Map cobbling tool

[Sajt]

Haven't officially started this project yet, but I have nailed down a .MAP renderer (which was the hardest part). Currently it's incorporated into my game engine but it will be ripped out to make this standalone tool, which will be available on Subversion when I get a webspace.

This tool will be a rudimentary 'level of levels' editor. You import entire levels as .MAP files and can move them around, or rotate them at 90 degree increments (yaw only). So if, say, you wanted to put all of Quake singleplayer into one big map, you could use this tool. Import all the maps, create some connecting pieces in a map editor and import them too, remove a few brushes (like the backs of the dark doorways), fiddle with some entities (mainly changelevels), and export! Then try to find a compile tool that can handle such a massive level.

Some things will be handled natively, such as renaming target/targetname pairs to mapname_targetname, and changing slipgate changelevels into teleports. It remains to be seen how well having thousands of monsters waiting around the map will work. It will also be interesting to see how this works out in multiplayer...

For screenshots of the .MAP renderer, see:


(the white textures are non-power-of-two ones that I forgot to scale up)

Of course when editing only a few maps at a time will need to be rendered.

The interface will all be SDL and OpenGL, no OS-specific GUI stuff. I don't know yet if there will be 2D viewports, but the 3D mode will have a few different control schemes - FPS noclip controls, Maya controls, WorldCraft controls, UnrealEd controls are planned. There will be a 3D snap to grid feature.

[Error]

that's pretty neat, of course that would require coding on QC's part... monster spawning and whatnot

[biff_debris]

This plus the id source maps is what I believe a number of people have been waiting for...

BTW, need more vids of your engine, Sajt -- that Statue of Liberty one kicks ass =D

[Up2nOgOoD[ROCK]]

Sajt, nice job! I think this is a great idea.

I was wondering if you think it would be efficient to get "Ben" from http://www.bspquakeeditor.com/ to enter BSP into the opensource community and open up a SVN. This way maybe you could integrate your tool into BSP and you two could collaborate on the project together?

Just a thought

[Sajt]

Hehe... I have been ruthlessly suppressing natural urges to take this thing a step further (i.e. add map editor features). It's to be exceedingly simple. I don't know how exactly it could be integrated with the BSP editor, but maybe something interesting would be possible. (That is, if he's willing to release the BSP code, most of it being written by his predecessor, I think)

[Tobias]

Hi!
just registered here to give a maybe important hint.

I read this thread and also agreed that such a tool would be nice to have.
However, I just had some free time and cobbled e1m1-1m3 together. In a texteditor I prepended the mapname to every target / targetname, switched trigger_changelevel to trigger_teleport and info_player_start to info_teleport_destination with a new target/targetname pair. Then I did some copy/paste in Worldcraft to combine these 3 in one map. (BTW, if you continue with all the other maps you also would had to pay attention to the textures metal5_2, plat_top1 etc that differ between some levels. these would have to be renamed, too)

It compiled in 7 minutes on my P4 3GHz, resulting in a 3.5 MB bsp. As I supposed it didn't open in GLQuake, so I opened it in DarkPlaces. Here's a screenshot: http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/9382/dp000000ss4.jpg

Now the reason for this post: First when I read about this idea, I thought that combining all maps wouldn't really make much sense. From the size of 2 or 3 maps upwards, this would simply be too big for DM.
But as some people mentioned it would make sense for SP since there would be no need loading a new bsp when exiting a level, which would be nice for projects like QDQ. This argument convinced me, too.
But when I just ran through my e1m1m2m3.bsp I realized that there's a big problem that IMO noone has seen yet: When you get items like the silver or golden key, these will also open these doors in all forthcoming levels because you won't lose them on level-exit.

So does it still make any sense to compile a huge level containing all 4 episodes?

Edit: Oh, I just noticed that you already lose the keys when opening the doors. So if they're needed in a level this fact should be no problem in the next ones. But maybe there are keys where those doors can be circumvented. In these cases the keys could be used in the next levels which wouldn't be the case when playing an "uncobbled" episode

[Lardarse]

[Tobias]

[scar3crow]

[venomus]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Error]

[DieparBaby]

I'd like to see them all combined and Quake C-ed into a small, persistent MMORPG, if such a quake engine exists.

Also, if you want to avoid naming conflicts between maps just add "_<mapname>" to the end of the targetname,etc of the entities that need it.