Descent 3 Level Editing

Designing and creating levels and missions for Descent 3 can be fun and challenging!

You may at times find level editing confusing and discouraging. Don't despair, help is but a few clicks away.
To get started, you will need the latest version of D3Edit. Then explore the tuts listed below. Although new features have been added to D3Edit after many of these tuts have been written, there is a wealth of information available.

Getting Started

Setting up D3 Edit and Quicktest
QuickTest is a powerful tool that is included in the later versions of D3Edit. Learn how to use it and put it to work for you!

The Level
The Level is a great tut to start level building with. Schplurg has done a fantastic job of explaining the basics. I heartily recommend that you follow this tut closely to build your first level.

There are also some great 'getting started' tuts at Robo's D3Edit Tutorials!

Verify Your Mine

If you followed Schplurg's tut closely you should have been able to build a mine with few or no errors. But when you start building on your own, errors are hard to avoid. You need to Verify Your Mine. This tut will teach you how to find and repair them.

Troubleshooting

Of course, not everything always works correctly... Here are some hints, pages and links that might help you solve some problems.
The first thing to do is to run verify. Visit Verify Your Mine for instructions on how to do that, and tips for repairing many of the errors Verify will find.
Second, visit Troubleshooting Your Mission.
Third, post a question at Planet Descent.

Advanced Building

Constructing a Cave Style Tunnel
Getting tired of building straight walls? Try a cave!

Make a Sphere
It's easy to make a perfect sphere in D3... Just follow this tut!

Texturing

Custom Textures
Adding unique textures to your level can give it character and help convey the theme.

Scripting

Getting DALLAS to work:

First read Papacat's tut. The link for the SDK and the compiler are broken, so download them both in a zip here. There's also an article by Techpro about setting up egcs and another one about some common mistakes on the Guides Forum. If you are still having trouble, a thread on Planet Descent, 'DALLAS still won't compile' may provide some answers. For your first script, I recommend Script a Switch.

Script a Switch
So, you've built a level and in it you put a switch... but the switch does nothing! You need scripting to make it work. This tut teaches step by step how to do it. Along the way you will learn a lot of other concepts as well, such as HUD messages, animation, playing sounds, user types, and more. It's a great lesson in DALLAS even if you don't need a switch for your level.

Adding Music and Custom Sound Effects

Adding your music to your Descent 3 level:

There are two issues that need to be addressed:
One, is the sound quality is 22,050hz, 8bit, mono, PCM. Unfortunately music converted from 44k usually sounds like crap, especially the finely detailed, high notes like cymbals, triangles, etc... although loud deep bass notes don't fare well, either.

Two, Descent 3 uses regions, and plays clips successively with no cross fading. This means the clips need to be loopable. D3 will play a given set of loops following simple instructions, but if the loops are too long sometimes it will forget to advance to the next region. So, the clips need to be short. I have found that 16 seconds is good. I haven't seen any limit as to how many loops per region, or regions per level.

There is a tutorial at Kyouryuu's Levels.

Modeling

Create your own objects!

Objects, such as ships, robots and the great array of mechanical contraptions evident in Descent 3 begin life as a poly model. A poly model can be created by using D3Edit, as a room file (*.orf) and converted to an object file (*.oof) with OOFEdit. Another option is to use a 3D modeling program such as 3Dmax. You then need to convert to an OOF with a converter program.

Model Files

Justin Krentz's Pyro Model
This Pyro is in 3ds format. Custom textures in JPG format are included.

Further Development

There are a ton of things to download at Descent3.com, tools, source codes, file specs, etc... If you are hardcore serious about Descent 3 development it a must visit site!

There are many more tuts that I linked to on my links page. Let me know if the sites go down and if I can I will host them here. Comments are greatly appreciated!

Descent 3 Level Editing discussion and category. Tips, tricks, tools, tuts... Note, if you have a file to upload, please e-mail it to WillyP 'at' Prepare4Descent 'dot' net.

The following 28 pages belong to Descent3LevelEditing:

CaveTunnels	CommunityLinks	CustomDallas
CustomDoors	CustomTextures	D1D2LevelConvertToD3
D3EditTipOfTheDay	D3Limits	D3Matcen
D3Music	DescentiaPedia	Dxf2Orf
Extrude0	InternalExternalInterface	IntroMovie
LevelInfo	LevelOptimization	LevelView
MakeASphere	NewDALLASSearch	PlacingExternalRooms
Player0StartOnTerrain	QuickTest	ScriptASwitch
TableFiles	ToolsMenu	TroubleShootLevel
VerifyYourMine

I also highly recommend that you peruse the collections of tuts at the following sites:
Schplurg's Game Edit Tutorials
Kyouryuu's Levels.
Robo's D3Edit Tutorials.

Note: if you came here from the original D3 Level Editing page on Prepare For Descent., be advised that that page may not contain the latest info and corrections. It will not be maintained or updated, and may be removed at some point. Update your links and bookmarks to this page, DescentiaPedia, or Prepare For Descent!

DescentiaPedia : Descent3LevelEditing