Many questions... :)

[JasonX]

Hello Guys,

I'm a Half-Life 1/2 modder, and for years, i developed small and total conversions for those two games. Now, i'm interested in trying something new, maybe harder. After one week of deep research and testing, i chose DarkPlaces as my base engine. It's visually appealing, without killing performance (like Xreal) or bugging everything (Q2E). However, i have a "few" questions:

1) Can i use high-res TGA for textures?
2) Which mapping process the engines executes? Normal, displacement, occlusion? And how's the naming pattern?
3) What's the best map editor, that supports all the eye-candy features of DarkPlaces? NetRadiant?
4) Can i use Hammer, without problems? Y'know... i'm very used to it, and i love it.
5) How does the rtlights system work? I don't quite understand.
6) What's the best model format to use with the engine? I need a format with support for skeletal animations and high poly support. I use 3DS Max 8 to rig and export my models.
7) Any tutorials on creating/animating weapons?
8) How do i have those very ugly bullets that come out in some weapons?
9) What are the limitations that i should know of when mapping?
10) Can i use skyboxes?
11) How can i implement a mouse cursor in the menu?
12) Frikqcc is the best compiler?
13) A good wad manager?
14) How can i use TTF fonts in the menus/UI?
15) Any converting tutorials? For example, converting models from HL to Q1. Including animations (SMD's)...

Quake-C related and gameplay

1) I want to implement a simple weapons stats system. Being speed, accuracy, power, weight. Speed is, basically, the rate of fire. Accuracy is pretty obvious. Power is the amount of damage the weapon causes. Weight affects the overall player speed (holding a handgun is faster than holding a rifle). Would this be too hard?
2) Accuracy modifiers? For example: crouching increases accuracy, jumping decreases dramatically. Conically spreading :)
3) Bullet tracers?
4) Where i can find more tutorials for Quake C?
5) Where i can find some more mods, with commented source? I downloaded some, but without comments is a little hard for noobs.
6) How can i do some simple weapon reloading?
7) Secondary fire? Scopes? :)
8) Any modern warfare related mods around?

[Spirit]

First read http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/readme.html
Then consume some more information on http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/download.html and its files.
Next up is search.php for the terms "map editor", "hammer", "model format", "model tutorial", "wad", "converting", etc.

[MauveBib]

I'll throw some answers out...

1) Can i use high-res TGA for textures?

Yes, without a problem, for both map and model textures. The engine also supports JPG should you really want it, though I can't see much use for it other than smaller download sizes.

2) Which mapping process the engines executes? Normal, displacement, occlusion? And how's the naming pattern?

The engine supports diffuse, normal, displacement and specular maps. The naming convention is:

standard non-realtime lighting map: whatever.tga
diffuse: whatever_diffuse.tga
normal: whatever_norm.tga
displacement: whatever_bump.tga
specular: whatever_gloss.tga

If a displacement map is present without a normal map, a normal map will be automatically generated from the displacement map, though obviously this is not ideal. Features such as displacement mapping are not turned on by default, they're set by cvars.

The engine also supports _luma maps for fullbrights, _pants and _shirt maps for team color maps, and _glow for additive blended glowy maps.

3) What's the best map editor, that supports all the eye-candy features of DarkPlaces? NetRadiant?

NetRadient seems the best option, yes.

4) Can i use Hammer, without problems? Y'know... i'm very used to it, and i love it.

I think you could use it to create the initial .map file then import that into Radient to convert it. Don't quote me on that though, I'm no mapping expert.

]5) How does the rtlights system work? I don't quite understand.

Quake's original mapping format didn't save the location of the lights in the BSP by default, it just saved the lightmap. Likewise, many maps have an awful lot of lights on the map that would cause a slowdown with realtime lighting. RTlights files are essentially files for relighting the map with RT compatible lights, which can be created with an internal or external editor. Again, a mapper would be able to give you more information.

6) What's the best model format to use with the engine? I need a format with support for skeletal animations and high poly support. I use 3DS Max 8 to rig and export my models.

Your best option is probably DPM, DP's own format. It supports high poly models with skeletal animation, as well as tagging etc. It can be compiled from HL1 SMDs using a program called DPMODEL available on the DP website. Since you're familar with HL/HL2 modding this should be a doddle.

7) Any tutorials on creating/animating weapons?
You'd have to look elsewhere for that. Standard modelling techniques apply for DP as any other engine

How do i have those very ugly bullets that come out in some weapons?

Do you mean bullet models or impact particle effects? Both are entirely customisable. You can of course make weapons do whatever you want with a combination of modelling, QC coding and editing the effectinfo.txt file for the particle effects. If you don't want bullet models, that is of course fine, you can do direct hitscan weapons, partcile weapons or whatever you want. See Nexuiz for some good examples of what's possible.

9) What are the limitations that i should know of when mapping?

Depends on the BSP format used. DP supports Quake 1, Quake3 and Half Life 1 maps, of which Quake 3 is probably the best format. You can find the specifications on this as a format elsewhere.

10) Can i use skyboxes?

Certainly. These are defined in the worldspawn entity in the BSP file, using the following format:

"sky" "basename"

for example: "mtnsun_" would load "mtnsun_up.tga" and "mtnsun_rt.tga" and similar names


11) How can i implement a mouse cursor in the menu?

There are two ways, but neither is particularly well documented or tutorialised. There is menuqc or csqc, you'd have to ask around for specific help on either.

12) Frikqcc is the best compiler?

Personally I prefer FTEQCC, but they're both pretty good.

13) A good wad manager?

You'd have to ask a mapper, I have no idea.

14) How can i use TTF fonts in the menus/UI?

Not easily, if at all. It might be possible in menuqc or csqc, but I don't really know.

15) Any converting tutorials? For example, converting models from HL to Q1. Including animations (SMD's)...

As I mentioned above, the best model format for you to use is probably DPM, as that keeps skeletal animations and is easily compiled from SMDs using DPMODEL. Quake 3 MD3 files are also easily compiled from SMDs using the same program.

Quake-C related and gameplay

1) I want to implement a simple weapons stats system. Being speed, accuracy, power, weight. Speed is, basically, the rate of fire. Accuracy is pretty obvious. Power is the amount of damage the weapon causes. Weight affects the overall player speed (holding a handgun is faster than holding a rifle). Would this be too hard?

Pretty easy. You'd just add fields to each player entity for each of the stats, and recalculate every time it changes. For example, for Accuracy you'd need two fields, to store total hits and total shots fired. Each time a weapon is fired you'd increase the shots fired field by one, and each time you get a hit you'd increase the hits field. It's easy to then calculate a percentage accuracy on the fly. Not hard at all once you've got the hang of QC.

2) Accuracy modifiers? For example: crouching increases accuracy,
jumping decreases dramatically. Conically spreading

Not too hard, you just have to code the weapons well For projectile weapons you'd do something like this:

missile.velocity = missile.velocity + v_up * (crandom() * self.inaccuracy);
missile.velocity = missile.velocity + v_right * (crandom() * self.inaccuracy);

Where inaccuracy is a value constantly updated for jumping, crouching, running etc. This gives a conical spread linear to the inaccuracy number.

The process is very similar for hitscan weapons, you just alter the vector along which the shot is fired rather than the velocity of the projectile.

3) Bullet tracers?

Very simple, you just end a projectile entity along the path of the bullet, though do no damage with it; use a hitscan for the damage instead. It's equally easy to send only one tracer for every five shots or whatever you like.

4) Where i can find more tutorials for Quake C?

This site is probably the best source on the web, along with the . Unfortunately tutorials using DP's extended functionality rather than stock Quake are few and far between.

5) Where i can find some more mods, with commented source? I downloaded some, but without comments is a little hard for noobs.

Shrug. Trial and error I suppose.

6) How can i do some simple weapon reloading?

You'll need to use impluses or a +button to make a key correspond to reloading, then make the weapon model play the reloading animation and disallow firing till it's completed, at which point you up the currentammo and drop the relevant weapon ammo. It does mean dropping the connection between currentammo and weapon ammos in the code.

It's difficult to go into detail about how to do this until you're familar with the basics of QC. See for a crash course in the absolute basics.

7) Secondary fire? Scopes?

Both not too hard using DP extensions; self.viewzoom scales the zoom and sensitivity for sniper scopes, and the use of one of DP's extra +buttons for secondary fire. Again, this will make more sense once you've got the hang of QC.

Any modern warfare related mods around?

Not many good ones that I can think of, though I should plug at this point...

[Wazat]

[MauveBib]

[JasonX]