Swat 4 levels are created using the SwatED tool. which is an adapted version of the Unreal 2.0 Engine. The Editor comes with the game and is installed as standard when you install the game. To locate and run the editor you will need to find it in it's default directory structure, whichever drive you installed to.
SWAT4/content/System/SwatED.exe
You are going to be using this regularly while level editing. So I suggest you make a shortcut on you desktop.
A point to note early on is that SwatED uses a Subtractive approach to level editing rather than the more usual Additive. This means that instead of starting with an empty world and adding your geometry,meshes,lights etc. You will instead be carving out areas to work in. A way to picture this is to imagine a solid block of clay that you can reach into and take chunks from without damaging the surrounding area. So if you know how large your total map is you could in theory go ahead and carve out a chunk that big and then add stuff back in. However the normal approach is to build your level area by area (room by room so to speak) and then carve out the outside if needed.
With this understood its time to go ahead and launch the editor. You should then be presented with the default view of a completely solid world. This is the black area in the bottom left window of the four views you see, also known as the perspective view. the remaining three views are also showing you the world but in an orthographic way (flat). They are depicting your would from a top down, side on, and Front point of view.
So before we discuss the tools and menus you see we will go over navigating these four viewports.
In the Orthagraphic viewports you can use you left mouse button (LMB) or your right mouse button (RMB) and drag to pan around the view. If you hold both of these mouse buttons down and move forward or backwards on your mouse you can zoom in and out of the view. All of this can be achieved with the middle mouse button / scroll wheel (MMB) if you have one, by holding the MMB down and dragging to pan, and scrolling the wheel forward and backwards to zoom in and out.
The perspective viewport work a little differently. This time the LMB will allow you to rotate around the scene and move in and out of it while holding and dragging. The RMB will also let you rotate in the same way, but the forward and backwards motion will make you look up and look down. The MMB does nothing.
Now that you know how to navigate the views it is time to learn what all the buttons along the top of each viewport do.
The joystick allows you to run (play) your level in that viewport.
The T,F,S buttons allow you to switch the viewport to the view you want T for top F for front and S for side, in case you feel more comfortable with a different setup.
The boxes you see are for displaying the contents of the viewports in different styles wireframe, textured, dynamic lighting etc. Without content in our scene it is difficult to see any results. As you move forward you may wish to check out these options more closely.
The eye icon lets you lock your view to a selected actor.
The last icon allows you to display bigger vertices.
In the next tutorial we will look at the menu bar.
Topic: How To Make Levels For SWAT 4: 01 - The Editor Viewports (Read 6593 times)
