1. Running the program.On Linux: run "./designer" in an xterm, or double-click on "designer" (a symlink) in eg. Nautilus.
On Windows: double-click on "designer.exe". Alternatively, open cmd.exe (use Run if necessary), cd to the DF Designer folder, and type "designer.exe".
In either case, a new window should appear, with a dialogue box in the middle. Read it, then click OK.
Some key shortcut help should scroll up the console on the left; it's mostly accurate but the merge broke a couple of things (Z doesn't work at all, and spacebar sometimes won't place things).
2. View modes.In the menu at the bottom (or using the number keys as shortcuts), select 4 (View), then click 2 (Iso/3d). You should now be in 3D mode, and in front of you should be a 3D representation of a flat sheet of rock with grass on top of it. You can rotate this view with the square bracket keys [ and ]. Holding shift and pressing the same keys (ie. pressing { and }) will rotate in the vertical sense.
You cannot build while in 3D mode; for that you need Edit mode. In the View menu (which should still be open), click 1 (Edit). You will now be confronted with a grid of green tiles. This is a
slice, specifically the Z-level at ground level. If you are comfortable with DF's interface, you should already understand Z-levels. As in DF, you can move Z-levels with the < and > keys. Your current Z-level is displayed on a small counter below the menu (if the mouse is within the Edit region, its X and Y coordinates will also be displayed here).
There are two forms of the Edit mode. You are currently in COLOURS mode, where tiles are represented mainly by various colours (exceptions are 'objects', such as chairs, statues and so on). You can get a list of all the colours by pressing semicolon ';'.
The other mode is DF-TILES mode; you can get to it by pressing Ed/DF-Tiles (4). In this mode, tiles are represented by an approximation of their appearance within DF, with some colours based on the COLOURS mode output.
3. File operations.Loading, saving, and so on are all handled through the File menu. To get to it, first press Go Up (0), then File (1).
Now press Load (2), and answer Yes to the dialogue box that appears. Next, a text entry box should pop up; type in the filename "examples/castle5.dfd". DF Designer will load this file, and you should see the ground floor plan in front of you. You should recognise walls, floors, stairs and doors, as well as the ubiquitous grass. If you move to the other levels you will see many other things, such as the fortifications above and the beds, chairs, stockpiles etc. below.
The Export option (4) normally exports a series of floor plans in ASCII art
(well, Unicode actually), but at the moment it's bugged and you get an empty file
New, Save, and Quit should be fairly self-explanatory. QF-Export creates a QuickFort .csv designation file for the current Z-level.
Look around the castle for a bit with the 3D mode (0, 4, 2), then come back to the File menu (0, 1) and press New (1). Answer Yes to the dialogue box that appears.
4. Building stuff.We're going to build a simple dwarven house. First of all, you need some walls, so select the Rock tool (0, 2, 1). This tool is used both for digging out rock underground, and building walls on the surface. Using the left mouse button to place tiles, create a square wall, 7 tiles to a side. (If you go wrong, use the Grass tool (4) to remove walls that are in the wrong place).
Now select the Door tool (3) and place a door in the middle of one wall, so that our Urist McInhabitant can get in.
Urist isn't going to want to have to walk on grass the whole time, so let's build him some floor. Select the Floor tool (2). Now right-click in one corner of the grass area inside the house, then right-click again in the opposite corner. The square thus marked out will be filled in with floor tiles.
We'll get to the upstairs later, but in the meantime we'll place the staircase ready. Select the Stairs tool (6) and place a staircase in one corner of the room. Note that you only place the Up staircase; the Down stairs are automatically added to the floor above. (If you don't believe me, go and look - remember, < and > to change Z-level).
Next let's give Urist some furniture. Go to the Objects menu (0, 3) and select Table (1). Now place a table by one of the walls (away from both the door and the stairs). Now select Chair (3) and place two chairs along the same wall, one on each side of the table. It's starting to look rather homely, isn't it?
Now go up a level, and build the upstairs. You'll need walls, floor (except on the down-stair tile, which you should leave clear), and a bed (0, 3, 2). On the level above, build a layer of floor tiles to act as the roof.
Of course, one thing that's even more important to Urist than his bedroom, is in the other direction: the wine cellar. Go back to the ground level, and select Stairs (0, 2, 6); position your cursor over the stairs already there, then go down a level, and click to place new stairs. (If you now go up again, you'll see the stairs on the ground level have become up-down stairs (an 'X'))
Now use the Rock tool to dig out some nice extensive wine cellars (and maybe place some Doors too). The more winding and complicated, the better; after all, Urist needs plenty of room to store his booze!
If you want to emphasise the fact that these rooms are for storage, you can place Stockpile tiles, with (0, 3, 5); unfortunately there's no way to mark the fact that they are for alcohol. You might also want to place some Statues (4) to guard the nectar.
5. Miscellaneous.In the Misc menu (0, 5) you will find several useful things. Count (5) will count up the numbers of items of many kinds which would be required to build your design - doors, beds, statues, etc. The "stairs" count only counts the upstair, so you will typically need to double this number.
The Clone and Shift buttons are large-scale; these are really for advanced use and you should always save your design before using them (because otherwise, you
will overwrite something you didn't mean to, and lose it). Clone/abv copies from the layer above into the current layer, overwriting whatever was there before. Similarly for Clone/blw.
Shift Dn will move every layer down one, discarding the bottom layer (and filling the new top layer with sky). Shift Up does the opposite, filling the new bottom layer with rock.
Ground (6) sets the groundlevel to the current Z-level. The main use of this is that levels below this will have rock where levels above this have walls; it is essentially a display thing.
Finally, About (7) streams the credits up the console. Find and report a bug, and you might get your name in there too
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Topic: DF Designer - 0.16.3 released (Read 47858 times)