The Newbie's Map Making F.A.Q.: Getting Started

This section has the basic questions you need answered to get started with your mapping. This isn't a section on how to create your first room. This is about downloading the editor, getting your textures loaded, etc. See the General Mapping section for getting started on your actual mapping.


The most important thing a newbie MUST understand
How do I get started?
What editor do I use
Where are all the textures?
How do I get my custom texture to appear in Radiant?
Tricks of the trade (things you should know when working in gtkRadiant)

The most important thing a newbie must understand

Mapping is hard. It takes time, patience and determination to make a map. It takes even more time, patience, determination and practice to make a good map. Don't forget that. Ever. Moreover, the mapping community expects YOU to put in your dues and try to answer questions ON YOUR OWN. You are expected to read tutorials day and night to understand this stuff. You're expected to surf the net for hours trying to solve a problem before you ask. Why? Well, two reasons that I can think of. First, the question you are asking has most likely been answered before, many many times. What's even more likely is that the question you're asking has been answered in the forum you are posting on. If you simply do a search you'll likely find the answer to your question. The second reason, I think, is that many of the people that hang out in the forums have seen the same question many times before. It gets tiring answering the same question over and over again. And a third, more selfish reason, is that we usually spend hours upon hours reading and learning ourselves and it can seem a bit lazy when someone expects an answer to a question without putting in at least a minimal amount of effort required. One last point. I've also found that people that are too lazy to do the required reading and research to answer their own questions are usually too lazy to ever really finish a map. Just keep that in mind. :)

Another thing to remember, mapping in wolf is very similar to creating maps for Quake 3 Arena. Therefore, many of the tutorials out there for Q3A will also work with Wolf. The only difference is going to be the textures you use since Quake textures won't be in Wolf.

How do I get started

Read. Read everything you can. Play with the editor a bit, then read some more. Read the manual that comes with Radiant, then read it again. Read every tutorial you can find. Do multiple tutorials of the same thing done by different people because each person may have one little piece of information you didn't have before. You may learn one more trick or shortcut that will help make your life easier.

What editor do I use?

There are two editors out there for making maps. The first one is the official editor WolfRadiant. The second editor is called gtkRadiant and is a community based editor. It can be used to make Quake 3 Arena or Wolfenstein maps (as well as Jedi Knight II, Soldier of Fortune and Elite Force). Which to use? I recommend gtkRadiant. WolfRadiant just doesn't have some of the enhancements that gtkRadiant has. The most significant one for me is the navigation in the 2D and 3D windows. You can get Wolfradiant here and gtkRadiant here.

This entire guide assumes you are using GTK.

Where are all the textures?

By default, not all the textures will be listed in the gtkRadiant Textures menu. The reason is that the textures are loaded based on what is listed in your main\scripts\shaderlist.txt file. Append this list to your shaderlist.txt file:
assault_rock
awf
broken_castle
castle_wall
cathedrale_door
cemetary
chat_wood
crypt
dam
director
effects
frogman
intro
maps
metal_misc
miltary_trim
nxlab
occult
skies2
sleepy
swf
terrain
the_end
town_door
town_floor
town_props
town_roof
town_wall
town_window
town_wood
village_interior
xlab_floor
xlab_window

How do I get my custom texture to appear in Radiant?

Once you've created a custom texture, you should create a directory under the main\textures\ directory. Usually you would name the directory the same name as your map to avoid confusion. Then, you have to go into the scripts\shaderlist.txt file and add your directory name to the end of that list.

Tricks of the trade (things you should know when working in gtkRadiant)

• To select a single piece of terrain, use ctrl+alt+lclick
• To cycle through each piece of a func_group, slect the group then hit tab. You can size and texture the individual piece this way
• To select all brushes with a particular texture, select the texture in the texture window, then press shift+a
• Learn to use the filters under View->Filter