GtkRadiant Editor Manual


Installation & Set Up

Installing and running the editor

Open the installer package and follow the instructions. You may install GtkRadiant anywhere you choose.
Run GtkRadiant from the shortcut provided and choose a game to edit from the game-selection dialog.

Setting up Paths

Set the path to the engine in Edit > Preferences > Settings > Paths.

Improving Performance

If you find that the editor is sluggish on your system, try some or all of the following tweaks:

Setting up Preferences

To set up your editing preferences, open the Edit menu and select Preferences. Use preferences to set a variety of options and editor behavior based on your personal preferences.

Game Settings Screen

Globals


Interface


Display

Settings

Project Settings

The project settings dialog allows you to configure GtkRadiant for mod editing. You can choose a mod 'game-name' from the list, or enter a custom game-name. Depending on the game being edited, you can also choose between single-player and multi-player game modes.

Build Menu

You can customize the build-menu with Build > Customize.

  • Click on an item in the Build Menu list to edit its name.
  • Select an item and press 'Delete' to remove it.
  • Click in the blank line at the end of the list to add a new item
  • Select an item and edit the Commandline list to customize its commandline.

    Setting up the Windows

    There are six configurable windows in GtkRadiant.

    The Camera Window (CAM)
    The Camera window initially shows a gray field. This is where the 3D in-progress view of your map appears. You can SHIFT + click mouse button 1 to select objects in this window. If the images in this window appear overly dark, you can adjust the gamma value. Open the Misc menu and select Gamma. Enter a value between 0 and 1 for the light value. Close the program. Reopen the program. Check the darkness. Repeat this until you have a value you like.

    Entity/Texture/Console Window
    Depending on the Windows layout view that you’ve chosen, one or more of the following sub-windows share this window. They are selectable by the tab at the bottom of the window, or by shortcut keys.

    Entity Window

    The Entity window is one of four windows that share the same window space: Console, Entity and Texture and Group. The entity window is used to create and modify the properties of game entities. The uppermost box in this window contains the entity names. Use the scroll bar to find the one you want or for speed, type in the first letter of the class of entity you desire (“w” for weapon, “I” for item and so on). Refer to the Working with Entities section for more details on this.

    Texture Window

    The Texture window displays textures that have been loaded from the texture directories for easy use. The texture subset tool (set in preferences) allows you to quickly jump to a texture if you know the first few letters of its name. The scrollbar tool adds normal Windows functionality to the window. The most common method of navigating the window is to right-mouse click and drag through the window contents. SHIFT + right-mouse click and drag speeds up the rate of movement through the window’s contents. A thin green outline around a texture indicates a non-shadered texture in use in the map. A thin white outline indicates a shadered texture. A bold red outline indicates a selected texture.

    Console Window

    The console tracks the editor’s processes, like loading, saving, and compiling. When you compile (selecting an option from the bsp menu), the contents of the console are dumped into the junk.txt file in your Temp file folder on your root drive. In the Split Window view layout, the Console window is always in view.

    Orthographic Window(s)

    The Grid
    Think of the Orthographic window as a piece of graph paper, neatly divided into squares. However, unlike graph paper, you can change the size of the grid to fit your needs of the moment. You can change grid size from the Grid menu, but it’s faster to learn the key shortcuts listed below.

    Setting Grid Size

    Grid size Key
    1 unit grid (1)
    2 unit grid (2)
    4 unit grid (3)
    8 unit grid (4)
    16 unit grid (5)
    32 unit grid (6)
    64 unit grid (7)
    128 unit grid (8)
    256 unit grid (9)
    Grid Down Decreases the size of the grid. [ key
    Grid Up Increases the size of the grid. ] key

    Grid and Window Layouts
    There are four distinct ways of laying out the work windows for GtkRadiant.

    Design Notes:
    Try not to build architecture with a grid smaller than 8 units.
    Use a smaller grid if you need to build small details.
    Use a large grid (32 or 64) for roughing in a level.
    Use a large grid for moving large chunks of architecture around.

    Colors
    GtkRadiant allows you to select the colors of your grids and tools. Because the manual refers to the colors of some features, you may wish to wait until you are more comfortable using the editor before changing too many things. You can always revert to the GtkRadiant defaults, should you choose change too much.

    To change Map window and Texture window colors, select the “Misc” menu and choose colors. The pop-up lists a number of options.

    Themes
    Brings up four options:

    Each of the following options opens the Windows color selector.

    Grid Background…
    The background color for the map window.

    Texture Background…
    The background color behind the textures in the texture window. This is probably best left a neutral color.

    Grid Major…
    These bolder grid lines mark 64 unit increments in the map window. These never change.

    Grid Minor…
    The finer grid lines in the map window.

    Grid Text…
    The color of the scale numbers along the left and top of the map window.

    Grid Blocks…
    These lines mark the 1024 x 1024 unit grids on the map.

    Default Brush…
    This is the color of unselected brushes in the map.

    Selected Brush…
    The color of selected brushes in the map.

    Active View Name…
    This is the text that says “XY Top” or “YZ Side” or “XZ Front” in the map view window(s).

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