From the 3drealms forums

Duke Nukem Editing Project tutorials


Prismed 1.0 & 1.1

By RG, altered by Fredlennium

Please be warned and advised that learning prismed will be time-consuming and frustrating. A lot of what you learn should come from experience and patience. But there are already alot of answers to basic questions in threads on the 3drealms forum, and in the other tutorials. It will probably take a few months, at least, to get up to working speed with this editor, so if you cannot commit to the time and frustration, do not try it.

To set up Prismed properly:

  1. Make sure you have installed both patches, one for DNMP and the other for the editor.
  2. Change the name of your game directory so there are no spaces in the name (example, c:\DNMP).
  3. Go into you game directory to c:\DNMP\duke\base and extract all the .zipfs files back into the base directory, but DO NOT delete the zipfs files.
  4. In the main DNMP directory there is a help file(DNMP Prism Help.chm. Read it entirely!!!
  5. View and study all the demo maps available to you through the editor menu and refer back to them to see how entities and brushes work.
  6. If you haven't done so, check out and work through the official Scssoft Tutorial.
Go into the editor and open the map demo_mover_adv2, look at the group manager on the right and take a good look at the structure of the directory hierarchy and how it's set up.

Then, click "build and run" the map. It has examples of setting up an auto-game track, a mover entity and a logic entity, plus some other things. See what it shows and then return to the editor.

Then, minimize(don't close) that window and open another editor window for a new map. Switch between the two maps and build the map exactly the way it shows in the group hierarchy, starting with the top folder and the properties of "CSG starting with" solid block, and just work your way down, studying all the properties of the various brushes and entities, and the structure of the files(subfolders, children, etc.)

When you get it completed, go to the main file menu at the top of the window and click "Check map for errors..." or the shortcut "F12". This will tell you if there will be any problems with your map. CHECK YOUR MAPS FOR ERRORS BEFORE YOU BUILD AND RUN THEM, ALWAYS and you will avoid a lot of crashes.

Also, before running maps, turn off any texture modes you might have on for the 3d view, because these modes can crash the editor(more so when you levels start getting really large).

Finally, save your work often so that if the editor does crash, you will not lose all your current work. Be sure to change the map name when you first click Save as...!

With this method, you can work through all the demo maps and learn what you need to make a fairly complicated, playable map.

Of course, when questions arise, search the forums and THEN post a question.

I hope you keep working on maps. Good Luck!

Special thanks to RG and Joe Siegler 1