Entities only compile?

(ACROBAT) #1

I don’t know how to do these or if they work? How do I go about it?

(Wezelkrozum) #2

I don’t think that will work. Entities are detailed. Only brushes can be structural. This means you have no closed room what will result in a leak.

(ACROBAT) #3

“I don’t think that will work. Entities are detailed. Only brushes can be structural. This means you have no closed room what will result in a leak.”

No no. I mean you already have your map done, but you want to change a few entities and nothing else so in these cases, I have heard people do an entities only compile. It modifies existing bsp that you just made the previous compile without having to sit through. My map is very very large so knowing how to do this would be a great help.

(kamikazee) #4

Ah, I remember this one. You need to take a backup of your compiled map (if you already had a pk3, that’s fine too). Then run q3map2 in “bsp meta” mode and add the “-onlyents” switch.

I thought this was an experimental feature, hence the backup should things go wrong. Still, you have a chance of success.

(ACROBAT) #5

kamikazee,

You seem to know a lot about compiling. I think you were the one who told me about concave leaf nodes being autosplit and introducing portal lines in the process.

anyway

What about region only compiling. People on map-craft were talking about it. Have you ever done it successfully?

http://www.map-craft.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2953

(kamikazee) #6

Heh, I don’t know as much as obsidian or Ydnar, they’re pretty much the reference. Back in the day I did experiment with quite a lot of stuff though, so YMMV.

Region compiling is not usefull in general map making. It is basically a hack by the editor where it creates a copy of your map and clips anything away which is not in your “Top” viewport. Then it compiles only this region of the map resulting in a fast(er) compile so you can quickly see how a particular section of the map turns out.
The problem is that it adds walls with the default shader which clip part of the ceiling, hence this little test compile won’t do any good if all you want to do is to check out the lighting from you sky shader.

Region compiling used to work in Quake3, but it might take some tweaking of the GTK-radiant files before you can get it working. Another option is to use an external “Q3Map2 launcher” like Q3Map2Build and play with the switches there.

(ACROBAT) #7

If I make alpha shadows, it normally takes like 40 compiles to get them right.

I normally make a separate map to test them. Should I be using this instead?

(obsidian) #8

If just testing a shader and how lights react to it, a separate map may be easier. If testing stuff like how a spot light casts shadows on a bunch of brushwork, regions may work better. I don’t recall compiling regions working properly lately, and haven’t investigated exactly.

(ACROBAT) #9

http://holonet.antarat.com/wiki/index.php?title=Map_Modding

Here is how Loda does his entity only compiling in section 4.

(ACROBAT) #10

What compile line do i need to use for a region only compile or will it work with any?

I used one with meta, light and vis and got this error

“************ ERROR ************
LoadPortals: couldn’t read C:/Program Files/LucasArts/Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast/GameData/base/maps/expedition.prt”

(Chrissstrahl) #11

PRT file is the portal file, it should be computed during the Structural construction process (the VIS compile).
How ever if you want just to change some entities you should try altering the BSP.

Altering the BSP is not illegal if:

  • It is your map.
  • You do not modify the map to cheat with that (anyway nonsense, in my opinion).
  • The map is made by another user and not by the game company and you do not have permission.
  • The game End user License Agreement(EULA) does not allow user Modifications of any kind and nature.

What ever you have been read or been told about bsp-Files, here are two things I want to state clear to avoid users posting their speculations which lead no where, as it happens often if I talk about BSP-Files.
1. You are not allowed to decompile a bsp if it is not you own, unless you have permission.
Decompiling is reverse engineering and if not explicitly allowed you are performing a illegal action by law and braking also the EULA so you could get sued.
2. Altering a bsp-File with a hex-editor or similar tools is legal if you do not reverse engineer the file to alter it and if you do not act against the EULA, which is usually the case in a computer game, please read the EULA statement of the game if you are intend to alter stock game maps.

Here is the link to the tutorial(Modifying a BSP File) how to do it.
As you will notice this will make things much easier for you if you have just to alter a few little things on the entities, since you don’t need to wait for the compile, just extract the bsp from the pk-File into the map folder, alter it and load the map again, you don’t even need to close the game (load the map, don’t use restart as this will not reread the bsp-File from your hard-drive).
But there are restrictions, so you should read the entire tutorial before you get started.

I hope it will help you :slight_smile:

(merlin1991) #12

well, you don’t need to reverseengineer the bsp to know it’s strukture, you can:

look at ratiant + q3map2 source (wich is gpl) and learn it from there

look at the ioquake3 bsp loading (wich is gpl sourcecode again)

and boom you can write your own little tool that does nifty things like adjusting the entitys or surfacepamrs, or whatever (I did one that does surfaceparms and entitys).

Then you can even adjust the offsets in the beginnig of the bsp, that the bsp doesn’t get corrupt on changes that involve size changes.