Section 1 - Connecting Rooms (Creating 'Doors')

We now have three rooms but what good is it if you can’t get from one to the other? Think of a “door” as a connection or portal between two rooms rather than a literal door. “Doors” can be a variety of sizes and openings. For instance, you must use “doors” to create water, mist or cobweb passages and with any use of transparent textures such as window panes, cell bars and cyclone fences. These portal connections can either be on a horizontal or vertical plane. They are simple to make when you follow the rules; but improperly constructed “doors” will give error messages and must be corrected before you can create the playable version of your level.

NOTE: “Wafer Thin Walls” Before getting started you should become familiar with the concept of wafer thin walls. To save polygons, outer walls (the gray squares) actually don’t have any thickness. Ceilings and floors don’t either. This isn’t a problem as long as there are no openings because all you see is the inside of these surfaces. However, if you don’t connect your rooms properly, you will have created a wafer thin wall that will seriously shatter the nice illusion of reality you have created!

Horizontal Connections (openings between two walls) Two methods can be used to create horizontal portals:

Method 1 - Demonstrates creating portals using a small connecting room the width of the door opening.

1. Begin by building a new room 2x3 squares and name it “hall 1 X”. This new room will default to 20 clicks in height so reduce it to 8. Select the ceiling squares, then use the CEILING “-” button to lower the ceiling. Check the “Ceiling” readout in the ROOM INFO BOX just beneath the EDITOR WINDOW buttons to see when you have reached 8.

2. Texture and light your connecting “Hall 1 X” however you like.

3. Move this hallway to the east (right) side of your “first room” so that the two rooms are touching but not overlapping. Position it half way down the side of the room. (Always refer to the demo model if your are confused about the location.) Make sure your floor elevations are at the same height. “First Room” and the “Hall 1 X” floors should read “0”.

4. Click on the small hallway to select it. In the PLAN VIEW grid, select the two center gray wall squares on the west (left) side of the hallway (if you select all 4 gray wall squares and try to make a doorway, you will get an error message).

5. Now click the DOOR button in the ROOM EDIT panel . The room in the PLAN VIEW grid will switch to “First Room X” – the room you just became connected with. Notice the two black door squares on the east (right) side of the room. If you don’t see the black squares, you did not successfully create a door.

6. Now, turn off the 2D MAP button, turn on the FACE EDIT and DRAW DOORS buttons. You should see your first room with the hallway connection.

TIP: Go back to the PLAN VIEW grid. Left click once on the black squares. You will see a green outline around the black squares. (You will also notice a line of text in a yellow box. This tells you what the highlighted area is.) Now right click and watch as the editor switches you to the adjoined room. This is a convenient method for navigating between rooms.

7. Next, position your “Cropped Room X” (the one with the central column) on the east (right) side of “Hall 1 X” that you just connected to your “First Room X”. Again, line up the rooms so they are touching, but not overlapping. In the PLAN VIEW grid, select the two center gray wall squares on the east (right) side of the hallway, then click on the DOOR button. You should now be connected with the “Cropped Room X”, and it should be displayed on the PLAN VIEW grid.

8. Copy your small hallway, name it “Hall 2 X” and repeat the above process to connect “Cropped Room X” to “Dome Room X”.

Method 2 - Demonstrates how to avoid the wafer thin wall problem by raising walls next to the connecting portal.

1. Select an empty room by clicking on the SELECT ROOM button and using the BOUNDING button crop it to 3 x 6 squares, 12 clicks in height and name it “Side Room X”. Raise the floor up 4 clicks. (Be careful to use the FLOOR “+” button, not the ROOM “+” button!)

2. Move it to the north (top) side of “Cropped Room X”, so the rooms are touching but not overlapping.

3. In the PLAN VIEW select the two center gray squares on the south (bottom) side of “Side Room X.” Click the DOOR button to create the portal. You should now be in “Cropped Room X”.

4. Click off the 2D MAP button to view your room in 3D. (If you can’t see it, you may have to click on the DRAW DOORS button to refresh the view.) Look at the walls between the two rooms. This is a perfect example of wafer thin walls! Not good!

5. In PLAN VIEW left click on your new door opening, then right click to get back to the adjoining room. (You can also use the ALT Z target cursor to move back “Side Room X”.)

6. Select a blue square on either side of the two squares in front of the “portal” (door), inside the small room. (You can do this from either the PLAN VIEW or the EDITOR WINDOW.) Check the demo model for location if unsure.

7. Click the WALL button on the PLAN VIEW panel. Repeat this process for the other side of the “portal.” Check your model to see the newly formed walls – problem solved!

8. Now you need to take care of all the little details:

a) Adjust the wall texture panels (divide in two)

b ) Texture the walls, floor and ceiling

c) Adjust the Ambient light setting

Vertical Connections (portals between ceilings or floors) work pretty much the same way except instead of creating a wall around the portal, you raise the floor at least one click or create a ledge by raising one row of squares around it. This will be perfectly clear when you create the water room later on in the tutorial.

Tips For Making Vertical Connections

The basic rule for connecting one room on top of another is:

“The highest point of the lower room can not be higher than the lowest point of the upper room.”

Below is a side view example of this basic rule. You want to connect the lower room “A” with the upper room “B” to make room “C”.



If you try connecting rooms using the above method, you’ll get the error message: “Cannot connect rooms”. Instead, raise the blocks on the right side of room “A” so they become as high as the highest part of room “A”. Then room “B” will connect to room “A”. Or you can temporarily lower the highest point of room “A”, make the connection, then raise the part you lowered.

Be careful of Random Floor Down/Random Ceiling Up

When using the Random Floor Down and the Random Ceiling Up features, take care to note your rooom’s new Floor and Ceiling elevations. If you could see a profile of your model, it would help! Even one single corner of one square lowered beneath the original floor or one ceiling square slightly raised will change the elevation read out. This can cause problems when connecting rooms. If you get the “cannot connect rooms” message, be suspicious – check your elevations!



NOTE: Disconnecting Rooms (Deleting “Doors”) Sometimes it is necessary to delete a door and begin again. Simply select the door area represented by the black squares in the PLAN VIEW grid and press DELETE on your keyboard. The rooms will become disconnected and your portal will vanish. Remember, to
select a door area it must be highlighted with a green selection square - if it is red, you will get the message, “No object selected.”

TAKING A LOOK

Time to check out your new additions (if you haven’t already) in PREVIEW MODE. Don’t forget to save often, and with a different project name!

SUMMARY OF SKILLS

So far you’ve learned how to build, texture and light a room and create a playable TR4 file so you can check your work “in-game”. You also learned how to copy the room you built, modify it to create an additional room and how to connect rooms horizontally by creating doors or “portals”. In this next section you will have the opportunity to learn and practice more advanced techniques in a special “practice” room, to better prepare you for SECTION III of the Tutorial.