Q4 - Two (nub) Questions

[Mr.Bios]

I want to tinker around in the q4 editor in my spare time. I want to remake a quake 3 map so I have a couple of question that if answered will get me started.

1. When the editor opens my screen goes very bright, how can I fix this?

2. How to load a q3 map into the q4 editor so that I can edit it?

If anyone can pint me in the direction of a tut for re-making a map it woluld be great.

Some may think im aiming a bit high but I think its a better way to learn. I know a lot of maps ahve been remade by people here so hows it done ?

Thanks

[$NulL]

1. Add +set r_gamma 1 +set r_brightness 1 to your editor command line.

[Mr.Bios]

yup that works. Thanks

[Johnny Law]

2. How to load a q3 map into the q4 editor so that I can edit it?

Just open it. Your textures will all be gone, as well as most entities, but you will be able to see the map structure.

I wouldn't worry about preserving textures. You're going to want to retexture the map anyway, and I would actually recommend rebuilding it as well, just using the old structure as a guideline.

As for the entities, if you want to see where they are located you can first (before opening the map in Q4) open your mapfile in a text editor and do some fiddling with entity names. I've done this before, and here's some of the notes I took. This is not at all exhaustive; it just covers some entities that came up while I was looking at a specific map. This also doesn't cover the other work you need to do to make some entities conform to Q4 standard, e.g. the correct height, nodrop setting, fx, and weapon marker model for weapon entities.

So, keeping that in mind:

Get rid of light entities and any info_null entities that they may be pointed at. You will have to relight the map from scratch.

Personally I got rid of any target_speaker entities as well, rather than worrying about how to transform them into similar Q4 speaker entities.

target_relay, info_player_intermission, and holdable_medkit no longer exist. I'm sure there are others that are gone too.

trigger_always can be replaced by trigger_timer with a "wait" key of "-1".

trigger_push entities are replaced by func_jumppad entities. (Might as well make this change in the Q4 editor rather than a text editor.)

There are no differences between team spawn and respawn points anymore. (Grr.) Both team DM and CTF use info_player_team for spawn/respawn points, with the "team" key set to "strogg" or "marine".

Some entities have different bounding boxes than their Q3 correspondents. I remember having to move the player spawn/respawn points on the Z axis. Also it seems like ammo boxes need to be at least one pixel off the floor to make sure you don't get warning messages when the map loads.

target_location has been replaced by info_location, but that doesn't work currently.

Entity name changes that can be search-and-replaced:

"target_position" "target_null"
"ammo_rockets" "ammo_rocketlauncher"
"ammo_bullets" "ammo_machinegun"
"ammo_lightning" "ammo_lightninggun"
"ammo_cells" "ammo_hyperblaster"
"ammo_shells" "ammo_shotgun"
"weapon_lightning" "weapon_lightninggun"
"weapon_plasmagun" "weapon_hyperblaster"
"item_health_small" "item_health_shard"
"item_health" "item_health_small"
"item_regen" "powerup_regeneration"
"item_armor_combat" "item_armor_small"
"item_armor_body" "item_armor_large"
"team_CTF_redflag" "mp_ctf_strogg_flag"
"team_CTF_blueflag" "mp_ctf_marine_flag"
"item_quad" "powerup_quad_damage"
"item_ammoregen" "powerup_ammoregen"
"item_doubler" "powerup_doubler"
"item_guard" "powerup_guard"
"item_scout" "powerup_scout"

[Mr.Bios]

The q4 editor needs a .map extension all the maps in the baseq3 foilders are .pk3 or .bsp

[Johnny Law]

Ah, I thought you were talking about a map that you had the .map file for. ALL Quake map editors open .map files, not just the Q4 editor.

.pk3 files are just zipfiles. Same for .pk4, and .pk2, and I think the original .pak format as well. Open them with a zip utility if you want to look around inside them.

.bsp files are compiled .map files, for Quakes prior to Q4. There used to be an app floating around (q3wumpas) that did an OK job of converting a Q3 .bsp file into a .map file of untextured brushes. The result is pretty messy and only useful in certain situations. If you wanted to use it as a guideline for rebuilding something from scratch, as I mentioned above, it could be helpful. I don't know where to find q3wumpas currently though.


Hmm. I suppose I should also mention at this point that if you didn't create the original map yourself, doing a remake of it is an iffy thing. I believe most people won't fuss about a remake if you keep it to yourself, but publically distributing a remake of someone else's map is frowned on unless you get permission from the original author. (Although this rule of thumb seems to be overlooked if the author was a professional mapper employed by the game developer. But I guess that's another thread in the making.)

[sumatra]

I would recommend q3map2, which is very handy.
But first of all I'm interested what you are going for?

[Mr.Bios]

Well my thoughts were going between between 3 maps. dm16, dm9 or tourney4. Only reason I was thing dm16 is because it would probably be easier to make.

After changing the .pk3's to .zip's I still dont get .map's. Also I cant seem to find the pk files that contain the original q3 maps. I opened a few others like the ztn maps and they were still bsp or aas, whatever that is.

[Todtsteltzer]

... .bsp files are compiled .map files...

It's like the source code of programs.
You won't find the map files in any of the stock pk3 files, but you can generate them (out of the bsp files) using (e.g.) q3map2.

But before you continue I would suggest to read Johnny Law's last post again .