Short tutorial for Traveller Editor 0.3 Introduction Welcome to the manual of the Traveller Editor project. Please read carefully, and if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact the author at [email protected] Thank you for your patience, since this product is still under development in a very early alpha phase.

What is it for The Traveller Editor is a 3D world Editor (still under development) for 3d games. Although it was developed with FPS games in mind, you can use it to create maps for any other game you prefer. It incorporates creating levels for the game, with imported objects, monsters, and locally edited scripts. It also has a great support for plugins, extensions, but these are dealt in a different document.

Glossary The following terms are used frequently in the document below. Please make sure you are clear with their meaning - Level: Since this product is a level editor the most important term is of course the level. The level is a collection of objects that define how the game is played at one section of the game - Room: a level is usually built up of rooms. A room usually is having four walls a floor and a ceiling, but of course, you have the freedom to build rooms with more walls, and if you combine intelligently the floors/walls you'll be able to build stairs too… - Wall: A room has four or more walls. Every wall has four vertices (plural of Vertex). (In The current implementation of the engine, the player cannot walk through the walls). Imagine a wall as a polygon. - Floor/Ceiling: Horizontal walls are called floors/ceilings. The player can Walk on these two entities (so, if you plan to create a building with two or more levels remember this) - Imported Objects: These are entities created with another 3D modeling tool, such as 3d studio or anything else. You must save these objects as MD2 or ASC format. - Lights: Lights make the level look much more realistic

First steps When you start the editor you'll see a screen like the one below

So, as you can see above, the screen is composed of a Menu, a Toolbar, four black panels (the ones with the grid are the editing panels, and the entirely black one is the 3D preview panel) and a tree on the right (incorporated in a tab control), which does look like a list box for now, but you can believe me that it's a tree. The left/upper view is the one in which we see the world from above (XZ coordinates, Top view), the right upper view is the one that shows the world viewed from the front (XY coordinates, right view) and the bottom left one shows the level from the side (ZY coordinates side view). The bottom/right view shows the level from first person view, as we'd be walking through it. Here, with the left button pressed over this window you can look around, and when you press the right button you actually move through the level, just as in a first person game (The only difference: here you can walk through the walls so that you can easily inspect the level). The top view is the most important from all of them, because this allows us to create new entities, such as new walls or new floors in a very convenient 'architect' mode (ie. top down view) . The other two editing views are used mostly for placing or moving, rotating the objects (but of course, you can use them to create objects too, but please do not forget, that you'll still have the 'top-down' feature activated… to understand this let's take it like this: If in the TOP view you create a cylinder, that will be as you have expected it to be, a vertical cylinder, but if for example you create the same cylinder on the FRONT view,

actually it will be a Tube… If you keep this in your mind it'll ease your work to a quite high level, when creating your levels.). To make your life easier, there is a coordinate system with grids, and the following conventions: The BLUE line is the X axis in the 3D world The GREEN line is the Z axis in the 3D world The RED line is the Y axis. You can see these conventions in the 3D view, and in all of the projected views.

Let's Make Something We now want to create a room so do the following: -

Press the button on the toolbar so that we put the editor in 'Wall placing mode' Position your mouse on the top view Press the right button so that you start drawing the walls of your room. Draw the room of your dreams, just right click when you want to start a new wall Right Double click/press Escape when you feel you are done The following should appear:

That means that you have finished creating a room (or one or more interconnected rooms… don't forget to leave place for doors) of your game so, the application has automatically created a group for them (default) and placed the walls inside it. All the walls (or polygons of the complex objects you can create, such as sphere, cone, etc …) will be placed in the currently selected default group (the default group is bolded in the tree). In the initial stage this is “default” but you can create groups (right click on “Wall groups” tree entry, and choose ”New Group”) and you can make your groups “default” too, by right clicking on them and selecting “Make default target”. No I wanted to see all the things with some textures on them, so just press the last button on the toolbar. The situation changed to the following:

Now, of course we have to create a new floor too, so just click on the create floor button , and draw it. I have added the new floor to the “group_1” group after I have made it default target using the above presentation .

So, this is our first Room. It has no ceiling so we really can see the stars. I just leave it at your discretion to add a ceiling to this room.

The Next Steps Positioning a wall This editor of course allows you to do more things to do. Such as modifying the walls. How you can do that is very simple: Click on the check box of the wall in the tree, and with this you have selected the wall (you can select more than one wall if you like to). Please note how the color of the wall has changed to Red to indicate its selected state.

Now, let's make the wall taller. Click on the button, which means you will vertex move mode (i.e., you'll be able to move the common vertices of the selected walls). Make your room look like:

(Yes, I know it's ugly but this is only for teaching purposes). The operations are as the usual classical press left, move the mouse, release left… The Editor will update the screen in real time, so that you now what happens. Here is a list of different buttons from the toolbar you can use to move objects around the screen (mainly walls ) Used to move the selected objects (and walls, of course). Moving is realtime, update to the screen happens instantaneously Used to move the vertex from the selected wall, to which we are the closest. On the top view it will move BOTH the vertices (if the line is horizontal) Used to move a vertical line, without taking care for its height. Top view: same as above Used to move a vertical line, but with taking care for its height

Let there be textures. Ok, now we would like to change the textures of a wall. Nothing easier. Please click in the tree view on the wall you want to change the texture (on the name of the wall, not its checkbox). This will bring up a small window just like on the screenshot, with all the properties of the wall (please note: If you click on a wall while other walls are selected using the

checkboxes of them the operations that you will do in the small window will affect all the selected walls. This way you can change the texture for more than one wall at the same time). Now click on the small button after the texture's name and choose a BMP file. The editor will load the texture you have selected and use it to draw your wall. See below:

There is another way to assign a texture to the wall: Click on the Textures Tab, this will show you a list of textures that were placed in the 'textures' sub-directory (of the directory in which your executable resides) and choose from the list:

Importing objects Yes, you can do import objects from MD2 or ASC files. Just go to the File menu, and you can see there 'Import'. Choose the object you like, and open it. I have imported a barrel… Do you see how big and ugly it's? 

But nothing to fear. Just do the following: - Deselect the wall by unchecking it. - Select the barrel from the tree by checking it. Choose a texture for it, by clicking on the “…” button in the Object‟s window. Acknowledge the texture. -

There is a button: 'Scale' . Press it. By positioning you mouse on the top view scale the object so that you like its size. Just like this. Small trick: By moving on different views your mouse will get different scaling factors (for the three different axis) so if you want to scale on XZ, move your mouse on top view, and so on… By pressing the 'Ctrl' button while scaling you'll get uniform scale.

The only problem is that this barrel does not stand as supposed to. No problem. There is a button 'Rotate' . Press it. Position your mouse on the Side (ZY) view (left, bottom). If you rotate the selected object on this view it'll always be rotated on the X axis (similarly, rotating on the Top (XZ) view will rotate the object on the Y axis and so on…). Make your barrel stay the way it's meant. But we are not done yet: Click on the barrel in the tree. You can see that it has a 'Skin'. Just select there a skin Bitmap, so that it will look like a normal barrel:

Do you like the result? Of course, you can move the barrel where you want to… It does not has to stay there. For this you can use the button (which in its turn can be used to move selected walls to...  )

Scaling and rotating Now let's present the scaling and rotating: is the Scaling buttons. It scales the selected objects according to the view on which you 'press' the mouse button, and drag it (after you release you can press, drag, release again, this way making a new scaling). Depending on X/Y movement of your mouse, the object will be scaled on the accoring axis the specified quantity (for example, if tou scale on the TOP view, your object will be scale on th X and Z axes, if you scale on the FRONT view you object will be scaled on the X and Y axes, and if you scale on the side view, your object will be scaled on the Z and Y axes) . If you press the Ctrl button while scaling you'll get both scale units to be the same, just as if there wouldn't be difference between X and Y scales is the Rotation Button. On each view you press, drag, release (the mouse) and the selected object is rotated according to your needs on the axes you specified when you selected on which editor to press/drag your mouse (see above). If you press the Control Button you'll get a crosshair cursor and by clicking (while still pressing the Ctrl) you can specify new rotation center (this rotation point initially is the origin)

Two types of selection There are two ways of selecting objects (mainly talking about walls) in the editor. The first is to check them in the Tree on the right. This selects both the walls, and their vertices. However, you cannot select only the vertices of a wall from the tree item. They are there only for informative purposes. For selecting the vertices you have to use the selection tool When you press this tool, draw a selection rectangle over the vertices you want to select, and TADA, you have your vertices selected. You can only move these vertices. You cannot rotate, and you cannot scale them. Please note, that if you have selected all the vertices of a wall, the wall will be selected too.

The window of the walls

This window contains no more, than the properties of the currently selected wall from the tree view. Beware! There is a difference between checked and selected walls. This wall displays the properties of the currently selected wall, so the wall in the tree view which has a blue or gray background. The buttons of the wall as follows: -

-

This button Flips the wall, so that it faces the other direction. Meaning: The walls on the views have their normal drawn (the short blue line). If these lines point toward the player the wall actually is facing the player, so that it will be drawn by the engine when it comes about hidden face removal (Clockwise/Counter clockwise setting…)

This button rotates the texture of the wall, so that if your textures seem to be rotated just press this button a few times, till you get the desired texture on your polygons (don't forget to switch to Textured view on the toolbar) The edits P1.x … P6.z are the coordinates of the wall. The wall is built up from the vertices P1, P2, P6, P5 (in this order) so here you can see them. Why they are here is a long story, I'll better not share them with you. This might be changed in the future. The text fields P1.U … P6.V are the texture coordinates of the different vertices. Here I'll share a trick with you: The apply button works applies the changes for all the checked/selected walls, not only the one that is described in this window. So, select the walls (by checking them in the tree) then click on one of the walls if you don't see the

wall window, then modify the texture coordinates in the window and press apply. It will apply the texture coordinate modification for all the selected walls. The texture text field works just the same way as above, you can apply a texture for more than one wall. The Two buttons you see after the Texture text field have the following meaning: - opens a simple Load BMP dialog, here you can specify the Bitmap file that is not in the 'texture' sub-directory. - opens next tab from the main Tab screen (the one with textures) and there you can select your favorite texture Of course, you see the 'Wall state' Tab page too on the small screen. FYI: That is an extension. If you want to know more about extension, please read the document about how to create extensions.

Complex Objects Complex objects such as cube, sphere cone can be created using the tool. Just click on the tool bar the icon of your preferred object, and drag the object‟s base on any of the views. Please note, that depending on the view you have drawn the base, your object will be perpendicular to it. Please see the following screen showing a sphere created in the tool:

Paths Paths are as their name suggests something on which objects can move. To create a path you will have to click on the „Create Path‟ button, and then draw the path on one of the views. When you have finished creating the path, you will be asked to assign it to a path group (path groups are like wall groups, the only difference is that they group paths). After done with this you can do the followings with the path: 1. Smoothen the path – Meaning, this path will be „smoothened‟ using a Bezier curve (of course, it will take more points and memory, so the movement on it will be much nicer). Some of the operations that are shown in the Paths window can be done only on a smoothened path (such as create motion) 2. Create motion – Motions are mobile objects from your game. You can create a motion on a smoothened path 3. Create Tube – Once you have a smoothened path, you can create a tube on it, by selecting the path, and in the path‟s object window click the “Create Tube” button:

Outro A few things don't work (on December, 2007)… such as copying/pasting the objects. I'm working on this right now. The Edit menu is totally out of order… I'm working on that too 

Regards, Fritz [email protected]