Call of Duty : Map Editor Setup

This tutorial assumes that you have no knowledge of mapping, or no knowledge of using any version of Radiant.

A tutorial by Surgeon courtesy of .Map

Radiant Setup

The first thing you will need, if you havn't got it already is a copy of Call of Duty Radiant (CoD Rad for short). You can get the Tools here.

Installing CoD Radiant

To install CoD Radiant:

• Open up CoDTools.exe
• Click next
• Read the License agreement and agree with it.
• Read the system Requirements and make sure you have what it takes to run CoD Rad.
• Make sure that the directory is pointing to where Call of Duty is installed.
• Install.
• Create a shortcut on your desktop.
• Exit.

Go to your callofduty/main/maps folder and create a new folder. Rename it mp.You should now be ready to run CoD Radiant for the first time.

If you have any problems runnning CoD Radiant, Open Regedit and delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareCoDRadiant folder. You do so at your own risk.

Setting CoD Radiant up

This section is going to tell you how to set your editor up with some of the more common preferences.
Open up your editor. You should be asked to locate the cod.qe4 file. This should be located in toolsbin.
The Editor will then open up and you will see something similar to this :

Ok, now that you know what CoD Rad looks like, we have to go and set up some preferences.

• Click on File->Project Settings:
  

You should see:

The editor should have detected where everything is. The important lines to check are:

• basepath (.EXE Location) - Should point to the folder where codsp.exe & codmp.exe are.
• mapspath (.MAP location) - Should point to the mainmaps folder.
• entitypath - Should point to the cod.def file located in the toolsbin folder.

Radiant Preferences

Next we have to set up CoD Rad's preferences (edit->preferences). This will bring up the Preference Options :

We'll take it in stages. Note: I'm only going to cover the points I consider important.

Views/Rendering

The 4 little pictures offer you a small choice in the layout of CoD Rad. Try them all out and see which one suits you the best.

Solid Selection Boxes - When ticked, any brush/entity selected will be shown with solid bold lines. With it unticked, the lines will be dashed.
Ents use '_color' value - ??
Texture Brushes in 2D - This shows the textures on brushes in the 2D window, useful for building geometry from a 2D image

Camera

Slider - The slider controls the speed of camera movement in the 3D Window.
Update XY views -
QE4 Update Model -
Farplane - The maximum farplane distance (controls how far the in editor cubic clipping can go).

Texturing

Texture Toolbar - Unticking this box gives you a handy texture toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Ticking it hides the toolbar.
Texture Scrollbar - Gives you a handy scrollbar to scroll through the textures in the texture window.
Texture Subset - Gives you a method of selecting textures within a texture set.

New Functionality

Right click to drop entities - With this ticked you can bring up the entity list by right clicking on the 2D Window.
Rotation Inc - ??
Vehicle Arrow Time - A chain of vehicle nodes draws a spline in editor when set up correctly. This control sets how far apart the arrows are by time the vehicle would take to get from one arrow to the next.
Vehicle Arrow Size - Sets the size of the arrows in the 2D Window ??
Patch Toolbar - Adds a selection of buttons to the toolbar at the top, that allow the manipulation of Patch Meshes.
Light Drawing - With this selected, the editor draws a light entity as a diamond shape. Unselected the light entity is drawn as a common box.
Paint Sizing Info - When creating a brush, the unit length/width (dependant on view plane) is visable.
Drop Height - Ctrl-Alt-left click copies a currently selected entity to the location clicked. Ctrl-Alt-middle click moves the selected entity. Drop height controls how far above or below the surface you clicked on the entity will be placed. Useful for making the base of trees be below the terrain when they are placed on non flat surfaces.
Scale Base - See Toggle "tree/grass placement mode". Scale base defines the default model scale for this mode (100 = normal).
Scale Range - Like scale base, but controls the amount of scale variation.
Tolerent Wield - The distance at which the editor will do tolerant welding.
Startup Shaders - ??
Splay Distance - Select some vertices in a terrain patch and press Alt-W . This will make these vertices separate apart along their current direction by the distance set in this box. Useful for keeping the texture a consistent scale on a patch which uses Set for its texturing (for example roads).
Game Path / Tool Settings / Misc
Load last project on open - With this ticked, CoD Rad will open your last project when started
Load last map on open - With this ticked, CoD Rad will open your last map when started
Auto save every - With this ticked CoD Rad will autosave your map every # of mins that you specify. Handy way of making sure that you don't loose much work to a hang / crash.

So thats the basics covered. Now you can begin to learn the basics of mapping with CoD Rad!

by Surgeon

Sources