor is get a feel for the sizes of things: how big is a typical room? How wide is a street? I know how to do this but I'm worried about the scale eventually changing out from under me when TDM is released and my maps ending up too cramped. I long ago mapped out my ideal City on paper, but when I get started actually building it I need to lay details down on graph paper with a appropriate-sized grid. That way I can closely estimate the size of the hulls for each section (Each hull will be lined with a wide wall of tall buildings to block lines of sight, this is also where most of the Thieve's Highway will be located on relatively flat rooftop areas with interesting "hallways" connecting ajacent City sections--it's all planned out).

 

That sort of thing. Or questions like, can the Doom 3 editor do shape primitives like in Dromed or do you basically always have to carve out what you want from a multi-sided cylinder? How can you easily create a pyramid or a dodecahedron? Just like in Dromed? Does the Doom3 editor have anything like multibrushes to store brushes of useful shapes for building things like rooftops, etc.? I hope you can create a editor-learning thread for newbies to feel comfortable (and the gurus who love them).

Edited by Ratty
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