Rip off?

[I cant spell u]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047003 ... e&n=283155

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193184 ... e&n=283155

Was looking for a nice tutorial on mapping and such, you think these books are a rip off and that an online guide would be better for me?

[Fjoggs]

lol, total waste of money.

[AEon]

I am probably the last of the old-skool folks that actually still reads manuals

Don't know if those books are any good, but if I actually did want to do coding, it could indeed be handy to read such books *off-line* - i.e. not be forced to read that much info on-screen - just to get a feeling for the concepts and collect ideas.

After you understand the basics - even the worst book with cover those - you should then be able to ask the right questions at least.

So they might be worth it, but I'd try to get them second hand

[Eraser]

I don't know if they're a waste of money. Most of these books are written by people who have experience in writing, probably even in the field of (game) development. That alone is reason enough to believe that the information you'll find in such a book is a lot more coherent and easy to understand than most online tutorials. The average quality level of online tutorials is shockingly bad.

[foralarx2k3]

I cant spell u,

I don't know about the books, but, check out my first map thread, on this forum. ..... I started that map on Monday night with no previous mapping experience. (just 4 nights of mapping).

If you want to map for Q3 .... follow the instructions in the sticky thread about what software to get ....

Then use these two excellent online tutorials to get you going and then some.

Bubba's tutorials

Donkey's tutorials

Bubba's tutorials are amazing.

If you need a pointer as I've just started myself and it's all fresh in my mind I'd be glad to assist you. Just drop me a PM.

One word of warning... it's seriously addictive and time consuming.

Regards

Fora.

[seremtan]

the usefulness of those books depends on how well documented Q4 is right now. few developers - as far i know - put much effort into encouraging the modding community

frankly, you could save yourself the cash by mapping for HL2SP, HL2DM or CS:S, where valve have given the community a massive kickstart

[Eraser]

The problem with Q4 is that it takes such enormous amounts of time to create decent quality assets that most people don't even bother anymore.

[Kat]

.... Most of these books are written by people who have experience in writing, probably even in the field of (game) development....

In the case of the Quake 4 book the opposite may indeed be the case.

We've looked into the Quake 4 book over at the D3W forums and unfortunately the author of the has written all of 3 or so tutorials for either D3 or Q4 editing, and they were basically on how to set up the editor which was more than likely cobbled from other sites.

No maps, models or related assets have been released that we're aware of and neither has anyone heard of him within the specific D3 and Q4 communities.

He does however have extensive CoD2 editing experience, so exactly what that has to do with the Doom 3 engine is anyones guess.

My personal opinion is that he's managed to 'blag' his way into doing the book by impressing them with his none editing credentials (he runs his own business apparently amonsgt other things).

[d3mol!t!on]

CoD2 editing has a fair bit to do with the Doom 3 engine because it uses a modified version, and the basic level design principles are the same.

[Kat]

CoD2 use a modified version of the D3 engine? That's news to me as they were supposed to have written this one themselves weren't they (aside from someone on these boards knowing one of the programmers and being told it was just a heavily modified version of the Quake 3 engine).

I've not looked at CoD2 editing but based on what you just said I'd assume that the use of dynamic lighting is the same, as well as the use of portals, and gawd knows what else?

That's like saying the Q3 editing has similarities with D3/Q4 editing, it does, but it pretty much stops once you've laid out the brushwork and applied a few textures.

As this is supposed to be a technical book one would have expected an author with specifically relavant output; it's editing Quake 4 not Call of Duty 2.

[d3mol!t!on]

Well I can't confirm it... but I have been told so many times and read it on sites and such. To be honest I'm not sure the more I look at it, because the lighting systems are quite different to Doom 3 engine games. Shadows in general appear to be static, low resolution, and soft-edged (light a light-mapped system would give), however, a single sun-light casts player shadows. This single sunlight also affects bump-maps on your own player's model and weapon model. Muzzle flashes affect bump-maps on level geometry, but do not seem to have effect on your own player model or his weapons. Sorry, I don't know many of the technical terms for these things, but looking at how Doom 3 engine games work it doesn't seem very similar. Oh, r_showtris 1 gives Doom 3 engine results (it only shows tris that is visible)... I thought that was worth a note.

Anyway, the worst thing is that the game seems so inefficient... DirectX 9 mode needs a lot of power to run, but it could just be the excessive particle effects (guns produce smoke (or steam, or whatever else it is that comes from guns) when firing, maps have dust effects everywhere clogging up the view) as they effect things on DirectX 7 mode quite a lot as well.

On a final note, the editor is a variant of Radiant, and whilst I haven't actually got round to using it massive amounts, the basic construction principles seem to apply so far for geometry, and the sample map features very little in the line of portals.


Not long in the future before I finished the post…
Just looking around quickly, Googling for something like “cod2 engine”, and I see this on some forums:

CoD2 does NOT use a brand new engine. End of story. It is based on Quake 3 engine, or rather RTCW which in its own time is based on Quake 3 engine.

But for all of you who still think that CoD2 engine is a completly brand new engine, here comes.

- Separate EXEs for Multiplayer and Singleplayer. RTCW thing... RTCW is based on Quake 3 engine.
- IWD files in main folder are plain ZIP files. They are the same as PK3 files Quake 3 uses. No difference at all.
- RoQ video files (open iw_09.iwd to find some under video folder). RoQ Video was developed by id Software. Introduced in Quake 3 for the first time.
- autoexec.cfg and default.cfg files. And basically the whole CFG thing Very much Quake 3.
- BSP maps. Very much a Quake thing.
- Obvious scripts like menus and etc. Quake 3 again.
- Console commands. Exactly the same as Quake 3 with some additions.
- Some hard prove? Open iv_00.iwd as a ZIP file. Within it there's a file called avatar.cfg, open it. Now take a good look at what the first line says. Get it? For those who don't have the game or can't be bothered checking it themselves.. here's the line "// generated by RTCW, do not modify". RTCW stands for Return to Castle Wolfenstein which as I already previously said is Quake 3 engine based. And even if it says "// generated by Call of Duty, do not modify", as some CFG do, that line itself is a Quake 3 thing to begin with.

So now I don't know what to say. Some think it uses mainly the Quake 3 engine, some mainly the Doom 3. Either way it appears to me to utilize some older technology and some newer, and whichever way runs like crap on DirectX 9 considering the quality of it's visuals.

[Kat]

I can tell you for definate that it's most certainly *not* running on any form of modified Doom 3 engine despite what people may think; they're just not a known licencee of the tech.

There *was* speculation when the project was first announced, several years ago now, that they might have used the D3 engine becasue they actually said they were looking at it in a number of interviews. They later said they went the 'roll your own' route becasue they were familiar with what they had already used in the past and that they wanted to code in a lot of 'outdoor' stuff.

What you posted above just confims that all they've done is indeed just an uberhack of the Quake 3 (RtCW) engine they used in the original game. I know that they had to hack a lot of features into it becasue the original game didn't support the kind of things they were wanting to have in CoD2.

Back on topic, I serious have my doubts as to *where* the author of the Q4 dummies book will have got his information.

[Hipshot]

Back offtopic. I've speculated before what engine COD2 did use. It feels like an iD engine in the core, same console, using a radiant, but it doesn't feel like an upgraded Q3 nor a D3 one. I think they might have built a "new" engine using core features that iD also used, some system, same editor and so, they just applied other effects and a different renderer.

[d3mol!t!on]

I've been such a dork, I should have just read on the CoD2 manual and box: "This product contains software code from Id Software, Inc. © 1999-2005 Id Software Inc." It doesn't sound as much as them using a complete engine, but just using some features from Id Software's stuff.

[Foo]

They will have licensed out the Q3 engine way back, and developed the second CoD game from their first engine.

The Half Life engine was derived from a licensed Q1 engine. One could assume the HL2 engine was in turn evolved from the HL1 engine over time.

Of course, tracing these things back so far carries little significance when the code changes so drastically.

[obsidian]

Almost certain it's a pumped up Q3 engine.

CoD used Q3. A more modified one was used for Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, which also supported normal and specular maps on player models as well as some Havoc physics. It had stencil shadows for players and static lightmaps for world shadows.

Regardless, certainly not Q4.

[79DieselRabbit]

Q3A RTCW CoD CoD2

...Is my understanding of the chain.

[spookmineer]

Other games made some of the same evolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_ ... ena_engine

For example
Q3A code > EF
Q3TA code > EF2

Though, RTCW stems from the Q3TA code as does in turn COD and COD2.

JK2 used Q3TA as well, but at the time the term UberRadiant was often used to emphasize it was "heavily" modified. Same term was used for EF2, I don't know if this is a common term for altered Q3TA code...?

[79DieselRabbit]

Though, RTCW stems from the Q3TA code as does in turn COD and COD2.

I forgot about Q3TA. Maybe that's cause I never played it much.

Other games made some of the same evolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_ ... ena_engine

Ah poo. Someone didn't give Gray Matter credit for CoD:UO. I'll have to fix that...