World Editing 1

Introduction to 3D Game Development

Game Development using Reality Factory

Tutorial 1
World Editor Usage
Reality Factory is a free game development package which features an open source
game engine using Genesis3D (another open source 3D engine) with all the necessary
tools to build a game for any user at home. To use the package, we will first need to
download the package from the Internet via the following URL:

http://www.dhost.info/realityfactory/

Currently the most updated version is 0.75A.

Step 1
Download and install the Reality Factory package (0.75A)

http://dhost.info/realityfactory/downloads.htm

or follow the download link inside first link.

Choose the official release to download at the above page. Inside the page, choose
RealityFactory075A.exe for download for now.

Step 2
Bring up the world editor of RealityFactory(RF) package by going to the tools folder
of RF installed directory (typically C:\realityfactory) and double click the rfEditPro
program icon.

The opening screen of the world editor of Reality Factory is like that below:

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World Editing 1
Introduction to 3D Game Development

There are three primary editing modes of the editor:

Selection, Template & Camera.

Camera/Viewing window: navigating inside the created level (top left sub-window)
and adjusting the viewing portion in the three views(top, front & side – rest sub-
windows)

To switch between these three modes, simply press the buttons as indicated above, or
pressing the hot key (C-camera, B - Selection, T-template)

For each mode, there are some actions associated with it. We will cover them more in
the following sections.

2.1 Basics of Modeling in Polygons

Polygonal models consist of three basic elements: the vertex, the edge, and the
polygon.

Vertices: a single point in space

Edges: defined by two vertices. When viewing an object in wireframe mode, we are
seeing the edges.
Polygons: defined by three or more edges. Actually polygons are planes. Most
modeling packages allow an polygon to have more than three sides, but these are
generally tessellated to triangles(3-sides polygons) when being rendered to screen.

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Introduction to 3D Game Development

In 3D game modeling, the models have to be incredibly simple i.e. least number of
polygons used in modeling.

Vertex

edges and polygons

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 Tutorial on Game Development using Genesis3D
World Editor Usage

2.2 Create a little world

To create a level using RF requires you to understand the concept of Constructive

Solid Geometry. But first let’s have an idea of the components of a level first.
Basically a level inside a RF game(or most of the first person view game) consists of
many little geometric entities called “brushes”. A brush refers to some basic
geometric primitives or their combinations such as spheres, cube, etc. Inside the
world editor, we have only two kinds of brushes : solid brush and cut brush. They
refer to the basic operations of CSG as indicated below.

union

intersection

difference
primitives

Fig. 1 Possible operations of constructive solid geometry

In the union operation, the properties of two brushes are solid brushes i.e. they add up
together. In the difference operation, the sphere assumes the role of a cut brush and
the box is a solid brush. (there is no correspondents in RF for the intersection
operation AFAIK) In this sense, we define solid brush as a volume which has actual
existence in a level whereas a cut brush is a tool we used to carve or remove some
volume out from a solid brush. In the example below, we illustrate a simple example
how to build a level which consists of a room.

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World Editor Usage

2.1 Create a room

Change to template mode by pressing the template button (or pressing hot key ‘t’).
Note the right hand side of the editor window now shows the template tab as below:

Now click on the box button as indicated.

The description for the box template will appear on the right hand side as below.

This is the configuration box for creating a brush in your world. In the coordinate
system of RF, vertical direction is represented by the y-axis. The dialog box allows
you to input values which define the size of the brush. You can change the values for
the dimensions according to your requirement by pressing the “Customize Template”
button and entering corresponding values. For our current purpose the default value is

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 Tutorial on Game Development using Genesis3D
World Editor Usage

okay. Press the “Add to World” button and you should hear a “flip” sound and the
screen should change as below:

Now a blue outline will show in all the three view windows which indicates that a
brush has been placed into the level.

The created room will use default setting i.e. textures etc. for all your created brushes.
Now we need to do an extra operation to enable walkthrough.

Change to template mode and click on the template tab window. Click on the drop
down menu below the “Entities” and scroll to select the “PlayerStart” entity. This
indicate to the engine the starting position of our player.

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 Tutorial on Game Development using Genesis3D
World Editor Usage

To place the player start position onto our created level, click on the “Add” button
You should also hear a sound now, indicating that the entity Ihas been added to the
level.

To view the player start position, click on the “Group” tab and the following will
display:

This will show a list of entries and brush in our created world. Click on the
“PlayerStart” and the three views would be similar to that below.

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World Editor Usage

The information below the entry can be edited by clicking on the right hand table.

Now the four windows that show the level should change to make an arrow with light
blue color inside the level, which means that you have selected that
entity( PlayerStart).

Now repeat the same procedure to add also the entity called “PlayerSetup” to the level.
Note that the newly added entity is also placed in the center (0,0,0).

To start the walkthrough around the level, simply compile the level to generate the
required level file. Choose “Build\compile”” get the similar dialog box as follow:

Now check the Preview button. Press the “OK” button and the editor will perform
some calculations and the following dialog box will be displayed:

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World Editor Usage

That means the level is compiled successfully. Press “Y” or enter to confirm it.

1. The editor will bring us into the game world. The first picture of your created
level would like this:

Move around the level by using the “W,S,A,D” keys ( forward, backward,
strafe left, strafe right respectively) and mouse to adjust view point.

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World Editor Usage

2.2 Moving items inside the game world

2. Now choose re-select the “PlayerStart” by clicking on the group tab and select
it. The light blue arrow indicate the player start position with the facing
direction. Now click on the move button as highlight below:

3. You may now move the start position to wherever you like. Let’s move the
start position to the center of the room. To move an entity in the level, simply
drag the mouse towards the direction you wish. Also to do this operation, you
would probably work in the top window. To scroll along the top window (but
no moving the entity, just drag by pressing space bar the same time.

Now you may do the same operation to compile the level and start walkthrough.

Exercise
1. There are a number of building blocks available in the template menu,
indicated as below. Try all the different blocks in your level by repeating the
procedures similar to the steps we used in creating our level above, but with the
difference that you need to place the created object inside the created level in
order to be visible.

2. Try to place a building block over another and check the final result. This
corresponds to the union operation we described above.

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