Darkradiant 0.5.0 Questions

[New Horizon]

Ask questions here.

[Komag]

Okay, I downloaded and unzipped it to a folder on my desktop "DarkRadiant". Inside the zip are a few subfolders, a bunch of dll's, something called "RADIANT_MAJOR" (and MINOR), a couple other things, and "darkradiant.exe".

 

So, I click to start "darkradiant.exe", and after accepting the default "Global Preferences" the program starts. It looks a lot like Doom 3 Edit.

 

But I can't do much! I managed to make a cube room, load doom's Hell textures and paint the walls, add a player start and a light, but what now? There doesn't seem to be any build bsp or play game mode or anything like that. Am I just being blind?

 

I guess I'm not much of a pioneer, since I feel really lost! I like to have some basic tutorials, rough "trail" laid out so to speak, then I can flesh it out, expand little things, make it nice and palatable for the average guy, etc.

 

Maybe I just need to read more tutorials already out there - Radiant tutorials?

 

PS - I can't seem to find any Dark Mod stuff either - textures, models, weapons, ai, anything. Have I failed to install it correctly?

[New Horizon]

But I can't do much! I managed to make a cube room, load doom's Hell textures and paint the walls, add a player start and a light, but what now? There doesn't seem to be any build bsp or play game mode or anything like that. Am I just being blind?

 

Don't worry, you're not being blind. DarkRadiant (GTKRadiant), is a stand alone editing interface, but the developers don't have access to the Doom 3 source code, so support does not extend to the doom 3 map compilers and ingame renderer. DarkRadiant is essentially our only way to have a custom editing interface...otherwise we would be limited to doom3Ed and unable to tailor the map building process. There are drawbacks, such as the problem you mentioned, but it's as easy as opening up doomedit and doing a quick dmap to test it ingame. We might be able to setup a hotkey to fire up Doom3 from the DarkRadiant interface in the future though.

 

 

PS - I can't seem to find any Dark Mod stuff either - textures, models, weapons, ai, anything. Have I failed to install it correctly?

 

I'm sure you did install it correctly, but you must setup your project settings in order to be able to see DarkMod materials. Go to File: Project Settings. Choose, custom Doom 3 modification in the first box and then type darkmod in the fs_game box. Click okay and you should be good to go.

 

It's a work in progress, but soon we'll be able to have interfaces for stim/ response, objectives and whatever else may be required. Even so early in development, DarkRadiant is quite different from Doom3Ed.

 

Lights are very easy to place and edit as well...they're draggable, like brushes.

 

 

Here are some GTKRadiant tutorials...although I don't know how relevant they are.

 

http://www.gamedesign.net/node/796

 

http://www.qeradiant.com/manual/

[Komag]

Okay, it's working fine now, thanks a bunch for the quick tips

 

But does this mean we can't see render mode while editing? That is a really BIG drawback I think! Perhaps it isn't really

[OrbWeaver]

But does this mean we can't see render mode while editing? That is a really BIG drawback I think! Perhaps it isn't really

 

There is a render mode, available by pressing F3. Currently it is very limited and only displays a rough approximating to Doom 3, with simple lights (no custom textures) and no shadows. Hopefully the framework is enough for further improvements; unfortunately I am not yet much of an OpenGL/graphics programmer so I don't know how easy it will be to add these features.

[bob_arctor]

So is this thing any good to use then? Is it better to start in D3ed, build the map, make it all pretty, then use Darkradiant for TDM specific stuff?

[New Horizon]

So is this thing any good to use then? Is it better to start in D3ed, build the map, make it all pretty, then use Darkradiant for TDM specific stuff?

 

People are mainly going to be using D3Ed for the majority of their work right now, but we would like to see people at least start playing around with DarkRadiant while it is in development so we can get some feedback on what mappers feel they need to make it an even better mapping application. DarkRadiant is still pretty functional, but it's not ready to be the main mapping tool just yet.