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Busting Out The (Valve) Hammer?
I like Worldcraft 1.6a quite a bit, but the lack of quality rotation is a real time killer. I did some experiments creating a cube and copying it and rotating it 180 degrees and recording everything I had to do to make it a mirror image and it was too much work.

I've done some reading on aguirRe's site on all of the features his map compile tools support and basically I am wondering this ...

1. Does anyone know from A to Z everything it takes to setup Valve Hammer for doing a Quake map? I've tried but get very intimidated by the configuration screens.

2. Is there any major disadvantage in Valve Hammer that is a reason to not switch to it from Worldcraft?

3. Not quite related, but at Func_Msgboard some ppl talk about using Wally over TexMex. Is there any reason to do that, I've not heard that tool talked about here.

4. What texture manager is a good fit with the WAD3 format Hammer uses and how do you convert it.

5. Currently I use CZG's fgd for Worldcraft. Will that still work?

If I can get the answers to these questions, I'll aggregate all of this into a tutorial, post it here and anyone can do with it what they wish -- mirror it, modify it to make a better one, whatever -- I'd just like for this information to be available as it seems like it requires a great deal of learning/setup to get things started with mapping and maybe with the information more readily available that would change.
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Baker 
Does it include the fgd? 
Of Course 
It has even has skippy ;)

In fact, in the c:\program files\worldcraft\quaketools folder, it has several utilities. 
Works Fine But.. 
Error creating HLWAD: c:\program files\worldcraft\textures\dkte2.hlwad ... details ...

WadConv Texture Toolbox by Eric 'Riot' Lasota.
Syntax: wadconv [-wad2wal] [-wad2tga] [-wad2hl] filename
Loading palette... Done.
Converting wad textures...

Loading directory... Done. Loaded 969 entries.

Converting miptexes...
0: +0lavarock1
1: +1lavarock1
2: +2lavarock1
3: +3lavarock1....... blah blah blah

138: cycped1
************ ERROR ************
Texture too big, shrink it.

Everything else appears to work perfectly, Im guessing I got a texture too big in one of my texture wads to convert properly. 
The Textures Are Convert By Qonverge ... 
... which says in the readme "Don't use WADs with over 1024 textures. Don't use textures bigger than 512x512."

If someone knows of a utility that converts WAD2s to WAD3s that doesn't have this limitation, let me know and I'll change it.

I might write a workaround that extracts the textures from the WAD and checks each lmp's dimensions and removes them from the WAD, but that would be a lot of work.

If the texture dimension limit an inherent weakness of the WAD3 format or just of the Qonverge utility?

(I don't know of a WAD3 texture manager to check this out myself.) 
Align: World And Face 
From Hammer help:
"Align: World and Face
These checkboxes allow you to set the texture alignment style for the selected faces. World alignment causes textures to be aligned according to world coordinates (if you're familiar with versions of the editor before 3.3, this was the standard behavior). Face alignment uses the coordinates of the face as a basis for alignment."


I have made much mess using this feature. It changes the texture alignment in a way I don't understand quite right (maybe I'm dumb).
Could anyone explain how it works? 
I Think... 
You generally want to stick to world alignment. The only time I think you'd ever have to use face alignment is on a rotated crate or something of that nature. But I could be wrong as I haven't used the old Hammer in some time. 
Hammer 4.3 
Anyone ever have resource problems after applying a texture? I get a Windows message stating my system resources are low. Sure enough, Hammer is using 400MB of my 1GB. My pagefile is on a drive with at least 65GB free, the other 2 partitions have at least 6GB free.

Any idea what to do? 
Simple Solution 
Reduce the levels of undo from 50 to 10 and tell it not to show the warning. It should be fine after that.

same with all versions of worldcraft and hammer... 
Fgd File Question 
Would it be possible to change the fgd file in a way that entities would be assigned to specified visgroups upon creation? For example every new light entity would be assigned to the "lights" visgroup when created. The same with monsters and other point entities. Maybe this could be done with triggers also. 
Not 100% Sure 
but I reckon not :/

You should just use shit+drag clone as much as you can bear, the visgroups are kept unless you group (ctrl+g) something that has a visgroup assigned, or make it into an entity.

I pretty much never create new lights after I've got one or two in the level - just clone drag them around and tweak values as neccessary. If you have certain types of lights in your level that are a reccuring feature then cloning is perfect anyway :)

Sometimes I do group lights so that I can tweak the values of many without having to select them all individually. Unfortunately, I think you need to ungroup them to do this, then regroup when you are done, which loses the visgroup data. Maybe g works? 
Er, And By G 
I meant "ignore groups". Perhaps ignore groups keeps the whole group selected at first and lets you alter the brightness of all the lights in the group without having to ungroup first and regroup later. 
Whoa 
tell me more tips when you use wc...
I didn't know about shift-drag, i always hit ctrl-c ctrl-v like mad! 
Sorry 
in wc, the proper term is indeed shit-drag as you said 
Ankh 
I'm modifying the qouth fgd at the moment and I've checked about ~three different styles of .fgd format and I'd guess setting the visgroup inside the entity definitions is impossible. Its your basic system (hauntingly familiar of raw .html (cascades)) and not too difficult to get the old breadbox round; but there seems to be no way of modifying how objects are created - though you can change how they are viewed in the editor. 
 
thanks for the answers. Looks like I will have to stick with drag cloning (which I'm already using but not in that extent). 
Thanks A Lot Baker! :D 
i'll be damned. Your QuakeAdapter does the trick.. You must know i've been using Worldcraft as my first Quake Map/level editor, and i've been searching the net for better working alternatives.. I've been using QME 3.x, Qoole, Thread and Quark, but i liked Worldcraft most because of its simplicity. Now today, i found this page, and i'm damn happy i found it!

So, once again you did it. I'll definetely keep an eye on you... atleast, i'll try :o)

As a little suprise i'll share the two DM maps i've ever made, using Worldcraft 1.6a .. all enjoy :-) http://members.chello.nl/j.leijten1/q1a&q1b_born4trance.zip

For now, thanks a lot and see you around! =)

/b4t 
Thanks 
I got very frustrated with WC 1.6's lack of rotation w/o messing up the textures and the later versions of Worldcraft were a pain with the need for constant texture conversions. 
Feedback 
ok, I finally tried it out and nearly everything runs perfectly, apart from the aforementioned texture limitation problem ("over 1024 textures in a WAD, you are insane!") which means its not easy to use many different wads (ie. splitting them into two, three or even four pieces), including nehahra and my own project wad (though that'll definately be shrinking alot). the other problem is that the compilers call the log by default everytime a portion of vis is completed - which slows it down a huge amount (i'd guess x3-x4 though this behavior can be disabled)- in the readme you say its bengt's tools but to be honest I didn't check which versions.

Since I'm in the middle of something I don't want to go through the process of reconversion (since loading a .map in 3.3 makes it incompatible with 1.6 (most likely an easy fix editing within the .txt of the mapfile)). However this is a huge leap forward when you consider 1.6 has been around and used for almost as long as quake itself - great work.

As to all the other tools and adaption systems; they worked perfectly, possibly the only gripe that could crop up is having base directory as c:/program files/worldcraft but since its such a small utility to move I can't see anyone complaining.

All in all, a very useful set of tools that will eliminate the headaches from alot of mappers lives, I salute you. 
Ijed 
All in all, a very useful set of tools that will eliminate the headaches from alot of mappers lives, I salute you.

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback I have been getting on this. 
 
Absolute Newbie question. Whenever I run the map all the textures are missing. What am I doing wrong?

Other than that it seems to work great.

Thanks alot for this. 
Sounds Like... 
Your map doesn't have its worldspawn properties pointing at the .wad you're using to make your level. What editor are you using? 
 
Napalm setup Quake directory in program!!?!?! 
I Found Out What The Problem Was. 
I am using Baker's Worldcraft3.3 Quake fix and it turns out you need to have your Quake Directory somewhere in c:\ (i.e. c:\Quake for example) otherwise it can't write the GFX from the wad into the BSP. 
You Can Also 
have the wad in the same dir as your compiler and the map file... or something like that. don't remember if the wad had to have the same name as the map too or if it was specified to qbsp. 
Vb6 Runtime Link For Win32 
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