Contains all of the info for the entities, just like JSON or something like that. So you can edit certain things quite easily like targetnames, and entity names (like a door called 'bob'). But you can also easily edit the path information about the location on the HDD of the .wad files, or .hlwad files - whichever you use. TxQBSP supports .hlwad and .wad files.

Load the .map file into a text editor and search for the word 'wad' - you will find it :) 

If that doesn't do it for you then it's safe to say that it can't be done. Not for Quake anyway. 

I'm finding on my map I'm getting overly bright red corners on my lighting (even where there isn't a light touching it). Has anyone got any experience with mapping with Quake 2 engine games?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/814f7f7htjgrx0r/Htic2-02.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vg9zld2x0d0idef/Htic2-03.jpg 

I decided to change a bunch of textures on some surfaces. Updating floors, roofs and ceilings etc.

I think surfaces have a maximum allowed size and then Rad starts freaking out. It's a weird problem that doesn't occur in Quake 1 but seems to occur in Quake 2 engines. 

 

You might try downloading it again. The original file, released at the same time as Quoth 2.2, had some syntax errors - it turns out that the worldcraft parser is quite fault-tolerant, in a way that some other editors are not. I uploaded a version about a month later, which had these errors fixed. It now loads in Radiant, where it didn't before, so worth a shot I guess... 

where can I get the fixed version? 

isn't the fgd included with trenchbroom? 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/misc/quoth2.fgd

Necros: Not the 2.2 one, no.

Preach: You may want to update that link in your profile. ;~) 

I get this error. Parse error at line 1166, column 44: Expected token type integer number but got decimal number 

Change "integer" in that line to "string". 

How am I supposed to do that? 

 

I changed "integer" to "string" and I'm still getting the error. must be something to do with the "delay between flashes" being set to 0.2 

damn, I was just guessing though. Try removing the whole line and see if that helps. Don't blame me later! 

wait(string) : "Delay between flashes" : "0.2"

Need "" for string default values, might be it? 

that worked, but the models don't show up.
at least it still works. 

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation.

No, I do realise that the compilers are standalone. I've been using TrenchBroom to map and them LordHavoc's hmap2 to compile (to test stuff), for which I use the terminal (i.e. the Linux "command prompt"). It's just that I could not get qbsp to work, as I clearly wasn't typing the right commands. I'll try it again later, but for now everything's working again and I've fallen back on hmap2. The problem was not with the compiler, but with the fact that I had duplicate (and as it turns out, triplicate, quadruplicate and quintuplicate) brushes), as mfx suggested above.

Still not sure how that happened, but I hope it won't happen again, as it was a pain to track down and remove all those duplicates. And no, I wasn't mapping under the influence! :) 

... that's really useful information. I am able to open my map files with my humble text editor (Leafpad) and now I can simply find and replace textures if I suddenly decide to use a different texture on 1000 faces. Thanks! 

Checkout jEdit some day, it rules!

Leafpad has some nasty undo bugs that can corrupt everything iirc. 

What is the upper limit (if any) to the number of brushes one can have in a Quake map? I'm not even done with one third of my map's basic layout and there's a lot of detail to be added, and already I've got ~800 brushes ... at this rate I'm going to have thousands of brushes by the time I'm done. Should I be worried?

PS: Thanks, Spirit. I'll check it out. 

I don't think there is a limit. The limits exist in the resulting BSP file. 

The standard bsp format is bsp29.

There's a newer one called BSP2 which needs support from compilers like Tyrann's: http://www.disenchant.net/

Where you need the -bsp2 switch to make it compile.

There is a size limit on how far away from the world 0,0 you can get - if the player leaves this volume in game then strange things happen. Can't remember the distance.

Finally, the most difficult limit to overcome is your own sanity. Slaving away on a gigantic BSP2 monstrosity is not for the faint hearted and can quickly suck the fun out of mapping if you let it. 

 

To clarify:

There's are various limits to what can be compiled into a working bsp that you can play. Most of these are based on the hardware that was available in 1996. Things like how many entities and so on.

These limits, all apart from the +/-4096, can be removed if you use the BSP2 format.

For a beginner though, you really want to avoid that - keep it small and fun to start with.