ShockEd - The System Shock 2 Mission Editor

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*This was taken from the original guide to ShockEd. It serves as a good starting point. I encourage everybody to edit this to be more friendly and include more information


Introduction

Welcome to the world of DromEd, Looking Glass Studio's level editor, and the tool you need to create your own Thief, Thief 2, and System Shock 2 missions. This tutorial focuses on the System Shock 2 version, ShockEd, though the basic principles can be applied to editing for Thief as well. The tutorial starts as a walkthrough, but towards the end tends to be more specific and generalized.

Please keep in mind these editing tools have been released to the public "as is", meaning that the program is unsupported by Looking Glass, or anyone else for that matter. If you run into any problems whatsoever while using these tools do not call Looking Glass, EIDOS, Electronic Arts, Ion Storm or Irrational Games for help!

Another thing to bear in mind is that we do not know everything there is to know about the editor. There was never a comprehensive guide to the editor, so much of what we know has been gathered by experimentation and may or may not be correct. We bear no responsibility for the information contained within. If you do run into trouble you can probably find help at the Editing Forums at TTLG, but please remember that this a community website and we cannot guarantee that we can help you.

Finally, remember that this is not an official tutorial and was written by fans. It is not definitive and all of it is mainly educated guess work.



What IS DromEd/ShockEd ?

When the Dark Engine was first designed DromEd was created as the level editor to carve out the world and place objects within it. Due to the versatility of the system within the engine, it could be quickly and easily adapted to other genres. The engine was tweaked slightly and used to create System Shock 2, and then Thief 2. If you have played all three games you will notice similarities between them all.

As DromEd was the one and only level editor available originally, all further version bear the same name, including the one for System Shock 2 - it is simply called ShockEd for convenience, but the actual program name is still DromEd. Within this tutorial the terms dromed and shocked are interchangeable to a degree. Despite the same name you still have to use the correct editor for the correct game. There is some degree of integration between the three games - the architecture can be loaded between each - but not enough to allow you to edit all three games from one editor. The reason being that each game has different code addons which the others lack. Thief 2 has code for a scouting orb, SS2 code for cyber upgrades, etc.


How it works ?

The main idea with using the DromEditor is to carve out your world and then populate it. 'Architecture' refers to actually building terrain and selecting textures and lighting, and 'objects' are the do'ers in the world. AIs, doors, weapons, keys, keycards are all objects. If you want something to react or change during the level, it HAS to be an object. When you are playing the level the architecture is forgotten about, it is only used visually. In fact the levels on your game disks will not have the architectural plans within them to save space.

To create a level you use a set of geometric primitives to either create a solid object of that shape or to remove a solid of that shape. This system is know as CSG - Constructive Solid Geometry, and if you have edited for Unreal you will be familiar with it. These primitives can overlap, and they can be ordered about in time so there is an immense amount of versatility in what you can create. These shapes act as the plan for your level, you have to tell the editor to build your plan in a process known as 'portalising' (more on that later). Once you have portalised the level you can actually see something while in the game. The terrain in game is independent of the plan. This is why it was safe for the plan to be absent from the levels on disk. Once the house has been built destroying the plan won't remove the house. However, unlike a house, to make an alteration you need the whole plan, so if you want to change a level you have to have the existing plan of primitives already there.

For the object side, there are a number of set object templates named 'archtypes' which are in a class based list otherwise known as the 'Object Hierachy'. What determines an objects behavior are two areas Properties and Scripts. This is where our biggest hindrance arises, we cannot modify or add the list of properties or scripts, we can only use the ones that are already there, but that is getting into complicated editing. There are also 'Links' which connect objects together and define the relationships between them. You would link a lever to a door if you wanted it to open, but more of this later.

How to install it?
*This has changed with the release of Dark 2.42. This section needs some editing.

First you need to own the game to use the editor. Second you need to unzip the editor to the same directory as the game is installed. If when you try to run the editor it exits warning that it cannot find a font or a similar message you probably haven't installed it to the same directory as you installed the game.