I know this first one is going to look a bit like a large wall of text, I'm sorry, but there's not much to show off in pictures when it comes to interface. There will be plenty of pictures later, though.

This tutorial will cover both beginner and advanced methods for the majority of things in the level editor. Even if you have no experience with modding, you should be able to follow these tutorials. If you can't, either you skipped a section of the tutorial, or there's something wrong with my tutorial. You can PM me on the FG forum (Kiandra) and let me know what I need to clarify.

For the sake of not swamping everyone with everything, I'm going to start with the absolute basics. If you haven't downloaded the level editing suite, you can do so here. There are adequate instructions on the linked page on how to download and install the editing suite, so I won't be covering that in this tutorial.

If you wish to add to this page or would like to see your tutorial in the Useful Links Section (coming soon), feel free to edit this page and give yourself credit. Just try to stick with the same format used by the rest of the tutorial.

Okay, so I'm hoping you know where the level editor is. For windows users, like me, it's C:/Program Files (x86)/Amnesia - The Dark Descent/redist just double-click on the level editor application not the PDB file to get started.

So what is this thing, exactly? It's a lot of buttons! We'll go through each one of them in a bit of detail. Don't panic about needing to know all of them right off the bat, I'll refer back to the hotkeys and appearances of the buttons every time they're used in the basic tutorials. You'll become more familiar with them as you use them.

As we go through them, I will start with the buttons in the left side-bar and move counter-clockwise to the bottom bar, then right side-bar, then the top menu. It would be beneficial if you follow along in the level editor and click on the buttons or press the hotkeys when they're mentioned.

Don't worry if your screen doesn't look exactly like mine. I have the perspective viewport enlarged (you can do this by hovering your cursor over the bottom right quadrant and pressing spacebar). To enlarge the pictures beside each tool, you can right-click and select Open Image in New Tab.

We'll go over each of these buttons in more detail as they become relevant.

1. Select Tool

Hotkey: 1
Button Appearance: White, triangle-shaped pointer
What it does: You can click on anything and move it, duplicate it, turn it, or stretch it

2. Lights
Hotkey: 2
Button Appearance: Yellow light bulb
What it does: allows you to add lights so your map isn't a pitch black when you load it

3. Billboards
Hotkey: 3
Button Appearance: White rectangle
What it does: The stream-like things coming from the window as displayed in this link.

4. Particles
Hotkey: 4
Button Appearance: Blue atom-like thing
What it does: Makes neat special effects like fire, smoke, fog, dust, and water droplets

5. Sounds
Hotkey: 5
Button Appearance: Grey megaphone
What it does: Places different, looping sound effects (like ambient noise) around the map, causing a 3D effect with the sound

6. Static Objects
Hotkey: 6
Button Appearance: Red Lego brick
What it does: Brings up a menu on that large blank right-hand column which will let you place in objects that cannot be interacted with, such as walls, pillars, door frames, stairs, and railings.

7. Entities
Hotkey: 7
Button Appearance: A little white ghost
What it does: Brings up the menu for objects which can be interacted with (mostly), such as furniture, paintings, lamps, monsters, tinder boxes, lanterns, in-game items, and notes

8. Areas
Hotkey: 8
Button Appearance: Transparent-looking box
What it does: creates thesuperimportant player start areas, script areas, ladder areas, water areas, etc

9. Primitives
Hotkey: 9
Button Appearance: A cone and a cylinder
What it does: Places in the visual effect for deep and large pools of water, add ceilings, floors, and ground to large areas with more texture options, pretty much whatever you think a flat piece of repeating pattern could be useful for

10. Decals
Hotkey: 0
Button Appearance: A black goo splat
What it does: Allows you to place images that wrap around surfaces, such as blood and dirt stains

11. Fog Areas
Hotkey: Ctrl+1
Button Appearance: Cloud
What it does: Creates an area filled with fog

12. Combine
Hotkey: Ctrl+2
Button Appearance: two arrows, a blue and a red, facing each other

1. Grid Planes

Hotkey: none
Button Appearance: an XY, YZ, or XZ depending on which plane you're using
What it does: cycles through grid planes - changes how objects move when you're placing them (vertical or horizontal)

2. Toggle Grid Snapping
Hotkey: none
Button Appearance: U-magnet
What it does: changes whether objects will “snap” to the grid (move in multiples of 0.25). When it's deselected, you can move objects by multiples of 0.001

3. Height
Hotkey: none
Button Appearance: White text box with a 0 in it currently
What it does: changes the height of the grid. Standard walls in amnesia are 4 tall and 4 wide. You can change whether the grid is visible by pressing G

4. Snap Separation
Hotkey: none
Button Appearance: White text box with 0.25 currently in it
What it does: changes the distance between grid spaces (precision of grid-snapping), most useful as 0.125 or 0.25

5. Enlarge Current Viewport
Hotkey: Spacebar
Button Appearance: Two white boxes stacked on each other
What it does: makes the box which is highlighted red (because your cursor is hovering over it) fill up the screen

6. A - Ambient Light
Hotkey: None
Button Appearance: A capital A
What it does: Toggles between having the ambient boxlight; the one that makes everything evenly bright so there's no black-holes-of-doom (more on these later)

7. Global Pointlight
Hotkey: None
Button Appearance: A capital P
What it does: Toggles the global pointlight; this one enhances normal maps. Translation: it makes flat things look 3D.

Note: the global pointlight and ambient light do not show up in-game; only in the level editor

8. Focus
Hotkey: F
Button Appearance: A capital F
What it does: zooms the camera so that the selected object fills your view. This button is indispensable if you don't have a mouse or middle mouse button (the one used to pan)

9. Lock Tracking Grid
Hotkey: None
Button Appearance: An LT
What it does: Your view will move according to the grid's height if this is selected

10. Clip Planes
Hotkey: None
Button Appearance: The +/- buttons beside t