Getting started with Habitat.
OK as promised, here's a tutorial on how to get started with habitat, the world editor from 8monkeyslab. This may sound obvious, but you need the game to be installed in order to use the Modtools. So make sure you've installed it. Download the mod tools beta from the following URL: ModTools BETA. After both are installed make sure you have everything else on the following list:
- NVidia PhysX - I had already installed it on my computer, so the DoD installer actualy Uninsulated it by running the PhysX setup again. So make sure you install it back if this is the case for you. You can find the setup file for PhysX inside your 'Darkest of Days/setup' folder.
- OpenAL - You can also find this in the same folder as PhysX. But just to be sure, here's a link to it online: OpenAL
- Updated drivers for your graphics card and the newest DirectX.
Now go to your Darkest of Days folder, find the file named Cagebreak.exe and run it. It will prompt with a DOS like screen. Type 'base' and hit enter, this should take some minutes to finish.
After that's done you can run Habitat.exe and the world editor should open up. You should see the sky-box and nothing else, let's create a terrain so that we have a sense of the place we're editing.
Click on Create -> Terrain. This pops up a new small windows with some settings for your terrain. These settings depend on what you're doing. I'm mostly going to preview small parts of an environment so I choose smaller patches, less rooms and higher mesh density. But you should be careful with this, don't overdo it. Here's my settings:
- Room size: 500
- Room X: 1
- Room Z: 1
- Tessellation: 10
- Texture scale: 12
This is the result. Save your map, close habit and then re-open your map. If you don't do this, some of the tools might not work. A but that the dudes at 8monkeyslab need to fix 
.
Empty terrain.
Camera movement:
- Pan: Hold ALT and middle mouse button and move the mouse.
- Rotate. Hold ALT and left mouse button and move the mouse.
- Zoom: Hold ALT and right mouse button and move the mouse.
Terrain editing:
Go to Edit -> Terrain -> Geometry or simply press CTRL-SHIFT-T. This will pop-up the Edit Terrain settings window. If you've ever used a world builder before then you'll find this very familiar. It has Raise / Lower/ Smooth etc. But one thing that this tool has that I haven't seen so much is the tessellation controls. You can increase or decrease the terrains polygon density where ever you like. I love having this much control.
Here are the actual controls:
- Raise terrain: Hold CTRL+ALT and paint with the left mouse button.
- Lower terrain: Hold CTRL+ALT and paint with the right mouse button.
Play around with the different settings and tools to paint your terrain, this is what I've got after a quick play with it.
Edit: Go to Calculate - Computer Terrain Shadows, to give it some nice shading.
Tesselation rulez.
Painting different textures:
Go to Edit-Terrain-Texture or press CTRL-SHIFT-P to enter the tools for texturing your terrain. Select the only selectable mask for your terrain and set the Mode to Layer. Now you can simply paint the different textures on your terrain. The controls are the same as raising and lowering your terrain, so hold CTRL+ALT and press the left mouse button.
Each terrain can have multiple layers of textures. The default ones are on Layer 0(Bottom) and Layer3(Top). You can add your own textures, but I wont cover that in this tutorial, since this is only a 'getting started' tutorial.
After some playing around I came up with this. I tried mimicking the WoW painting stuff in Habitat, since I'm planning to create a WoW-ish/Cartoony environment soon. I've used the default textures that came with DoD so it looks kinda weird, but you get the picture. For my own environment I'll be creating cartoony terrain textures from scratch .
WoW style terrain in Habitat!
Now let's add some meshes to this terrain. Click on Create -> Meshes. In this new windows click on Load Mesh and browse to your mesh. I've just selected some of the DoD default meshes. They are located in Darkest of Days/base/props/ folder.
Once you've added it to your list, hold shift and click somewhere in your terrain. This will add an instance of it which you can rotate and move around.
You can do the same with tree's just go to Create -> Tree's and repeat what you did with the meshes. Remember: SHIFT-CLIK to add it onto your terrain.
I wont go into grass, particles, effects etc, since this is just a 'getting started', but keep an eye on this blog because I'm going to make some tutorials for those as well.
After some playing around with the DoD meshes, this is my result. Once more, for my own environments that I'll be creating very soon I will create everything from scratch, because the DoD style doesn't not match the style I'm going for. Enjoy the great tools!
Voila.