Now it's time to actually start up a map. We will start with a blank map. To get this, all you need to do is choose the file menu, then new. You should then be presented with a window that is divided up into the following four views. Please note the numbered areas and use the key below to learn what they are.

Click for Large Version (will open new window)

You should notice a small world in the very center of each view. This world is the first "brush entity" in our new map. However, it's an "empty" brush which means it doesn't actually show up in game. It's basically a marker for the exact center of your map.

Now for some notes about how the Serious Engine, and more importantly, the Serious Editor, views the map you are currently looking at. There are two options, and what you do first is what makes this decision for you. The editor can either see the world as fully solid (like a huge block of clay), or as completely empty. This is a very important thing to understand, so I will go into it a bit more deeply.

First of all, we will discuss the option of the world being made out of a solid mass, or block of clay. If you have a block of clay, the only way to make a map out of it is to use some tool to dig hollow spaces out of the center of the block of clay. Once you have a hollow space, or "room," you can then add more clay into that space to form architecture, like beams or buildings or whatever.

On the other hand, if you have a completely empty world, you must add blocks to it to create rooms. For example, you could create a house out of lego blocks. The important thing to remember about this is that you can't have spaces between legos that lead to the outside, where there is nothingness. Holes into the nothingness are called leaks, and can cause some very serious problems.

So, how do you get the world to think of that space as you want it to? Well, your very first action is what decides the issue. If you place a hollow "room," the outside space becomes an infinitely huge block of clay. If you place a standard architecture brush (like a beam, or a wall), the outside space becomes infinite nothingness.

Now, something that's been suggested time and again by numerous level editors is this: Never, ever start with a solid piece of architecture! Always start with a room. There are many reasons for this, but it seems that the most important reason is because it's easier and it helps prevent leaks. If you prefer editing each individual wall or whatever, the best idea is to simply create a huge "room" and then build your other architecture inside of it.

So, how do we go about creating the first room? It's actually very easy! Perhaps not as intuitive as other editors, but once you get used to it, it will become second nature. The first thing you need to do is create a "conus primitive" (which is just a fancy way of saying create a brush). To do this, you use the "Create Conus Primitive" button ().

When you do this, the following window will pop up. Also notice that the mode indicator has switched to red, letting us know that we are now in the CSG or layer mode.

Now, don't worry if the values in your boxes are different. I didn't want to reinstall Serious Sam just to figure out what the default values were!

This box is very important, you should practice these steps with different values so you can learn exactly how it works. I will explain most of it, but there is nothing that can help as much as practice. The following table explains the commonly used boxes (the others will be covered in later tutorials.

Please copy the values I have above into your boxes. This will ensure that you have a similar project. Having a similar project is important because when creating brushes, I will give you exact values to type in for position, etc., and if you have a different project, these positions won't work correctly for you.

Each time you type in a new value, press the [Enter] key on your keyboard. This will update the view in the map windows and the 3D perspective view. This allows you to see exactly what you're creating as you're creating it. Please note that this brush is currently not part of the world! This is a nice feature because you can play around with the brush before you actually add it. Unlike a lot of editors, in the Serious Editor, once you add a brush to the world, it can get pretty complicated if you later need to move or delete it. I will discuss this in greater detail later.

Basically what you're doing now is creating a new brush. Not that complicated. You type in the size you ant, the position you want, and then you add it to the world (later steps). It is important to understand what is going on, because if you don't, you will easily become lost in the news few sections of this tutorial.

Those of you coming from other editors may be wondering about these steps. In other editors, you use the mouse to draw boxes, and those boxes are your brushes. Once you have these boxes drawn, you may use a "hollow" type function in order to hollow it out. In the Serious Editor, it works differently. As we've discussed, if you create this brush as a "room" it will be hollow, but if don't, it will be solid. As far as I know, there is no way to "draw" a new brush with the mouse in this editor.

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