Better way to quickly create rooms

thenextguy32 · January 30, 2019, 8:36pm

Is creating a room a very time-consuming process for you? Even the most basic six-sided room with a southern door needs has to have a door part, the southern wall above and to the left and right of the door, the floor, the east, west, and north wall, and a ceiling. This may seem tenable until you have to make the floor wider, causing just about every piece to need to resize. I find myself constantly disabling and reenabling collisions so that my pieces mesh perfectly.

Is there a better way, or am I just unused to the expected workload for creating? For reference I’m creating a single player shooter campaign level from like 2001 where its just move straight turn move straight turn etc. Just creating a bridge and three hallways has been exhausting.

Would you commission a level designer? I’m mainly a gameplay programmer and AI type.

thenextguy32 · January 30, 2019, 11:24pm

Im saying this takes forever. You even were lazy and didn’t complete the corner or place the ceiling.
I feel like the whole project could be taken up by level making alone, let alone all the code that it takes to make a project come alive.

WingItMan · January 30, 2019, 11:36pm

Two things varies with this.

What artistic style do you want to apply to your game?
How willing are you to own your craft and make it ‘nice’.

Anyone can make a ‘room’, but if you want something to fit into your game, with the style and feel of your game, you have to put work into it. There’s no short-cuts to making something clean, new or graphically please - only experience produces such shortcuts.

Aotrou · January 30, 2019, 11:38pm

I think you should be looking at more modular methods of map creation if you’re going to complain about placing Parts around. Basically making a few base models, then mixing and matching to create a large variety.

Just keep collisions off then. If you want things to line up, set your move/resize increment to a more rounded number like 0.1.

Another alternative would be to learn how to use building plugins like SBS or F3X - both of which have quality of life tools that just generally make building easier/quicker.

thenextguy32 · January 30, 2019, 11:41pm

I like the ideo of .1 move increments. I dont have either of these plugins, thanks for the tip!

lavafactory · January 30, 2019, 11:43pm

One way to ease up on the workload would be to outsource it to someone else, say a builder. If they take care of level design, props, etc then that alleviates some workload stress on you to program the game.

If you choose to do it all yourself, in worry of losing out on profit if you offer, or rather the builder asks for a percentage of profits, then I’d suggest making templates of a room, and then adding variations later in. I’ll show you an example here:

(Roof has been left off for convenience and to show the interior)
And so, say you want a doorway… Okay, no problem!
Just decide which wall you want, and then click on said brick, copy and then shrink it by half the wall’s width, so you have a skinnier brick inside the wall, now widen it enough that seems fitting for a door, make the frame, stuff like that and you end up with something like so:

Now, you want windows? Okay!
Copy the room template again, and now start deciding the window location. I’m going to put it in the middle for simplicity, and using the same technique as I did with the door, I will then make a frame for the window.

Using increments like .1 like @Aotrou has mentioned, help a lot with sizing issues.
Plugins like F3X or SBS are really helpful as well, although they have their own shortcuts and controls so those are to be watched for, especially if you are used to vanilla studio.
I personally use F3X, but to each their own.
I hope this helps atleast a tiny bit.

thenextguy32 · January 30, 2019, 11:45pm

I mainly worry that Im too small for my shoes. Outsourcing to a level dev sounds fine but not if every which way youre outsourcing. I already outsourced some models.

lavafactory · January 30, 2019, 11:47pm

That’s an understandable worry. I also agree with the point of where if you outsource so much it’s basically not your game anymore, as it’s made with every other person’s help under the sun.

But if you feel as if your ambitions are too great, I do suggest getting someone to hop on as a secondary, someone that can help you out with stuff, whether that be a permanent builder, or a second scripter. It’s always nice to have similar views with someone else and have them able to support you through rough periods of development.

thenextguy32 · January 30, 2019, 11:49pm

The context is that my last project (a board game but it counts) had good sales but we spent way too much and brought on the wrong people.

My main partner started strong but ended up doing very little. We went to conferences we couldnt afford. It goes on.

lavafactory · January 30, 2019, 11:51pm

That’s why you gotta make sure you bring on the RIGHT people, it’s best to vet them yourself, or even work alongside them as just a pay-per-model and if they seem like a good fit, ask them to come on as a full time builder/partner.

lavafactory · January 30, 2019, 11:52pm

Your worries are not misplaced though, many devs worry about level design aspects in their games, because many developers aren’t a jack of all trades, so they have to worry about outsourcing work, making sure their game vision is put into perspective, all that fun stuff.

lavafactory · January 30, 2019, 11:55pm

An example of having many different walls etc, you could even make wall pieces and randomly place them together.

thenextguy32 · January 31, 2019, 12:02am

Yeah I feel pretty inadequate here, I think ill just throw a 20 at a builder see what happens.

lavafactory · January 31, 2019, 12:05am

I wish you the best of luck!

thenextguy32 · January 31, 2019, 12:09am

THX lava

Generic0001 · January 31, 2019, 12:34am

As Lava’s way of making rooms may be less time consuming, I believe that creating each part from scratch will increase variety in your build. Having every room be the same color and size, varying the size of your rooms from lets say 5x5, 7x5, 3x9, or 7x7 will keep the players interest in your game more efficiently rather than walking into different rooms that are virtually the same. A way to make this easier to build, though, would be just creating a “blueprint” of sorts by building only the floors, then working your way up to the walls, and finally the ceiling. Hope I could help!

Generic0001 · January 31, 2019, 12:35am

(To add onto this, using diagonals in a room will heavily improve variety in your builds.)

thenextguy32 · January 31, 2019, 12:42am

I want a shortcut to getting the barebones out. Style is for dedicated specialists

thenextguy32 · January 31, 2019, 12:44am

Yeah I like the blueprint idea. I played through the Republic Commando droid factory level to see where the teammate pause points were, where enemies spawned, where turns into big areas were how many enemies and from what direction they approached. I’m finding it hard to copy it, let alone iterate on it.

Generic0001 · January 31, 2019, 12:46am

If you need help with efficiency of building, I recommend only using sizings 1, .5, .2, and .2. Other than that, when you start a build, only place one part down. From there, you can press ctrl+D to duplicate the part for less exhaustion in the long-run. This is much easier than either getting a new part or copy/pasting. My personal favorite tool for building in studio is the resize tool, it is easier to use than the drag tool and is efficient as well. A tip for this tool is to hold shift while using it to drag both ends at the same time. Hope these tips could help!