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Easiest Mapper to learn
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:16 pm
by Kronus
I'm realtively new to mapping, and I was wondering which mapper is the easiest to pick up. Or which mapper is the best to learn on ( I don't care if it takes me longer to learn it, if it's worth the effort.)
Thanks!
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:30 am
by Sajt
I've heard Vondur is pretty easy to pick up. Especially on holidays.
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 5:04 am
by HeadThump
Get the 3 100 brush competition packs. The .map files come with the packs, and being uncluttered with good game play in a lot of the maps, you should learn a lot of things. I personaly rebuilt Ikka Karanen's Valley of the Kings from the first pack. Actually, years later, I am still on an Ikka kick.
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:29 am
by SkinnedAlive
I think he's looking for an editor.
BSP has a nice set of tutorials.
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:54 am
by spamalam
Well i'm a complete newbie here.
I found worldcraft exceptionally easy (1.6) to use. But then I have a feeling its hard to make a good architecture in it. I don't see many options for things like curves and stuff, and looking at some of the most impressive maps i have to wonder if they used worldcraft.
They've got way too many complex structures and worldcraft seems so old. But to make a level worldcraft can do it easily.
GTKRadiant I tried to look at but all I get is "Shader not found" instead of textures, but i hear a lot of people favour that.
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:48 am
by Sajt
The main gripe against WC is the (EXTREMELY) slow software 3D window (which also seems to use a 4-bit depth buffer
)
Using a newer WorldCraft, or Hammer, gives you a much better 3D window, and better texture alignment tools and stuff (you might need a specific bsp compiler for this though, like hmap2), but you have to maintain two copies of your wads - one in Quake format for compiling, and one in HL format for use in the map editor. Then everytime you want to compile you have to change the wad key in worldspawn to point to your Quake wads. Of course this could be more or less automated with little scripts or something, if you're up to the task
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:33 am
by RenegadeC
Sajt wrote:The main gripe against WC is the (EXTREMELY) slow software 3D window (which also seems to use a 4-bit depth buffer
)
Using a newer WorldCraft, or Hammer, gives you a much better 3D window, and better texture alignment tools and stuff (you might need a specific bsp compiler for this though, like hmap2), but you have to maintain two copies of your wads - one in Quake format for compiling, and one in HL format for use in the map editor. Then everytime you want to compile you have to change the wad key in worldspawn to point to your Quake wads. Of course this could be more or less automated with little scripts or something, if you're up to the task
What an unneccessary hassle! WC 1.6 is fine and it's 3D window is perfectly fine AND fast on "Textured" mode. You can also enable hardware acceleration for it which I haven't noticed a difference; I can zoom across the whole grid pretty darn quick in the 3D window...
Then again your computer perhaps is slow, I don't know!
Also you can easily do curves with brushes (geometry) with the "Clipping Tool" (Shift-X).
Enjoy!
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 6:50 am
by FrikaC
When I use WC 3.0, I have a bat file with an XchangeCL command in there to alter all the hlwads to wad. It's automatic, it's easy, and wads aren't that huge to keep around two copies.
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:55 am
by Trinca
easy map program is diferent from people to people i think worldcraft hard :\ ans Quark very easy...
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 1:15 pm
by FrikaC
Worldcraft comes with a very easy to follow tutorial in the help file.
Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:03 am
by Preach
Sajt wrote:The main gripe against WC is the (EXTREMELY) slow software 3D window (which also seems to use a 4-bit depth buffer
)
Using a newer WorldCraft, or Hammer, gives you a much better 3D window, and better texture alignment tools and stuff (you might need a specific bsp compiler for this though, like hmap2), but you have to maintain two copies of your wads - one in Quake format for compiling, and one in HL format for use in the map editor. Then everytime you want to compile you have to change the wad key in worldspawn to point to your Quake wads. Of course this could be more or less automated with little scripts or something, if you're up to the task
If you're using the right compilers, you don't need to change the wads at all, most recent compilers will just perform the conversion for you.
http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/ has one such complier, and I know most of the func crew would recommend it. You just use hammer with HL format wads and send those to the compiler without adjustment. This also means you only need the HL copies at any one time, although I keep backups of the quake format ones just in case.
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:52 pm
by Kronus
Would the one found at
http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?go=hammer work or do I need to find another version of Worldcraft?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:17 pm
by Preach
Yes, the 3.4 version will work using these tools. You may wan't to read
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=47175, which does mention the EULA stating that 3.4 can only be used for half-life and it's mods, whereas 3.3 had no such restrictions. It's unclear how enforcable that is.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 1:08 am
by Baker
QuakeAdapter 1.0 for Worldcraft 3.3
1. Install the standard Worldcraft 3.3 Installer:
Download: Worldcraft 3.3 Installer
2. Install the QuakeAdapter for Worldcraft 3.3:
Download: QuakeAdapter for Worldcraft 3.3
3. You are now 100% setup with all the best tools and everything is preconfigured.
Any WADs in your c:\program files\worldcraft\textures folder are auto-converted to the .hlwad format, but only if they haven't already been converted.
Sounds simple enough
I created a companion package for Worldcraft 3.3 that installs aguirRe's compile tools, a couple of open source .map and a couple of WADs.
For lack of a better name that wasn't taken by something else, I called this the QuakeAdapter for Worldcraft 3.3.
Merely install Worldcraft 3.3 and then install the QuakeAdapter and every hassle of using Worldcraft 3.3 (same issues as Hammer) are eliminated.
Upon starting Worldcraft 3.3 - AFTER installing the adapter - all of your Quake WADs in c:\program files\worldcraft\textures will automatically be converted to the HLWAD format any time you start Worldcraft.
Additionally, the "Mapversion is not a field" error is eliminated (it gets stripped from the .map).
And ... it is pre-broken in. There is no setup involved to set the tools, it is done for you.
I spent a lot of time on it and tested it about 80 times.
Upon installation, you are ready to go. The ONLY catch is that you must use c:\program files\worldcraft as your Worldcraft folder.
Does this affect Hammer?
It doesn't. Hammer uses not only a separate folder from Worldcraft 3.3, but separate registry entries as well. You can have Worldcraft 3.3 and Hammer on the same machine with no issues.
Does this affect Worldcraft 1.6a?
Unless you use c:\program files\worldcraft folder for Worldcraft 1.6a, the answer is no. Worldcraft 1.6's default install folder was c:\wc2 and it uses different registry entries than either Worldcraft 3.3 or Hammer.
Does this affect Worldcraft 3.x or 2.x?
Very much so. Backup everything and if you had any special customization, you'll have to go back into options.
This doen't work with any version of Worldcraft except 3.3 so if you are using 3.0 or some version that isn't 3.3, you will need to install 3.3.
Why Worldcraft 3.3 and not Hammer?
Mainly because Hammer isn't permitted to be used for Quake. Additionally, I don't see any features in Hammer 3.4 that matter to Quake that Worldcraft 3.3 doesn't have. Why go afoul of a license agreement, especially if you can use a version where Quake usage is permitted (but unsupported.).
The perfect rotation and OpenGL acceleration are both in Worldcraft 3.3 and those were the only things I didn't like about Worldcraft 1.6a.
---
Btw, if anyone who takes a look at the setup has any suggestions or comments, let me know. This was at first just an idea. I included 2 .map sources, one from Trinca and one from Zwiffle because the readme.txt files for those 2 maps were very liberal, I would have included more but I'd rather follow what the readme.txt says than make assumptions.
If you discover something that doesn't work, let me know. There shouldn't be anything because I did tons of tests on it and used it several times myself, but live usage > testing, in my experience.