How to decompile QL map?

[CZghost]

the ads will just be a texture on a surface? whats the issue here?

Have you played Quake Live? If so, then you know the advertisement boards are arragment in walls, at some stands and not just as a brush placed at the wall (some of the ad boards are placed directly at the wall, but have framing). Some of the billboards have framing, some of them are just a single brush with one surface textured with advertisement placed on stands or some hang, and not just flying around, or glued directly on the wall...

/*EDIT: Oh, also, have you seen ad boards in space arenas? They're floating in the air, but have more details, such as jets, towers and the framing... Ad texture is transparent, to fly through... */

So this is the reason I need help with decompiling the map, I need to load advertisement boards in Radiant (which I'll decompose the advertisement entity into worldpspawn)...

They use a special entity called "advertisement", which is similar to a func_static but capable of streaming ad content from select providers. Each of them have a "cellId" spawnflag, viewable in-game with "r_debugads 1". It's not really as simple as slapping in a three-digit number for the cellId and calling it a day, however. Apparently, there's some behind-the-scenes stuff regarding how ads work, most likely embedded in the game's code itself, and therefore it is impossible to build a fully functional advertisement without access to the developer toolset. You could probably troll around though and make some easter eggs by putting "Hello World" for a cellId.

I just need to load advertisement shape, not build working ad banner, since I know that won't work with right compile prog...

[CZghost]

Have downloaded q3map2 v2.5.17, which was used to compile Quake Live maps, but haven't found any -game switch to compile with QL lumps... Looks like ID software have developed this version for themselves to compile the maps they have created...

It's possible the QL support is hidden somewhere, but cannot find it... Does anybody know the all new features q3map2 v2.5.17 contains? The download doesn't contain documentation for this...

[CZghost]

Have found some informations at excessive plus forums:

Quakelive maps (IBSPv47) can be decompiled with q3map2.exe(v2.5.17) using .bat: "q3map2.exe -game quakelive -convert -format map <mapname.bsp>".

So, if it's true, then there's nothing to edit in BSP files, it just decompiles the bsp's as they are into raw map file to load it in radiant... When compiling quakelive map, use the same switch as in decompile, but what to do with the added lump, when there's no advertisement entity? Maybe I'll use it only for decompile...

// EDIT: Yes, the -game quakelive switch decompiles the map almost correctly (there are some textures parsing issues, texture alignments are lost and doesn't put in misc_model entities with desired models' pathnames)... I'll just test, how the quakelive advertisments work, just making the advertisement entity on a patch used to make the ad board (in usage with brushes) and putting in some cellId number... As the quake live shows error, when loading up the map, then the cellId value must be previously recorded in game's code... For a test while, I'll set up a value previously set in a source level, will try, if that will work. If not, then it's better to compile as Q3's bsp and for ID Software keep the source map with the prebaked Q3 bsp - IBSP. -- . = 2Eh (46) - to give it a try... They'll look at and compile it directly as QL bsp - IBSP/ -- / = 2Fh (47) - It may work, when they update the code...

[KittenIgnition]

Heh, I remember this... there are a few methods since QL isn't open source and we had to figure out our own ways of doing things.

Simply decompiling the map isn't really what you want, unless you do just want to mess with the map in Radiant. You'll need to add all the lights and re-do the textures if you want to compile the map again. That's where the BSP editing comes in, and there are at least two ways of doing it that I know of.



..But I'm not going to say what they are 8)

[CZghost]

@KI:
I just need to look at the map in Radiant.
Have exctracted some advertisement boards to usage. Now I know they have used patch with ad texture to make advertisement entity. The ad entity is only one patch, which advertisement entity makes non-solid.

The way to make solidity of some boards is caulked face of the brush ading the depth for the patch... Brushes around or behind the advertisement patch are just worldspawn, so they emmit the marks (except for caulked faces)...

[themuffinman]

That -game quakelive switch seems to do the trick... never knew Net's q3map2 could do that, good find CZghost.

Looking through the 1.6.2 code it seems its q3map2 also has quakelive compile/decompile functionality, and the editor has QL pk3 support. Hell knows, I've been setting up ql.game file etc. and trying to get it loading the textures from the original pk3's but I can't. I modded the code some to try and fix where I thought it was missing stuff but I'm missing include files even though I've got Python and SVN installed so I can't build it... the fuck.

[obsidian]

We're currently working on Quake Live support for GtkRadiant. It'll hopefully be running properly for the 1.6.3 release.

Here is the latest "nightly" build if you guys want to test QL support... Warning - experimental code ahead: We're using this build to test things internally, it isn't considered something for general public use. It may eat your map files, or crash your computer, or turn your pubes orange. I'm not sure if bspc.exe/q3map2.exe works with QL with this build, there have been a number of changes since this build was put together. I would advise keeping this build as a separate install and not using it for any production maps (or at the very least, make a backup).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/GtkRadiant/Gtk ... 120731.zip

[CZghost]

@muffin: Right, it's GTK radiant 1.6.2 q3map2 version. Never triedto decompile quakelive map with Net's q3map2.
Have also realised the q3map2 v2.5.17 have also the GTK radiant 1.5 - Editor I'm using.

@obs: 1.6.2 radiant has the old textures button in the strip, which allows only first 100 directory groups? All other have to display only with shaderlist.txt only feature (disables all other dirs that haven't been provided by shaderlist.txt - shader filenames represents the dirs with all textures inside)... Maybe in 1.6.3 you can implement the 1.5.0 textures window, that includes texture dirs inside with all the directories provided in pk3's AND in shaderlist.txt file...