As HL2 Source engine continues to be updated and new expansion packs are being released, how does this affect the work of a HL2 mapper?

If gfx features X and Y are introduced in HL2 Episode 1 or 2, can a mapper use those features in a standard HL2 map or will the map require the expansion pack which introduced the feature into the engine? What about new entities, sounds, textures and models? 

To even have access to the content you'd need to buy the packs. If you're asking whether or not it's "legal" if someone say rips all the content from the packs and puts online for mappers to use in standalone HL2, I would say probably not. However I doubt anyone would notice if you used some textures here or there, but again I doubt anyone would take the risk of hosting the content. 

I am following the article of Preach about animating models on Q10Ex,
and I really enjoy it.

So strange I can't get my Gmax working.
I logged in but the programm isn't available.
They stopped supporting in it nov.2005.
Then I found it on FilePlanet, and installed it.
But it needs an Registering User ID to get it working.
I register myself to TurboSquid and I'm Welcome.

But I can't find my Registering User Id code in the email ? 

blah actually I don't, but I did have a problem and had written a huge post about it, but then I managed to fix it.

The problem was with self.nextthink = time + whatever;. I thought this was perfectly fine, but apparently I was wrong. Changing it to self.nextthink = self.ltime + whatever; fixed it, but why? Nextthink is set in relation to time a lot of places in the original qc. Why wouldn't it work in my case?

What was happening for me was that the nextthink would be set to time + whatever + whatever time was the first time I referenced it; 

Does this have anything to do with that map that we're all forcing you to release? 

 

CZG, is the entity in question something with movetype_push, like a BSP object? These objects always use ltime for their nextthink instead of think. Thanks to the 3rd post in http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?doc=1042080107-38582000
I've found out why. ltime stops increasing for an entity while it's blocked, which makes a lot of sense. Otherwise if you blocked a door until it would otherwise arrive at it's destination, it would call the end journey function, which teleports it into place(to remove the slight floating point inaccuracies you'd otherwise get). This would probably get the player stuck. 

 

http://czg.leveldesign.org/curv_tut/curv_tut.htm

Archive.org of it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050308151558/http://czg.spawnpoint.org/curv_tut/curv_tut.htm

which has broken images. 

I made a while back, it's got some pics.
http://skynet.campus.luth.se/~chosen/bam/curvtutt/ 

a md3 exporter d/load link for max6? 

what's the feasibility of making a tool that takes a quake .bsp as input and outputs the world geometry as a single mesh that can be imported into, say, 3DSMax? After all, the visible hull is just a bunch of triangles, right?

Not concerned with textures or anything, just geometry.

The reason I ask is I'm considering doing a remix of a Q1SP map for Doom3, and I thought having something like that would be kinda handy as a guide. 

Kinn: according to rome.ro the quake map sources may be very close to release, apparently Romero is just getting confirmation from id that they're ok to release. 

whoa - that would kinda help things i guess :} 

doesn't DUBSP.EXE output a <mapname>.max when it compiles a .MAP file ? I am assuming that is a 3dsmax .MAX format file but I've never tried opening one. So all you need to do is use BSP>MAP converter and then compile with DUBSP.EXE

This is all theoretical of course :) 

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/utils/level_edit/converters/

Cheers QuakeOne Navigator! =) 

I've seen a tool that can export q3bsps to VRML, so if you can go to q1bsp->q3bsp somehow you may pull it off without having to write a line of code.

A breif google didn't turn up any easy way to do that, though. 

Most of those command line editors have some severe limitations to them.

I would recommend using Id's Quake 3 Arena tool BSPC to decompile the bsp into a map file (it works on all Quake formats) and then use a utility like 3d Exploration to convert the map into an obj or 3ds file. There is a non trial period version of 3d exploration floating out there, but I haven't seen it since in several months.

Baring that, you can convert the .map file into an .ase file using q3map2. 

Is it possible to compile Q3 or any of its tools with Visual Studio 6.0? If so, could someone please point me to a resource that lists out the steps necessary to accomplish this?

I am such a Visual Basic/non-C++ person (n_n)

Thanks in advance (^_^) 

You need a simple command line tool called prjconverter (I'm sending a copy to your email address in a second). Drop the VC7 project file into it and it'll pop out VC6 dsp and dsw files. From there it compiles like a breeze. 

I'd start with the engine code as a base, since it turns the bsp into a giant list of polygons that share edges and vertices. From that point it's just a matter of spitting out what's in memory into a standard 3d mesh format. UVs could be retained, as could references to textures/materials.

Not saying this is a trivial job, but it seems mainly like a question of learning the file format you need to output. 

I sent the program as a zipped attachment, but got back a postmaster response that the zip has kooties are something. I checked it with several commercial and free antivirus programs and nothing turns up. I suspect the filtering processes being deployed are growing more bullshit oriented by the day.

So this should be just as useful:
www.codeproject.com/tools/prjconverter.asp 

www.codeproject.com/tools/prjconverter 

thanks for the replies guys. I guess it seems there's already ways of getting a .map extracted from a .bsp and then turning the .map into a mesh - although I can imagine this would result in a rather messy mesh, retaining all the brush polys that would normally get culled during the bsp stage.

metlslime's idea sounds promising - use a modified engine to spit out just a nice clean mesh of the visible hull that I could get into .ase format to import into DOOMEdit, which I could then show/hide to act as a visual guide to the layout and scale whilst I create the new brushwork. 

use a modified engine to spit out just a nice clean mesh of the visible hull that I could get into .ase format

as overkill for what you are trying to accomplish.