Feedback, corrections, and suggestions welcome.
http://planetwolfenstein.com/4newbies/radiant101.htm
From the top of the the tutorial:
This is not an all-in tutorial on Radiant. What I am trying to do here is explain what the various buttons and menu options do, at least the ones I ended up using in my first 60 days of mapping. The target audience is the new mapper who installs Radiant for the first time and goes, “Huh, WTF do I do now??!!”
Wow that is really nice.
Have you thought about describing all the items in the entities menu.
P.S.
You mentioned somewhere that the player box is 84 units high. I don’t remember this right but I think it is 56 units high. All the dimensions are in the manual somewhere. I don’t remember it very well now and I could be wrong, but if I’m not mistake 8 units in Radiant is one foot in game. the player model is 1.75m tall, which is a little less than 6 feet. So I think it might be 56 units…again I’m not sure as i don’t remember it well.
hmmm, I really couldn’t remember. That’s one of the details I need to go back and fix
16 q3u is a foot, iirc. also, i believe that players were 56 q3u in q3a, and 84 in rtcw.
Gah. You are remembering q3 measurements. q3 != et.
standing player is 72 units tall. For smooth movement, the ceiling should be a little taller. Possibly this is where the 84 comes in.
Ifurita:
Nice work. Not modem friendly, but very nice. 
Here are a few suggestions:
compile menu section needs a bit of work. You have
vis -fast described as “compile required to determine vis” while that is really minimal vis for testing, and vis without the -fast is a full vis. While you can load a .bsp that hasn’t even had a vis -fast, in my experience, it is really painful. Describing the difference between the ‘single’ options and the others would also be good. More advanced, but you might also mention that you can add options to the compile menu through the project settings dialog.
mention that grids less than 1 should be avoided for brushwork.
http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=432
mention find/replace textures in the texture menu. This is one of the most useful features ever. Mention texture lock too.
mention the entity window.
describe the status bar stuff, esp. texture lock indicators.
the bottom toolbar is the ‘plugin toolbar’ all the buttons come from various plugins. Toolbars can be turned on/off in the preferences menu
the patch inspector. Not sure if you can get it from a menu or button, but shift+s is the default shortcut.
I have a cable modem and it seems to work fine for me. I think you meant to say “dialup” instead.
Nice work Iffy.
So, what does Texture lock do?
what entity window? The one you get to via ‘N’? or some other?
<— still learning this shit
Texture lock is under the textures menu. There is a lock for moves and rotations. The default is for both locks to be on. I never noticed them until somehow I turned them off, and then none of my textures would stay in place when I moved brushes around.
Play around with it to see how it works.
It just locks your texture coordinates and information once it is applied to a brush. Thats all. As if you had painted a picture on a canvas and now u are moving the canvas from your home to the studio… The picture on the canvas isnt gonna change, once you get to the studio, if u have texture lock on.
The ‘train icon’ plots the spline path(s). This allows a visualization of a path in Radiant - this way you can muck around with control and spline points before compiling and going to ET
Yeah I remember reading it on the old manual. Didn’t you or sock say you were going to update it at some point?
How much is one game foot in units. I though it was 8 but when I look at the map 8 units can’t be more than 10cm.
Since others have described what it does, I’ll just say why I find it useful.
Texture lock off is handy if you are cutting/cloning/moving stuff and you want to have the textures match up over a large area.
For example, imagine you are making a wall out of a brick texture, which has various corners and variations in it. A simple way to create this is to make one section, then clone, move the cloned piece to one end, adjust it as required, repeat. If you leave texture lock on, each section will have an ugly seam. If you adjust the texture on the first section, and then turn texture lock off for moves (shift + T) and rotations (shift + R) then the texturing will all line up, without additional adjustment.
If you do your initial construction with texture lock off, most of the texturing will be close to it’s natural (i.e. unmodified texture coords) position, thus leaving you with less alignment work to do.
Texture lock on is good if you want to completely clone some specific part.
The state of texture lock is indicated by the letters following L: in the status bar. R = rotation lock M = move lock.
what entity window? The one you get to via ‘N’? or some other?
Yeah, the N one. Important points:
With the testing I’ve done, with merging models from 3DSMax 12"=15.34 units… roughly. so I go 15 for smaller areas, and 16 for larger areas.
It’s weird tho, it’s seems as if the engine is accurate to any means. Looking down on measured objects 15 seems good, looking up at measured objects 15 is almost double what it should be. You really need to just use a size you feel looks the best and will work for what you’re going for.
Oh yeah, units seems to be larger in verticle size then horizontally. :banghead:
Where you describe texture find/replace you say
“you might have to manually enter the texture paths”
this isn’t really true. You click in the entry area, and then use any of the normal texture choosing methods (ie, click in the texture window, or select a face of the desired texture)
Yes, it took me a long time before I realize that.
Oh, and if a player is 72 units tall, than 1 unit = 1 inch makes sense (= 12 units = 1 foot, unless your feet are very big :D).
shift click on a shader in the texture window brings it up in an editor (configured in preferences)
In the plugin toolbar, the things with red triangles are bobtoolz split and merge patches. Very handy. Play with them and you shall understand.
Ah, that is very useful (the texture choosing methods). See, this guide is helping out already – ME!!!
Oh, and if a player is 72 units tall, than 1 unit = 1 inch makes sense (= 12 units = 1 foot, unless your feet are very big :D).
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That’s pretty much what we go by i think.
