DARK FORCES MISSION EDITING TIPS: (For Mac Users) By ArchTx@aol.com May 16, 1996I made the enclosed STARTER MISSION file to provide a boost to those who are just starting to learn how to use DFLE to edit add-on missions. One of the common problems that people have is understanding what the minimum requirements are for a functioning add-on mission. This tutorial and the STARTER file was created with the intention that you use it as a basis for building your own add-on missions. This tutorial assumes that you have read the "DF_Specs" and "DFuse tutorials 1 & 2", if you have not, you should get them and do so. On AOL I included copies with APPLE.GOB in the Mac software libraries, you can also get them at http://www.3dg.com/DarkForces/MISSION CONTENTS: The usual MISSION files unclude:MISSION.GOB < the missionMISSION.TXT < text describing the missionMISSION.BAT < text file needed by PC's to load the missionThe usual MISSION.GOB, contents are:SECBASE.LEVSECBASE.OSECBASE.GOLSECBASE.INFSECBASE.CMPSECBASE.PALJEDI.LEVTXT.MSGOften the .GOB will also contain additional files for new textures, enemies, 3DOs, music, etc. But those are non-essential enhancements that you don't need to worry about right now.MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:Not all of the usual MISSION.GOB contents are essential. At minimum you need the following: SECBASE.LEV, SECBASE.O and SECBASE.INF1. A SECBASE.LEV file that you create with DFLE, it contains the geometry and texture informaton for the mission.2. A SECBASE.O file that contains the objects for the mission. In this case the minimum object you need is the SPIRIT. The SPIRT is you, the player. This file defines the location where you start out in a mission and your altitude. If the spirit location is not located within a sector or is below the floor or above the cieling, the mission will crash when you try to load it. As you use DFLE to add objects, the information on them will be stored in this file.3. The SECBASE.INF file that comes with DFLE. This file contains the goals and dynamics information about a mission. You can actually load and edit the SECBASE.LEV and SECBASE.O files into DFLE without a SECBASE.INF file, but Dark Forces will not load the mission without a SECBASE.INF file. Strangely enough the .INF file doesn't have to say anything more inside of it than this:INF 1.0
LEVELNAME SECBASE
items 0
But if you don't have an INF file you will get an error message, something about "CAN'T FIND RICKENBACKER". You can make a pretty sophisticated mission without ever modifying the SECBASE.INF file. But the more complex dynamic aspects of mission editing use this file to make elevators, keyed doors, and switches work; to define complex goals, to trigger sounds and lights, etc. I recommend that you focus on learning how to make a mission without these things first, and after you have mastered these basics, then move up to learning about the .INF & .GOL files. To learn more about these, there are demos and tutorials written by Jereth Kok available at http://www.3dg.com/DarkForces/LOADING THE FILES: You can load these seperate SECBASE.LEV, SECBASE.O and SECBASE.INF files into Dark Forces without combining them into a GOB. This is an easy way to test and walk thru your mission. Go ahead, try it out. Drag these files from the STARTER folder over next to your Dark Forces application. Highlight all three of them at once and "drag & drop" them onto DF. They will load just like a GOB. Take a look around, this Starter Mission has only two small rooms and one door. One room (sector) is an interior room and one is an exterior room (Sector). Notice that the door is actually made up of three sectors, a doorway or recess from the small room, the door, and then a door way/recess into the larger room. You could actually leave out these recesses and just have a door or an opening between the two rooms. The two rooms also already have an extra pair of vertices added, so you can practice adding on a new room or making a new door.LOADING THE STARTER MISSION: Put the STARTER MISSION someplace easy to find, like on your desk top or in the desktop documents folder (if you have it turned on in System 7.5). Double click on DFLE. Select the "Open" command. Navigate to the STARTER MISSION folder, open it and select the SECBASE.LEV file. The STARTER MISSION should load. You will see a triangle and two boxes with a small link in between them. The dot in the left hand box is the SPIRIT location, where you start out in the game. Use the magifying glass tool to zoom in on the boxes. Try clicking on the various vertices, walls and sectors to see how they are made and how the textures are indicated. Caution: The larger of the sectors has a sky texture selected. DFLE V0.96 still has one bug that always makes it crash, at least it always does on my Performa 630CD. If you select a sky texture, or open a sector that has a sky texture it will crash. I get around this by editing the sector with a cieling texture that is not used anywhere else, selected for the sky, and when I'm done, I then go into the LEV file with a TEXT editor and type in the name of the sky texture I want to use.EDITING THE MISSION: FIRST, to save your self a lot of grief, you should always copy a default sector and default wall into DFLE. Otherwise, all of the textures will become the DFLE "DEFAULT", which is dark grey with the red letters "DEFAULT" everywhere. Its real ugly. IF YOU DON'T do this now, you will have to do it hundreds of times later. To do this you can either:1) select one of the existing sectors and walls as your new default, or 2) edit one so that it fits the default characteristics that you want to use for the rest of the game, or 3) in a completely new mission, make a new, small 3 vertices starter sector ("triangle" shaped) and edit the Floor & Ceiling altitudes and the the Floor, Ceiling, and Walls TEXTURES to be those you intend to use in the majority of the mission. Name this sector "Complete" so that it will work with the DFLE INF file.THEN COPY the sector and a wall as the new defaults in the pull down Menu.Everytime you start up DFLE you need to reset the default sector and wall settings before you start adding new sectors and walls.Place the Spirit object location (player start) somewhere in your level, where you want to start. If you move the Spirit to a new location, you must verify the floor altitude (Y) is correct for the sector, otherwise the mission will crash if the Spirit is above the ceiling or below the floor of the sector.TIP: Save your mission often, so that if it crashes you will not loose much. TEXT EDITING: All of the Mission files can be edited in text. For some of the files there is no other way to edit them but in text. I use Microsoft Word 5, but when you use the open command you must tell it to open file types "All Files" and Save As "Text Only". Simple Text can be made to work on any of the Mission files (IF they are less than 32k in size); AND IF you drag and drop the document onto the Simple Text icon. Simple Text will NOT recognize a Dark Forces document (icon has stormtrooper head) if you use the pull down menu to try and open it. However, you can use ResEdit to change the TYPE/CREATOR back to TEXT/ttxt, and then SimpleText will recognize and load it.Two of the .GOB documents are often larger than 32k, they are SECBASE.LEV (LEVel geometry), and sometimes SECBASE.O (Objects). SECBASE.LEV AND SECBASE.O are created and edited using DFLE VO.96. However, I often find it handy to be able to go into these and edit the text directly. I have read about a freeware application called BBEditLite that is similar to SimpleText but will edit documents larger than 32k. I haven't tried it but it may be an option. It is critical that the text editor you use, displays and saves the little boxes along the left margin of the page, these are Line Feeds used in PC documents, and are essential for the DF application to be able to read the documents. Your mission will often crash if one of these is missing. This is true even for the Mac version of Dark Forces.You can make a playable mission without new SECBASE.GOL and INF documents (using only the .INF document provided in DFLE), if it does not have any switches, keyed doors, elevators or complicated goals. Creating these items can be the most complicated parts of making a Mission. I recommend again that learning about them should be delayed until after you have learned how to deal with the geometry and objects files.TROUBLE SHOOTING:No one has ever said that mission editing is easy. If you think using DFLE is hard, try making a mission by just editing all of the text directly, then you'll see hard. Numerous PC users, who have had DFuse available for a long time, have tried mission editing and have given up after a few tries. But, if you are really interested in mission editing don't give up too easy, you have to consider each failure as a learning experience. Have you read the DF Specs and DFuse tutorials? If not you should, so you will have a basic understanding of how levels work and how to make them?There are a few things that the DFLE instructions don't actually explain.Coordinates: LucasArts must have gotten these from "Bizzaro-Land" (superman comics).North/South, Top/Bottom, +/- of screen is the "X" coordinate.West/East, Left/Right, -/+ of screen is the "Z" coordinate Altitudes: Up/Down is the "Y" coordinate. Up is a negative number. If your floor is at 0 feet altitude and your ceiling is 10 feet above it, the "Y" coordinate is a -10 (minus) anything below the floor (0) would be a plus number.DFLE V0.96 has an error in this regard on the editing window. At the top right where it displays the X and Z coordinates, what is labled as the "Y" coordinate is actually "Z".DFLE does mention that you need to name a sector "complete" and include a copy of the .INF document in your .GOB. It also mentions that the vertices have to be placed in a CLOCKWISE order. This is also critical.As mentioned above, if your mission crashes on loading, its often a result of the Spirit location being incorrect. Other problems that could cause crashes are :~ You forgot to Convert any documents that you edited in text to Type/Creator = DATA/dRfO, before you GOBed them together. Use "GOBtyper" for this.~ The number of Objects listed do not match the actual number in the .O document. ~ The number of Sectors listed do not match the actual number in the .Lev document.~ The number of Walls listed do not match the actual number in the sector.~ The number of Items listed do not match the actual number in the .Inf document.~ Missing line feeds or typing errors in any of the documents that you edited.If your problems come from none of these things, than I don't have a clue as to what is causing them. Maybe you have discovered something new that I haven't encountered yet. However, you should double check all of the above items. More than once I have spent hours double checking things only to find the problem was a simple typing error that I overlooked more than once.PC COMPATIBILITY:You can make a mission that will play on a Mac, but will not load on a PC. Being a devout Mac user you might say "Who Cares!". But that wouldn't be very considerate would it, especially considering all the hours of enjoyment we have gotten out of playing add-on missions created by PC users. I feel we have an obligation to repay the PC community by making sure that any new missions that we create can be played on a PC. You can do so as follows:BAT FILE: PC's need a BAT file in order to load the mission. A BAT file is easy to make, just paste the following text into a new Simple Text document, insert the name of your "Mission.GOB" following the -U, and edit the rest of the text as appropriate.@echo off
echo EASTER.GOB
echo By Ron L. Davis
echo Made by a Mac User
dark -UEASTER.GOB
echo Thanks for trying it!
echo Send ALL comments to:
echo ArchTx@aol.com
WASHING MAC FILES: PC's cannot use Mac files because Mac's save files, even basic text files, with an extra resource fork containing information about the file like its TYPE/CREATOR. That's why you have to convert PC missions in order to load them on the Mac Dark Forces application, the Mac won't recognize the files without this information. But a PC doesn't know what to do with the extra information, so it will not load a Mac file. I discovered by trial and error that you can wash this information out of the Mac files by running them thru GOBIt or GOBViewer. In other words: 1. Put all of your files in a folder, including the Mission.TXT and Mission.BAT files.2. Drag & Drop the folder on GOBViewer, so it makes a new GOB.3. Take the new GOB and drop it on GOBViewer, so it extracts all of the files into a new folder, put the GOB in the trash. Notice that all of the files in the new folder have lost thier text or DF icons. They have been washed and will now work on a PC.4. Remove the Mission.TXT and Mission.BAT files from the new folder.5. Drag & Drop the new folder with the remaining files onto GOBViewer again so it makes a new GOB. VERIFY 6. Use ResEdit to Change the Type/Creator information to TEXT/PCXT.BETA TESTING: I learned as a result of issuing EASTER.GOB (and finding three errors in it) that you should always take the time to ask a few people to BETA test the .GOB for you before going public with it. Its real hard to pull something back off of the internet once you have released it. I'd be happy to BETA test any new missions that you produce, just send them to my email address below.I hope this tutorial helps you create many marvelous new missions. I'm looking forward to trying them out!ArchTx@aol.com
