The UN - Offical Guide to Apogee's BUILD Editor Release 2 May 29, 1996 Matt Bollier 103220.3302@compuserve.com DESCRIPTION: This is an idiot's guide to making levels w/ BUILD. No, I'm not calling you an idiot, it's just that the documentation that came on the DUKE CD was a little, well, misleading. This document does not teach you all the fundamentals of making a level (adding new rooms, changing textures, etc.) I am assuming that you already know this stuff. What it does do is tell you how to make the cool effects that may have been absent from your levels so far. For example, earthquakes, smashing glass, even exits and doors. Hopefully, this will help those of you out there make cooler levels. DISCLAIMER: This file was not written by Apogee or 3dRealms or in association with them. Hence the "UN-OFFICAL GUIDE". Apogee will not provide support for levels you create! They also cannot provide any support for this document, only contact me with questions about this file. I will not be held responsible for any damages caused in whole or in part by this file, be it hard drive failure, memory loss, loss of appetite, your dog dying, or your house burning down. MAKING STUFF: The following information tells you how to make all the cool effects that you're trying to figure out. They are somewhat grouped by categories but if you want to find stuff quicker, just do a search w/ your text editor. Either use a keyword or in some cases, SE # (where # is the number of the sector effector you're looking for). DOORS AND LIFTS: Here's where you'll find how to make SOME doors and lifts (some are just too damn complicated to figure out right now): 1) CEILING RAISE DOOR: This is a tough one, all ya need is a sector effector (only if you want the door to auto-close) and a musicandsfx sprite. First make a sector that you want to be a door. You should lower the ceiling of the sector all the way to the floor, unless you're making some strange door. Next place a sector effector and a musicandsfx sprite on the floor inside the sector that is the door. Give the musicandsfx sprite a high and low tag of whatever sounds you want played, and give the sector effector a lo tag of 10 and a hi tag of the time delay you want on the door before it auto-closes (I usually use 256). Next, give the sector itself a lo-tag of 20 and you're all done! By pressing O on the walls that are on the inside of the door you can toggle between them moving when the door raises or not. 2) SWING DOOR SE 11: This one's a little complicated, but if ya can understand it, you'll be able to make 'em by the millions. You need to make a sector that only touches one neighboring wall w/ one vertex. This vertex will be the pivot point of the sector. It should look something like this I I I I I I--------------------*I <-- pivot point (*) and sector effector I I MSFX DOOR / I I I------------------/ I I I Note that only the pivot point (where you will also place the sector effector) is the only place to touch the walls around the door. Next, place a musicandsfx sprite in the sector, giving it the hi and lo tags of your choice for sounds. Place a sector effector as close as possible to the pivot point as you can while still keeping it within the door sector. Next, give it a lo-tag of 11, and a hi-tag of your choice. The angle of the sector effector determines which way the door will rotate around it. If it is angled up it will rotate clockwise, and if it is angled down rotate counter-clockwise. Give the door sector a lo-tag of 23, and a hi-tag that matches with the sector effector's hi-tag. You can link doors together with the hi-tags, so that if you open one door, another will open right next to it (creating a French door-like effect). This is important, you must leave enough room in the sector that the door is surrounded by for the door to swing open! Make sure you have enough clearance that when the door swings open, it does not go into any other sectors, otherwise you will notice that the door "dissappears" when it goes into another sector. EXPLOSIONS: Here's the stuff that blows up real nice: 1) THE EARTHQUAKE SE 2 This is a very very simple effect that for some reason (either people don't understand it or just don't want to use it) has been pretty much absent from most levels (except Ground Zero and Fistful of Steel ). All it involves is a touchplate, a sector effector, and a masterswitch. First, make sure you place all three of these sprites within the sector you wish to have the earthquake in (some can be in a diff. sector, but hey, you're learning here, keep 'em in the same sector). Give the sector effector a lo-tag of 2 and set the angle (using the < > keys to the direction that you want the floor to move during the quake) NOTE: this can seriously alter the structure of your map, make sure to leave enough space for the sector to move into and make sure you don't have anything that has to be carefully aligned or have any sprites that might be hit by a moving sector Next give the touchplate a lo-tag of any number (as long as you haven't used it yet) and give it a hi-tag of the number of times that you want the effect to happen (right now use 1, but you can use any number. 0 makes it happen everytime you walk in the sector). Give the masterswitch a lo-tag the same as the touchplate's lo-tag. Then give it a hi-tag of the amount of delay you want before the effect occurs. (Give it a delay of 0 for earthquakes, you don't really need it to be delayed) 2) FIRE EXTINGUISHER EXPLOSIONS (AND OTHERS LIKE IT) SE 13 Here's another easy one. On the map, make the structures that you want to show up after the explosion has taken place. Next, place a Sector Effector in the sector that is going to be blown up and give it a lo tag of 13 and a hi tag of your choice. Next, place the extinguisher or other object that is going to blow up in the desired location. Give it a hi tag that matches with the sector effectors hi tag. That's it! To make it more complicated you can do a few different things: A) Floor or ceiling explosions only: You can have the floor drop out or ceiling explode instead of walls blowing up. All you have to do is set the sector effector to where you want the ceiling or floor to raise or lower to before the explosion. You should probably set it to the same height as the neighboring sectors. Then, set the sector effectors angle down, which causes the nearest piece (either floor or ceiling) to come to it. If the angle is up, both the floor and ceiling meet there. Now, it's ready to blow up. B) Timed explosions: You can have explosions occur after the initial explosion as well. Put seenine sprites where you want explosions to occur, giving them a hi tag the same as the sector effector and a lo tag of the time delay you want. A time delay of about 60 occurs about a second after the initial explosion. You also have to "shrink" the seenine sprite along the x-axis so that it does not show up as a can (the explosion will be normal size). Use the 4 and 6 keys on the keypad to change the x-axis size. You can link timed explosions to earthquakes by putting another touchplate in the earthquake sector that has the same hi tag as the sector effector in the sector that is going to explode. Everything above applies the same. MISCELLANEOUS: 1) WATER SE 7 This is the easiest of all effects. All you need to do is make two sectors exactly the same size (start w/ a square room for now). Give the sector that you want to be above water a lo-tag of 1, and the underwater sector a lo-tag of 2. Next put a sector effector in each sector, in the same spot relative to walls, and give each a lo-tag of 7 (make sure both are on the ground). Then give them any hi-tag you want (they both have to be the same) and make sure you haven't used that hi-tag yet. 2) SMASHING GLASS This is quite a simple effect, once you understand it. Make a spot where you want to have the glass (NOTE: you can only use glass in certain areas) preferably a windowsill. In 3d mode, press M on the bottom or top of windowsill (the lower or upper wall, not the inside wall or floor or ceiling) Then you should see a "ugly brown texture" in front of you. Press V and change it to glass. Next press B while the cursor is over the glass, then press H. When you return to 2D mode you should see a pink line that is very thick (almost like 2 lines in one). Now, you have some glass that you can smash. 3) MAKING RED AND BLUE SECTORS By simply changing the palette of the walls and floors and ceilings of sectors, you can make those cool red and blue rooms like in the real game. Simply press alt-p while highlighting the desired object's palette you wish to change while in 3d mode. Then put in a number (1 or 2 for the colored rooms). You can also do this on objects (but they are auto palette converted if they are in a colored room). By setting weapons to a palette of 1, they are placed in multiplayer mode only. You can also change the colors of the enemies using numbers around 12 and in the teens. Instead of a blue trooper, you can have a green or red one, but the skin color doesn't change. When you use certain palette swaps, you'll notice that the whole object changes color. You'll probably want to avoid this unless you're trying to make some groovy 70's kind of pyschadelic level (did I spell that right?) 4) CAMERAS This is almost a necessity for DukeMatch levels, and it's one of the easier effects. All you need is a Viewscreen and Cameras to play the video. First, create a spot for the viewscreen. Next, put a viewscreen sprite on the wall by first hitting S to create it, get it to the appropriate height, and press R if you need to so that it is flat. Now, give it a hi-tag of anything you want that will refer it to the cameras it will view. Put the cameras wherever you want them along the map, setting the angle of the sprite to the angle of the view, and use the shading keys to set the angle of it looking up and down (haven't figured out yet if darker means lower or higher). Give the cameras a hi-tag of the rotation you want them to have (stick with increments of 128) and give it a lo-tag that is the same as the viewscreen's hi-tag. Don't forget to press control - page up to put the camera on the ceiling, otherwise it will look bad. 5) TELEPORTERS SE 7 : This works almost the same as water, but not quite. Put a sector effector in each sector that is involved in the teleporting (total of 2). Both sectors should be the same size (I think) and the SE should be in the same spot relative to the walls. Give each SE a lo tag of 7, and give them matching hi tags of any number. Put both SE's on the floor, and set their angles to the angle the player will face when he teleports into the sector. That's all there is to it! 6) EXITS Don't strain yourself on this one. You need a NUKEBUTTON sprite that is flat (press R) on the wall. Give it a lo-tag of 32767 to end the level, or a lo tag of 1 through 11 to end the level and go to a bonus level. If you're going to a bonus level, give the sprite a palette of 14, otherwise leave it at 0. Here's a better way to play your .MAP's: - You can play the maps you create by going through setup -OR- use the better method, type : duke3d map xxxx where xxxx is your map name (.map is not required) Questions, comments? Send me anything you have to report (or suggest) about this file. Did I give the wrong sector effector number? This stuff is important, tell me! You can e-mail me at 103220.3302@compuserve.com. You may distribute this text file in any format provided it is not altered in any way (this is a subtle hint to those of you making those big CD collections to put this file and my .MAP's on your CD).