Importing a Quake 4 .map file into GtkRadiant 1.4 or 1.5

[Infernis]

Hello,

I've made a map in Quake 4 Radiant which I want to use in Quake 3. It's only a alpha build. Meaning no entities, patches, lights, etc. Just brushwork with the caulk texture. GtkRadiant 1.4 gives a lot of line errors when loading and eventually comes up with a empty map. GtkRadiant 1.5 doesn't give any errors, it just shows me a empty map.

Google hasn't helped thus far so that's why I'm asking you guys. I've read I can export it to a model but that's not what I'm looking for. In the perfect situation I would just simply get my brushwork into GtkRadiant 1.4 and continue my brushwork. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

[themuffinman]

I've no idea whether there's a tool that automates such a conversion, but this is what works for me...

1. Get the latest version of QuArK.
2. Install, load it, and under 'Games', run it in Quake 4 mode. Open the map.
3. Save it as a .qrk file (QuArK map file for hand editing).
4. Open the file in a text editor and where the game tag says Quake 4, change it to Quake 3 and save.
5. Change the game in QuArK to Quake 3, open the map.
6. Save it as a .map file.

Now you'll have geometry you can load into GtkRadiant. The textures will use brush primitives so you may want to convert it to normal texture mapping. If you had done texturing then you'd have to realign everything again (after making the textures available to the editor of course).

[Infernis]

Quark gives a file corruption error when I try your method. If I choose to continue it says that the file extensions does not match the file contents.

[AEon]

Strange... I thought for AEdm7 I was able to swap between Q4 and Q3A without a problem. Hmmm... maybe I did it from Q3A and loaded that into Q4.

[Infernis]

I could send you a zip file with the map if your willing to give it a try?

[AEon]

I use the same tools as everyone... so I doubt it would help. But I can give it a try.

[Infernis]

I will do it as soon as I get home from work. Thanks!

[obsidian]

I believe the map file versions are different between the two games. Try opening up the map in Q4R, select all brushes, copy. Open GtkRadiant, paste. If that doesn't work, you'll have to open up the map file in a text editor (back up original first) and hack the version number. Create a basic map in GtkRadiant to compare differences in the headers.

[Infernis]

I will try that as well. Thanks for all the tips guys!

[Infernis]

The only difference between files is that that the Quake 4 version header says Version 3. If I remove that and try to open it I still have the same result.

[AEon]

Try to the copy and paste approach, Obsidian suggested. I tried to look up here in the forums what I did working on my Q4 map AEtri and the in-parallel developed AEdm7 for Q3A. And I seem to recall, selecting all brushes in Q4radiant, copying them, and pasting them into the also opened GTKradiant (might have been v1.2.13 though not 1.4 back then) did work. But that was 6 years ago, so I just do no recall how I did things.

[AEon]

Reading up on my Quake 4 Mapping FAQ (sticky thread), I noted this:

• Converting Levels to Quake 4 @ iddevnet.com
  Info: How to convert Q3A maps to Q4.

But that is indeed the other way around.

[dONKEY]

If irc, Q4 map is xmap format based on brush primitives. Also iirc you need to run gtk 1.5 with quake 4 game selected, open the map then you can save as q3 map.

[Infernis]

I tried the copy and paste approach. It gives a XML version error. How do I save it as a Quake 3 map in Radiant 1.5? It only has the option to save as, but nothing regarding for what game.

[dONKEY]

Maybe that option was in q4edit....damn its been so long since I did this

[AEon]

Tested v1.4 and v1.6.2... via Open, and then even via Import... did not work. Reason, as was mentioned, Q4 saves "objects" not as brushes but as primitives... whatever that means. The problem is, I compared a q3a map with the q4 one Infernis sent me, the source is completely different. No wonder a normal load under q3a will not yield anything.

It might be possible to write clever UltraEdit Regular Expressions that would convert the lines of the q4 file into the format used in q3a... but I am not even sure that is possible (in theory). The format looks similar but is not the same... info on texture offsets also seem to be missing... very strange.

It could very well be that back then I converted the q3a map to q4... and never the other way around.

[AEon]

OK... I will try and give it a shot... what I need to get this somehow working, the manual conversion from q4 to q3a are two map files.

Create a caulk brush at the center of a new map in q4 128u (X) x 64u (Y) x 32u (Z)... the bottom of the brush is at z=0, and the brush itself center on XY (0,0). And save that, then create the very same brush in Radiant v1.4... again save the map file. Send those files to me. I can then use a diff tool to compare the files and find out what the format is... at least approximately.

Update: We had a thread on the topic here as well: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=986&view=previous

Take a look if the tool (last post) can be found on the net... the link to it alas is broken.

[Infernis]

I'll do that as soon as I get home tonight. If I'm not mistaken I should have the tool mentioned in that thread somewhere. Thanks for all the help so far.

[AEon]

Did a quick compare... now if the brushes were exactly the same, then there is nothing I can do... the q3 128 coordinate is suddenly -128 in q4... and the other numbers are all over the place.

OK... double-checked...

• Q3: ( 128 8 0 ) ( 0 8 0 ) ( 0 0 0 ) common/caulk 32 0 0 0.500000 0.500000 0 4 0
  Q4: ( 1 0 0 -128 ) ( ( 0.03125 0 0 ) ( 0 0.03125 0 ) ) "textures/common/caulk"

I never looked into how geometry is actually saved by the editor, but the older ones seem to be using coordinate triplets to save (what I am guessing one "vertex-face"), whereas those get replaced by a group of four numbers in Q4. The Q4 format seems to be a lot more efficient as I read it. There is no trivial way to convert a Q4 map to Q3A. It would take someone with geometry expertise to write something up.

The tool you found, is actually for q1 and q2 maps to be converted to q3a... so that does not help either.

I am a bit surprised that the format was changed this much, I had expected to remove a few {} here and there, maybe rearrange the order of the coordinates, reformatting them basically. But this is a paradigm change ("how pompous can you get" meaning myself ).

Maybe TTimo can help with this...

[phantazm11]

Yeah, I tried this a few years ago and never found a successful way to port a map from Q4 to Q3. You can do the opposite, which is kind of strange.

[themuffinman]

double post... whoops

[themuffinman]

Quark gives a file corruption error when I try your method. If I choose to continue it says that the file extensions does not match the file contents.

I've never had that error before. I've only got errors about floating point operations before, and that had to do with a glitch in the 3D camera view which can be disabled beforehand to prevent the error. I can't guarantee that it always works, but I'm yet to be unable to convert any map so far.

How about some proof that my method works? Since phantazm11 is here it may be most appropriate to use a Q4 map of his (don't worry, just using it as an example, nothing more). Here's phantq4dm8 loaded in QuArK in its Q4 format, in Radiant converted to Q3 format and in-game:

[lvlshot]http://i744.photobucket.com/albums/xx87/TheMuffinMan86/Q4%20-%20Q3%20map%20conversions/q4q4_1.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://i744.photobucket.com/albums/xx87/TheMuffinMan86/Q4%20-%20Q3%20map%20conversions/q4q3_2.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://i744.photobucket.com/albums/xx87/TheMuffinMan86/Q4%20-%20Q3%20map%20conversions/q4q3_3.jpg[/lvlshot]

The only geometry I can't convert yet are models such as used for terrain - they're stored in proc files so I know where to find them, just not how to convert them yet.
You can PM the map to me if you like so I can see if I can convert it for ya.

[themuffinman]

• Q3: ( 128 8 0 ) ( 0 8 0 ) ( 0 0 0 ) common/caulk 32 0 0 0.500000 0.500000 0 4 0
  Q4: ( 1 0 0 -128 ) ( ( 0.03125 0 0 ) ( 0 0.03125 0 ) ) "textures/common/caulk"

You're probably better off comparing with Q3's brush primitive format, but the planes are still dealt with the same as with normal texture mapping. And according to this article, the brushDef3 plane equation refers to Euclidean distances, which I have no knowledge about.

[phantazm11]

That is truly impressive themuffinman. I tried to convert phantq4dm7 to Q3 back in the day...might have to give it a go now that you have come up with a way to achieve it!

[AEon]

Interestingly it has been a really long time since I last used Quark... was way back in the day when I built Half-Life MP maps, back then I hated Worldcraft, and Quark was the first editor where 90° rotation of brushes would not kill the map (Qoole also had its issues with that), plus the editor actually had real named grouping of objects. And I registered the editor back then too... ... good times...