This is a tutorial I wrote ALL by hand on FNRP forums a while back, so I might as well post it here for those who haven't seen it :) Hello guys, this tutorial should help you learn the basics on making a map for Deathrun. For those with a Mac: (I thought you couldn't map with a Mac, but by the sounds of it, there's a way you can)
Contents: What software to download What makes a good Deathrun map How to create a brush How to rotate a brush Explaining radiant basics Key shortcuts Designing traps Creating the activators room How to import models Okay, so lets begin. What software to download Everything about software is explained in this following video:
Or just download here: http://www.moddb.com/games/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare/downloads/mod-tools-sdk What makes a good Deathrun map? Ever wondered why people hate one map, but love another map? - This is all down to thought and hard work. Some things to think about are: -What makes your map different from anyone elses? - Lets use "Dragonball" for example. Everyone loves this map, there is a set theme, and more than one purpose. One being the usual, kill the activator, the second one to collect the Dragonballs. I personally love this, and so do a lot of others. -What is the theme on your map? - Example: Mario is a map based on Super Mario, Dragonball is a map based on the Anime 'Dragonball', Tron is based on the film Tron, and they all have the same textures as the theme. Also the map could contain secrets which fit the theme, which could make your map better than someone elses, and more enjoyable. -Be realistic. Have you ever gone to an assault course and spotted a random floating piece of wood / metal? No, there are supported by something. Maybe this is something to think about. Map length compared to secret length - If you have a secret, never make it so when people finish it, they will be infront of people on the actual map course. This is just annoying. Bounces - I guess you have all heard of a mod called "Codjumper". Some Deathrun mappers have intentions on adding bounces, as hard as codjumper ones, to reach the next platform. Remember, players are there for Deathrun, not codjumper. You could think about adding one into a secret, that way, it's optional. Song choice - No one wants to hear the music you like. Try adding a music menu in your map, but it may be hard if this is your first time mapping. How to make a brush Making a brush is just the first part of radiant. To make a brush, all you do the left click with your mouse, and drag on the 2D-Grid. A brush is another word for platform, or wall. All walls, floors etc are brushes.
How to rotate a brush You may need to rotate the brush in all different directions. To do this select the brush by pressing Crtl+Shift+Left mouse click whist your cursor is hovering over the specific brush you want to rotate. Once the brush is selected, press "R" and the outline of the brush in 2D view will turn from red to purple. To rotate, simply click and drag the direction you want it to rotate.
When you rotate it, you may be thinking to yourself "Why can I only rotate it in one direction?" You can solve this by pressing Ctrl+Tab. Your tab key is located at the middle left of your keyboard, about Capslock. When you press Ctrl+Tab, your 2D view will change. There a 3 different types of views. All 3 views will rotate the brush in 3 different ways: 1. XY Top 2. XZ Front 3. YZ Side XY, XZ and YZ are just the axis. To know what view you are in, you can see at the top left of your 2D view grid. You may need to zoom into your grid by scrolling up with the scroll on your mouse. Re-sizing your brush Again, the 3 different views on 2D grid determine which side of the brush you enlarge or reduce the size of. I specifically like using the XY Top view for length, but use the XZ Front for width. Anyway, when you select your brush, you should see lines on the X-axis and Y-axis. This is just which direction you want to enlarge or reduce the size of the brush. All you have to do is hold in your left mouse button, and drag. You will now be altering the size of you brush.
Explaining radiant basics Okay, so you might want to know more about shapes, textures etc. I will show you where to located them. Grid - First of all, you can re-size your 2D view grid.
The numbers represent the button(s) shortcut instead of clicking "Grid" "Grid 8" etc. Textures - The textures is one of the most important things for designing in radiant. Without textures, there would be no realism and everything would look dull and boring etc. This is the main place to find textures:
As you can see there are other options, but the main 2 are textures > usage and textures > surface type. As you can see, you can look through a whole range of textures for walls, doors, roads, lights, almost everything! But textures are not just pictures of walls etc, you get tool textures too, which are very important. Tools such as: Ladder, clip_player, clip_full, trigger, caulk. Ladder - So you can climb walls to make it act like a ladder. If you just put a ladder in your map, the player would climb and invisible wall. So you would have to make a separate brush, with a texture of your choice, then put the other brush with the ladder texture infront of the other texture you want to climb.
Caulk - When creating your maps, you should always make your map brushes Caulk, then add a picture texture over them second. Caulk makes it so the players take NO falling damage on that brush. If you don't want to do this, you can use clip_player ontop of the brush, so both brushes are separate, with one being ontop of the other, like the ladder. clip_player: Can act as no falling damage tool, as I just explained or as an invisible wall for map barriers. Have you ever played a normal MP map, and not been able to get out of the maps because a mysterious invisible wall is disallowing you? Meet your victim. clip_full - Is used so people cannot shoot the activator. Place this infront of the acti room's glass / texture the same way as explained with ladder and clip_player. Trigger - Triggers are huge in radiant. How do you think things move? That's correct, by triggers. Something must trigger a certain thing to move, or script to run right? This can be be anywhere in the map. There are different types of triggers: Hurt: If a player touches spikes, of you need close water that kills when you fall in, this will come in handy. Use-touch: This is for activator triggers. When the acti presses "Use" key on the trigger, the trigger will run through the map script, link the targetname of entity to the defined one in the script, and run that specific script. But I am not going to go into detail with scripting in this thread, that will be in another thread. Multiple: This trigger is when the player passes through the trigger and touches it. The trigger then activates the script it's allocated to. There are more, but they are the only 3 I use. More are explained here: http://www.codjumper.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2661 Also here: http://wiki.modsrepository.com/index.php/Call_of_Duty_4:_Tool_Textures Misc - The misc tab is mainly used for searching errors in your map. When you compile your map, you will most certainly get an error. The log will tell you the entity / brush name, and you can go there to search the brush. Radiant will automatically find the brush and select it for you. There are more options, but I won't explain them in this tutorial.
Patch - Patch is a very good way to change to a shape. Remember, to try ALL 3 2D VIEWS when changing a shape! They will all be different!
Key shortcuts Radiant would not be good without shortcuts right? Well here's a few to remember: 1. Select a brush using Ctrl+Shift+Left mouse click, and press spacebar to copy and paste the brush.
2. Use numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 to change grid sizes. Number 0 will disable grid lines. Try it out for yourself. 3. You might come across a material you decide to change, but you don't want to go through the whole of your map, to find every brush with this texture right? Well, you can do that in only 5 seconds!
Just follow the steps 1, 2 and 3. Here is a text version, incase you don't understand: 1. Select the material you want to change in the material box. You can find it by using "Textures > usage > show in use". To select it, just left mouse click, and the box should highlight red. (Make sure you don't have any other brushes selected in the process, or else they will change texture to the one you just clicked. To deselect, press "Esc". 2. Press Shift + A. 3. You will now see all the brushes with that material you want to change, will now be highlighted. Simple choose another texture, and click it to apply it to all the brushes highlighted! 4. Backspace is not really a shortcut, but you need it to deleted brushes. Select the brush(s) you want to delete, and click "Backspace". There are a lot more, but not really needed. If you feel like there is, message me and I will add them to the thread. Designing traps Deathrun would be nothing without traps right? Traps can be hard to think of in later maps, but easy with your first map. You might want a simple spike trap, a few rotating platforms, but remember, your imagination is key! Think about difficulty. Do you want your map to be fun, or challenging? If challenging, you want to invent new traps! Make your map something other maps are not! I am also not going to show you how to make certain traps. There are plenty of tutorials on the internet, all I can suggest is, don't start on something too big and complicated. Before you ask about how to make a trap move, that is all scripting. Which I will not be going through on this thread. Creating the activators room The activators room is also one of the key elements to deathrun. Without an activators path, there would be no traps, and it simply wouldn't be deathrun. A simple way to create a acti room is this: Step 1 - Create a rectangle to scale. To see how upto scale it is, always have a test dummy, as i like to call if. Right-click on 2D View and goto "actor > ally > marine > AT_AT4combo". Don't worry about keeping them there, they will not appear when you compile your map.
As you can see, I covered the rectangle over the dummy. Then all you need to do it press the hollow button. If it looks weird, user a smaller grid like 4, or 8, to create the brush.#
That's what it looks like inside, after I press the hollow button. You will need acti triggers also. Now, all you need to do is create a few brushes. Scripting can wait for now.
If you would like the acti to see out of the acti room, but the jumpers cant see in, all you have to do is like Ctrl + Shift inside the acti room, and the brush you can the acti to look out of. This will select one side. Now, go find yourself a glass material in "textures > usage> window" and BAM!
Importing models I will now proceed to tell you how to import default radiant models into radiant. What I mean is, these won't be models you got from the internet, but models you downloaded when you downloaded cod4radiant.
Right-click 2D view and navigate to "misc > model" and it's simple as that. Models will be non colliding, so you will have to use clip_player, and surround the model with it so please don't pass through it.
Extra notes: To make a brush so you walk through it, all you have to do it right-click the brush in 2D view and click "Make Non-Colliding" You need these for the spawns https://www.dropbox.com/s/lnrnfouob5poygx/DRSpawns.rar?dl=1 Also place an mp_global_intermission anywhere in your map for spectators. Forgot to add this in! I hope this tutorial helps alot! Thanks! :) -Pixel
