General Mapping Info - Bunch of Questions

[jkoder]

Hello,

I've been messing around with Q3Radiant and I was wondering some things about the map making process, specifically
when making medium/large sized maps. When creating larger maps do you have to work with everything in one .map file all of the time? I could imagine it could get a bit overcrowded in there if you were making say a street with a dozen houses. Even working with three of four different rooms if felt like I was wrestling a bit with the application...Is there an easier way
to create larger maps and possible define reusable structures that you can work on separately?

Also does anyone know of any good tutorial sites? I have found one or two but I get more dead links than anything else. Given it's 2008 I guess that's to be expected when looking for mapping tutorials for a game that was born in 1999. Do people still use the *radiant tools in 2008 or is there something different?

Also is there any sort of repository where I can find models for things like barrels, crates, park benches etc?

One last thing; When decorating walls with textures how do I apply different textures to the same wall?

Thanks to anyone who can answer any of these.

Mike

[Mikko_Sandt]

Also does anyone know of any good tutorial sites?

http://bubba.planetquake.gamespy.com/mapping.html

One last thing; When decorating walls with textures how do I apply different textures to the same wall?

You need to use the clipper tool to cut the wall in half. Select clipper (X), draw a line where you want the division to go and press shift+enter.

[pjw]

Also, go through the four sticky threads at the top of this forum. Some of the links may be dead/old, but there's a lot of valuable information in there.

[ix-ir]

Try View --> Region and the various options. That will allow you to work on small areas from a large map file. There's no reason not to work on things in separate map files before combining them with cut and paste though.

[WHAT!!]

Try View --> Region and the various options. That will allow you to work on small areas from a large map file. There's no reason not to work on things in separate map files before combining them with cut and paste though.

I always had problems doing that myself. I never group anything despite how chaotic it seems at times

[jkoder]

Hi,

Thanks to everyone for the info.

Regarding the copy/paste, maybe I am missing something but I can't see how this would work. Once I have 2-3 brushes on my grid I can't reselect the whole brush if I have escaped from it. I have to select all sides again individually and sometimes using the 3d view for help. On a larger structure with overlapping brushes this would become impossible I think.

[dichtfux]

Make sure you are in brush selection mode (instead of faces) and press shift, then left-click the brush. Click more brushes (hold shift all the time) to add them to the selection.

You may also want to check out Edit->Select inside, Edit->Select Touching and - very useful imo - Edit->Invert Selection.

[Kaz]

Yeah just hit i with nothing selected

[jkoder]

Hi

Thanks again. I managed to get the selection working as I wanted. I also discovered you can make prefabs
which should allow me to define reusable structures and not have to work with everything in the same editor all of the time.

[jkoder]

I decided to use GtkRadiant 1.5 instead of Q3R. GTKR is feeling a lot more solid. That said can anyone tell me how the hell I can get a ruler down the side of my grid? I checked everywhere in this application and can't find it!

[scythe]

A suggestion: If you are interested in making realistic maps with "barrels, crates, park benches, etc" you may be better off using Unreal Tournament 3, Half Life 2, or COD4. When it comes down to it, Quake 3 is really best for making the sort of arena style maps that shipped with the game. Anything else and you'll be fighting the engine and tools a lot.

[monaster]

@jkoder: It seems that they skipped this function, I've been searching that feature too some time ago and as far as I remember the guys here told me that the ruler isn't included anymore when it comes down to 1.5.0... that's why I still use 1.2.1 the most time

EDIT: Considering models: Is there a way to scale entire models inside GTKRadiant? (1.2.1 or 1.5.0 can use both).

[obsidian]

That said can anyone tell me how the hell I can get a ruler down the side of my grid?

What ruler? Grid units or the Z-scale. The Z-scale is obsolete since you have more than one grid anyway, or toggle between them. Grid units are always there so if they are not, something is wrong with your installation.

A suggestion: If you are interested in making realistic maps with "barrels, crates, park benches, etc" you may be better off using Unreal Tournament 3, Half Life 2, or COD4. When it comes down to it, Quake 3 is really best for making the sort of arena style maps that shipped with the game. Anything else and you'll be fighting the engine and tools a lot.

Any reason why you say that, scythe? I've seen plenty of Q3 maps with barrels, crates and park benches and they all look fine. As a matter of fact, the default Quake 3 maps have plenty of barrels and crates (though no park benches). RTCW, MoH, CoD were all Quake3 engine games and they were "realistic" maps. Both HL2 and CoD4 are related to the Q3 engine and editors are heavily based off of the Radiant family of editors. Those engines you listed above are newer engines capable of dynamic lighting and normal maps and other fancy stuff, but that shouldn't stop anyone from creating "realistic" maps for Q3.

Considering models: Is there a way to scale entire models inside GTKRadiant? (1.2.1 or 1.5.0 can use both).

modelscale (uniform scale) and modelscale_vec (scales vectors independently) entity key/value pairs.