Half-Life BSP In q1

[Baker]

I've done some research on the Half-Life map specification and the map format itself is identical to Quake, with the exception that each texture gets it's own palette and it can also be specified in the texture that the texture is located in an external .wad file.









And, that's the reason a few engines support Half-Life map format including FuhQuake, ezQuake, DarkPlaces, Telejano and FTEQW. Keep in mind supporting the map format isn't the same as supporting every feature in Half-Life. You can't play Half-Life in any of those engines, but you can run around most of the maps kind of in the way you can "sort of" walk around rocket arena maps without running rocket arena.

The main reason I've been thinking about this lately is that some of the things I like about Half-Life include:

1. "alpha texture" support - the texture that is transparent in places. Used for fences and stuff. Not to be confused with alpha entity support (something neither FuhQuake nor ezQuake have).

2. func_rotate_doors - doors that revolve to open and look right in doing so. Hipnotic Quake mission pack has revolving doors that don't look right.

3. Built-in colored lighting in the map

4. func_ladder. A lot easier than the kludge of clip trickery (and waste of time) required to do this in an authentic Quake map.

Plus, I think Worldcraft 3.3 is a rather convenient editor and although I made a "Quake Adapter" for it, it sucks palettizing images for quake1.bsp if you want more color and if you don't use the Quake palette, you run into incalculable hurdles with the HUD. Using a pure Half-Life format would eliminate the need for using the "Quake Adapter".

I'm thinking about trying to rip this out of FuhQuake and then looking at the map compiler stuff a little because I imagine legally using the Half-Life compile tools with Quake or non-Half-Life stuff might break some license agreement somewhere (although I haven't checked).

/This is more thinking single player, but of course higher color maps on our servers using this format isn't entirely out of the question considering if Qrack and ProQuake both supported it, all the clients are covered.

[Trickle]

its funny you bring this up, I'm actually working with avirox on a mod called quakelife. we are even having a special quakish crowbar made

[Baker]

I spent part of today playing pulling out my Half-Life CD and trying to determine what gives it such a great base environment [Half-Life admittedly is looks a little dated, but in context of what they did with the Quake engine it is impressive]. I also download the Half-Life 2 demo and played it.

One of the things, aside from the lighting and things mentioned above, is the engine's awareness of what texture you are walking on for different "boot sounds".

What is sad to me is that in context of what I know now, you can tell in both Half-Life and even Half-Life 2 the map format is barely unchanged from Quake. One example: there are no curves in Half-Life 2 [however, the sunlight effect is awesome and the media and models really enrich the environment]. Areas that appear to be curves if you look carefully, it is a very staggered "octagon-like" transition.

Yet Quake lives in the dumpster, figuratively speaking ... being perceived as obsolete especially graphics wise.

Whenever I load up more modern games like Prey, Far Cry, Crisis, Half-Life 2, etc. -- while being impressed by the graphics and environment ... I get equally perturbed by the loading times and onerous start times and maddening install complexity.

If Quake --- or something like it --- kept all the strengths of simplicity and game load times while pulling in some modern features ... I can just imagine.

[Trickle]

here is some progress.







this is aimed at being a coop qw mod for now. it needs extra support though, ezquake ALMOST fully supports it. FTE does and DP. ezQuake is being updated to handle some of the engine intensity that FTE has.

[Trickle]

1. "alpha texture" support - the texture that is transparent in places. Used for fences and stuff. Not to be confused with alpha entity support (something neither FuhQuake nor ezQuake have).

this is one thing I really want included on ezQuake! it works well in FTE and QRACK. I remember first seeing its sexiness in Nehahra.

[Baker]

this is one thing I really want included on ezQuake! it works well in FTE and QRACK. I remember first seeing its sexiness in Nehahra.

I think every engine should support .alpha entity.

(You know, DarkPlaces doesn't appear to be supporting alpha texture in Half-Life.bsp. This is the meshy textures. ezQuake supports those alpha textures.)

Something about the lighting in DarkPlaces is making the Half-Life maps look better and less bland. I'm thinking it is DarkPlaces removal of the lower and upper lighting bounds because I don't have any special features on.

DarkPlaces:



I played with the lighting in FuhQuake to try to match it as best I could ... (but I have a feeling the "bland" lighting thing is because I'm pretty certain that Half-Life doesn't bound the lighting limits like most Quake engines do. DarkPlaces and I believe Qrack don't bound the lighting. Maybe FitzQuake doesn't, but I can't load half-life.bsp in Qrack or FitzQuake to experiment).

I could be wrong about this. I found if I turned the gamma all the way down in FuhQuake, it looked very Half-Life-ish. I guess the lighting in Half-Life is very important to the look and the default settings matter. Half-Life kind of buried the color controls and limited what you could play with a little.


FuhQuake:



/By the way, Tonik told me ezQuake now fully supports NetQuake progs.dat just like he had added a year ago in ZQuake.

[Trickle]

DarkPlaces:



FuhQuake:



/me is pondering the lighting ...

/By the way, Tonik told me ezQuake now fully supports NetQuake progs.dat just like he had added a year ago in ZQuake.

if you talk to him, tell him to add support for transparent textures! this MegaTF coop server I play on has Nehahra maps and I can't see through the windowed stuff on ez.

[Phenom]

... just... ...

I'm amazed at this! This is sounding like Quake, but with bells and whistles attached Bells and whistles that can possible give Quake 1 a whole new view! though i'm fond of its current view, the above postings are showing me that Quake 1 potentially has a huge ace up its sleeve!

[Lardarse]

HLBSP uses different hull sizes as well.

[avirox]

Hi everyone

Just to clear some things up, the mod is actually being made for DarkPlaces/FTE, not quakeworld. FTE happens to support clients using both protocols, so people using quakeworld engines that have half-life bsp support will be able to play it. Darkplaces and FTE already support transparency for glass in HL1 maps, as well as proper client-side prediction for half-life maps' hulls.

So far most of the game from c1a0 through c3a2 is playable, with a few obvious kinks along the way. Basically I replaced the half-life monsters with quake (and quake mod) ones, and added tons of entities common to singleplayer half-life. 95% of the maps run fine natively with the mod - no entity changes or anything! Doors rotate, track trains move, turrets fire, etc. It's not really in any proper form for public release yet, but if anyone wants to test around in it, feel free (pm me or something).

[Baker]

HLBSP uses different hull sizes as well.

Does this mean more than just being able to support the player crawling thru places? Does it mean the monsters can have custom sizes as well?

Basically I replaced the half-life monsters with quake (and quake mod) ones, and added tons of entities common to singleplayer half-life. 95% of the maps run fine natively with the mod - no entity changes or anything! Doors rotate, track trains move, turrets fire, etc. It's not really in any proper form for public release yet, but if anyone wants to test around in it, feel free (pm me or something).

So far most of the game from c1a0 through c3a2 is playable, with a few obvious kinks along the way. Basically I replaced the half-life monsters with quake (and quake mod) ones, and added tons of entities common to singleplayer half-life. 95% of the maps run fine natively with the mod - no entity changes or anything! Doors rotate, track trains move, turrets fire, etc.

Sounds very cool. Especially the rotating doors.

Does it use the rotating doors that are in the game? Like the red ones in the office complex?

Either way, it certainly sounds like a great mod.

[R00k]

Might be useful for a CS clone

[Baker]

Might be useful for a CS clone

Hey Rook, can you upload your source. It'd save me a little bit of time back tracking,

[R00k]

99% came from FuhQuake. I need to tweak a few things, seems r_farclip is ignored, as the world isnt draw at really far off distances. Also, that sky is actually the skysphere not a skybox. I can post a walk-thru of the changes I had to make, and which files were altered. As for rotating doors, and such that would require more coding

[Baker]

99% came from FuhQuake. I need to tweak a few things, seems r_farclip is ignored, as the world isnt draw at really far off distances. Also, that sky is actually the skysphere not a skybox. I can post a walk-thru of the changes I had to make, and which files were altered.

Cool.

As for rotating doors, and such that would require more coding

Probably DP_SV_ROTATINGBMODEL with some type of func_rotate_door .qc (but probably not what is in hipnotic).

I think the Half-Life maps need to have func_ladder (.qc with func_ladder | whole package)