The Beginning

Upon the recommendation of my modding partner Jedi_Mediator, I decided to begin my work in the field of mapping, which is said to encompass many of the other facets of modding(i.e. brushes, textures, shaders, and models, as previously mentioned. This past Labor Day, I invited JM (who is indeed one of my real-life best friends) over to my house to begin working with GtkRadient, a level design program developed by id Software and Loki Software. GtkRadient is used to create maps for a number of computer games, but the version I downloaded was developed for use with the Quake III Arena game engine, which is what Jedi Academy and its predecessor use.

During his time here, Jedi_Mediator showed me some of the GtkRadient's more basic functions, starting out with simple tutorials covering processes such as creating brushes, texturing them, and hollowing them out to make rooms. Afterwards he moved on to more complex things like making doors open and close, placing models, and creating light sources.


What I constructed under JM's direction was basically a single room with textured control panels on two walls, a row of support structures along one wall, and a moderately-sized "garage" door that open whenever the player presses the "use/interact-with-environment" key. To either side of the door are lights, one on each side. Within this chamber I placed three crates in close proximity to each other: two large crates (one of which was set at a random angle -- nonparallel to the walls, in other words) and one small crate stacked on top. Lastly, I placed a Gonk droid in the corner in the far corner of the room, hidden behind the crates. In my next entry, I will elaborate on these boxy robots.

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