THE BASICS OF
MAPPING
This tutorial is aimed at total beginners
who have never used a Quake engine (or any other engine for
that matter) map editor. If you have even a little
experience this tutorial may seem basic to you, but hopefully
its still worth reading to clear up the
fundamentals.
Kingpin is based on the Quake2
engine, which means it is very easy for you or I to change
aspects of the game, or to make new maps. The map editor
provided with the game is a special version of QERadiant that
Xatrix used when making Kingpin... The chances are if
you saw something you liked in a map in Kingpin made by Xatrix
you too with a little practice can do the same thing yourself.
A lot of people think that
QERadient is hard to use compared to other editors, which it
probably is. But don't let this put you off. Once
you understand the basics and have had a fiddle with the
editor you'll be amazed what you can achieve. Its just a
matter of understanding the basic principles.
DONT
PANIC! When you start the editor the chances are the
first thing you will probably do is panic! This is
something you certainly don't have to do! QERadiant like
even the simplest editors can be very intimidating to the
total beginner, but with a little explaination you can look at
all the strange words and tools in a different
light.
When you start
the editor you should see something like
this.

What I want you to do is forget
about all those buttons, forget about all the menus, forget
about all the different views and most importantly forget
about any pre conceived ideas of how to make a map!
All the maps you will ever make
will be made out of two main components. These are
called brushes and
entities. If you're thinking
'Huh?' right now its really very simple. A brush has
nothing to do with painting anything. Quite simply every
inanimate part of your map is a brush! Every wall, every
floor, every road, every chunk of rock. An entity is
also very simple to explain! An entity is a part of the
map that does something! An entity can be anything from
a door to an invisible object on your map which tells the game
to do something. For instance the most important entity
you will ever use is called info_player_start. Forget
about the name for now, but that entity marks the spot on your
map where the player will start! Another important use
for entities is lighting your map! You can place an
invisible light entity in a room to light it.
Now that you know what the two
most important things are you can begin your first map!
Start up QERadiant and then
draw a box in the main view of the editor by clicking the left
mouse button and dragging it out so it is 256x256 in
size. Don't worry too much about getting it a precise
size right now. You have now made your first
brush! A flat cube about 256x256.
The next thing to do in this
first map is to give the brush some height so it can become a
room. To do this make sure you have your brush selected
(If it isn't selected hold down shift+left mouse button to
select it). In the tall thin view on the left of the
screen you can see the height (z) axis of your brush.
With the cursor just above the top of your brush in this view
drag up so that the brush is about 128 units heigh.
Now you will need to select a
texture to make your room look good. Using the [Texture]
menu load the texture set entitled [Bricks] by clicking on
Bricks. Now in the texture viewing window in the bottom
right corner scroll down untill you find a nice texture to use
for your room. Click on the texture while your brush is
selected.
Now the next thing to do in
making a room is to hollow out the brush. This is much
simpler than it sounds. Select your brush by holding
down shift and left clicking on it if it isn't already
selected. What you have to do now is go into the
[selection] menu and go down to where is says [CSG]
When the CSG menu expands you should see an option [Make
Hollow]. Thats the one you want! Click it and your
one single cubic brush will be hollowed and the sides will
form brushes to keep the room enclosed.
You now have your first
room. The next thing to do is to make it so that you can
see whats going on inside your room when you load it into
Kingpin. First de-select your room by pressing
Escape. This is where those entities come in handy.Right
click the mouse in the middle of your room in the main xy view
and click on [Light] This will place a light entity
where you clicked. Use the Z view to position the light
in the centre of your room.
Now you can adjust the
light. With the light selected press the N key.
Now where it says [Key] type in light. Press enter to
get into the value field. In this field enter a value of
300. Your light now has a brightness of 300 which should
be plenty to light your room.
If you select your light and
press K you can set what colour the light will be.
The final thing you need before
you can test out your room in Kingpin is that all important
info_player_start. Right click to bring up the entities
menu and place in info_player_start in a corner of your room.
Info_player_start can be found in the info menu when
you right click.
Using the different views make
sure the entity isn't in any walls or outside of your
room.
Your map should now look
something like this.

Now before you can test your
map you have to compile it. To do this go to [BSP] menu
and select bsp_fullvis (qrad -extra) which will fully compile
your map to a .bsp file in your maps directory.
Now when you start Kingpin go
to the colsole and type map yourmapname. You will now be
in your room!
Try experimenting with
different values for the light entity and different colours of
lighting to see how they effect your map. Try selecting
the brushes that make up different parts of your room and
applying different textures to them.
Coming in part 2 of the
tutorial I will explain how to join rooms together and how to
make doors and the use of other entities you will
need.
[RETURN TO MAIN][DISCUSS
KINGPIN MAPPING IN THE
FORUM] |