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| BUILD "HOT SHEET" by BEARD BROS.|
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___ ____ _ ___ __
DONE BY /___/ /___ /_| /__/ / |
/___/ /___ / | / | /__/
___ ___ ___ _____
/___/ /__/ / / /__
/___/ / | /___/ /
_________________________________________/
BEARD BROS.
Welcome to the Beard Bros. Build Hot sheet! We've been
busy the last few months, and haven't made any hot sheets for
UMK3 or any other games. Here we are now making one for the
Duke Nukem 3D level editor, BUILD. Ok, enough about us, let's
get down to business.
===============================================================================
Table of Contents
===============================================================================
Introduction -- Boring stuff you have to know about BUILD and our "Hot Sheet"
1) Chapter 1 -- Drawing Lines and Making Rooms in BUILD
1.0 - Drawing lives and making a room
1.1 - Different 3D mode Modes
1.2 - Deleting lines
1.3 - Adding Verticies on lines
1.4 - Moving Verticies
1.5 - Deleting Verticies
1.6 - Putting Player 1 Start
2) Chapter 2 -- Your First Cheezy Room
2.0 - What is a Sector?
2.1 - Making a Sector/Room and entering 3D mode
2.2 - Raising/Lowering the Ceiling and Floor
2.3 - Slopes
2.4 - Trying your cheezy level in Duke
3) Chapter 3 -- Fixing Your Room, and Making it Look Good
3.0 - Changing Textures
3.1 - Texture Alignment and Modification
3.2 - Texture Shading
3.3 - Parallax Ceilings
3.4 - Multiple Sectors in a Sector
4) Chapter 4 -- Sprites
4.0 - What is a Sprite?
4.1 - Adding a Sprite
4.2 - Moving a Sprite
4.3 - Deleting a Sprite
4.4 - "Flattening" a Sprite
4.5 - Changing a Sprite
4.6 - Changing the angle of a sprite
4.7 - Sector Effectors
5) Chapter 5 -- Hi-Tags and Lo-tags
5.0 - What are hi and lo-tags?
5.1 - How to give a sector/sprite a tag
5.2 - Your first hi-tag and lo-tag (Teleporters)
5.3 - Water
6) Chapter 6 -- The Little Things That Make it Happen
6.0 - How to Make Glass
6.1 - How to Make a Vent
6.2 - How to Make a Mirror
6.3 - Security Cameras
6.4 - Echo effect
6.5 - Light switches
6.6 - Where to get the SFX numbers
7) Chapter 7 -- The Different Types Kinds of Doors
7.0 - The Regular Doom Door
7.1 - Swinging Doors
7.2 - Sliding Doors
8) Chapter 8 -- Things That Just Make it Easier
8.1 - Sprite copy/move
8.2 - Sector copy/move
===============================================================================
Introduction The Basics of BUILD
===============================================================================
- First of all, if there is anything you don't understand, please refer to
BUILDHLP.EXE that you have on the CD from your REGISTERED Duke Nukem CD.
<ahem>. :) There are many things we won't mention that are in there.
But, we tried to make this as user-friendly as possible. :)
- Don't stop to think twice if you want to E-Mail us! If there's something
you need to know. 72734.232@compuserve.com
- We will not repeat ourselves, if you don't know what we're talking
about, we likely mentioned it earlier, and you didn't read it. :)
- MAKE SURE THAT BUILD.EXE IS IN YOUR DUKE NUKEM DIRECTORY. You cannot
enter 3D mode proporly if it's not.
That should be it for now. Just read carefully, and don't
skip any parts. This is organized so that you have to know
what you're doing before going on. :)
===============================================================================
Chapter 1 Drawing Lines, and Making Rooms in BUILD
===============================================================================
Naturally, your first .MAP is going to be cheezy. This is good
because it's the only way to learn, isn't it? Now, from your
Duke Nukem directory, type 'BUILD', and you should see a grid
when you get into to it right? Good. Move the mouse around
1.0 a bit and wherever you want, press SPACEBAR. Notice how when
you move the mouse around, a line follows you. Press SPACE again,
and it will stop, inserting a vertex, and another line will
follow you. Don't cross lines! You will run into problems. =)
When you press SPACEBAR on the FIRST vertex again,
it will stop drawing. This is how we draw rooms in Duke.
Oh ya, if you want to zoom in or out, press A or Z. You can
change the grid size by pressing G, and toggle Grid Locking
by pressing L. We know it's a lot to learn, but you're on
your way to great levels!
1.1 When in 2D mode, press A and Z to zoom in and out. When in
3D mode, press A to move up, and Z to move down. Press
CAPS LOCK in 3D mode to change modes. There are 3 modes:
1) Regular walking - Press A, and you will move up one
notch at a time
2) Flying mode - Hold A, and you will float up
3) Water mode - Same as mode 2, but you will not change
heights. Kinda hard to explain, so just try it out.
If you accidentally draw a room wrong, and you are still in
1.2 line mode (the line is still following you), press BACKSPACE and you
will delete the last line you did. You can keep pressing it
until you reach the first point.
If you want to connect the line to another line, (add a vertex),
1.3 insert a point there first: Press INSERT on the line wherever
you want the new vertex.
1.4 If you want to move a vertex, simply click on it with the left
mouse button, and drag it to the desired location, and let go
of the mouse button.
1.5 When there is a vertex that you don't want, or don't need, just
drag it over another vertex, and it will be deleted.
1.6 To put player 1 start where you like, put the white arrow where
you like (click the RIGHT mouse button), and press SCROLL LOCK.
This is VERY important, as if you try to start the game without
it, you will get crushed. (It's like putting no clipping on
and trying to walk through the level).
===============================================================================
Chapter 2 Your first, cheezy room
===============================================================================
2.0 What is a sector? It is simply an enclosed area made up of
lines. Sectors can be any shape, but most are geometrical
shapes (square, rectangle, polygons etc...). Inside these
sectors, you can put anything such as bad guys, weapons,
items, noises, explosions, etc..
2.1 Making a sector is very very easy. All you have to do, is
draw a square. It is now a sector. Place the white arrow inside
the box by pressing the RIGHT mouse button inside of the box that
you have made. Press ENTER on the KEYPAD, and you will enter 3D
mode. This is your first room, and this is what it looks like
in the game. Ugly texture huh? Oh well, we'll fix it after.
2.2 Now, you can raise/lower the ceiling/floor height by putting the
white plus sign (mouse) over it, and pressing PGUP or PGDN. If
you hold the left mouse button on the floor/ceiling, and hold
PGUP or PGDN, you don't have to follow the floor/ceiling.
In other words, while you are holding the left mouse button
down, the floor or ceiling is still highlighted, and no matter
where you point the mouse, you can still modify the object you
are holding the mouse button down on.
2.3 Slopes have to be one of the easiest things to do in BUILD.
All you have to do is point to the floor or ceiling that you
want sloped, and press "[" or "]" to slope it! Ta da!! Now,
what if you want it sloped the other way? Well, it's quite
simple. Point to the wall that you want to be the bottom of
the slope, and press ALT+F. The floor will slope the way that
you wanted now. Neat eh?
2.4 Go back to 2D mode (ENTER on the KEYPAD), and press ESC. A menu
will pop up in the dialog box. Press "A" to Save As, and type
a name in (with no .MAP extension). <ENTER> Then press ESC again,
and press "Q" to quit. It'll ask whether you want to save the
changes or not (we don't know why), but press "Y" anyways.
Go into SETUP, and third from the bottom, select 'Select User
Level'. Select your level, and Launch Duke! After, type
BUILD and the file name that you used. It will automatically
put you in 3D mode.
2.5 Deleting a sector is scary as there is NO UNDO FEATURE!! Be
careful that you haven't worked for 2 hours on a sector, and
accidentally delete it! There is NOTHING you can do unless
you previously saved it. Point to the sector in 2D mode and
press CTRL+DELETE. Extra careful! :)
===============================================================================
Chapter 3 Changing Textures
===============================================================================
3.0 By now, you probably want to get rid of that reeeally ugly
texture. Right? Ok, enter 3D mode, and point to the wall.
Press V. You will see that same texture in the top right hand
of the screen, and nothing else. That's because that's the only
texture that we have used in the level so far. Press V again.
Now you can see ALL of the textures, sprites, and everything
used in the game! Select a cool texture, and press ENTER.
Point to another wall, and press V. You'll notice that the
texture that you chose is at the top of the screen now too!
That's because now you've used it the level. The number on the
picture show how many walls you've used that texture on.
3.1 Point to a texture, it can be either a wall, ceiling, floor or
whatever. You can shrink and stretch the texture using the
2,4,6,8 numbers on the KEYPAD. If you want to simply move
the texture up, down, or sideways on the wall, hold Right-Shift
and press 2,4,6,8 on the KEYPAD. If you really mess up the
texture, press the '/' (slash) key, and it will go back to
normal. Also, you can flip a texture by pressing the F key.
3.2 You can darken or lighten a texture by pointing to the texture,
and simply pressing the + and - keys on the KEYPAD. Very easy.
3.3 If you have tried to place a sky texture such as the L.A.
texture, you'll notice that it didn't quite work, right? Well
press "P" for Parallax, and now it won't follow you like the
other textures. WOW!! =)
3.4 You can have multiple sectors in one sector. All you have to do
is make a box within a box...right? Well, let's try it. Make a
big square, and inside that square, make a little square. (2D mode)
Something like this:
--------------------------
| |
| -------- |
| | | |
| 1 | 2 | |
| | | |
| -------- |
--------------------------
Place the white arrow in square #1, and enter 3D mode. Notice
how you can't walk inside square #2. This is because there is
nothing inside square 2. If you were to put no clipping on in
Duke, and enter square 2, you would get crushed. It's called
VOID. Void is the 'nothingness' of a level. In order to make
square #2 VALID PLAYING SPACE, you have to point to it in 2D mode,
and press ALT+S. The box should turn red, and the dialog box will
say, "Inner loop made into sector". Right? Good. Enter 3D mode
and notice how you can walk through the whole area. You can
raise the floor and ceiling of either sector. Try it. Change
the textures if you like. This is the base of ALL levels in
Duke Nukem. Be sure you know how to do this, and that you
UNDERSTAND what you are doing before moving on! :)
===============================================================================
Chapter 4 Sprites
===============================================================================
4.0 Ok, a sprite is an object. It can be a bad guy, weapons,
a noise, or a sector effector. We will talk about these
shortly.
4.1 All you need to do to insert a sprite, is press S, either
in 2D or 3D mode. But for now, go to 3D mode if you're not
already there, and press S. You will see that same ugly,
default texture right? Ok, point to and press V. The same
as before applies, press V again to see all of the things
used in Duke. At the top you will notice some letters. The
most popular one is the S. It is on the top row, and at the
bottom, it will say Sector Effector, this is how you select
a Sector Effector, or SE for short. But for now, choose
something, like a weapon, or a health kit. It doesn't matter.
Press enter when you've found the one you like. You can move
it either up and down the same way as textures. Be careful not
to move the wall up and down instead of the sprite! Here's a
hint: Hold the left mouse button on the sprite, and then hold
PGUP or PGDN, then you don't have to stay on the sprite.
If you want the sprite directly on the ceiling, press CTRL+PGUP.
If you want the sprite directly on the floor, press CTRL+PGDN.
You of course have to be pointing to the sprite. :)
4.2 Unfortunately, you can't move a sprite in 3D mode, you have to go
to 2D mode to do that. But it's the same as moving a vertex,
just drag the sprite to wherever you want it.
4.3 Deleting a sprite is simply pointing to it and pressing Delete.
You can be in either mode for this (2D or 3D).
4.4 If you want the sprite to be against the wall, press R until
it's against the wall. Somtimes they disappear, or just seem
to disappear. It's there somwhere, but that's because it tried
to go against the floor, not against the wall. :)
4.5 Changing a sprite is very easy. All you have to do is enter
3D mode, point to the sprite you want changed, press V twice,
and pick the one you want!
4.6 Point to the sprite, and press the "<" and ">" keys. The line
on the sprite will move. This determines which way the sprite
is facing, or which way you will face when coming through a
teleporter.
4.7 A sector effector is simply a sprite in a sector that makes
something happen like a noise, or an explosion, teleport and
stuff like that.
===============================================================================
Chapter 5 Hi-Tags and Lo-Tags
===============================================================================
5.1 Hi-tags and Lo-tags are very hard to understand at first. To tell
you the truth, we don't really understand them yet. But we will do
our best. A Hi-Tag on a sprite is like it's name, or identity. If
you wanted something to happen because of that sprite, their Lo-Tag
would have to be the Hi-tag number. Here's an example:
For security cameras, the hi-tag is how
many degrees it turns. The screen that
you look at the cameras with have to have
the same hi-tag number as the cameras' lo-
tag number.
Here's another example:
Camera A has a hi-tag of 90, and lo-tag of 4 (90,4)
Camera B has a hi-tag of 180, and lo-tag of 3 (180,3)
Screen A has a hi-tag of 4, and no lo-tag. (4,0)
Screen B has a hi-tag of 3, and no lo-tag. (3,0)
If you look in screen A, (hi-tag of 4), it
will look through camera A (lo-tag of 4),
and the camera will turn 90 degrees.
If you look in screen B, (hi-tag of 3), it
will look thorough camera B, (lo-tag of 3),
and the camera will turn 180 degrees.
Get it? If you don't, then read it a couple more
times, maybe it'll help. If not, maybe you'll get it
as we journey through this 'hot sheet'. That's what
we did. It's easier to learn by doing it. =)
5.1 To give a sector a HT, press H
To give a sector a LT, press T
To give a SPRITE a HT, press ALT+H
To give a SPRITE a LT, press ALT+T
5.2 The easiest application of hi-tags and lo-tags (ht and lt), is
a teleporter. That's the first really cool thing we'll do.
Make the following sectors, and place a Sector Effector (SE) in
sectors 2 and 3:
-----------------------------------------
| |
| ------ |
| | 3 | |
| | SE | |
| 1 ------ |
| |
| -------- |
| | 2 | |
| | SE | |
| -------- |
| |
-----------------------------------------
All sectors should be VALID PLAYER SPACE. You remember how to
do that? Good. Go to 3D mode, and raise the floor of
sectors 2 and 3. Lower the ceilings of them too, just to make
it look good. Put the teleporter texture on them (#626) and adjust
the texture to make it look real (RSHIFT and 2,4,6,8...remember?)
Now, the tagging part: Give the SE's a Hi-tag of 1. You give
them 1 because it's the first thing you are doing in the level. If you
did another one, the ht's would be 2, the next ones 3. Get it? The
lo-tag of the two SE's is 7. You give them 7 because that tells
Duke that that sector is for teleporting. That's just the magic
number that they chose.
Save it, and try it out!
5.3 Water is quite easy, but sorta disappointing. Okay, make two
identical sectors. It's probably easiest to go on the biggest
grid setting for this. Anyway, make sure both sectors are the
same size. Place a sector effector in both sectors. The SE in
sector A must be in the same place as the SE in sector B, and
the other way around too. Give the sector you want the top of
the water to be, a low-tag of 1. This means that the sector
will be the surface of the water. Give the underwater sector
a lo-tag of 2. This means that the sector will be underwater.
Give the SE's a ht of 1, and lt of 7. The same rules apply as
the teleporter. Ok, place the water texture on the floor of the
top of the water, and the ceiling of the underwater sector.
You're done! =)
===============================================================================
Chapter 6 The Little Things That Make it Happen
===============================================================================
6.0 Glass is VERY easy. All you have to do is this:
Make a room (probably square, it's the easiest), and then
make a little square inside it, like the teleporters, but
you only need one square inside. Make the square in the
middle valid player space (ALT+S). Go into 3D mode, and
raise the floor, and lower the ceiling of the little square
sector. This part is hard to explain, but easy to do.
Point to the UPPER or LOWER part of the inner sector. Then
press 'M' to mask the wall. The ugly brown texture again
right? Change it to the glass texture (it'll say in the
bottom right "GLASS". Go into 2D mode, and point to the line,
and press 'B' to make the wall blockable, and then press
CTRL+H to make it hittable. If you want, do this to all
four sides of the inner sector, and put a goodie inside it.
6.1 Vents are our FAVOURITE thing about Duke. And they're easy
to do. But all of the other FAQ's are wrong. They say to
do the same thing as the glass. But instead, you insert a
SPRITE (S), and change it to the vent texture. Position it
where you like it, and that's it!! NOTE: This won't work
proporly unless you insert the sprite in 2D MODE.
6.2 Mirrors can be quite tricky. But after a while, they're a
snap. Make the following sectors:
--------------------------------
-------------------------- | |
| | | |
| |__| |
| | | |
| A |B | C |
| | | |
| |--| |
| | | |
-------------------------- | |
--------------------------------
Both should be VALID PLAYER SPACE. If you like, raise
the floor, and lower the ceiling of sector B. Place the
mirror texture (#560) on the right-hand wall of sector B. You
remember how to do that? (6.0) The most important rule for
a mirror is that the sector BEHIND the mirror has to be
as big, or bigger than the sector itself (C bigger than A).
In 3D mode, press '1' on the mirror texture to make it
one-sided. Go to 2D mode, and make it hittable and blockable
If you want Duke to talk to the mirror, give the wall a low-tag
of 252. (ALT+T, and be sure the wall is flashing before
you press it). And that's IT!!!
6.3 Well, we pretty much explained these to you in 5.0, trying to
explain hi and low-tags. It's pretty easy: Insert a camera
sprite (#621), and put it where you want. Put a viewscreen
sprite on a wall (#429), and follow the steps outlined in 5.0.
It's pretty easy, but it CAN be tricky. May need to use
Relative Alignment on the viewscreen to have it against the
wall ("R"). Remember to keep the left mouse button depressed
while working with objects, so that the object is still more
or less 'highlighted'. Even though you can't see the object,
you can still modify it.
6.4 Echo effect is easy, and cool. Here's how to do it: Place a
Music&SFX sprite in the sector you want, give it a low-tag of
1000 + the amount of echo (0-255). The hi-tag is how far you
can hear the sound. Every 1024 represents the biggest square
on the grid. Oh ya, don't bother putting it to 255, because
it's ridiculously too much. Trust us. =)
6.5 Light switches are easy. Make two sectors, put a light switch
texture on any wall. Put a sector effector in every sector that
you want the light switch to light up. Give the light switch a
high-tag. It doesn't matter what, but don't use the same high-
tag between different sprites. Give the SE's the same high-tag
(because the switch and the SE's go together right?), and give
the SE's a low tag of 12. You give them 12 because that's just
the special number for light switch. NOTE: Make the room
really dark, because the lights are bright!
6.6 The sound effect numbers are in your DEFS.CON file. They start
on line 676. Just place the number as the low tag. Check
BUILDHLP.EXE for more help on sound effects.
===============================================================================
Chapter 7 The Different Types of Doors
===============================================================================
7.0 The doom-type door is simple. Most of you should know how to
make the setup right? Make the same setup as you did for the
mirror, but the sizes don't matter. The door sector (middle
one) will be the only one we need to touch. Bring the
ceiling of that sector down to the floor, and give the
SECTOR a lo-tag of 20. Place a Music&sfx sprite in the door
sector, and give it a low-tag of 259, place nice textures,
and that's IT!!
7.1 Okay, it's VERY hard to do swinging doors the first time.
After the first time, it's a snap. We'll try our best:
Make these sectors:
----------------- Naturally, both
| | sectors are to be
| |----------- valid player space.
| A | |
| | B |
| |-----------
| |
-----------------
Somewere in sector A, make a sector the half the size of what
the door will be. Like this:
-----------------
| |
| |-----------
| A | | We'll call it sector C.
| __ | B |
| |__|<-- C |-----------
| |
-----------------
Now, drag the vertecies over to where the door will be.
Remember, that this is the top half of the door ok?
-----------------
| |
| __|-----------
| A C -->|__| |
| | B |
| |-----------
| |
-----------------
Be sure you lay the verticies on top of the other one. You
are place the top right corner of C, to the top left corner
of B. Right? Ok. Make another sector C, and do the
exact same, except to the bottom part of the door. The
two vertecies from the old sector C should overlap the new
sector C. Like this:
-----------------
| A |
| __|-----------
| Old C -->|__| |
| New C -->|__| B |
| |-----------
| |
-----------------
Place a sector effector in each sector C. Put them in the place
where you want the door's pivot to be. You will have to turn
off Grid Locking for this. (Press "L") Do NOT put them on the
line, or it won't work. Get them as close as you can. Give each
SE a low-tag of 11, and each the same hi-tag. It doesn't matter
what the hi-tag is remember? As long as they're the same.
Raise the floor to the ceiling, and point the SE's to the way
you want them to open (experiment a bit). You can change the
direction of a sprite by pressing "<" and ">" in 2D mode. Add
textures, and try it out!