Wikis / Unreal Wiki / Legacy:Creating DM-Quadroid/CreateTheRooms

Tutorial: DM-Quadroid for UT – Building the Rooms

In this part of the tutorial we are going to create four rooms of an identical size. These will form the main rooms of the level. In this part of the tutorial you will learn the following

• How to change the red builder brush into a cube of a specified size.
• How to create a room using the "subtract" operation (see CSG for more information).
• How to apply basic texturing.

Before you Start

Before you start please make sure you have completed the following steps:

1. Looked at the Toolbox page so you are familiar with the icons on the left hand side of the editor.
2. Started the Unreal Editor.
3. Selected File -> New (Or used Ctrl-N) to create a brand new level.

A Quick Recap

Remember, the world is solid. In order to be able to run around in it we need some space. In order to create space we need to remove chunks of the solid space (called subtracting).

Building the Rooms

Step 1: Create the rooms

• The first thing to do is make the red builder brush the right size.

Right click on the "Cube" icon, which is the top left icon in the toolbox (shown left). This will display a small dialog box that allows you to enter the properties of the "cube" that will be created the next time you left click on the Cube icon.

Enter the values 512, 1024, and 1024 for the height, width, breadth respectively, and then click on the Build button.

You will see the size and shape of the red builder brush change to the dimensions you have just specified. Notice that the brush didn't change shape until you actually pressed the build button.

You can now press the Close button to close the dialog box.

The shape that we have created doesn't look like much. It's simply a red wireframe box. In order to create a room in our solid universe we need to subtract some space out. Which is what we'll do next.

• Create a room by "subtracting" the red builder brush shape from the world. You can do this by left mouse-clicking on the 3D view in the lower left quater of the screen and performing any one of the following three actions:
  1. Click on the "Subtract" icon in the operations toolbox group on the left
  2. Use the Ctrl-S keyboard shortcut
  3. Select Brush -> Subtract from the menu bars at the top of the screen.

As if by magic you will see a rather unpleasant looking cube appear in space. This is your first room. Feel free to look around it in the 2D and 3D views (see Mouse Control if you've forgotten how). Notice that the subtracted cube shows up as an icky brown/orange type colour. This colour indicates that the cube (or brush in mapper speak)is a subtraction form the world.

You can see Subtract A Space for more information on subtracting cubes from the world.

• Right then, now that you've finished playing around, it's time to create 3 more rooms. Using Shift + the Left mouse button move your red builder brush (if the brush doesn't move then it isn't selected) left until you have a gap of 512 units (4 of the large grey squares if you've kept the default grid size) between the red builder brush and your subtracted cube. Perform another subtract.
• Create two more rooms, one above each of the two rooms to form a square of squares. Once you've done that it should look like the picture below (plan view and 3d view shown).

Step 2: Add some texture

OK, we have four whole rooms, all to ourselves. That's great, but you have to admit that they look pretty ugly. Lets make them look nice. Before we do that read the following pages:

1. The Decorating Rooms with Textures page.
2. The Mouse_Control page, specficially the surface selection section.

Done that? Excellent. Lets get started.

• Open the Texture Browser and load (File -> Open) the UTTech2.utx tecture package.
• Using the lower drop down list (next to the All button) select the Floor group. From this group of textures click on the tan looking one called "RCLFFLR6X".

At this point you can close (or minimise) the texture browser as we have selected a texture. We'll need it again in a minute but if you don't have a lot of screen real estate it's worth getting red of it.

• In the 3D view port Alt + Left Click on the floors of each of your rooms. Ta-da! We have a bit of colour.
• Now it's time to do the walls. Go back into the Texture Browser and select the Wall group from the lower drop list. Use the Alt-Left Click to texture the walls of the rooms. It's worth selecting a different texture for each of the rooms, but do each room in the same texture. I'll leave it up to you to decide which textures to use.
• And finally, it's time to texture the ceiling. Select the Ceiling group in the texture browser and pick a texture you like. Apply this in the same way as you did all the other textures. You may find that you have to move down and look up before you are able to see the faces that represent the ceilings of the rooms.

That's It

Well done. You've managed to complete the first part of the tutorial. Hopefully you now know how to create rooms and texture them. However, we still haven't got a level that we can play around in. Don't worry though. We will get there. I'm not one for making things too easy, and running around in a square box is pretty dull anyway.

At this point it's worth saving the map. Use the File -> Save As .. menu option and use the title DM-Quadroid. The UnrealEd Goblin likes to crash the editor on the regular basis so save little and often if you are planning on doing a lot of work in the editor. It's not a bad idea to save the maps with version numbers (e.g. DM-Quadroid1 for the first save, DM-Quadroid2 for the second and so-on).

You are now ready to move on to Creating DM-Quadroid/CreateTheCorridors, and add some corridors between the rooms. See you there.

Foxpaw: Why the lack of spaces in the page name?

Mosquito: Why not?

Mychaeel: ...because it's customary on the Unreal Wiki to use normal spacing in page names.  :-) I can rename those pages unless somebody vividly objects.

Mosquito: [Vividly objects]

Mychaeel: Since I'm not inclined to imagine your argumentation on that part, I'd appreciate if you actually phrased it.  ;-)

Foxpaw: I think it looks ugly with the names smashed together. It looks like WikiWiki, MeatballWiki or Wikipedia. (all of which I consider to be ungodly, in appearance, organization, and content for that matter)

EntropicLqd: The lack of spaces in the names are merely an artifact of the time they were created. It was an awful long time ago so if there was a method to it I forget what it was. Feel free to add spaces or not as the mood takes you.