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Tips from Beta Mappers


New Horizon

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- When adjusting patch mesh vertex points, you can click and drag a selection to select more than one at a time

 

- After you've selected a bunch of patch points, you can use the 'rotate brush' buttons to rotate them all at once, nice for quickly making pipe bends and such. The catch is that after rotation they get zoomed and thrown into really odd places, often making it difficult to see if you rotated it in the right direction (and you have to move it back of course)

 

- When making stairs, I like to create one step (usually from 1-3 brushes), align the textures and then copy it to make the rest of the steps. However because of the identically aligned textures, the cloning is painfully obvious. Select a few steps at a time and realign their textures to remedy this

 

- Build frames around all doors, it makes them look tons better. They don't need to be fancy, simple wooden frames to smoothen the doorway out of the wall is usually enough. Likewise consider making window frames.

 

- If you're using doomedit like me, don't fuss too much with aligning patch mesh textures. The texturing features in darkradiant are a LOT better and it's a good idea to tweak the patch meshes in that.

 

- Place dummy AIs into your level while building so you can compare the scale of your architecture to them and not build too big/small. Most of the textures are deceivingly big in their default scale and can't be trusted in that regard

 

- Save often, save into different files

 

- You don't have to restart doomedit if you change the texture directories etc. There's a button in the media browser window you can use to reload the assets (I can't remember what it's exactly called)

 

- You can press 'Q' to show the dimensions of the selected brush or selection in doomedit

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  • 2 weeks later...
Mouse drag texture adjustment:

 

- Select a brush, and enter F(ace) mode (make sure Texture Lock is on). Normally this is used to drag faces in the ortho views. However, in the cam view, select one of the green dots on a face, and drag it around. To keep some control over it (and not inadvertently resize the brush), go into Translate mode (W) and use the arrows. Also, don't forget to dial the grid down if you want really fine control.

And one I posted somewhere else, but should have included here:

 

Single Vertex Dragging

 

- You have a flat sheet of 5 X 5 vertices, and you want to drag only the center one, while in an edge-on ortho view for strict XYZ control. The problem is, when you click to drag, it selects all other vertices in the row, or any obscuring vertices in the case of a much more complex patch.

 

First, select the center vertex from the cam view. Then, back in the ortho view, toggle Translate mode (W); it works for single vertices too. Now, you can drag that vertex alone, without ever touching the others in the row.

 

- If you're browsing textures, trying to decide which ones to use, memory can get eaten up fast, and your system can really start chugging (check taskmgr to see just how much DR is using). But no one wants to shut down and restart DR, because that means reloading your whole map (imagine Bonehoard or Blackheart). Well, just hit Flush and Reload shaders (Textures tab). The only ones that will be re-loaded are the ones in use, and the rest are discarded. DR's memory imprint will go back down to sane levels.

 

- You can use arrows and shift-arrows to navigate the Media tab folders (open=shift-right, close=shift-left, up, down as normal)

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World Spawn to Func_Statics:

 

Build one door or window frame. Texture it. right-click ortho view and save as func_static.

 

This turns the door frame pieces from world spawn brushes into an entity. The bonus is that you now have one piece to clone and use elsewhere. Also, func_statics don't split world geometry so it helps keep poly count down.

 

The draw back is that there is currently a cap of 4096 entities per map so you need to watch how many entities you have. You can always go back later and select some/all of them and revert them to worldspawn if you get low on entities to use.

 

This can be used for any world spawn brushes; pillars, doors, steps, ect...

 

Keep in mind that func_statics don't seal the void so caulk brushes need to be used behind them as with patches. Also AI cannot walk on func_statics so in the case of stairs you'd need to build simple monster clip stairs for the AI.

 

For pillars you'd need to make a simple monster clip pillar so AI don't try to walk through them. They can't walk through but they won't know it so they'll end up walking against it forever without monster clip.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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  • 1 month later...

You probably know to regularly save the map you are developing under a new name (or use the snapshot feature.) Sometimes you might regret deleting or changing some feature and want to retrieve it from an earlier save of the map. In your prefabs folder keep one named say !TEMP.pfb or similar (the ! just keeps it at the top of the list.) Use this for temporary transfer of map items as it saves typing a name and avoids clutter. Reload your old map, select the item(s), do NOT drag, save as prefab as !TEMP.pfb. Now load your current map and use file menu LOAD prefab (don't use INSERT prefab in the orthoview RMB menu or it will not add the offset which in this case you want) and your selection should slot perfectly into place where it was before. And always keep texture lock on when using prefabs just in case you drag them and they contain textured surfaces.

 

When saving 'permanent' prefabs always drag them roughly to coordinates 0,0,0 before saving so it doesn't have any offset. Then when you or anyone else wants to insert them into their map use the Insert prefab option on the orthoview RMB menu and it should go roughly where you want it with only minimal dragging needed - subject to the following...

 

Whether you are inserting a prefab or creating a new model or entity you may find if say, you place it where you want it in a room in the ortho side view, it is miles away when you turn to the front view. Dark Radiant uses the last selection for the other coordinate so first select and UNselect any existing item roughly where you want the new one and then insert - and your new creation will not need much dragging in any plane.

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