(making a minimal building having a door, window, rooms and hallway (corridor))

Prerequisite

This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with the material covered in the first Hello Serious WLD tutorial, which covered making a minimal Serious world that can be selected and played from within the Serious game itself.

More specifically, it assumes the use of the HelloSeriousWorld.wld world file that you create during that tutorial (a world consisting of an added 1024x1024x1024 conus CSG "room" that is located at 0,0,0, with a temporary work light (type: ambient, hotspot and falloff: 1024, located at 0,512,0) that allows viewing the world, and with a playermarker located at 0,0,0, with an orientation of 0,0,0).

Intro

The 1024x1024x1024 room discussed above serves as the outdoors play area for this world. Its floor serves as the ground on which the player and enemies will run around and on which building(s) will be placed. Its walls and ceiling will eventually serve as portals through which a view of the sky textures and directional "sun" light of a background (skybox) will be provided by the background's backgroundviewer.

Note: In the following, positioning of pending conus CSG primitives is accomplished via typing in coordinates. It is also possible to accomplish positioning by hovering the mouse over the pending primitive, and using Ctrl+LeftMouseButton to drag/move them.

Let's Get Started

File | Open the HelloSeriousWorld.wld file from where you stored it earlier (presumably somewhere within the Worlds subdirectory).

Add a Building

Add a solid rectangular building, on the ground (the floor of the large room), by clicking the Create Conus Primitive button , setting the dimensions to W 16 L 48 H 8, unchecking the Room checkbox (so that it is empty), clicking the Position tab, setting the location to X 0 Y 0 Z -40 and orientation to 0 0 0, and clicking the Add button .

This results in:

Top View

front view

Side View

Add a Door

Add an empty rectangular door to the building, with its bottom flush with the ground and the bottom of the building, in the building wall facing the PlayerMarker, by clicking the Create Conus Primitive button , setting the dimensions to W 4 L 1 H 6, checking the Room checkbox (so that it is filled), clicking the Position tab, setting the location to X 0 Y 0 Z -16.5 and orientation to 0 0 0, and clicking the Add button .

This results in:

Top View

front view

Side View

Add a Window

Add an empty rectangular window to the building, to the left of the door, in the building wall facing the PlayerMarker, by clicking the Create Conus Primitive button , setting the dimensions to W 2 L 1 H 3, checking the Room checkbox (so that it is filled), clicking the Position tab, setting the location to X -5 Y 2 Z -16.5 and orientation to 0 0 0, and clicking the Add button .

This results in:

Top View

front view

Side View

Add a Room

Add an empty rectangular room to the building, immediately inside the door, in the end of the building nearest the PlayerMarker, by clicking the Create Conus Primitive button , setting the dimensions to W 14 L 15 H 7, checking the Room checkbox (so that it is filled), clicking the Position tab, setting the location to X 0 Y 0 Z -24.5 and orientation to 0 0 0, and clicking the Add button .

This results in:

Top View

front view

Side View

Add A Hallway (Corridor)

Add an empty rectangular hallway (corridor) to the building, leading from the first room to where the second room will be, by clicking the Create Conus Primitive button , setting the dimensions to W 2 L 16 H 4, checking the Room checkbox (so that it is filled), clicking the Position tab, setting the location to X 0 Y 0 Z -40 and orientation to 0 0 0, and clicking the Add button .

This results in:

Top View

front view

Side View

Add Another Room

Add an empty rectangular hallway to the building, immediately after the hallway (corridor), in the end of the building farthest from the PlayerMarker, by clicking the Create Conus Primitive button , setting the dimensions to W 14 L 15 H 7, checking the Room checkbox (so that it is filled), clicking the Position tab, setting the location to X 0 Y 0 Z -55.5 and orientation to 0 0 0, and clicking the Add button .

This results in:

Top View

front view

Side View

NOTE: Once the building itself is added, the rest (door, window, rooms, hallway) can be added in any sequence.

Update The Thumbnail And Save The World

Update the thumbnail image file (.tbn) for the world, via File | Save Thumbnail. Save the world file (.wld), via File | Save.

Test The World

Hit "T" to test. When finished, hit Esc to exit testing.

Play The World In The Game

Copy the HelloSeriousWorld .wld, .tbn and .vis file to the Levels directory (or some subdirectory within it).

Start the game and play the world via Single Player | Custom Level | Hello Serious World.

But It Looks All Yucky!

If you have done these two tutorials exactly as written, all surfaces in the world have the same texture...... and the lighting is monotone in nature, with no shadows, etc. And there is no sky and sun. (And if you are editing on an old and/or 16 bit card, like me, you may be seeing some weird colors.)

You could hit "P" for polygon mode and then select various surfaces (ground, building walls, etc.) and assign them various ground and building-like textures. And you could resize textures.

You could hit "E" for entity mode, select the light and change its type (to "point") and hotspot value to 256 to obtain some crude shadowed lighting. And you could employ multiple lights, etc.

You could add a sky and sun by dragging and dropping a background (skybox) from the virtual tree's Background category/folder to the world, positioning it (via Ctrl+LeftMouseButton dragging or via hitting "Q" and using the Position tab) TO A LOCATION OUTSIDE OF (A DISTANCE AWAY FROM) THE LARGE OUTDOOR/PLAY AREA ROOM, setting its location to X -768 Y 1264 Z 768 with an orientation of 0 0 0, and hitting the Add button.......then hitting "P" to switch to polygon mode, selecting the large outdoor/play area room's walls and ceiling polygons, hitting "Q" for Tools Info, selecting the Polygon tab, then clicking the Portal checkbox (so that it contains a checkmark). TO SEE THE RESULT, YOU WILL NEED TO HIT "6" ON THE NUMERIC KEYPAD, THEN HIT "T" TO GO INTO TESTING. (This works in First Encounter (patched to 1.05) and Second Encounter.) When done testing, hit Esc to exit testing, then hit "0" on the numeric pad to return to the normal editing views.

To see the world to its best effect, save it, copy it, etc. and go play it in the game.

Yeah, But It Still Looks Yucky And I Still Need To Know A Lot More About Editing Serious Worlds!

Remember, this tutorial's purpose was just to provide you the minimum necessary for you to be able to add a building with a door, window, two rooms and a connecting hallway.

Check out the Basic Mapping Tutorial tutorial on Serious Editing and the room building tutorial in the Serious Editor's own help. Mapping forums and additional tutorials are available on Seriously! and Serious Editing.

-Michael Harris