The creation of the three-dimensional version of Castelvecchio has been a long work separated in various phases: the first one involved the visit to the castle to understand how was made the structure of the building and the proportions of the various rooms. Subsequently in the libraries have been taken in loan books in which the plant of the building was found in all of its stairs. Subsequently, using GTKRadiant it has procedeed to the construction of the building.

The principal objective was to interpret the information of the plan with the elements perceived during the real visits and to succeed in transposing these data in GTKRadiant to get the representation of the real castle.

Almost difficult to build were the vòlts, that structures that allow, in an ancient building, to create ample voids in the walls; the difficulty is given by the fact that these architectural structures are created with GTKRadiant in an horizontal way, parallel to the sight of the plant, the one that is called XY View in the program. To make it rotate vertically, it is necessary to click on Selection> Rotate and then on the voice in base to which it is desired to rotate the selected object; by default the program proceed with a rotations of 90°, but if we desire some rotations of different anglings we have to click on Arbitrary rotation and in the window that will appear we have to indicate the axle of rotation and the number of degrees needed.

GTKRadiant is a free software downladable from the site www.qeradiant.com. It allows, using the graphic engine of the game (in the case of all the videogames of the ID-software it is Trinity), to create some MODs, "modifications" of the games itself.

The program it is not found directly on the site above, but it is avaible through a series of mirrors.

To create a 3D environment , a “place” in which the player moves inside, ite is necessary that this is the fluiddest possible, and this is realizable by reducing the number of polygons present on the renderized scene. The rendering engine, for every frame reads the inputs of the player, calculate the new position in the map,, individuates the position of possible BOT or of other players, elaborates the collisions and the animations, draws the frame, syncronizes the whole in real time and, finally, shows the output on the screen.

Once uploaded GTKRadiant we have to proceed to its installation, during which the user it is prompted to indicate the path of the main directory of the game; once done this, the installation program ends the procedures and it is ready to be used.

Done this it is possible to immediately begin to build, but first of all it is necessary to set up the inside windows that allow us to visualize the MOD that we are going to realize, because for a good construction many views are needed: the view from above, the frontal and the side views and, very useful, the one that shows us the whole renderized scene in real time, that is a three-dimensional preview with low quality textures applied that has the purpose to make us understand what we are doing and where we are working on.

It is now necessary to begin to build the first wall: with the mouse pointer moved upon the view from the above, we draw a rectangular selection holding pressed the left button of the mouse; then we move on one of the other two windows -the frontal view or of the side one- we click a little above the border of the rectangle and -by keeping the left button of the mouse pressed- we move it in vertical toward the above: in this way a height is given to the rectangle just built.

In this way we have just built the first wall, and we can preview it in the fourth window, the one of the rendering preview.

As it regards the textures, in the map there are two ways of use them: the first one is to use those avaible in the game itself; while the second way consists of importing them from outside the game as image files, and this is possible by putting them in the Texture folder created inside Main, located in the directory of the game. The images have to have dimension of the sides calculated in power of two (2x xes 2y where X = Y or X> Y or X <Y; for example 28 xes 28 = 256 xes 256 or 28 xes 26 = 256 xes 64 or 26x 28 = 64 xes 256) and a resolution of 72 DPIs (Dot For Inch), that is the image is composed from 72 bright points for every linear thumb, in how much superior resolutions or greater dimensions would make the game crashes, causing, in this way, the reset of the computer, since the required memory to make the game work would be very superior to the memory that is found installed on the mother card.

The construction of a room implicates that we have to build the figure six times in a way to have all the six walls of a room.

For connecting two rooms through a corridor, it is necessary to create the passages in the walls and this is doing by lifting from the level of the floor a wall, filling the space with another wall and giving attention by keeping free the space for the passage where the doors are previewed; finally by connecting the two rooms with a corridor, that it is nothing other that another room deprived of the walls that have to allow the passage.

In this way it is possible to create a great variety of environments, from the houses to the castles, and even to build some futuristic environments.

To apply the textures on the model that has just been created (after putting them in the proper directory) we have to select the brush and, subsequently, move above the menu bar and click on View> Toggle> Console View; by doing this, a window appears in which the textures are seen, but the window appears empty, because the images have not yet been loaded. For loading them, we have to click on the menu bar on the voice Textures and in the list that appears we have to choose the images, that are grouped in various typologies according to what they represent. It is enough then to select firstly the brush and after the texture to make it be applied above the brush.

Once inserted the texture it is necessary to manage it, and this means to widen or tighten it up so that it covers the whole width, height and depth of the object, in such way that no points of junction are seen; or to make that the square of the texture has the same dimension of the base and the height of the used file and that it is repeated so many times how many are necessary for covering the whole object.

To do this it is needed to click on the Textures menu and subsequently on Surface inspector: in this way a window opens in which by clicking on Fit it is possible to widen the texture on the surface avoiding that it repeats; by clicking on Axial the square of texture is multiplied up to cover the whole object.

There are then other options, as H Shift and V Shift that allow, respectively, to horizontally and vertically lengthen the image; then modifying the values in Rotate it is possible to rotate it, while for moving it we need to modify the values in H Scale and in V Scale with the result that, for example, we can make begin a tile of the floor precisely next to the wall, so that to create a best illusion of reality.

It is now necessary to create the point from which the player will have access to the level. To make this we right click on the created map: by doing this, a menu it appears and in it we have to choose Info and then info_player_start. In this way a red figure it appears (we can put only one of this iside any map). From that point, once compiled, the game has beginnin. This object, as you can see in the image above, it is endowed with an arrow and this points out the direction in which the look of the character is facing at the beginning of the adventure.

Now we have to complete the elements that compose the scene, the models and the camera, that is is managed by the player and that he can modify his liking, by inserting the lights, whose purpose is, besides to illuminate the scene, to create pathos in the player by lowering the level of brightness in certains moments of the game.

The light is inserted by right clicking with the mouse in the part of the level in which is wanted to position it: a menu will appear and here we have to choose the voice Light: a dialogue box will appears in which it is asked to indicate the intensity of the bright ray. In this way it has been created a light point that can be duplicated as much as you like.

Inside the map just created it is possible to insert an environmental sound, that is activated in the moment in which the level is loaded: to do this we have to select any brush of the map, activate the Entity View and insert MUSIC as value in KEY; in the voice VALUE we will put the path of the audio file that we want to use.

As has been mentioned above, the map, once completed, must be compiled. This operation has a double motive: the first one is to allow some controls aimed to discover malfunctions or errors of coding; the second and most important, is to allow the diffusion of our own work through various channels, such as the peer-to-peer, the e-mail or simply the upload on sites or forums from which other users can download it.

To create a map so that to have a preview, we have to click on Bsp and then on Q3Map2: (single) BSP - meta: it appears in this way a MS-DOS window in which there are shown the elaborations that are running and the percentage of completion.

After having ascertained that the map correctly works and that it is in conformity with what we have established, we have to click on Bsp again and then on Q3Map2: (final) BSP - destination, - vis, - light, - fast, - filter, - super 2, - bounce 8 for having the final compilation of the map. This second operation needs more time in comparison to the preceding one to be completed, becouse all the elements of the map are compiled (the shaders, the reflexes and all the elements that improve the perception of the MOD are elaborated); for this reason the time of elaboration can lasts from about ten minutes to a few hours, according to the power of the computer on which we are working.

The result of the compilation process is a file with extension “BSP”, acronym of “Binary Space Partition”, that is the type of file used by John Carmack when it conceived Doom, due this game and others that have the same graphic engine use this type of file.

The process of compilation is subdivided into four single processes linked between them: the first one organizes and identifies the data of the map, as the audio and the textures; in the second phase the surfaces are built in a three-dimensional way; in the third phase the lights are elaborated, their color on the various surfaces and the shaders; in the fourth and last phase the file of area is created (with extension “AAS”), that gives instructions to the BOTs (characters that stir in the map and with which it is possible to interact in various way) about thing to do and how to stir in the map.

Now that the work has been completed, it is necessary to test it, and for doing this it is necessary to start the game and to access the command console; to do this we have to press the key \ and then digit the command “map” followed by a space and by the name of the map itself. After some instants the map is loaded and it becomes possible to move inside the environment just created.