Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my Duke3D level-editor FAQ page. When I first installed the shareware version of Duke and played the eight levels, I was astonished at the level of detail put into each level and the truly revolutionary things that were being done to the 3D first-person gaming genre. To my great pleasure, I read in gaming magazines and the closing screen shots of Duke about the free level editor they were going to be shipping with the registered version and the commercial CD.

Within days of its release, I ran out and purchased the game and immediately began playing with the editor; here on out referred to as Build. Unlike most other editors I've used with games such as Doom, this was a complete breakthrough in ease of use. Setting textures, sprites, & ceiling/floor heights was so easy I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Many kudos to the programming prowess of Ken Silverman, the brain behind the 3D engine used in Duke and the creator of this Build program.

Life isn't always perfect, I've found, and my early euphoria turned into frustration as I meddled with the editor and help files included with it. I couldn't manage to figure anything out those first few days, and the help files were much less than that. The program BuildHLP, which is included with the whole Build tools set, is good for laying out the basic details of level design; making sectors, splitting them, joining them, inserting sprites, and the like. What they failed to include was how to create the more advanced features; sliding doors, rotating sectors, subways, etc. They listed out the different Sector Effectors and what they did, but nothing as far as how to implement them, or how the sectors should be laid out.

I'm assuming in all of my tutorial pages that you've read the BuildHLP files and know how to make sectors, set ceiling/floor heights, insert sprites, change sprite tiles to Sector Effectors, and the common Build tasks. In certain places, I've pointed out how to accomplish a certain task in case it wasn't mentioned in the help files, or if the help files were simply wrong. The most frustrating error I came across early was how to make a sector within another sector. The help files say to hit ALT-Insert on the inner sector. This key combination duplicates sprites, unrelated to sectors. The real combination is ALT-S.

I decided early on in my quest to solve these puzzles that no one should have to struggle through making interesting and challenging levels for this awesome game. I spent many nights taking apart other levels to see how they, the level lords at 3DRealms, made their trick levels. Even then, the levels were so intricately laid out it was hard to discern the multitude of sprites overflowing my screen. And then I found the perfect maps. In the Build directory of your CD, there are two maps included with the editor. They are _SE.MAP and _ST.MAP. These two maps include every possible thing you can do with sectors. I tore them apart like a dog with a rag doll. Now everything seemed to fall into place.

There are many little tricks you need to know in order to make your levels appear seamless, and natural. What looks like a single line on a sample map may in fact be two, three, or even more lines layered on top of each other. The Build program is half 2D and half 3D. The 2D half can get quite confusing when sectors are layered over sectors (a very crucial effect when planning multi-floored levels.) Unfortunately, we can't spend all of our time in 3d mode.

Before you begin your very rewarding and challenging quest to make the ultimate levels, please heed some advice. Save your work often. On my 486 at home, the Build program frequently dumps me entirely from the editor when switching between 2D and 3D mode, taking with it the changes to my level I just spent twenty minutes on. I've gotten so used to it now that I simply save my work before I even switch over to 3D mode. If you have a relatively slower box, like a 486, I recommend highly that you save your work frequently. Make numerous backups of your level, ie naming copies like "mylevel1.map", "mylevel2.map" so that you have some history as your level progresses. If something goes terribly wrong, you have the last stage still on hand to revert to.

Acknowledgements:

I'd like to thank the following people for assisting me in level design, page layouts, and neat little tricks: Don Rogers, & John "Kasai" Leonard.

Contributing Authors:

The following people have contributed to the tutorial pages, making it the best we possibly can: Adam Ashley and Jean-Francois Groleau. Write and thank them sometime, they've done excellent work :)

If you've come across a neat effect, find an error in my page(s), have a suggestion for the layout, wrote a description on how to do something not listed here, or any undocumented information at all to do with the Build level editor, please send me a note, at ty@synet.net. I'll include your name here under acknowledgements and on any page I've created discussing your findings. I've still got some topics untouched right at the moment; I simply haven't had enough time to write out the tutorial. I look forward to hearing from people as they come across neat tricks and little caveats, so that we can share with the rest of the level makers out there. If you've found these pages useful, or informative, I'd love to hear about that too.

Good luck, and happy level-editing :)

Ty Matthews

Introduction

Acknowledgements:

Contributing Authors:

THIS PAGE IS NOT MADE BY OR SUPPORTED BY 3D REALMS