Creating a Room

Todo: This article currently doesn’t have many images because it has been completely rewritten. Feel free to add what you think is necessary, but remember that sometimes less is more.

Sealed Rooms

All serious maps consist completely of rooms one way or another. Even outdoor maps are surrounded by so-called “skyboxes”. These rooms and boxes are very carefully sealed off from the black void surrounding them to allow the map to compile properly. If there are any holes, the map will not compile properly. The data that is not compiled is essential to a high FPS and proper lighting as it controls the visiblity of objects within levels. A simple room consists of six brushes: The floor, the ceiling, and the four walls—completely sealing what is within from the void outside.

In order to make a room quickly and easily, you’ll first need to know a few more easy brush handling techniques:

Moving Brushes

To move a selected brush, select the Selection Tool and put the mouse pointer over the brush in one of the 2D views, staying clear of the corner handles. The pointer will change into four arrows pointing in all four directions, indicating the option to move. Now, click and drag the brush to where you want it in one of the 2D views. As you release the mouse button, the brush will be moved to that position.

Cloning Brushes

Instead of having to create new brushes with the Block Tool every time, you can make a copy of an already existing brush by holding down the <shift> key while moving the brush. The brush will remain in its place while the copy will end up at the position you <shift>-dragged the brush to.

Once you learn this technique, you will rarely have to use the Block Tool to create basic brushes—you will just clone one of the existing brushes when you want a new one.

Deleting Brushes

To delete a brush, select it with the Selection Tool and press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Building the Room

A 3D camera view (shaded textured polygons) with one wall brush selected. Note that the wall here is "between" or "supporting" the floor, ceiling, and neighboring walls.

When you feel confident with these techniques, let’s build the room. It should be a large room, as it will contain the whole level for this example, so a total room area of about 1024w x 1024l x 512h units will do fine.

1. Make a brush to use as the floor with the Block Tool (about 1024w x 1024l x 64h).
2. Using the Selection Tool, <Shift>-drag to clone the floor brush, and move it upwards to create a ceiling of equal size as the floor.
3. Clone another one of the brushes and resize it so that it connects the floor to the ceiling. You can either have the wall brushes on the outside edges of the floor and ceiling brushes, or between (supporting) them. (see associated note)
4. Clone this wall brush and drag it to its opposite end.
5. Again clone and resize a brush to create a third wall.
6. Clone this brush to the opposite end of the room to create the final wall.
7. Check for any gaps so that you are sure that the room has been completely sealed. If you've been designing your room on a relatively large grid scale (e.g. 64 units), then any gaps will be apparent. Mouse-over the 3D view window and press Z to enter mouselook mode to carefully inspect your room.

Alternatively, you can create a single brush the size of your room, then right click on it and select the Hollow option. Though quicker, this method makes it harder to size the room to your needs.

Note:One thing to take into consideration when deciding to have your walls "lean" against your floor and ceiling or "support" them is regarding later texturing. If you design your walls to "support" your floor and ceiling, for instance, if the "height" of your room is 256 units, and your walls are 256 units tall, it will be straightforward to make a texture that is 256 units tall, rather than having to worry about the top and bottom edges of the walls that are being covered by the edges of the floor and ceiling.

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Your First Map

← Basic Construction

Applying Textures →