Quake 3 for a n00b

[lth]

Hey,

Just got Quake 3 Arena (not Team) and I want to get about modding it, not in a scary engine way, but a mod with upgradeable weapons and a menu system (preferably with 3d models embedded in it), an observer mode, possibly a chase camera and possibly multipart models (a la Tanx, if anyone remembers that).

My problem is that I have no clue where to start. Can anyone recommend any good "getting started" tutorials for Quake 3 modding, and somewhere I might find tutorials for the specific elements (menu, observer mode, etc) that I need?

Cheers,

LTH

[leileilol]

code3arena

[lth]

Cheers!

What model editor does one use for Quake 3? (I want to be able to do animations for whatever the q3 equivalent of v_ models is)

[Preach]

Cheers!

What model editor does one use for Quake 3? (I want to be able to do animations for whatever the q3 equivalent of v_ models is)

Gmax with the tempest pack is designed for making MD3s. You may have to jump through some hoops to get it running if you don't already have a copy, discreet have turned the distribution of it over to http://www.turbosquid.com. If you visit their gmax forum there should be a stickied thread on how to get the copy they supply running.

nb: The website is down at the time I post this but the page says it's just a temporary outage.

[Lardarse]

One warning: a lot of the code3arena tutorials are based on pre-1.32 code.

Oh, and don't fall through switch statements. I'm on MSN if you need an explaination...

[lth]

Thanks for the tips, guys. Switches are evil anyway; I learned to code with QuakeC, so I was quite surprised, many years later, when I encountered this thing called the switch. Never quite trusted them.

(And actually, from a software engineering perspective, if you're using switching often then you should probably refactor your code to be more data-driven)

[leileilol]

Cheers!

What model editor does one use for Quake 3? (I want to be able to do animations for whatever the q3 equivalent of v_ models is)

Gmax with the tempest pack is designed for making MD3s.

buggy ones!

I use Blender and some export script tr3b cooked up on the xreal svn.

_hand.md3s are the equivelant of v_whatever.md3. These are usually a floating animated tag_weapon tag

[CocoT]

Hey LTH! Nice to see you! Long time no see!

[Sajt]

Thanks for the tips, guys. Switches are evil anyway; I learned to code with QuakeC, so I was quite surprised, many years later, when I encountered this thing called the switch. Never quite trusted them.

(And actually, from a software engineering perspective, if you're using switching often then you should probably refactor your code to be more data-driven)

They have their use! Switches can get compiled into jump tables which are faster, and the whole data-driven thing doesn't apply to all situations.

</offtopic>

But yeah, not when compiling to QVMs. :p

[lth]

Hi CocoT Old Quakers never die, man, they just keep respawning.

In fact, I'm going to have "respawn()" on my gravestone

Switches in my opinion (large, 4+ case switches) imply a certain laziness of coding or design - why test every time which path the flow of control should go down when you should be able to set a function pointer at the time that the variable that controls the switch is switched?

I'm not saying that switches are all bad, all the time, but from what I've seen as a programmer, most times they are used poorly.

[Sajt]

Well, yeah, the switch statment horrors you see when browsing the sourcecode of Wolf3D or Doom or Build engine games is nightmarish. But, that was necessary then, and not many people nowadays hardcode sprite indexes into switch statements and such, since they can use data-driven design more or less for free. I think competent programmers are pretty reasonable with switch statements today.

But I just had to speak up because I'm currently working on a project (VM bytecode interpreter) which revolves around using a switch statement, and without a switch statement, it would be much, much slower.

The large, 4+ case switches that you mention (in my case, several dozen cases) are the ones which take advantage of the fact that such switch statement are compiled into jump tables.