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Text File | 1995-01-28 | 12.5 KB | 250 lines

DEU HELP FILE V1.2 A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO YOUR FIRST LEVEL! For Doom Editor Utility 5.21 By Jawed Karim jawed@infiniti.org This text file was created to help DEU beginners build their first level. As you may have noticed, DEU521 is a great program, but the documentation that comes with it is not very helpful. This will help you to understand the basics of building your own Pwad. This file is very streight forward and not very long. As I said, this explains only the basics. It's not supposed to replace DEU.TXT. I noticed the biggest problem beginners have are small ones even though they might not think so themself. The more complicated stuff is better explained in the DEU documentation. But once you get started, believe me, you wont have any problems. 1) Linedefs and Sectors ----------------------- At the DOS prompt, type DEU. You will see a menue (still in text mode). To create a NEW level, type C 1 1 (Create Episode 1 Mission 1) and hit ENTER. The screen switches to graphics mode. You should probably start out with a very simple level, that contains only a few rooms. With the TAB key you can switch between the following modes: -=> Verteces 'Corners' -=> Linedefs 'Walls' -=> Sectors 'Areas' -=> Things 'Enemies, Bonuses' I will explain later what they are all for. The easiest and fastest way to make a room is to 1. [define the corners] and 2. [connect them]. You should do that on a grid since it is easier that way to make lines streight. To do that, press 'G'. You will see a blue grid on the screen. In the lower right corner you will see a scale. If you have no idea how thick or long any thing in DOOM is, remember that the sides of a DOOR are usually 1/32 thick. Whenever you press 'G', the scale gets smaller. Keep pressing 'G' until you reach 1/32. Later, when you want to make more detailed shapes, you can even go to a smaller scale. But for now even 1/64 would be fine. We will make a square shaped room with 4 (Duh! :) corners. To define a corner, hit TAB until it sais "VERTECES" in the lower left. To place the four corners on the grid, chose a place where two lines of the grid intersect. (That should not be too hard to find :) Move the mouse pointer on that spot and press the 'INS' key. There! You will see a little yellow dot. That's one corner. Do the other 3 ones the same way. Now that you have 4 corners, you have to connect them. DEU wants you to click on the dots in the right order. Do this CLOCKWISE! I will explain later why. Go to corner #1 CLICK!, corner #2 CLICK! and corner #3 CLICK! Remember: CLOCKWISE. Don't click the 4th (or 1st) corner yet. Now that you selected #1, #2 and #3, press the 'INS' key. DEU will connect the first 3 dots with lines, called LINEDEFS. Hit TAB to get back to VERTECE mode (DEU automatically switched to LINEDEF mode after you hit 'INS'). Connect corner #3 and #1 and hit 'INS' again. Now you connected all 4 dots with LINEDEFS, which are walls. This is what your level should look like: 1 2 *---------------* | | | | | | | | | | *---------------* 4 3 What you have now is a room with walls but no floor or a ceiling. Although Linedefs can have wall textures, you need to make a Sector because only they can have floor and ceiling textures. Go into Linedef mode by hitting TAB. Then click all 4 Linedefs so they change color. The direction does not matter now. When all 4 Linedefs are selected, hit 'INS' to form a sector. A room does not always have to contain exactly ONE Sector. Let's say you want one part of the room to have a different floor or ceiling texture. Then you would have to divide the room into two Sectors. To form a Sector you always need at least 3 Verteces that can be connected and make a closed shape. But we're not done yet! Because some important parts of a level are still missing. Doom will crash if you try to play this level. One of the reasons is: YOU NEED AT LEAST 2 SECTORS IN A LEVEL. I don't know why, but that's the way it is. For now we will only make ONE SECTOR per ROOM, because it is easier. Let's build a second square shaped room right next to the other one and then connect them with a door! Do the same things you did before. Your level should look like this now: *---------------* *---------------* | | | | | 1 2 | | | | | | 4 3 | | | | | *---------------* *---------------* -The numbers are for part #3 DOORS 2) Sidedefs ----------- Now I will explain why you had to connect the Verteces in CLOCKWISE order. When the Linedef appears (after you press 'INS' to connect two Verteces) you will notice that a Linedef looks kind of like this: Linedef: | First Sidedef | Second Sidedef --| | | The important thing is the little thing that sticks out from the side. Remember: Like an ordinary wall, every LINEDEF ('wall') has two SIDEDEFS ('sides'). The Sidedef that has the little stick is the FIRST Sidedef, or Sidedef #1. The one that doesn't is #2. This is important because if both Sidedefs have different textures, you want to know which one is which. When you click Verteces in CLOCKWISE order before connecting them, all the little sticks will point INWARD, so that the walls you see in the room are all the first Sidedefs and the second Sidedefs are outside. It just makes it easier this way. When building doors, you have to be careful which side (1 or 2) is outside of the door... so go on to part 3. 3) Making a door to connect two rooms ------------------------------------- The distance between the two rooms on the grid should be 1/64. This is a good scale to work with. For this part of the level you might want to use '+'and '-' to ZOOM in or out because we will now build a door. The most important thing to remember when you build a door is that A DOOR IS A SECTOR. Many people tend to think that a door is just a line. Now put a Vertece on points #1, #2, #3 and #4 just like you did before. When you do that, DEU will ask you if you want to cut the Linedef in half (or seperate it) at that point. Press 'Y' for yes. Each of the two long Linedefs will now be 3 seperate Linedefs, the ones in the middle forming the door (almost..). Connect the four corners like before. First 1,2 and 3 and then 4 and 1 again. That's because if you do it all at once you would click #1 TWICE which would UN- SELECT it. Now you have a third sector in between the other two big ones. Look at the picture above again. !>! Make sure that the FIRST Sidedef of the Linedef between 2-3 and 1-4 points OUTSIDE. Whenever you activate a door in DOOM (usually with the SPACE bar) you activate the FIRST Sidedef. The second Sidedef cannot be activated. This is the biggest mistake people make with doors. Also the First sidedef of the Linedef between 1-2 and 3-4 should point INTO the door-sector. So this is what the door sector should look like: I included the 'sticks' that mark the first sidedef: The STICKS are '='s or '|'s. *-------* | | | | | =| |= | | | | | *-------* We're almost done. Switch to SECTOR mode (TAB) and move the mouse pointer over it. You don't actually have to click to select it. When it changes color you know that you 'semi' selected it. Now press ENTER and you will see a menu. Here you can change the properties of the sector. Click on the line that says CEILINGHEIGHT. Change it to 128. That's a good size since most of the wall textures are 128 units tall. Do the same thing with the other big room on the left. The floorheight should always be ZERO. Change the Ceilingheight in the door-sector to ZERO. That's important. As long as the door is not activated in the game, the door is down which means that ceiling and floor height are the same, ZERO. Switch to LINEDEF mode and select (CLICK) both of the DOOR Linedefs. They are still normal ones, so you have to tell DEU that they're supposed to be DOORS. Press RETURN and you'll see a LINEDEF menu. Go to the line that defines the TYPE of Linedef and hit RETURN. You'll see a second menu. Go to DOORS. There are at least 20 different kinds of Doors. This is what the Letter in front on each type mean: D Door. Press SPACE to open it. S Switch. Press SPACE to activate this LineDef. W Walk. Walking across the Linedef activates it. G Gun. Shooting at the Linedef will activate it. So if you want a door that activates when you shoot at it, choose a G type door. In the main Linedef menu, add UPPER Texture to the First Linedefs (FIRST ONLY!). Remove any Normal texture from both sidedefs. Also, the 2nd Sidedef of the Door-Linedefs shouldn't have any texture at all. THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT MAKING DOORS: -------------> A door is not a line, but a seperate SECTOR. -------------> The first Sidedefs of the 'to be activated' Linedefs should point OUT. -------------> The Ceiling height and floor height in the door-sector have to be EQUAL. If the floor is ZERO, the ceiling is, too. -------------> Don't forget to set the LINEDEF type to DOOR! -------------> The 1st Sidedefs of DOOR Linedefs ONLY have Upper Texture. The 2nd Sidedefs of DOOR Linedefs have NONE. -------------> Doors should only have the property TWO-SIDED Now make sure that every Linedef (except for the Door Linedefs) in the entire level has the property IMPASSIBLE turned on. In the Linedef menue which you get by pressing RETURN after selecting a Linedef, go to PROPERTIES and turn on IMPASSIBLE. The two Door Linedefs should NOT be impassible, but TWO-SIDED! 4) IMPORTANT: Multiple Sectors ------------------------------ One of the things that's hard to figure out on your own is how to put a sector into a second sector, like this: *------------* 1 | *----* | | | 2 | | | | | | | *----* | *------------* DOOM will crash if you just put sector #1 into #2. First, connect all dots with Linedefs but don't make any sectors yet. Select all Linedefs of #2 and hit 'INS'. Now square #2 is a sector. To make square #1 a sector, SELECT ALL OF THE LINEDEFS. That is, SELECT ALL LINEDEFS OF #1, THEN ALL LINEDEFS OF #2 AND THEN HIT 'INS'. There! Now you have two sectors that will function correctly. If you have a sector within a sector within a sector [and so on], just do the same thing for the first two sectors, then ignore them and use the method described above, for the rest. 4) Things! ---------- In order for the level to work, you need 4 player starting points and at least 4 deathmatch starting points. The more deathmatch points the better because they are selected randomly for each player at the beginning of a deathmatch game. Switch to THINGS mode and hit 'INS' anywhere inside of one of the two big rooms. It'll be a Seargent. So select it and hit RETURN. You will see a THING main menu. Go to PLAYER and then to PLAYER1 START. Then do PLAYER2 START and so on until PLAYER4. Now you have starting points for all 4 players. Below PLAYER4, there is a line that sais DEATHMATCH START. Put four of those into the level, too. That's it! You're done with your very first Pwad! Press ALT-F, then (S)AVE and exit. To play your Pwad, type doom -file mylevel.wad In this case, the name of your Pwad is mylevel.wad. Don't forget to read the DEU.TXT file that comes with DEU. And most important: HAVE FUN!