Anyone have any experience building a map from an existing place/bldg, etc.? Advice?

I'm considering doing an office bldg I have access to (for the fun of it). I've worked out scale: 210' x 258' = 2520 units X 3096 units. From there I plan on building the external walls, and then trying to look at the architectural plans to get some more scaling information (mostly height stuff). It's a two floor bldg with a very open greatroom based on a warehouse (pretty cool actually).

Anyway, I'm trying to learn how to map and am taking on this ambitious project to go through all of the challenges of mapping.

Let me know if you have any good advice.

take a picture of your workplace its easy 2 remember it then :D
also 1unit in CoD = 1inch real-life :D but u know that ^_^

Use wyatts awesome videos :D then you should learn quickly mostly the things you need to know about mapping
good luck
have fun :D

I did that for my first map, I definatly wouldn't say it's a good way to learn, but if it keeps you interested enough to get past all the "EXTREME FUN" in mapping, as it did me, I see no harm... However, I would never do that again...

I went to the library and bought 3 floor plans of our school.

It's on a A1 format see picture above î
and below you see it on radiant, now I'm further with it, screens soon! :biggrin:

All sizes match but some class rooms look small

On the floor plan are the sizes in centimetres so I did that 2.5 centimetres is 1 inch = 1 unit in radiant.

damn metric

Thanks, I have the floor plans for the space and I have the architectural plans for scale information. So, it should be pretty cool for a starting project.

It's really too bad that the Radiant designers didn't allow you to paste in a background image to one of the graphed views (like the top view) such that you could sketch out a design and then paste it in.

As a matter of fact, I'm a software engineer (7 years) and I'm sort of appalled at the number of issues that the CoDRadiant editor has... even the UI elements. It would have been cool for them to implement some of the standards that windows uses.... select by left click, select all by ctrl-a, delete removes a brush, MDI interface (dockable UI and controllable without restart), bug management (if I don't save ALWAYS I'm at danger of a crash), etc. Too bad they don't release the source and let us dev's at the code to improve it. There aren't any other tools to use, right? And no updates of CoDRadiant, right?

Also, makes you wonder if the game level designers at Infinite Ward had to use this tool....

Anyway, there's my complaints....

I've heard that it is possible to insert a floor plan (or what ever) on the background, but I don't know how

You can try to make your map as a .bak file:
you can find it in your codmainmaps where the .map are in too.

BAK-file:
// brush 1
{
( -954 576 38 ) ( -942 576 38 ) ( -942 576 40 ) common/caulk 37 -60 0 0.249977 -0.250038 0 0 0 0
( -942 464 40 ) ( -942 464 38 ) ( -954 464 38 ) industrial/concrete@fctry_concfloor1 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0 0
( -942 464 32 ) ( -942 576 32 ) ( -954 576 32 ) industrial/concrete@fctry_concfloor1 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0 0
( -954 576 34 ) ( -954 464 34 ) ( -954 464 32 ) industrial/concrete@fctry_concfloor1 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0 0
( -948 576 36 ) ( -948 464 36 ) ( -954 464 34 ) industrial/concrete@fctry_concfloor1 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0 0
( -948 464 36 ) ( -948 576 36 ) ( -942 576 34 ) industrial/concrete@fctry_concfloor1 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0 0
( -942 464 34 ) ( -942 576 34 ) ( -942 576 32 ) industrial/concrete@fctry_concfloor1 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0 0
}
// brush 2
etc.

Radiant isn't designed for CoD.
I think that it is possible to built your levels in an other editor and after that you put it in radiant for the final things (texturing and stuff) but that's a long and hard way...

I map since Dec. 2003 and I haven't got an error since April 2004, because now I know exactly what you never must use and do.

Good luck!

You haven't had an error.... what SHOULDN'T you do then?

It seemed that most of the time when I had an error that shut down it was a texturing thing....

What are the best practices to keep from shutdown errors...

What do you mean with shut down? Exit the program and:
1) you can't load your level anymore or
2) you can load it, and there aren't any problems anymore.

-If you make your 3D as big as your screen is, sometimes it shut down (2)
-If you rotate your whole map, sometimes radiant will shut down (2)

-If you delete models or lights and try to get them back with ctrl + Z, sometimes after stopping and loading it will not load anymore, (1)
-If you change model names with the Entity button N sometimes after stopping and loading it will not load anymore, (1)
-Once I made a brush something with glass, didn't textured it good, and also after stopping and loading it will not load anymore, (1)

Also don't copy rotate able doors, the copy is different so, make all the time new doors!

DONNOT:
trying difficult 'new' things in your levels, always try it in an other level and shut radiant down, restart it and load the level again, look at it and if you don't see any changes, insert it in your main level.

for example: want to make a door?
Make a new map, TEST.map or doors.map and make your door, compile your level (if it's a small level you will compile it in less than 20 sec!) and test your door.

Do I make myself clear? :ohwell:

Excellent information. Shutdown usually just means I lose my changes since the last save. When I started having this, I started saving OFTEN. Anyway, your suggestions are really useful. I'll be careful about all of that stuf and just live with the shutdowns.

Thanks dBKapsel!