Just a couple basic MaxED2 queries

[The Dave man]

Now that my exams are done, I got started on my first Max Payne 2 mod today, which is consequently also the first time I've really attempted to delve into MaxED2 with the aid of the "first-timers" tutorial from Remedy.

I've begun recreating my highschool, and have a basic layout of the halls set up; I made one floor and copied and pasted it ontop of itself twince more, with a little gap in between, to create all three floors. All three floors are closed in and there is one jump point on the bottom floor, no textures or anything yet. I wanted to link the floor together so I downloaded the MP2 stairs pack from Payne2TheMax, and stuck the 2 story stairs in my level, and miraculously they (seem to) line up perfectly with my floors.

The problem is the floors are completely closed in, you can't get to the stairs. I wanted to know how I could take out a section of a wall rather than eliminating the entire wall, to create a passageway to the stairs.

My floors are L shaped and each prong is about 100m long, with a portal dividing it in two. Also, sometimes I'll move the camera inside one floor, zoom back out so I can see them all, and only the one I was just in is visible, although the others are still there, just invisible; what the heck is that? Thanks guys for the help, these are my first steps on that 1000 mile journey.

[Ghast]

You'll get familair with the when to union and when to subtract with practice. Kipsta's has some great tuts!

The vanishing rooms is frustrating, but easy to fix. Just filter rooms off rooms on. Does it usually happen after a big boolian? *G* And I would get portals down to just the one required one, better safe than sorry.

[The Dave man]

That's right, I do only need one, I'll leave it on the 2nd floor I suppose just to create, or simulate, some sort of equilibrium. Thanks for the tips, I frequent Kipsta's regularly, and I'll check back now that I know what to look for: union and subtraction functions.

[The Dave man]

Also, I didn't know what booleans were until I just now found out, and no, up until that point, I hadn't even done any booleans. I'm working on uniting the stairs and my separate floors now though.

[The Dave man]

Check out the attachment, it's a picture of what I've got so far. I tried uniting the stairs to the halls but it gives me an error. Is it because the stairs have to be enclosed? It tells me: ERROR: Boolean: Cannot operate on differently flipped objects!

Sorry for my ignorance but I'm just about as beginner as they get at this, although I have high aspirations for my mod and my capacity to learn how to create it, by learning as I go I suppose.

[Ghast]

Ack! Start small, it makes it easier to fix stuff.

Don't boolian everything, really make an effort to understand the remedy prefab architecture tutorial.

MaxED2 can be pretty painless to use once you get your head around how it wants you to think. I am still learning and making big mistakes, so practice practice practive, but a step at a time.

Big open spaces need to be planned, but a string of small rooms can almost be done on the fly.

The door prefab in the example level is also great, good for determining scale, hope this helps?

[theHunted]

you should take a short timeout and take a look at this
http://aavenr.8m.com/ar_backface.html
(alternate version if the images are ****** up:
http://aavenr.8m.com/ar_backface_alt.htm )

tutorial by aavenr. the way you're currently mapping is illegal to say it in short words. you should try to understand the room-based mapping style of maxed first before proceeding, because you'll hardly get your map exported or ingame.

[biXen]

I'd say as you are just starting out, do not boolean anything at all, except unioning rooms together. I hardly ever boolean something together at an early stage, most often it does more harm than good, so just skip that for now except if you are making more complex objects.

[The Dave man]

So basically, I should be working with multiple smaller rooms rather than my large, L shaped ones? I haven't taken a look at the tutorial you pointed me to yet but I'll do that today.

[Joonas]

You can make two floors with a single modelling turn. First make one floor, then set everything up and TEST THE LEVEL IN-GAME. If it works (aka. you can play it without error messages or crashes) then go back add something. _Everything_ must be inside a room, including the stairs.

[The Dave man]

Well I think I've made some progress!

As you can see in the pic, I built an addition on the school around the stairs, a stairwell I suppose, and they fit incredibly well in there. I stripped the stairs of all their textures so it wouldn't give me erors about not being able to find the right textures, I'll apply some of my own later, I just want to get the functionality down first. I also removed the CHARACTER, CAMERAsomething and DUMMY textures, but I have a feeling they served a purpose. I then unified each floor to the stairwell and now it's one big room, minus one half of the middle hall which is separated by a portal. I corrected the zero area triangles, exported it and Max can run around like a nutcase. The stairs are difficult to walk up though, my guess is that CHARACTER texture made the stairs act like a flat ramp rather than incremental steps the character model might have trouble navigating, and I don't know how to fix it. I'm very happy though with the progress I've seen thanks to all your help, so thanks again.

Just a few more things, I'm only able to construct rooms and walls in MaxED2, which makes me wonder how one would go about making things like ventilating pipes, individual stairs, or the banister on the stairs. I hear a lot of talk about 3DMax5 as well, and just realized it came with the dev tools; what is it? Lastly, I wanted to start some basic texturing of my level, and I have around 2000 textures in like 180 different folders I took from MP2 using LDBRIP; is there a way to import them all into MaxED2 at the same time? I'd been importing them one by one, but that's extremely innefficient.

My next plan is to duplicate my stairwell, and have 4 in total, 2 for each L branch of the school, then maybe start class rooms. Let me tell you, this is a blast.

[Aknott]

and they fit incredibly well in there


Hehe http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif (bit proud of myself)



CHARACTER, CAMERAsomething and DUMMY textures, but I have a feeling they served a purpose.


Good feeling! The character collision slope allow characters to "walk" on it, instead of bouncing on steps. You should have Exclude from game instead of delete these...
There's a recent thread about indicators, you should read it.



is there a way to import them all into MaxED2 at the same time?


Download XnView (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/endownload.html), you will be able to drag and drop textures in the material window.

[biXen]

To make objects you gotta flip them, CTRL-F on the object in F4 mode, you REALLY should go through the tutorials and actually do it as you read it, it helps a lot.

[The Dave man]

Major props to you Aknott for all the helpful prefabs. I actually already have XnView, I didn't know you could drag and drop with it though. Just wondering how I can create some character collision textures for my (your) stairs rather than copying yours.

Also, I'm copying and pasting the stairs so I have 4, but when I move it, flip it 90 on the Y-axis then try to stick it on the other prong of my L shaped building, it doesn't fit like it did on the other side; is there any way I can move something like the stairs I'm dragging around more precisely, rather than by like 2 grid blocks at a time? Oh yeah, one last thing (for now), I have that one portal at the right angle of my L building on the second floor, and I've successfully united my 2 stairwells to all three floors on one side, but on the other side it can only unite the first and third floor, and says it can't boolean two rooms that are connected by an exit. Is there any way around this? I tried taking out the portal but it gives me an extremely annoying BSP tree creation failed error. Hmm...

[Ghast]

yeppers, that the main danger with more than one portal misplaced too soon. If I planned things better I wouldn't have to hide my one required portal in a closet (good advice *WEG*) - didn't I warn you?

[The Dave man]

Oh yeah, in MaxED2, is there any way to name your own Material dropdown catagories? They give you a list of names from which you can choose some predefined names when you choose to Add Catagory, but I already have them classified differently from that list and was hoping I could name my own catagories.

[Ghast]

those material categories determine decals/sounds etc used. You could write your own but do you really want to get into custom stuff so soon?

[Aknott]

Argg... You really need to re-read the official MaxEd and MaxEd2 tutorials.
You can encrease and decrease the grid unit with numpad+ and numpad-.
The MMB is also very usefull at start, to get the commands, and to learn the keyboard shortcuts.

[Aknott]

A BSP tree creation failed error is due to an unvalid geometry = you screw up a boolean or an exit operation...
Try to fix the meshes, if you still get the error you will probably have to delete and rebuild meshes...

There are some threads related to this error.

[Aknott]

To underline theHunted's post, The Dave Man, don't run into modelling without knowing basics. It's just like typing a C++ code without knowing what a function is.

And... build a short level with 2 or 3 small rooms at first, do some experiments. Building a level as large as the Pentagon, at first, will not lead you very far.

[The Dave man]

Alright, lots of responses, you guys are great, let's see...

No, I don't want to get into creating new Material catagories, I'll try and fit mine into the prexisting catagories. I knew about the grid resizing you can do, but didn't remember it affecting the preciseness of dragged objects, though I'll try it again, and will likely find it works. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif I'm becoming more and more familiar with what I can and cannot do in MaxED2, especially with keyboard commands. I've read over the Max Payne and Max Payne 2 tutorials again, and more of it makes sense now. I also checked that psychology of level design in MaxED article, which really clairified the mind set I need to be in when making my level, although I was aware of almost all aspects mentionned in it before I read it. I might just start again, but I'm going to keep tinkering around with what I have now to see what I can do and just get more, much needed experience with the program. I'll keep you updated. Plus, I just thought of exactly how I'm going to structure the gameplay associated with my level, a way I haven't seen anyone do yet. Should be interesting. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[The Dave man]

I've decided to restart my mod fron the ground up, so I can take advantage of all the things I've learned just in these past few days and put them to use right off the bat rather than work around blatant mistakes I've made now. I'm going to split both branchs of my L shaped building into 2 areas with a portal right off the bat for a solid foundation, maybe take the portals out for the 2nd and 3rd floor, and make my halls the same size as the ones in the actual game. I noticed mine were kinda smushed and the textures would fit much better if they weren't. I'll be sure to update when I've got the foundation...

...damn, I'll have to do those stairs over again, crap...

[The Dave man]

This may put me in the record book for most "quick questions", but I've got a few more before I restart.

The first is just how to make a basic door, one that swings open. Do I just slap a door texture on a wall then give it a command? I'll be needing normal sized ones for classrooms and double doors for my long halls, at the same points as my portals. Do I need to accomodate anything while I'm building the halls, or can I build them then come back later to put in doors?

Also, sometimes when I try to put a texture on a surface, it stretches it out which really ruins it, like ceiling tiles. Do I decrease the grid square size to reduce the amount the textures are stretched?

Lastly, something that's been bugging me from the very start, how can you place things like the texture for a graffiti, on a wall, but not have it tile itself? I don't think it's like sticking it on a prefab and hanging it on the wall; it's on the wall like a texture. Same thing goes for loose sheets strewn on the floor.

[Aknott]

I recommand you use the Remedy door_wood.pre prefab (in the MaxPayne2DevTools\Prefabs folder). This will help you to find the correct dimensions for doorways, and you will be able to change /replace the prefab later if needed. If you take a look at the code, you will see that it can be really complex.

For texture fitting, go in F6 mode and MMB for the commands.

Graffiti textures must be in the graffiti material category.
You can apply a graffiti texture on a 2d mesh, and put the mesh on a wall surface. Of course the mesh surface must have the texture proportions.
There are also some threads about graffiti textures.

[Joonas]

Also, sometimes when I try to put a texture on a surface, it stretches it out which really ruins it, like ceiling tiles. Do I decrease the grid square size to reduce the amount the textures are stretched?




F6, hover over the polygon, press 'U' or 'V'.

[The Dave man]

Great stuff, I'll remember it when I get back to work.