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Normal Topic [VIDEO TUTORIAL]How To Make Custom Maps In AVP1 (Read 4286 times)
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[VIDEO TUTORIAL]How To Make Custom Maps In AVP1
Oct 21st, 2015 at 12:18am
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I got permission from Bladeghost (aka Scythewraith) to repost his videos on making maps in 3D Studio Max 3.0/3.1 and Inteng for Aliens versus Predator Gold and Classic 2000.

GETTING STARTED

Obviously to get started you need the right tools, and in the case of Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000, you'll need tools that are hard to come by and often difficult to get working in the first place. To mod this game, you will need the following:

  • Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000 (Steam or GOG) OR Aliens versus Predator Gold Edition
  • WinZip, WinRar, or some other kind of extracting program
  • 3D Studio Max R3 or R3.1
  • Official Gold Tools

As Windows 7 is the version I use, that is all I can speak for.

First things first. If you don't have AVP Classic 2000 or Gold Edition, I don't know what you're doing here. Get them.

Secondly, download the AvP Editing Tools currently hosted on AVPUnknown.com. Open up the AvP Editing Tools folder.

****IF YOU ONLY HAVE THE CLASSIC 2000 VERSION, YOU MUST READ THIS SECTION****

Follow these directions in this order:
  • Locate your AVP Classic folder. Default directory for Steam users: YourDrive:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Aliens vs. Predator Classic. Default directory for GOG users: YourDrive:\GOG Games\AvP Classic.
  • Copy this folder.
  • Go to YourDrive:\Program Files (x86). Create a new folder called Fox. Paste AVP Classic folder into this location. Rename the folder to Aliens versus Predator.
  • Open the folder and find the folder called "bin". Inside, copy the avp_classic.exe. Go back one folder and paste it. Rename it to avp.exe.

****DIRECTIONS FOR ALL USERS****

Go back to the AvP Editing Tools folder you downloaded. Open up the folder called AvP_GE Level Creator.zip and install 3D Studio Max 3.1. If for some reason it won't work, version 3.0 is available for you as well.

Once you're done with that, locate the folder called avptools.zip and open it up. Inside a folder called fox editing tools should be four zip files, one .exe, and one .txt. Run the program called avptoolssetup.exe and set the directory to Program Files (x86)\Fox\Aliens versus Predator. Once setup is finished, extract the other zip folders to this directory: Program Files (x86)\Fox\Aliens versus Predator\tools. Add the .txt if you wish.

Go to your Fox\Aliens versus Predator\tools folder. Inside will be a folder called 3dsmax3_plugins. Open it. Inside should be two .dle files and one .BMI file. Copy all three. Now go to where you installed 3D Studio Max. Default directory is YourDrive\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\3dsMax3.1. Open the folder here called Plugins. Paste the three files here.

Lastly, return to the AvP Editing Tools folder you downloaded. Open the folder called Old Modding Tools.zip. The only program that will concern us now is FastFile Explorer. Run the setup and install the program to your computer.

The Programs You'll Be Using
These are the main programs you'll be using to edit AVP:

3D Studio Max 3.1: This is where you'll be building the map itself. You may use a more recent version of 3D Studio Max, such as 2010, to actually build the map. However, you must save it as a .max so 3D Studio Max 3.1 can read it. Only 3.0 and 3.1 have the ability to convert the map file to .RIM format.

Inteng: This is an abbreviation for Interface Engine. This is the second-stage level editor that deals with AVP-specific parameters, such as spawn points, item and bot placement, and lighting. This is also where you will assign strategies such as doors opening, lifts ascending and descending. The basis of the map is constructed in 3D Studio Max, while all the items and parameters are dealt with in Inteng.

TROUBLESHOOTING

In order to use Inteng and not have it look like shit, you will need to follow the instructions in my guide on getting AVP Gold to work on modern systems.

3D Studio Max 3.1 may not show you the gridlines. If that happens, download this version of the program, extract the folder to C:\3dsMax3_1. Open up 3dsmax.ini in Notepad and find the line that says GFXType=Direct3D. Instead of Direct3D, type in HEIDI. Save the file, then try the 3dsmax.exe from that folder.

VIDEO TUTORIALS

Once you have ALL THE ABOVE WORKING, you can begin the video tutorials. I have included the written transcriptions underneath.



0:00 Hi everybody, this is Bladeghost. I’m going to show you a little quick tutorial on how to make a fast level in Aliens versus Predator 1. Once you have the Fox tools installed you’ll have a little folder here called Tools in your Aliens versus Predator file [located in C:\Program Files\Fox\Aliens versus Predator\Tools]. Open that up and you’ll see 3dsmax3_plugins. This is for 3DS Studio Max 3. You’ll need to take these plugins and put them in the plugins folder in your 3DS Studio Max 3 application.

0:40 Now, open up 3DS Studio Max. To make your first level you’ll need two reference points. One’s called a hudson and the other one’s called a nucleus. You can do that by simply creating a box in your top view. Make this 1x1x2 high [length: 1; width: 1; height: 2]. Okay, you can zoom in on that, and you’ll have to call this sucker hudson. Then take a dummy object under Helpers and place that in the middle. Just right-click on the spinners and it’ll make it zero out. Same thing with the box, you want it in the dead center. So take that, okay, we got this sucker centered now and we’ve got to make the hudson right in the middle. So take it, move it there, change its pivot point, and center it to the object. Okay, that should be perfect. Okay good, now we have to name the dummy object nucleus, we can’t have it called dummy so we’ll just name it Nucleus.

2:15 Okay, that will tell the engine what the size is of your player. The hudson square here that you see, this is the actual height of the player, so consider that when you’re making doorways and how high the door is going to be over your player.

2:34 You can start by making a simple box and we’ll hollow it out. So bring that inside a hudson here. It really doesn’t matter, you can have it on the line as well. But as you can see, the normals are on the outside of the box and what we have to do is flip them. So go to your Modifiers, find your Normal Modifier, and flip them so it’s inside out.

3:05 Okay, when you’re done with that you can turn it into an editable mesh. Let’s say you want to give it some texture. Open up your material browser, choose bitmap (bmp), go to your graphics folder inside your Aliens versus Predator\graphics, and choose envrnmts. Once you’ve installed the tools, all these should be unpacked for you so you can easily find them. So let’s go to Battle, put a Hivecliff01 in there. Click Open, let’s apply it, show it, and you have to UV Map it. Once you UV Map it, you’ll have your textures applied, as you can see here, take off the grid.

3:57 Okay, we’ve got a basic room that should be big enough for a single player. Okay for this, what you’ll need to export it as a .RIF file. Go to your Fox game, or if you got it in Steam you can do it in Steam as well, but I’ve got this installed in both. So go to your custom folder. If you’re doing a custom level it’s good to start out in your custom folder. Let’s just call this sample.rif. Click on Save.

4:40 You’ll get a couple dialog boxes. Do you want to edit modules with no rotation data/keep rotation data? Just for levels only, you want to keep [it where it is (no rotation data)]. Everything else default is okay. When you’re making doors and you’ll do morphing, that’s a separate export. Everything else, this is for animations. “No data” is for huds and for levels. Just click OK. Shape export options, you can just leave all these unchecked and just click OK. And here (Objects to be exported), when you’re re-importing your level, you’ll get all your stuff in this left column. If you don’t want to replace it, just select them and click on the box. MAX Objects to be added: if you don’t want it to be added, you’ll click this box. And anything you want to delete, you’ll highlight it and just check the box to delete that one box. So if you’re replacing something with something new, you’ll do it that way. So just click OK.

5:35 And then we can go to our AVP folder. Go into avp_rifs and look for your sample level that you’ve created. To get that started, double-click on it and Inteng will open up and automatically start that. So double-click on it, and here we’re inside the box. So now what we’ll need to do is bring your mouse to the top, go to Mode, go to Module Linking, click on your area, and hit S so it turns blue. When you’re doing extra rooms what you’ll be doing is linking them together. You’ll click one, go to next, click N, so it links, it’ll turn yellow, and back and forth.

6:30 Everything that you see in your view is what you’re going to get. So filled poly line, that’ll help. So go back to our room here. Let’s go to object placement, let’s come inside, and let’s put in a player start. Okay, we can make an AVP generator for multiplayer, let’s just call it start. Hit the E key for Edit. Check Multiplayer Start. Click OK. Mode, Save, Exit.

7:06 Let’s add a light. Go to light sourcing. Hit the D key to drop a light and then back up hitting the A and Z keys. Everything that gets placed, you won’t see it because the camera will be right on top of it. So let’s just move that in place, by hitting the L key and the camera move keys. You need to select it first and it’ll move. Then use the NUM PAD keys and it’ll turn and move around as such.

7:38 Now all these parameters you get you use by hitting the greater and lesser keys and the plus and minus keys to go through all the items and objects. Okay, Run Time for objects and things, Omni will give your bright light, take that down, Range, Spread, Brightness, Color, everything.

8:02 Once you’re good, let’s go to Save Intensities for Game, click Exit, make sure you hit Miscellaneous, Recalculate Normals and Extents. Quit Inteng.

8:15 Then you can fire up the game. Load up your level, let's say, in Skirmish because it’s in a custom folder. Look for sample. Start. That’s how you get your first level working in the game using 3DS Studio Max and Fox Tools.



0:00 Welcome to part 2 of my Aliens versus Predator Inteng level tutorial. I arranged some items I’m going to show you, some module-linking, weapons placement, lighting, track, editing, and how to put in a switch and area switches. So let’s try what I’ve got here. Here you can see I’ve just built a couple basic rooms that needs to be built. So the first thing I want to do, this is fresh out of 3D Studio Max, just plain geometry. Nothing’s been done yet so it won’t work in game yet until you actually do the things I’m going to show you. So first thing you’ll need to do is bring your mouse to the top, go to Mode, let’s try Module Linking, choose the first area that you’re going to be in. Figure it this much: this is where the player’s gonna be, and everything the player needs to see is what you need to render so you need to link each thing that the player’s gonna see. So if you’re in this area, he’s gonna need to see everything that’s in front of him. Same thing with the next area, the next area, and the next area and so forth.

1:13 But now since we have placed objects that we need to move, like these doors I’m gonna move with a switch, and an area switch, what I’ll need to do—first, let’s get out of here [Module Linking]. When you first open Inteng, you select your item, and you need to tell it whether it’s going to be a placed object or module. So right now, let’s go to Object Type, under Object, then we’re gonna Place Object. Same thing with the other one [door], Object, Place Object. The switch, the doors here, make them placed, Object, Placed, and Object, Placed. So now when we go into Module Linking, see this is the most important area that you’re going to be using a lot here, is the Mode. So make sure you look into that; you have the Texture Map, Module Linking, Adjacent Modules, Lighting Source, Object Placement, (Hierarchy is for animations) and Strategy Data are most important. So everything from here [Texture Map] to here [Object Placement] and here [Strategy Data] are the most important things for level editing.

2:28 So right now let’s go to Module Linking. I’ll show you how to link modules. You can see that when I’ve made these [doors] into placed objects they just disappear because they’re not actually modules. They’re placed objects so that’s why they’ve disappeared when I went into Module Linking. So let’s render each area. First, choose an area, hit the S key to Set it, it’ll turn blue, select the next area with your mouse, hit the N key to Link it, it’ll turn yellow, same thing for the next one N, N key, N key, N key, N key. So now this blue area where the player will stand will actually see these areas that have turned yellow. Now go to the next one [area], hit S, and you’ll see everything turns white because it’s not linked. You’ll need to go back and link each piece so that it’s actually visible when you’re in the game. Same thing here [next area], S, and N, N, N key, N key, N key…and so forth. So everywhere that the player moves, you know, it has to be able to see where you’re going. This is just a quick module linking area. When you do adjacent modules, it’s the same process, but that’s just for doing the AI. So once we get all this done in place, okay everything is rendered so now when you’re actually in these places, all these areas will actually be visible. Okay good, so now we can exit out of here [Module Linking].

4:17 So the first thing I want to do is move these doors when I walk into this area here. So what I’m gonna do is actually put a virtual object in here to make it an area switch, and I’ll show you how to do that. You go to Mode, Strategy Data, you go to No Textures or Normal. Normal will show you with textures, No Textures will be see-through so you can actually see through all the links so we can find everything through all the walls because they’ll be invisible. So from here, let’s right-click, let’s create a virtual object, let’s create one here, give it a name, let’s call this Switch 1, hit Enter. Okay, back up using the camera keys. Camera keys are A and Z and the arrow keys. Okay, select your virtual object, right-click on it, let’s assign it a strategy, and let’s make this an area switch. Once you’ve done this, you’ll see you have a selection where you can change the trigger volume, blah blah blah whatever. Hit the V key and then select the area you want the switch to actually activate. Once you have your module selected, hit the S key to set it and it’ll actually surround it, and that’ll be your actual trigger area. Once you’re done with that, hit the Enter key to exit. Hit your targets. Click on the None name and choose what you want it to activate. So you want these two doors to open. So you select those two doors to open, you’ll see those items will be listed. So once you’re done, hit Enter, then right-click to exit.

6:05 Once you’re done with this, come over to your other area to the switch here that you want to activate to open these two doors [different doors]. What’s going to happen is we’re going to have an area switch that opens these two doors [first two doors], and we’re going to have an actual switch that opens these two doors [different doors]. So this’ll be separate. So this switch, what we want to do here is actually give it a strategy as well. So we’re going to right-click on it, assign it a strategy, and choose Multi Switch. So Multi Switch, click on that, and here what we want to do is choose targets. Click on the None name and choose the two doors for the targets. Once you’re done, hit Enter, and then right-click, and then…While we’re in this mode what we can do is choose each of these doors, right-click on them, assign them a strategy, and choose Track Object. Okay, click on Track Object, right-click, choose the other door, right-click, Assign Strategy, Track Object, right-click, same with the other ones. If you don’t do this, the game will crash. So Assign Strategy, Track Object, right-click, other one, right-click, Assign Strategy, Track Object. Good. Okay, once we’re done here we can go to Mode, Exit, it’ll ask you if you’d like to save, say yes.

7:41 Now we can go into Mode, Object Mode, Object Placement, and choose the actual doors. First what I want to show you here, before I show you how to track objects, while we’re in Object Mode, you want to add weapons? Just right-click on an area. You can go Create Weapon, choose, say, Pulse Rifle, it’ll ask would you like to have this imported, click Yes. You’ll see that the object is actually ported right on top of your camera. Hit the F key to go into Fly mode. Use your camera keys to move the object, and move it around. Now, if you don’t deselect it, it’ll go through the floor like you see this. So deselect it using the Backspace key, reselect it, and then hit the F key again and it’ll collide with the floor. To move it around, use your Number Pad key to pivot, rotate it, whatever. Once you’re done hit the Backspace key to deselect it, and you’re done with your weapon additives. With your weapons you can choose Ammo, Light, Stimpack, Predator Charge, Armour. Okay, now when you create Light, that’s for destructible lights that you can edit in Lighting mode, but that’s a different area than I want to cover. For now, we’re done with this.

9:02 So let’s go back and give these doors a track. So let’s choose the door, right-click, I’m sorry, choose the door, go up to Object, go to Edit Track, okay, right-click, choose Edit Section End Position, okay, hit F to enter fly mode, and use the camera keys to actually move the object over to where you want it to go. Okay when you’re in position, right-click again, go Finish End Position Edit. And here you can right-click and go Play Track, and you’ll see the actual thing start to move. Now  if you want to change the speed and everything, right-click, Stop Play Track. Right-click, go to Properties, Section, Track. If you go Section, it’ll give you the time. It defaults to five seconds. If you want it to go fast, you go one second. If you right-click again, go Properties, Track, you’ll get a selection where you can loop the track (loop back and forth playing at start), use track smoothing, or timer start. With the virtual object that’s gonna do the area switch, it’s gonna just do it automatically. So once we’ve got that track created, we can stop the Edit Track, choose the other one [door], and give that one the same thing. Select it, go to Object, go to Edit Track, okay, left-click, and then right-click, Edit Section End Position, select that, hit F to go into fly mode, and use your camera keys to move your object where you want it to go. Stop, right-click, and then Finish End Position, okay, right-click again, you can play track, and you can see that it’ll move like it does. Stop Play Track by right-clicking, Mode, Stop Edit Track, Save, Exit.

11:07 Okay, now, when you walk into this area, these doors will open. Now, for this switch, again, you want to go to Mode, Object Mode, Object Placement, you want to edit the track, so you want to select it, go to Object, Edit Track, select it, right-click, Edit Section End Position, click that, and then right-click again, Edit Pivot Point. You select Edit Pivot Point and you can see that you’ll find that you’ll wanna put the cursor right on the exact center of where it’ll go. Once it’s centered where it needs to pivot, right-click again, click Stop Pivot Edit, and then you can actually then enter fly mode (hit the F key), and move it to the position you want it to go in. You can use your Number Pad key to turn it down to where it needs to go like this. Once it’s in position, right-click, Finish End Position. You can right-click again, Play Track, and you can see that it’ll actually turn down. Now, if it’s a little slow, go back to the Properties, go to Section, and make this one second instead of five. So if you click OK, Play Track you’ll see it’ll go a lot quicker. Okay, stop Track, stop Edit Track, Mode, Save, Mode, Exit. And this [lever] will actually open up your doors when you hit the switch. So I’ll try to put that into the video to show you how that actually works. But this is what you need to learn and do when you put these things to put it into the game to have them work like, as such. You need to give it an actual edit track, a strategy, as opposed to giving it an object placement, and you’re giving it an actual edit track. Track is just pretty much an animation in short terms so that you can understand that this is how that works. So this will give that how that goes. Another thing I want to cover before I exit this area is just make sure that when you save, you also make sure you go Recalculate Normals and Extents and in Lighting mode, light sourcing, just re-do the lighting as well, Save Intensities for Game, so that should be good from here. So I’ll continue on. All right, thanks.
« Last Edit: Nov 15th, 2015 at 1:07pm by Olde »  

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Lucifer wrote on Oct 8th, 2016 at 9:54am:
go to fuck your self olde!
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Re: [VIDEO TUTORIAL]How To Make Custom Maps In AVP1
Reply #1 - Oct 23rd, 2015 at 3:07pm
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Awesome man, just Awesome!

This will definitely come in handy


Cheers dude
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