Mapping:Create your first room

This page is work in progress!

Introduction

This tutorial aims to help you create your first room and, your first map. The tutorial isn't meant to be "the best way", it's been created to introduce you to good practice, neat brushwork and a consideration of a 10 year old engine (soon to be given a new lease of life).

Before we begin

I'm assuming before this tutorial begins that you have a correctly configured radiant, it doesn't matter which, the principles are pretty similar in all versions.

If you've not yet configured radiant please see one of the sections about installing

• links to installing

First steps

Before you begin any mapping project you should choose a name for the project and create an empty folder in your textures folder with that name. For the purpose of this tutorial our map is called myfirstmap, it's short and snappy and easy to remember.

Create a folder in your mapping/textures folder called myfirstmap

Find your shaderlist.txt file, normally this will be in the mapping/scripts folder. Open this with a text editor.

Somewhere in this file, add the single line

myfirstmap

Save the file and close the editor

Textures / images

For the purpose of this tutorial you'll need a couple of images. Download these 2 files and save them to your mapping/textures/myfirstmap folder

Save these files as plaster.jpg and bricks.jpg -

Additionally download these files and save them to your mapping/textures folder

Save these as water.jpg and watercaulk.jpg

Create a shaders file

In your mapping/scripts folder create a new file called myfirstmap.shader and open it with a text editor.

Paste in the following lines, they're not important at this stage but will be needed in another tutorial later.

textures/myfirstmap/watercaulk
{
   qer_nocarve
   qer_trans 0.40
   qer_editorimage textures/watercaulk.tga
   surfaceparm nodraw
   surfaceparm nolightmap
   surfaceparm nonsolid
   surfaceparm trans
   surfaceparm nomarks
   surfaceparm water
}
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
textures/myfirstmap/ladder
{
   qer_editorimage textures/ladder.jpg
   qer_trans .40
   surfaceparm ladder
   surfaceparm nodraw
   surfaceparm nolightmap
   surfaceparm nonsolid
   surfaceparm trans
   surfaceparm nomarks
   surfaceparm noimpact
   surfaceparm playerclip
}

Save this file and close the text editor, the preparation work is complete it's now time to open radiant.