News | Forum | People | FAQ | Links | Search | Register | Log in
Mapping Help
This is the place to ask about mapping problems, techniques, and bug fixing, and pretty much anything else you want to do in the level editor.

For questions about coding, check out the Coding Help thread: https://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60097
First | Previous | Next | Last
Grid Account 
I use Quark63. It took quiet long before I could sahape a terrain map.
I don't use a terraineditor. Maybe a silly way I come up with.

I started with a triangle brush. Made it as precise I could. As long nothing happens to the brush it stands on grid with integers.

Then I turn the grid to 1 and force the outcorners to the 1 grid point. Of course the origin of the brush gets disordered so I have to force the whole brush into grid again.
That's my startpoint with terrain mapping and it compiled well.
Now I can make a terrainmap of all the triangle brushes. All goes well untill I lift the outpoints of the brush to level it with another brush.

From there the two outcomes appear in Quark.

Some brushes after distorted flip to a decimal but after resizing the brush with 1 the force to grid puts it exact 1 gridpoint aside. So I can easily rearange it untill it fits its origin.

Others get distorted and will never line up with the others. They will fit on x and y-axe but not in the lenght.

So I was thinking. Maybe I shoul force to grid only on a 8 or 16 grid. 
 
The wonders of QuArK. This is just normal behaviour from my experience... 
Terrain 
I am no terrain expert and it is difficult to make suggestions without knowing what you are trying to achieve. But... if you are doing anything on a large scale, then use a terrain generator and do all (most) of the modelling in that and then import it into the editor.

I did a large lump of terrain in FMB-BDG in the form of a cavern. It was over 1000 units in each direction made up a few thousand triangles of 64 units. It took about 30 minutes to do in the generator - I dread to think what it would have taken in the editor.

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/5075/fmbbdg16bu3.jpg

You can probably make it out in this screenshot.

When I had finished, I ran the BspEditor Brush Merge and got it down to about 900 brushes (from memory). 
Well I Use The Folloing Method: 
1 - select the brush tool, set it to "wedge" shaped (triangular prism)

2 - select a suitable texture

3 - quicky make about 4 or 5 wedge shaped brushes

4 - in the "top" view I use the vertex editing tool to move the corners of the brushes into whatever shape I want, usually on a grid not smaller than 16x16

5 - I switch to a "side" view and move the verticle edges of the prisms up and down to shape my terrain

Notes:

Nothing ever goes off grid. The editor is set to "snap to grid" and whatever the grid size may be, the points of my brushes snap to them.

Aligning the textures better is as easy as selecting my brushes and setting the attributes back to 0 (i.e. rotation, movement x, movement y, x scale, y scale), then click a button which says "to world", which tends to look OK.

You can use this method to make overhanging rocks and other intricate shapes.

It is quite time consuming but looks good in the end! 
Terrain 
I've just checked that old map and the cavern is 3000 x 3000 x 800 high. 
Is there anything similar to aquire's engine for q2? I was messing with q2 map, just made the first area, nothing special so far, 2 entities (start and light), but when i load it to the engine, the game just freezes and i see q2 using 99% of cpu. Wtf? 
 
i couldn't get the standard q2 engine to run either. there's quake2 xp and quake2 evolved that i know of. 
 
Quake2 envolved doesn't run it either 
I Want To Know 
but i dont want to peruse 9192 posts for the answer

how do you make monsters not move or attack even with the player right in front?

i tired clip brushes and making secret trigger button but those didn't work :? 
 
Put them inside a func_wall made out of clip brushes, but whose corners (BBOX extents) have a tiny normal brush inside.

Those normal brushes tell Quake that the clip brushes are there.

Then remove the func_wall when you want them to be active.

Never actually tried it, but should work. 
Hmm 
are the non clip brushes supposed to be in the Func_wall or out of it, because it dosent work when there in it and when they're out i get this error:

*** ERROR 13: Line 2131: Entity with no valid brushes or textures

1 warning

Elapsed time : 0:00

Peak memory used : 1.8 MB

!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!!-!
Build failed, because it did not create the (+BSP) file: C:\Users\alex\Desktop\q
uake\tmpQuArK\.\maps\mstart.BSP 
 
That's why he said to include a tiny, real brush somewhere within the func_wall entity. Quake won't complain if you have at least something in the entity with a texture on it. Hide it in the map itself by making sure it's inside of a wall or something. 
Yep 
 
Circular Jump Pads 
Remember those wicked jumppads in some Q3 maps that had you fly in a curve? The same is possible in Quake. Pretty obvious, but I only just thought of it again.

Take a look at this test map: http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/misc/pushtest.zip

The trick basically involves pushing the player towards a curved clip surface that determines the direction of the flight. The clip curve has to be fairly smooth so the player doesn't fall down prematurely. In the test map the small jump (1/4 of a circle) has 8 faces, the large one (3/4 of a circle) has 24. The map is pretty crude (but you'll get the idea) - it takes some experimenting with the pitch angle and the push speed. The larger such a push is (radius and distance), the uglier it becomes, because the clip wall and the pitch have to be a lot higher.

Now there aren't really that many situations where such a push would be useful. Imagine perhaps a castle with push-connected towers. Or a deathmatch map, although then one has to take into cosideration that NQ and QW handle the speed values in different ways.

At any rate, such a push can at least make for some funny wheee! effects. 
Hmm 
What about making a map where you fly along wind tunnels between different rooms and use keys to unlock new tunnels? Mebe with some water. And in brown... 
Like... 
... antedeluvian map ? 
QuArK And Changing Entities 
i has...have these new stuff in my progs that need entities placements on the map, but im finding that when i add an entitiy like ambient_drone i can't changeit, to something like ambient_front242. but i remeber doing it before somehow :S

the only solution i have is to edit it in the .map with a text editor but i find this somewhat of an out of the way solution

...i wonder if this makes sense 
Or 
why don't you just add the entity,
click on the object list,
and change your classname to monster_xxx? 
Oh...your Progs.dat 
search and replace function? 
Ya You Had It 
quark won't let me change classnames and i don't know why is what i meant with that paragraph and a half

and its kind of annoying because i could do it before i think 
 
QuArK lets you change classnames easily. Either slow double left click in the tree or edit in the detail view. 
State File Does Not Match Portal File 
A VIS error I could not find any documentation about. Does anyone here know what it means ?
It's a real error, not just a warning, no VIS is preformed. 
Ron: 
probably vis is trying to finish a partially-completed job, but you've changed the bsp since then. I think you'd just need to delete the state file, but i don't know what the filename would be (never used that feature myself.) 
 
I didn't know about this feature at all.
Anyway, reading your reply made try and just rename the map,that worked ! Thanks !
I've just switched to the WC 3.33 version so I might come back with some dumb questions later ... 
Surpsisingly... 
... aguirRe's tool tip does not mention this error :/ 
First | Previous | Next | Last
You must be logged in to post in this thread.
Website copyright © 2002-2024 John Fitzgibbons. All posts are copyright their respective authors.