Hello,

So, I feel especially dumb posting this, considering the source of my issue is a basic tutorial intended to teach me how to use 3DGS. But here we are lol...

Anyway, I'm following the instructions it provides, creating a new map, using the Project Wizard, etc.

However, when it gets to the point of adding the terrain, the terrain isn't there. None of the resources provided with the tutorial are recognized by WED. There's only one 'model' section highlighted, and that only has a 'water' object in it.

I've tried setting the project folder as the FastStrike folder, I've tried creating a folder within it. I've tried creating a separate folder outside it. All of this is inside Projects folder under the main 3DGS folder.

I got the assets to show up once, and was able to add the terrain, but when I attempted the step to build and run the map, it said it couldn't load the terrain and all I got was a blank blue screen. I should have seen the terrain HMP.

So, I've tried this in 5 different ways now, and I'm all out of ideas and feeling like a complete moron.

Where am I supposed to be placing the folders for the FastStrike template, and where am I supposed to be creating the project folder?

Thanks for any help.

If you started a project using WED project wizard I think it should create the files and folder on the project directory you specify. Make sure you save it first. Inside your project directory you'll find a folder name model, you can copy your terrain and other models there then you should see it.

I don't work with WED though but that's what I remember when starting with 3DGS.

Hey there,

Thanks for the feedback. Seems I had the right idea, I was extracting the files from the zip folder they came in, which was putting them into their own sub-folders beneat the folder I'd already created (if that makes any sense), so it wasn't recognizing them.

I was looking through the folder and realized that's what was happening. Now I'm just copying and pasting them manually in, and it seems to be working fine. The terrain was there, etc. I should have known to look for that in the first place; I know how zip files will tend to extract with their folder hierarchy intact. I guess I was too caught up in getting WED to recognize the files to stop and consider exactly where they'd been extracted.

So, I'll have to spend more time on it later when I get home from work.

Thanks!

Hello again,

So, have bumped into another problem with the 'FastStrike' tutorial.

I'm at the point where you add the skybox to the scene.

It compiles and runs and everything just fine. But for some reason, the terrain was showing completely black, and only the skybox was showing.

I checked in the map settings, and for some reason the sun and ambient light settings had both been set to all black (I never set them like that).

Also, the texture seems to have disappeared from the terrain, which I also didn't mess with.

I tried to set the lighting (sun and ambient) back to a setting I could actually see, but it's still showing up as all black.

Literally, before adding the skybox, everything was fine. Once I added the skybox, everything went wonky.

I finally found out that the material setting for the terrain somehow reset to 'ndef' in its properties. Setting it to 'material' brought the texture back (though only in-game; the terrain shows as a flat, plain gray in the editor window).

Any idea what might be going on here? Why did adding a large cube then hollowing it out and applying a skybox texture cause that to happen?

Maybe I can avoid it in the future if I know why it happened in the first place.

Thanks

Okay... Replying to my own post here, because I've now run into another issue - which seems to be happening at every step of this tutorial now. Was it never tested? Or was it submitted, looked over, and concluded to be "good to go" without anyone actually going through it to make sure it was actually accurate?

Anyway...

I'm now at the stage of adding the player model (the sci-fi woman one), and attaching the T7_Biped_Player action to it via the Behavior panel.

I save, rebuild and run the game, and nothing. I press F7 to switch to 3rd Person view, and nothing. The character model, like the terrain before, shows up entirely black. Further, according to the tutorial, pressing W,S,A,D should move her around. That doesn't happen either.

So basically, I'm attempting to learn this engine using a tutorial - provided by Conitec - that apparently was never tested or kept up-to-date. Should I even bother continuing with it at this point, because I'm starting to feel like it's a waste of my time, if every step is going to introduce some new problem.

Sorry for being angry here. I'm really trying to be patient, but, having worked as a QA Tester for a software company for a few years, it drives me nuts when training materials don't actually work. Having to "figure things out for yourself" should not be a requirement when you're going through the introductory tutorials.

I've been with 3DGS for a while so I've never used the starter A7 template nor have I heard of this "FastStrike" tutorial. From what I gather about the template, it wasn't too much of a success but they are developing a new set of them for A8. I haven't heard of anyone who is actually using the template in their games. Most people seem to be developing their games from scratch.

Hey there,

The tutorial is one of two that come packaged together. I'd downloaded them a little while back, so maybe they're simply outdated now or were obsolesced by some changes to A7 - which is the version they're designed for, and the version I'm using (I haven't updated to A8 yet).

It looks like the tutorials on the site here were updated from the last time I saw them, and I'm expecting a book in the mail (hopefully tomorrow, though who can say with the USPS these days) that should hopefully prove helpful as well.

I feel like I'm already starting off in a confusing position, because of the implementation of the Adaptive Binary Tree, which allows for levels to be designed in two different ways - ABT vs. BSP. This in turn requires them to be built and/or compiled in different ways (convex vs. concave, etc), which in turn seems to require different settings to be toggled/active, and those settings seem to be located in different spots, and used at different points in the project (at build time, in the game's prefs, etc). All stuff I'm sure I'll get used to with time, but a lot to take in and kinda confusing to make heads or tails of when you're first starting out (at least for me).

Anyway, I think I'm gonna just stop with the FastStrike tutorial, and move on to these others ones. Hopefully they'll be better written and more accurate.

Thanks.