Beginning the manipulation of your room and world

Click on the select mode button. It looks like this: :. You are now in select mode.

Move your cursor over to one of the white lines of your cube and left click it.
The cube line color changes to light blue. This means the cube is selected and you can now manipulate it and change its size, texture and other characteristics.

Click on the move/rotate button . You can now move or rotate your cube. Left click, hold and drag your cube to a new position by a few inches. When you release, the textured view will change. What you have done is moved the cube in relation to the camera view. The camera view is shown by the little white "X" in the center of the the top, front and side windows. Now right click, hold and drag your cube. This

rotates it. Now click on the scale button . Now you can left click, hold and drag your cube to a larger or smaller size. Try it. Do some experimenting. If you drag a corner then the whole cube becomes bigger. If you drag a side then only that dimension gets bigger. Note: Remember that you are looking at a cube from three different perspectives: Top, front, and side so modifying the cube in different windows will have a different effect on how your room will look. If you want to make the walls of your room taller you have to drag up the size of the cube in the front or side views. Expement with this and watch the results in the textured window. Before we go any further lets review what we have learned.
Select Mode button Click on this button when you want to select something in your game. After selecting it then you can modify it. Move/Rotate button Click on this button then you can left click and drag an object to a new position (Move). Or you can right click and rotate an object. (Rotate)Scale button Click on this button then you can make an object larger or smaller.

"Manipulating Textures"

Select the camera mode button . Now you can left click/hold and drag in any of the windows and get a good look around your room. Do this in the texture window and it gives you the feeling that you are looking around in your room. With left click you can mouse around left, right, forward and backward. If you want to move up or down then right click/hold and drag.

You are currently manipulating the whole cube but you want to make the textures of your walls, ceiling and floor different so you have to change from brush mode (the brush is the total cube) to face mode (Where you can access the different faces of your cube separately. To do this you press the page down key on your keyboard. The color of your cube changes to purple. Now left click/drag in the texture window moving your view so that you can see some of the ceiling, some of the floor, and part of at least two walls.

Now we are going to change the texture of the ceiling. Press the select mode button

Now single left click on your room in the Textured window.

Now hit the PageDown button on your keyboard. This allows you to Dig deeper into the Room.

In the texture window single mouse click on the ceiling of your room..The colors of your cube change and now only the inside surface of the ceiling is purple showing that only it is selected to be modified. In your control panel

select the textures tab

The texture panel comes up showing a list of textures you can choose from. A texture preview window shows you the currently selected texture. The texture used as a default in your room is blkrock (Black Rock). All the surfaces in your room have this texture. Well this would make for a pretty boring video game

so lets change some things.

Single click on the various textures and see what they look like. When you find one that you like press the apply button and voila! the ceiling texture in the texture window changes.

Make a video game - designing the room and Manipulating textures - continued
For my ceiling I chose tile10. The illustration below shows what it looks like applied to the ceiling. It is now starting to look like a room.

Now repeat this process to apply textures to the walls and the floor. Remember this is the procedure you follow:

1. Click on the camera mode button then click and drag in the textured window to show the surface you want to apply texture to.

2. click on the select mode button and select a surface. If a single surface doesn't turn purple when you click it then you have to hit the page down button.

3. click on the textures tab

4. single click the desired texture from the list then click the apply button.

I have applied a variety of textures to my room shown below.

It is starting to look like the room from a fantasy world.

Click on the camera mode button and left click/mouse around in the textured window and appreciate your work. Looks like a room now. You have completed a very important part of the process of building your world. this set of steps is critical knowledge. You will repeat this over and over again making different sized rooms with different shape, you will add objects and apply textures. If you build this base of knowledge strong then you are well on your way to designing video games. So I highly recommend that you repeat this part of the process again. This time experimenting with different room sizes and textures. Get to know the buttons we have used. Remember to switch between the camera mode and the select mode. Notice and remember how colors change and what the change signifies. Don't forget to page down to access single surfaces within your objects. So now return to the beginning of this chapter and do everything again. When you get to this point again then you can contine on to the next lesson..

Go back to the beginning and build another room

Ok, you have built a second room, maybe even a third. Continue on to the next lesson