newbie needing help!

[FireflyPDP]

Hey all, I'm a newcomer to these forums, but I really really really need your help!

 

Basically, I'm part of a 3-man team that has to make a mod for a school project. We chose Jedi Academy because the Q3 engine was a lot easier to use than something like the Unreal engine. The problem is, none of us really have any modding/scripting/editing/etc experience! Me and one of my teammates are programmers, but we've never done scripting for an engine before, or level editing, or anything like that. Our other teammate has some very basic experience with Maya, but that's about it.

 

We've had to learn pretty much everything else on our own, without even knowing where to start (because our stupid instructor hasn't even taught us how to use any of these tools)! I grabbed GTKRadiant to do level editing, and since then, our "artist" on the team took over that job. There's still a lot, though, that we don't know about GTKRadiant and level editing. Do you think you guys could help us out? I have a few questions...

 

- How do you make mirrors in the game?

I tried looking up that info all over the web (and even on these forums), but the instructions I see never work when I try them in the game! I tried putting the mirror_yavin texture onto the side of a brush, but when I load the game, nothing shows up! It's as if the texture were still caulk, cuz I can see right through it! Other mirror textures don't work either... they just show up as they look in GTKRadiant when I run the game.

 

- How do you import models into the level?

My teammate has some models he made (like desks and furniture), but he doesn't know how to import them into the game. I know they have to be .md3 format, right? That's the file type I saw the other models using.

 

- Can you explain how draw zones (or whatever they're called) work?

Right now our entire map is being drawn, but I think that makes the level run a little slower, right? How do you fix that? My friend (who has used GTKRadiant) was trying to explain to me Draw Zones, or Portals, or something like that, but I didn't understand it.

 

Oh yeah, I'm using GTKRadiant v1.3.13. Please help me out here! I'm new to all of this!

 

EDIT: Another question...

 

- How do you toggle brushes so that they conform to the grid lines?

My teammate accidentally did some kind of setting so that the walls he was creating were no longer locking in at the grid lines and he could basically resize them to make them paper thin or whatever thickness he wanted. How do you switch it back so that it follows the grid?