Tutorial #4: Adding A Room

Before we start laying more brick, let’s look at a couple of more things in Radiant.

If you haven’t already done so, shut down Radiant and then re-launch it. Notice how only the textures you used are shown in the texture window? When I load a gob of textures, I’ll periodically shut down and re-start Radiant to purge the ones I’m not using.


Holding down the RIGHT mouse button and moving the mouse will allow you to scroll the editing window in any direction.


By now you should know that the following commands move your camera:

  • Up & Down cursor keys: move forward & backward

  • Comma and Period keys: "side-step" left & right

  • D moves you up; C takes you down

Two more keys add to the camera’s movement. They are:

  • A: look up

  • Z: look down

THE SELECTION MODES

One of the more irritating quirks with Radiant is how it allows you (or doesn’t allow you!) to select brushes. At the top of the screen, there are four buttons that let you choose the method by which you can select brushes and entities.

From left to right, these four buttons are Select Tall, Select Touching, Select Partial Tall, and Select Inside. I have found Select Inside to be the most useful. Using this option, by holding down the Left Shift key and left clicking anywhere inside a brush, it will be selected.

One problem with brush selection, is after your map gets a few hundred brushes added to it, the only efficient way to select a brush is to do it from the 3D-preview window. You can do it from the main editing window, as long as you don’t have a large ceiling or wall IN FRONT of the brush you’re trying to select.

Entities respond differently; you can select any entity the same way you select a brush. As long as you click INSIDE the entity, it doesn’t matter how many brushes are between you and the entity.


ADDING TO YOUR MAP

OK. Load up the room we just made. We’ll add an octagon-shaped room.

1. Right-click and drag the mouse in the editing window to move the map over to make space to the right of your first room.

2. Drag out a square like the one shown in Figure 1.

 


To zoom out, press INSERT. To zoom in, press DELETE.


Figure 1: Drag out a cube for second room

3. Now press the ‘6’ key on the keyboard to bring the grid size up to 32.

4. Your box should still be selected (red). Check the other 2 views (CTRL-TAB) to insure you have a "room-sized" cube and not just a thin brush. Stretch out the cube (Lt Click-Drag) to make it at least 128 units high.

5. Go to the Brush menu and select 8-sided. Your square should now be an octagon. If not, you didn’t have the cube selected (Lt Shift-Click). Check the other views. You may have to stretch out the room on the top and bottom.

Figure 2: Result of selecting BRUSH/8-Sided


CTRL-Z will un-do the last command


 

6. Now click on the Hollow button.

Figure 3: The octagon after using the Hollow command

Now that you have two rooms, the next step is to connect them with some sort of passageway. On to tutorial #5!

 


Copyright 1999, by Terry DeLaney. Permission is granted to distribute this file as long as the author receives credit.