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| Quake II level editing tutorial by BobbaFett: The Basics |
Hi there,
this tutorial is meant to explain the basics of editing and a few topics that
are very important. I wrote this tutorial not for one editor but tried to make it
so that all beginning level creators can use it in spite of what editor they are using.
If you would ask my opinion for an editor I would strongly suggest BSP. This editor has great functions and it is free. I also
heard much good thing about Worldcraft, I only haven't tried that one yet.
All examples I made were done with BSP and Qool.
If I say create a brush(128x256x64) I mean that you should create a brush with the size (X-128 x Y-256 x Z-64). Another thing to know is that if I use "points" or "units" 1 point (or unit) is the smallest step that you can move a brush.
Topics:
This tutorial: The basics
Tutorial 2: Basic-Advanced maps
Tutorial 3: The advanced stuff
Tutorial 4: Speeding up things and the final piece of design
These topics are not known yet but it will help you to make your level a classic one.
Tutorial 5:How-To's
Help needed here!. The meaning of this tutorial is people sharing their knowledge with all other level creators.
If you think you have something I might like please mail me!!!
In Quake every solid object must be created as a block. This is why Quake and Quake II
are fully 3 dimensional. A block is called a brush. This means that for a simple room
(box that you can walk in) excists of 6 brushes, each of the walls one and one each
for the ceiling and floor. If you have done DOOM or Duke3d editing:
forget everything you have learned or done. Quake II editing is so much different because it's real 3d.
This 3D editing may seem kinda weird at first but after some use you will experience it
as a new way to create great levels with so MUCH MUCH more techniques than Duke or Doom.
Also very important is lighting, lighting can really make your level perfect but it can as well screw your level up big time!
It is not difficult to understand, it's just like the light you see if you look outside, or the light that your computer
monitor emits, it creats shadows and all that stuff. It's really crucial that you know how and where to use lights,
they can really give this atmosphere to a level.
The basics
You're first textured room
| Let's start off with creating a cube. Make it so that its Length X=512, Width Y=1024 and Height Z=256. Now make it a room (hollow the brush in qool, make->room in BSP, csg->make hollow in radiant and commands->make room in QuArK). If you're using qool, radiant or any editor that uses the "hollow brush" command then set the wall size -32 units. Else make the wall size 32 units Voila, your first room is here. You have to understand what the editor does, it just creates 6 brushes from the one brush you had before. There's a big empty space in the center. This space isn't connected with the void (the nothing; outside). That's why you can walk in that space in quake. Kinda confusing at first but you will get used to this soon enough. |
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You'll notice that your room isn't at all textured or all 6 brushes are textured the same.
Let's improve the room by adding some nice textures. Load up the E1U1 textures. (if you don't know how, check your editors help file)
The editor will crunch for some textures and the textures will appear in the textures window. Go to the "ggrate8_1" texture and click it.
If you have anything selected, deselect it and select the four walls of your room. Apply the texture to it. In BSP, hit alt-B. If you're working
with qool you have to learn something new: scope down. Click the room and this "scope down" button. You'll notice that you now can edit the various walls
of the room. Select the walls and apply the "ggrat8_1" texture to them. If you're using another editor just goto textures->add texture. Mmm, that's nice aint it? :)
Now deselect the walls and click the floor. Select texture "floor1_3" and apply it. Repeat this for the ceiling, give it the texture "bmetal12_1". Now let's have
a look at our level in quake2. We need to do 2 more things before we can play the level. The first is to insert a player start entity. Create a small brush (32x32x64)
and give it an entity "info_player_start". Make sure it is somewhere inside your level!!! First you need to save/export your level as a .map file.
Now use qbsp3 qvis3 and qrad3 for the compiling. I'm not going to explain how to use those utilities in this tutorial (I always have trouble with these utilities).
If you converted your .map level to .bsp then copy it to quake2dir/baseq2/maps and run quake2. At the console (~) type "map mymap" where mymap is the name of your .bsp file.
It should look something like the picture on the left. Congratulations, you've just made your first room. I advice you to play around with the textures and how to apply them. |
| We'll start with the basic light. Create a brush in your room (16x16x16) and give it a light entity. We don't want this light to be to bright so give it a "light" value of "150". To do this select the light and go to the entity window of your editor and change (or add) the "light" key to "150" (In bsp click on the + in the entity window and type key: "light" and for the value type "150"). Move this light to the bottom left of the top (XY) window like you see in the picture. Now add about 8 more lights and place them randomly into your level. Give them different "light" values. You can use the edit-duplicate or edit-copy-clone options to facilitate your work. It's time to look at the lighted room in quake2. Save and convert your .map to a .bsp file. Copy the .bsp file into the q2dir/baseq2/maps. Load your map in quake and look at your cool lighted room. |
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We will now add different styles of light. Select one of your lights. Choose one with a great light value. Go to the entity window and add a key "style" and give it a value "1"
choose another light and repeat this process, only give this light a style of "5". Now check out your map in quake2, cool heh?
What we just did was giving lights different styles. Here's a list of the different styles:
1.FLICKER (first type)
This colored light stuff is controlled by a RGB system. This means that you can give values for Red, Green and Blue. You can also mix these colors by just giving
each color an amount between 0.0 and 1.0. If you give a _color value of 1.0 0.0 0.0 to a light it would emit red light, 1.0 1.0 0.0 gives yellow lights, 1.0 0.0 1.0 gives magenta.
Again, play around with these colored lights and light slyles and try to combine them :)
Now this is what I call a nice wall (Texture blending and wall support).
Our room is almost done! We only need to restore our lighting. Let's begin with a big light on two sides of our wall-supports. Center the top view on the left wall support.
Create a brush(16x32x128) and move it next to our wall-support (on the left side). In the "right view" window move the brush so that it's exactly in front of the middle wall-support
brush and check in the front view that the brush is next to the middle wall-support brush. Give the brush texture "ggrat2_7" and select the face that is facing the walls of our room.
(the most left side). Select texture "baslt3_1" and give it to the FACE of the brush. I've played with an editor that couldn't give different faces of one brush different textures.
If your editor has that problem, I say you're in deep shit. Get another editor. It may sound rude, but that's the way of life :)
You'll notice that you're texture doesn't fit on the face of your brush. Call up the texture/surface window and take a good look at it. You will probably see some very confusing things.
Don't let it scare you off. We'll only use four pieces of this window, for now ;) Search for a box that says something like "X offset", "S", "OFFS", or something like that.
You should be able to enter a value in that box: we will now enter "16". Now search for a button "apply face" and click it. Watch your texture move over your brush.
It looks better now, but not yet perfect. Search for a box "Y offset", "T", "OFFSY" or something like that (it's probably next to the x offset box). We will enter a value of 64 here.
Now your texture fits exactly onto your brush. The next box we will use says "glows". It should be a checkbox. Click it so that it's activated. The last thing we will do is add a value
of "2000". Find a box that says "value" and type 2000 in it.
What we just did was to let the texture emit light. This is a great function because it will emit the color of light that is in the texture. There's only one little problem:
the values will take huge amounts. How bigger the brush(face), how greater the value. Values of "10000" are often used and are very normal.
You can (If you want) give the other walls texture blending too. If you already have the feeling, it sure is a feeling:), you have completed this tutorial. You are now ready to learn how to connect two rooms,
create doors in it and loadsa more basic-advanced functions. All these topics are in the next tutorial.
2.SLOW STRONG PULSE
3.CANDLE (first type)
4.FAST STROBE
5.GENTLE PULSE 1
6.FLICKER (second type)
7.CANDLE (second type)
8.CANDLE (third type)
9.SLOW STROBE
10.FLUORESCENT FLICKER
11.SLOW PULSE NOT FADE TO BLACK
12-XX. These are open, maybe useable to create your own styles of light???
The last thing we can do with lights is coloring them. This stuff is probably one of the best things of Quake2.
Select a light in a corner(optional) and open the entities window. Add a key "_color" (don't forget the "_"!!!) and give it a value of "0.0 0.5 1.0".
Compile the level again and look to the cool colored light you created.
Select the top brush and give it the texture "color2_4", select the middle brush and give it the "color1_4" texture. Now, the texture blending is done.
As you see we just created 3 brushes with different textures that perfectly fitted together. Now let's create another wall-support out of it. Select the
middle brush and (if necessary:) go to "move face" mode and in the front view drag the top right point to the right 32 points. Now select the top brush and
go back to "move face" mode. Drag the most right face to the left 32 points.
Goodbye for now ;)
This tutorial is created by BobbaFett. You can use and distribute freely as long as you keep it in its original zip file
and no fee or whatsoever is charged. If you want to distribute this on a cd-rom let me know.
