Any other crusty old-timers lurking around here? If so, say hello!


We see you lurking there, Frib....;) 

I post at least once every few weeks (or months, whatever)... surely that elevates me from lurker status up to almost-but-not-quite-zero contribution status! 

Emphasis on the crusty old 

"I hope you weren't trying to keep a low profile... if so, HeadThump blew your cover in his first post! :)"

Ha! Well, not a low profile necessarily but definitely a disconnect from work. Quake editing/hacking is one of my hobbies. :)

There really is just something about the crusty old Quake engine that appeals to me. It's grouchy and uncooperative sometimes but what it does, it does really well. It's like a comfortable old pair of jeans or something.

"FitzQuake is the engine of choice for single-player stuff (thanks metlslime... you guys certainly are overachievers!) "

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Since I'm on a Mac I'll probably just use the base engine since, I'm assuming, that's my only real option. 

Oh, hey Mr. Fribbles! Good to see some old school names still kicking around. 

dont think aguire's engine works on mac systems, but otherwise that's excellent too. 

I finally worked it out. Proper old skool business. Makes Frib look new-school.

I did one of my first and shittest speedruns on that level, entirely unsuitable for it. Good level at the time though. 

I remember retinal tear well dude, good map. Looking forward to seeing some newfangled maps from you!

Also, just read your blog... you've already got some features I've never seen before in a Quake editor, the mesh features (you stole that from Unreal didn't you ;) ) and the lighting system with the inner and outer radii look very cool.

Do you plan on releasing your modifications to your editor at some point? Enough of these features and it's going to be worth it to buy Cheetah! Um, but probably not a mac, fortunately I've already got one. 

DarkPlaces works on Mac, supposedly 

What would people require to get the best use out of a release of the LIGHT tool, for example? I'm happy to release it but I wonder what the accepted standard is.

Do I need to heavily comment my changes in the source code, or just release it and write some basic docs, or ...?

What's the expectation set?


As for Cheetah, well, hmmm. It's a great program for modeling and the fact that I've configured it to basically function as a Quake editor shouldn't be taken to mean it's nicely suited to that task. It works but it's clunky in a lot of ways. I've simply chosen to ignore the clunk and see the goodness. Heh.

I'd love a proper Quake editor on the Mac. Something like Radiant but it needs to run natively as a Universal app. 

Hah, and yeah, Retinal Tear. I was playing through that map again a few weeks ago and had several of those "What was I THINKING?!" moments. But you live, you learn, you know. :) 

My other Quake1 maps would be "Eye Socket" (my first and not so good) and Warehouse (or "Warehaus") which was my last but definitely the better of the 3.

Warehouse has a special place in my heart due to every single reviewer pointing out the one side of the one crate that I failed to align correctly. A scar on my brain that has never fully healed. 

Thats not such a bad thing to have comments on^^

Light tools

I like there to be clear user orientated instructions with utils. AguirRe's utils work well but you have to look through files to find the command options (when you do they are pretty much easy to use and understand though)

Coloured lights

I have tried to get coloured lights working in a quake level and it has so far seemed more trouble than its worth (or I guess everyone would be doing it)

I mean what are the best utils to use, engines to use and more importantly what Keys/Values would you use to get a decent colour??!

I guess if someone could present an easy solution for people like me it would be well recieved!

I looked at your site, and I dont use Macs but it looked cool, I like the extra light options outlined, but I think you can do most of that with other utils.

I give you my humble opinion as a user who doesnt do programmming. Hope it helps ;) 

I do most of my mapping on a mac. I'm interested in what you're working on, but I'd be wary of reinventing the wheel. pOx's tools and engines are still the gold standard for mac quake editing, as far as I'm concerned (link was pointed out a few posts back). Since I see you are exporting your brushes from a 3d modeller, you might be interested to look at pOx's eUtils release, as he made an obj2map exporter.

For me, a necessary prerequisite of any lighting tool is tyrlite compatibility, as my maps are heavily invested in its syntax of lighting key/values (i.e. "wait" for fade distance, "style" for falloff formula, and "_color R G B" for colored lights). It looks like you've created some interesting options, but I'm a little unclear how they'd work without seeing some documentation. (as I said, be wary of reinventing the wheel)

GTKRadiant 1.4 and Darkplaces works fine for me, and are probably the most "advanced" quake tools I know of on the mac, but then again, I don't have an intel mac, so your mileage may vary.

Nice to see someone giving mac quake some love. 

Thanks for the info.

I'm not really concerned about re-inventing the wheel on anything as I'm really just doing this for fun. Writing the code for this stuff is almost as fun as using it for me.

I tried to get GTKRadiant running before but I can't be bothered with X11 and whatever else needs to be installed to make it work. I just want something native and Intel, dammit. :)

I suppose it doesn't exist. Ah well. 

Oh, and back to Dark Places. Do I have to compile it for myself to make it work on Mac or is there a download somewhere on the site? I couldn't see a Mac native download anywhere. Just a Windows/Linux binary with source code included. 

They are inside all the recent packages.

Be aware that Darkplaces is not a "foolproof" engine so for testing/debugging one should use a glquake derivate or use something like Wine (Parallels?) to run aguirRe's glquake or Fitzquake. 

Mac (moreover Intel chip) + OS X Quake tools ain't soo much :S
Old tools mentionned above are OS9 (classic)'s tools :O

You need some STEAMCAKE! 

Yeah, I'm getting that impression. :P Thanks. 

(...GLProQuake being the current best OS X UB client...) 

mac gtkradiant: http://www.redsaurus.net/gtkradiant/
I found installing it to be pretty easy; it's a binary with installer. Apple's X11 should be on your OSX install cd, or on their website. You don't have to compile it yourself or use Fink like back in the old days. The hard part was convincing Radiant to work with Q1. You have to do this:
http://necros.planetquake.gamespy.com/gtkrq1.html
Except with extra improvised steps, because the whole radiant folder is contained inside the gtkradiant app package.

For darkplaces, look in here:
http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/
The latest beta releases have mac binaries. 

And I thought that OS/2 was the NeXT step ... 

it's a unix case! 

Good fun. Like the non-linearity. Well over-supplied with weapons. Couldn't find the mis-aligned crate texture, I suck :S 

Well, it's on the back of one of the crates near the start and it's pretty much bathed in blackness. That's why I missed it I guess.

Glad you liked the map!