Atmosphir 101: Designing a Basic Castle (Part 1 of 3)

In this lesson, we’ll be making a simple castle while learning about the basics of Atmosphir design.

Steps: 20 Time: 10-15 Minutes Difficulty: Beginner

1. Start by opening up design mode by clicking on the green button on the top.
2. In the upper-left corner, click the drop-down menu and select “Blocks.”

This is your Category list, and you can access all the different types of design tools here. For now, we’re going to stick to our basic building blocks, which are at the core of most Atmosphir levels. These blocks take up 1 grid space and are as tall as 1 floor.
3. Click the reddish-brown brick block near the top of the block icons. The background will be highlighted blue, showing that you have selected this block to begin building with.
4. Move your cursor over into the big grid area on the right. You’ll notice that your cursor is now followed by the block, and as you move around the grid, it moves and snaps to each individual grid square.
5. Left-click on the grid once to place a block down.
6. Keep your cursor over the block and right-click to delete it. Left creates, right erases (we strongly recommend using a 2-button mouse with a scrollwheel for designing in Atmosphir).
7. Press the up, down, left and right arrow keys. Notice how your view of the grid moves around when you do this. You’ll use these often to move around and get a better view of your work.
8. Click the Orbit button in the top toolbar. This tool allows you to rotate the angle of your view around. For our castle, we want to start with an overhead view.

With the orbit tool highlighted in blue, move your cursor over the grid, then left-click and drag the mouse slowly. Notice how your view changes as you move the mouse around. Take note of the 3D cube in the upper-right corner and how it rotates around as you orbit. To get an overhead view, we want to make it so the green top square is perfectly centered. You can either click the green square itself or continue dragging the mouse until you get the correct position/perspective. It should look like the image below: