revisiting old ideas

[onykage]

Sup guys, by the power of google it seems ive found what was the old LW/MQ crew(ps im talking about the old forum hosted by the Guild Hall and paul J from id).

Anywho...

ive recently found myself abit board and decided to bust out some tools and start mapping again. This is where i started wanting to revisit some old ideas. I wrote a program long time ago that eventually turned into q3map2tools/q3map2GUI. A few years ago i broke out the old source and converted it to a MIT version to work with some of the open source communities such as Tremulous, Nexuiz, Open Arena, and padman.

Long story short, im going to rebuild the program, but this time im going to take it from a completely new perspective as I am an accomplished software writer now and know what mistakes not to make . Im going to ofcorse include quake3 because its a classic but im also going to focus on quake live. Then I may later revisit some of the other O/S projects and put them back in. Im debating on ET, Q4, and thinking about adding a slot of RAGE.

Im looking for a few things. Suggestions, options that would be helpful, tools that mebbe dont exsit that may be of more benefit, and some assistance with testing, layout design, functionality, and mebbe some help with the code. Depending on the popularity of the scope i may branch the program out, make it cross platform and at that point will give it its own website in which case id need a graphics designer to design the website.

If any of you are interested please pm me or post below, i will check this thread every couple of days.

Here are a few of the gui base options that will be included thus far.

*automated .map to .ase conversion (it will convert to .bsp for you first)
*automated .map to .md3 conversion (it will do all needed steps prior to produce the best possible result)
*.bsp to .ase
*.ase to .md3
*.bsp to .map (will also convert quakelive maps correctly)
*pk3 building wizard (will also encode for quakelive and check files consistency)
*loads of map compiling options (and will have the option to add custom options that are stored for later use.)
*map versioning system
*model versioning system
*automated quakelive pak encoding/decoding (including full resource dump)
*automated config generator for ingame camera adjustment(ie will generate the config and put it where it needs to go based on the game.)

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

ask piddla. he'd know.

[Johnny Law]

Since you mentioned it, I'm curious: does anyone know what's the word on encoding pk3s for Quake Live? Is this officially OK to do? Or something that is "winked at"?

I've encoded a couple of my maps to try them out with bots in QL, but I have no idea if it's supposed to be kosher to publically distribute the encoded versions.

[themuffinman]

I wrote a program long time ago that eventually turned into q3map2tools/q3map2GUI.

I remember that – I used it a while back

*.bsp to .map (will also convert quakelive maps correctly)

That would come in handy – haven’t seen one of those yet and I’d really like something that could do that! That ‘version is 47, not 46’ error bugs the crap out of me!

*automated quakelive pak encoding/decoding (including full resource dump)

Quake Live Decembler works like a charm. It’s open-source too. Can't remember where I got it, so I uploaded a copy here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?iwnjyymt1tj

Good luck with your program – sounds like quite a project. I’d be interested to see the result.

I got a suggestion but it doesn’t tie with the (mainly) map and model editing you’re going for – a graphical game menu editor. This would come in useful not only for editing menu files, but also in-game huds, without having to do much in the way of programming. It should be relatively easy to implement, as it would simply read a .menu file and draw an image of what it would look like, allowing you to move and resize objects, etc. and add actions and such to different objects. While that would be great, so would a build-in shader editor, with a real-time view of what it the shader looks like in-game. That’s if you’re planning to do an all-in-one app 

[neoplan]

q3map2tools - still using it! It's very convenient way for compiling the maps with different settings but some things are a bit buggy. Mappacker doesnt pack all the textures for example and sometimes makes the tool crash.

But I'm still lovin it!

[onykage]

themuffinman:
yeah i know about the decoder, but that will decode 1 file at a time via the command line, how about drag and select and encode/decode with a click, using the same decoder just adding a GUI on top to make it easier and quicker to use. And while you at it, should someone decide they want to just dump the entire qlive game then it will do that too, which is what i ment by the full dump response.

neoplan:
yeah some of the programs work, some dont work so great some dont work at all, which is my chief motivation and goal here. By having active development and work on a piece of software, then I can release the source to the community and the community can run and support the program for the rest of time. Im just basically putting together the building blocks.

JohhnyLaw:
Im not sure man, but I am sure how ever about this tho, what resides on your computer that does not affect any other computer system that you do not own, then you are directly in the right as long as you do not violate any kind of copyrights with before mentioned action. in english, the game is free to play and as long as you dont rip off id software i doubt there will be any squabbling about it.

i will say this, open community development for quakelive is inevitable to extend quakelive's existence in the game world. So tools like this will definitely become handy to have in the future.

[Foo]

Johan?

[neoplan]

Suggestions:

1) One thing that I don't like about the compiler logging is, that if you enable this feature, you won't see the progress status of the bsp, vis, light - stages anymore.

2) After installing q3map2tools - you have to set the paths for compiler, mapdirecotry and so on. The program crashes if you set wrong directory (at first look it's not rly clear what path is meant for a file).

3) Mappacker should have proper exclude options (f.e. you dont want your editor images to be packed or baseq3 textures and sounds...)

[Foo]

Mappacker's broke on Win7 for me.

[neoplan]

Hm, for me it works. Try to execute it as Admin.

But Arena-Editor doesn't work under win7...

[onykage]

Suggestions:

1) One thing that I don't like about the compiler logging is, that if you enable this feature, you won't see the progress status of the bsp, vis, light - stages anymore.

2) After installing q3map2tools - you have to set the paths for compiler, mapdirecotry and so on. The program crashes if you set wrong directory (at first look it's not rly clear what path is meant for a file).

3) Mappacker should have proper exclude options (f.e. you dont want your editor images to be packed or baseq3 textures and sounds...)

great suggestions a feedback! can you elaborate further on these concepts.

build-in shader editor, with a real-time view of what it the shader looks like in-game. That’s if you’re planning to do an all-in-one app

I completely missed this suggestion earlier. Great idea, i think i can add that ability in later on as a plugin. At the bare minimum i can just create a separate app that does that. The menu/hud editor editors I may explore that idea later on and make it a plugin as well.

Mappacker's broke on Win7 for me.

this app will work flawlessly in win2k, me, xp, vista, and win7 on release. Depending on how well i get support for this project i may be interested in making the app cross platform so that it will work in osx 10.4.1 - 10.5.2 and various flavors of linux.

I havnt decided if im going to yet but im thinking about adding a bug report and Trak list for the app.

I would like to get a few people who would be interested in some early alpha stage testing. If anyone who has interest in this please mention your interested and list your windows OS version including service pack

[neoplan]

I also think a new shader-tool would be nice. Q3ase is nice but a bit outdated (doesn't support all shader parameters) and the navigation is weird.

For Q3map2Tools:
- I would like to resize the window.
- "configuration tools" & "set paths" could be merged into preferences
- Dunno if its possible, but i sometimes i would like to pause the compile process.
- A couple of ppl asked me where they can find the mappacker - maybe it is better to make a tab for it.
- Being able to save other filetypes than ".arena" for other gametypes (like the .defi file for defrag maps).
- I think the programm should automatically log the compile and display it after the compile is finished (and also being able to turn that off).
- Maybe a possibility to go directly to the .shader file which contains unknown parameters (you can only see warnings when the compiler loads the shaders).
- Update parameters and add additional Info's to the mouse-over of the parameters.