Hello all,

It is time that I broke the ice and let you all know about a project that I have been working on (on and off) and hope to release soon (how soon? Not sure yet ). I am in the process of writing a book on GameStudio from an artist's perspective. The purpose of the book is to guide you in the creation of game content as well as the use of the tools that came with GameStudio. Here are some of the sections that I am working on:

The Editor – WED
Menu, views, etc.
The Quant – WED’s measuring system
The Quant and the Pixel – Texturing in WED

Level Design 101
To CSG Subtract or Not to CSG Subtract – That is the question
Intro to BSP – Just what is it anyway?
Level design considerations
Considering clip ranges
All about entities (sprites, map entities, models)
Texture for details
Keeping textures in mind as you build
When is enough, enough?
Planning a level
The research phase
Lighting issues
Lighting for atmosphere
Lighting map entities
Lighting to draw the players attention
Considering frame rates
Using other tools to create levels (MAX, Worldcraft, etc.)
3DS2MAP
Various MAX scripts for level creation

The Modeler – MED
Menu, views, etc.
Scale
The skin editor

Modeling 101
Low poly modeling
Adding details through skinning
Animation
Using other tools for modeling and UV mapping (MAX, SI, Maya, LW, TS, Milkshape, etc.)
The MAX2MDL export plug-in for MAX
The ??? plug-in for MAYA
The ??? plug-in for LW

Texturing 101
Applications for texturing (Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, GIMP2, Dog Waffle, etc.)
Texture creation techniques
Making 2D textures look 3D
Dirt, scratches, wear and tear
Color coordination
The little details that count
Using photos
Making tiling textures from photos
Using photos with hand-created textures

Skinning 101
Applications for skinning (see Texturing 101 above but add things like Unwrap, etc.)
Texture Layers 2
Texporter (Max plugin)
Ultimate Unwrap
Preparing the mesh for skinning
Painting the skin
Texture baking

The section that covers WED is already written and the others are being worked on. Just to give you an idea of the books general size (when completed) the WED section is over 50 pages of text (without any of the screen shots and other various images). In the WED section I go over every single menu item, every icon on every toolbar, every right-click menu and panel and every function I can find. I attempt to do this in a sort of non-technical way (as much as possible) so that even a WED manual can be somewhat interesting to read.

While the WED portion of the book is only one section of the book, I hope to release this portion, stand-alone, for free as soon as it is formatted. I will be doing this for several reasons:

1 - I believe having a decent manual for WED will help many people use WED better.

2 - I believe that if people read the manual they will tell me what they like and don't like and this will help me improve the overall book.

3 - Frankly, I hope that releasing this portion for free will help promote the book once it is released.

I do not have a release date for the book. It may be a few months, but I am working on it daily now. I hope to keep people updated as I progress.

The book will come in two versions. One will be an electronic book that you can read on your computer or that you can print out to read off your computer. I am deciding on which electronic form to use. I believe I will create it in the same manner as the 3AM magazines were created as this gives both me and the end-users a lot of flexability (and I don't really like PDF that much ).

The second option will be a fully printed option. Yep, you read that right. I hope to complete the book and self-publish it using something like Lulu (www.lulu.com) so that people desiring a paper edition can go online and order one.

Well, enough with this announcement. I had better get back to typing and formatting. I will release the free WED manual here (hopefully in a week) once it is completed. In the mean time, please feel free to look over the topics I have planned to include in the book and let me know your thoughts.

As a side note:

If anyone would like to read the WED manual as it is right now then please send me an email at:

contact@m3dd.com

I will then send you over a brief statement asking you to not distribute the file or share the information in it with anyone else. Once I get confirmation back from you I will send you the file to read. I would do this IF you want to "bug test" the document by looking for glaring grammar errors (I am not all that concerned with the minor ones ) and to check it for readability purposes. If you did want this document, please note that I have not read through all that I have written to make it more readable. It is normally be the second or even the third reading that I drastically improve the way the document reads. Also keep in mind that many of the things written in the document will be made much clearer when the images are incerted. On the other hand, I do have footnotes on where I am adding images and what they shall be.

The document, in its current form, is not pretty, but it should provide a decent idea of what I am doing with this book.

Oh, and please only contact me about this if you will seriously look this over and give me genuine feedback. I really don't want to send out hundreds of these things. Remember, in a week (or so) I hope to have the near-final version out to the public.

This will be very useful
Also , I suggest you make the details and lighting sections more 'attention grabbing'. Show whats without them and with them , because I keep seeing 'empty' and 'clean' levels that just dont fit the whole picture...
Are you planning many screens or only a few ?

I am planning on filling the book with as many screen shots as I possibly can. And this may be the problem with the printed version because the book will be black and white (inside).

Well, this book seems to be a starting guide for non-experienced users. This is no blame, but I think the book is outdated the moment you posted the contents here.

The first thing which came to my mind was that you are writing an advanced manual with some intentions to other programs or techniques since it is yet done.

I really would like to see a more indepth view in combination with shaders (dont explain how to use them, just collect some and play with it!) How do I make naturally looking trees? How would I do a grass system and how should I make photographs? I think color coordination is that topic that discovers color harmonics, etc., but this should count for level design as well.. what about general style for a level? Style discontinues are very ugly, cover it! Maybe you should also consider to break in the pure model aspect of level environments or intermingled with BSP geometry.. in combination with the importing option in MED. Or maybe you can provide infos on graphic files formats and how to do DDs files.. what are the limitations in 3DGS? How do I smoothen shadows? How do I save perfromance with the maximum image quality? How do I achieve layered fog? What are the best ways to create a racetrack on terrain or out of models?! How do I create terrain like in Gothic II or Morrowind? When I plan to create a charactersystem with one zise fits all body parts to build my characters (NPC/player) like a lego system, what should I take care of? What are / How do I remove high pass repeating structures from bitmaps so that I dont see annoying patters from far away?

You see, I could post thousands of more common or more specialized questions and I dont want to say that your work is bad. Its just a matter of view if you wanna show how to use the shipped tools for common things or how to do amazing art stuff with 3DGS. Additionally I strictly advice you that you dont pay too much attention on MED, because its meant only as a converter. Though, I thought that you can maybe try a little advancement into more tricky regions than explaining how basic stuff works that is already covered in the manual.

When you are releasing the WED section for free, its fine.. but maybe you can reconsider to take it out of your book to free space for other content.

Secretly, I would have a follow-up with JCL, if the planned model support for static lightening and mesh deformation is released in the next update. If yes, wait! It would be a unvalueable benefit for your book!

Keep it up, I think every person should write at least one serious book during his lifetime except memoires.. so, my best wishes!

ciao
Christian

I will never personally criticize a manual of any sort for Gamestudio. So often a person is told to 'read the manual', but please, It's so hard to navigate the manual, a nd there's what seems to be hidden pages you can only find when searching a specific word or topic.

Now, I understand this won't cover every function, action and feature. But a Gamestudio manual that's more user friendly has been on wish lists for years. Lets make it easier for people to get started!

I'm very fluent in 'dummied down explainations' and can spot an unclear explaination a mile away even if I personally know what was being explained.

Count me in for a whack at it


EDIT: one other thought is to perhaps add other's contributions which expand upon, or add to the document as a whole... Making it more complete and full of good stuff as time goes on. Almost like a constant work in progress.

Jason

HeelX,

While I understand what you are saying I think I need to add a few comments here. First of all, I am not by any stretch of the imagination, a programmer. As such, I am not going to touch on programming issues except the very basic ones as it pertains to level design and getting a level up and running.

As far as the WED portion goes:

This portion of the book is essential. Do you realize how many times people have asked for a WED feature only to find out from other users that the feature has been in WED for a long time? Frankly, I went for years myself without knowing that there was a function to hide objects, display only a selection as a wireframe or solid while all the rest were textured in the 3D view, etc. Even today, there are features in WED that are not documented AT ALL. Therefore, the 50 page WED portion of the book covers every menu item, every toolbar and their icons, every right-click menu and anything else that I could find. And while some of WED's features are covered in the official manual, the section I wrote attempts to go into more detail and explain what the feature is used for. This entire section is designed to prepare the reader to understand WED better so that they can build levels better, whether those levels are BSP-based or designed purely from models.

As far as the level design issues you bring up (styles, repeating patterns, etc) who says these are not a part of the book? I have sections entitled "Level Design Considerations", "Texturing for Details", "When is Enough Enough", "Lighting Issues" and a whole lot more. There is a lot that can be said in any of these catagories (and the other ones as well). Therefore, apart from your programming considerations, I think we have you covered. The manual is basic in that it will cover the basics, but it is advanced in that it is designed to lead the end-user onward to advanced considerations when desiging the graphics for a game from the worlds to the panels and even the splash screen.

I think the idea is great and would love to help all i can. Ive sent you an email and hope to hear back from you soon .

I'm glad to see Dan doing such a project, because i know it will be aproached from the 'creative' viewpoint on each of his above topics.

scripting, programming, shaders shouldn't even be a part of this work. They are manuals/books in of themselves and as Dan is the ideal person to explain creativity and working with the tools, subjects like programming scripts and shaders should be covered by people that are well versed in those topics.

I just hope Dan covers modeling with as much emphisis in using MED from start to finish vs using a 3rd party application ( i.e. modeling a humanoid , skinning and aniamting it all with MED)

a decient section on how to do importing/exporting from other tools would be good too

This book sounds really interesting. I wouldn't read much of the WED section myself, but who's to complain if that sections being released for free? What i'd really like to see(and you probably have accounted for all this anyways), is color theory, patterns, vegetation, and other more general areas that effect the level as a whole.

btw - releasing it in the 3AM format sounds nice, as i'm not a big fan of PHD documents either. Though, I really like chm documents, like the current manual for 3DGS. So mabye that would work out the best.