This is the first in a series of tutorials designed to teach both beginners and experienced mappers how to use the Serious Editor. The Serious Editor is the mapping tool that shipped with Serious Sam, and is the tool Croteam used to create all the maps in Serious Sam.

The Serious Editor is a very powerful tool, but by its design, there are some limitations that have to be worked around by the mapper. These limitations and their workarounds will be discussed in detail in later tutorials. This is a basic tutorial designed to walk the reader through the following objectives.

• Become familiar with basic navigation.
• Learn how to create "rooms" and other architecture.
• Learn how to place lights.
• Learn how to place enemies.
• Learn how to save and test a basic map.

These are the main objectives, but understand that there are many steps to each of those, and other details will be discussed as well. If you are new to mapping in general, this is a good place to start. If you have experience with other mapping tools, but are new to mapping for Serious Sam, this is also a good place to start. There will be some theory that you will probably already know, but there are differences in the Serious Engine that will be discussed.

This tutorial assumes you have purchased the full version of Serious Sam. You cannot get the Serious Editor anywhere but the Serious Sam CD.

You must have chosen the "full" installation option in order to have the editor installed. If you haven't done so, the best way to get the editor off the CD is to uninstall and then reinstall the game. Once the installation is complete, you can find the Serious Editor under the Start menu, Programs, Serious Sam, Extras, Serious Editor. Note that if you didn't choose the default for creating start menu program groups, it might be elsewhere. Just look under the "Extras" folder.

Some things to note right off the bat. Also in the extras folder you will find the Serious Modeler, the tool used for creating and animated weapons, enemies, etc. The Serious Modeler is not covered in this tutorial. You will also find an SDK help file, which contains a tutorial on creating a basic room. You might note that that's one of the objectives here, but try going through that tutorial, and then you'll understand why I chose to write a new one. It's fairly complex and hard to understand. Finally, there is another "Extra tutorials" folder that contains tutorials submitted by other authors. It's a good idea to read through them, once your comfortable with the material presented here.

With all that out of the way, it's time to start the Serious Editor! It may take a few seconds to boot up, depending on the speed of your computer. A good way to ensure that it will run as fast as it should is to close all (or at least most) of your other applications. Once the editor is up, you should see a blank window like this:

Click for Large Version (will open new window)

If you see a window divided into 4 squares, it means you have opened a map somehow. Just use the file menu and click on close to get rid of it.

The main areas we are focusing on in this tutorial have circled numbers by them. Please familiarize yourself with these areas using the table below. Please don't bother yourself with memorizing them. This tutorial will discuss each area in detail. Please note that these aren't all the areas we will discuss in this tutorial, these are just the basic ones that you need to be familiar with for the moment.

It is very important to remember to watch the mode indicator. If you are in a mode that is different from the one discussed in certain areas of this tutorial, the editor will appear to be acting up (as when you press a certain key, the expected action will not happen, something else will). If something doesn't happen as it should, double check your mode indicator!

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