Main | Maps | Utils | Engine | About | Archived News
This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but should be accessible to any browser or Internet device.
Just a few little bits worth mentioning this month. Some talk has begun around another Quake Expo in 2003 - follow the discussion here if you're interested in contributing. The medieval project I mentioned previously will probably get released as a part of this - yes, we're all taking it really slow and not pressuring ourselves too much.
QMap died - in case you missed the transition, we've all moved here for now since Peej is away on holidays and there's nobody to reload the old database. The new site isn't quite complete, but most things work, so it's a good alternative for now.
And finally, Super Mario Sunshine is proving to be great fun!
Looks like I messed up in the qbsp version I last uploaded. There was a minor error in brush.cc which caused it to detect non-convex faces where there were in fact none. Fixed version is now uploaded as v1.76-tyr3, available on the utils page.
It's been brought to my attention that the last copy of TyrLite I uploaded was compiled using i686 instructions so it was unusable on any processors earlier than PII/Celerons. I've uploaded a recompiled version now that should work on pretty much any processor >= i386. I also uploaded the last version of TreeQbsp that I worked on, since work on that has stopped for now.
Two months since the last update and that's all that's happened? That sucks. Actually, I have started work on some medieval stuff for a joint project that Tronyn, Necros and I are thinking about; but nothing's guaranteed to come from that yet.
Ah, it's been a pretty hectic month with lots of (real life) changes. The biggest change is that now I am working full time, which is taking a little getting used to. It takes a while to get used to having to go to bed by midnight each night, since I'd gotten quite used to staying up till 3am most nights of the week. I could make it through when only working two or three days, but not five in a row on a regular basis.
I've been playing a couple of games too. I picked up a copy of GTA III for my PC and had loads of fun playing that. Lots of varied and interesting missions and a wonderfully free and interactive playing environment. Also picked up a copy of Morrowind which was quite nice. Miles of beatiful landscape, some really nice architecture in places and a storyline with enormous scope and freedom. I might take a look at the mapping tools included sometime, but I suspect it's mostly a bit of landscaping and placing prefabs to suit.
Almost no Quake stuff happening right now, since I usually feel completely drained of energy by the time I get home from work. I have done a small amount of work on my engine, but still nothing too exciting there yet. Somebody is going to scream at me, but I've decided to scrap the idbase map I'd been working on for a while and start again. I will be reusing parts of what I've done, but I'll be very careful about doing stuff to confuse the compiler this time =). Hmmm, yes I still haven't fixed qbsp =(.
Alright, I finally got it done. That texture work was a real pain but once I got the last part done, everything just clicked. Some last minute changes to the item placement seem to have improved the gameplay a bit too, so altogether I'm quite happy.
For those who don't know yet, it's a deathmatch map for Quake. Best suits around 2-8 players. Get yourself a copy from here (383 KB). Now, where did I put that single player map...
Due to an extremely busy week at work followed by a bout of the flu, the map isn't done yet.
I need to modify some of the textures a bit to give it that finishing touch that it needs. I suck very badly at this, so it's very time consuming trying to get it right. I should have most of this weekend free to work on it so just maybe... soon.
Recently I've been doing some more hacking on TreeQBSP with Bengt, trying to sort out the problems with the leak line simplification. We ended up coming up with an effective fix and also made the simplification process a lot quicker. The changes should show up in version 1.75 which will find here sometime soon.
I've also continued working on my experimental TreeQBSP, trying to fix the bad leak and clip hull problems I've had with other maps. Still no huge successes yet, but I've decided to try and upload my changes to the utils page periodically. Keep in mind that this compiler will usually be less reliable than the standard version. It's just for the curious...
Beta testers for Dark Ritual have been very quiet, so I assume they're all busy or just forgetful. I'll probably just finish up this weekend without any more feedback.
Dark Ritual is into the beta testing phase and all is looking good. I managed to get five volunteers to test and they should all have the map in their hands now. Depending on what they find, it should be ready to release within the next two weeks or so.
Bengt has been doing some interesting things with qbsp recently, so mappers should keep an eye on his homepage. He's currently working on some stuff to help tracking down leaks in hulls 1 & 2 which will help with those more troublesome maps (*cough cough*).
I've had some pleasant distractions this week. On Thursday night I got my GameCube and have been playing it a lot since then. Then on Friday my friend loaned me Dungeon Siege. I'm not normally an RPG fan, but I'm finding this one quite addictive.
I'm anticipating a fairly hectic week at work this coming week, but I hope that by next weekend I'll have Dark Ritual ready for some outside testers.
I've gotten some more work done on my deathmatch map this weekend and it's getting close to beta stage. It's structurally complete but there's still a bit of work to do on some of the texturing and lighting. I've decided to call it Dark Ritual due to the subdued lighting and dominant blue colour. Here's a couple of screenshots to whet your appetite:
Ok, another update to TyrLite is now available. This release fixes a problem that light compilers have had with QuArK maps from the beginning of time. Lightmaps weren't correctly generated for surfaces using QuArK's extended texture placement. Check the utils page for download details.
What else have I been up to? There's a new DM map coming soon based on some stuff I scrapped a few months back. I want this one to top Aggressor for intensity and depth of play and it's looking good so far. It's a little bit bigger, beautifully connected and very vertical. Might be finished in a couple more weeks depending on RL stuff.
I finally got a chance to finish my new design and upload the pages. Still no news archives, but they'll be available soon for what it's worth. I've only tested with Mozilla (0.9.8 and 0.9.9) and Internet Explorer (5.0 and 6) so let me know if you see something that doesn't look right.
Well, it turns out that the QBSP fix isn't quite so good as I hoped. Bengt ran it on about 30 test maps with varying results. I do believe that the fix is thoeretically good, but it probably suffers from the same roundoff problems as any other part of the program. I'm going to provide a download for the program on my utils page anyway since it does seem to work better in some cases, just not for every map.
After not even thinking about the QBSP problem for several weeks, I got the urge to try again. This time I had a little more luck. Bengt has been working on some modified tools for a little while and I decided to check out his version of TreeBSP (treeqbspbjp), which uses double precision floats (more accurate). The extra precision solved some of the problems, but not quite all.
So, with a little more poking around I found a problem with the code that generates the clip hulls (used for collision checking) which has been in the tools even since id's original version. Now, you know how anytime you try to get creative with your brushes, almost always you end up with places where the scenery goes non-solid? Well, I think I've got it fixed. Damn, I feel proud.
I've sent off the changes to Bengt and I'm just waiting for him to get back to me. At this stage it's not really worth me releasing my own Qbsp since Bengt's been working on his for a while, so I'll let him take care of releasing an updated version. Of course if he decides not to for some reason then I'll upload something myself.
Oh, and yes, this means I'm going to start working on my new map again. =)
Not much mapping been going on as of late, but I've been spending a bit of time going through the Quake engine source. So far it's been pretty slow while I learn my way around and clean things up, but I've managed to fix a few things here and there. Nothing ground breaking, but it's fun to do. I'll probably upload what I've done once I feel it's sufficiently cleaned up. It'll just be like regular quake for now, but hopefully with less bugs. After that, I have a few ideas of where I want it to go, but time will tell...
One recent annoucement that I found interesting is that Mindcrime has decided to start another game/mod based on the Quake engine. This time there's no uni or OUM taking up my time, so I'll probably be talking to him when he starts looking for mappers.
Another update to TyrLite, this time a new feature: .lit support. For those who don't know, this is another way of saving the colored light information for your maps. Instead of putting the information into the bsp, it is kept in another file with the extension ".lit". This format is supported a number of the available modified engines, e.g. TomazQuake.
As usual, the file is available on the utils page.
Thanks to a couple of the regulars on QMap, a rather large bug has been found and fixed in TyrLite. It affects any map compiled with "-nominlimit". It would cause all the lights cast to be double brightness. That's the only real change, so don't bother updating if you don't use "-nominlimit".
As for the qbsp stuff... well, don't ask. I'm leaving it alone for a while because it was getting on my nerves and I was having no fun. The map you've seen in my screenshots previously will still get finished eventually, but I'm probably going to start another one first because that one has gotten quite stale in my head. I need to come back to it later with a fresh prespective.