I’m a level designer and support of the good old enemy territory, my question abotu ET:QW follows naturally:
1: Will ET:QW have a Linux based standalone server like old ET?
2: Will it be possible to use gtkradiant or any other tool to edit and make levels for ET:QW?
As a huge supporter I’m certainly hoping for positive answer to both of these questions, both for my self and for the sales numbers of ET:QW.
1: ID has always supported linux in the past, so it’s very probable (aka near 100% likely)
With the search function borked, I can’t back up my facts easily, and I’m going from memory.
@ question 2: GTKRadiant will most likely support it after some time. It has been said that the level editor is now housed in a seperate link library, so I don’t know if it will be available for Linux from the start. But with reference to mortis’ answer on question 1, ID has probably got a solution.
there will be a level designing tool shortly after release which has been used by id & co , too
I’m pretty sure they mentioned the terrains were done in Maya, but you could make them in the editor also.
1 unit in Doom 3 is 1 unit in Maya, so I tried making a large terrain 65536x65536. Due to the view distance in Maya, I could only see a little area of the plane after creating it, but maybe there is an option somewhere I’m missing to increase the view distance. I would really like to know some more about how they make the terrains in Maya… if they are modeled in a small scale and then scaled for example.
ET:QW’s editor is basically the same as Radiant, with a few changes and a bunch of extra tools.
The terrain mesh is made in a modelling package. The megatexture is the bit that is created in the editor.
You can change the camera farplane in Maya - terrain models don’t get scaled in any way.
Thanks for the info!
If you’ve got time, could you give me an idea on what size (dimensions) of a plane is used for the terrains in Quake Wars? I’m guessing you subdivide areas for more detail, but overall the terrain mesh is subdivided into a basic size of terrain ‘tile’… what number of subdivisions is used as a base?
Our base mesh typically begins life as a 32768 x 32768 unit plane with 128 subdivisions. This is about equivalent to the mesh tesselation in Wolf, so is good for roughing out detail and getting playable terrain. We then add more detail where needed to shape cliffs and outcrops, and reduce tesselation locally in flatter areas.
But will SD supply us with a modelling tool to do this, or do we have to purchase one seperately. I couldnt even afford a tut on maya never mind the package.
At Quake3 Bits are some Blender level design tutorials.
Actually for D3 and Q4 I guess.
Although I’m not sure if it could be used for ET:QW.
Im sure I saw a quote about SD supplying all the tools needed for making maps for QW.
I think I just need this clarifying.
Wouldnt a student edition have restrictions like having to be a student. I remember student vers of MS office , you had to prove you were a student, which i am not. Knowing the output formats which are compatable would help, maybe .map. Does it have to be a mesh?
If I cant map for QW i’ll become a monk or somat 
The Blender Terrain video set isn’t necessarily ‘exclusive’ to D3/Q4 per say, it’s just ‘a method of production’, so it certainly can be used for QW… I know I’ll be doing terrain that way from now on as I hate ‘game boobs’ (heightmap based terrains).
Regarding the ‘free’ student edition of Maya. There isn’t one. There is an ‘educational’ version of Maya which is basically the full app available on a limited licence basis to full time students at greatly reduced costs (about £200 or so instead of close to £1000).
What you’re thinking of though is MayaPLE, that is free but it has limited functionality from the point of view of exporting models; it’s pretty much the same as gmax in that it needs a ‘gamepack’ - the ability to export to a suitable format has to be added to PLE.
Question for Wils (if you’re allowed to answer this one):
If you’re making the terrain in Maya is is safe to assuming that means you’ve got direct support *.ma (maya’s native file) format?
Are *.ASE and *.LWO files still going to useable for terrain models?
As of right now we support .ma, .obj, .lwo, .ase, and our own .surf format. If the engine can load it as a model, you can use it as a terrain model. Last I checked, we tended to use .lwo most frequently, followed by .obj.
Thanks for answers and the the blender info.Cant download the vid tut’s btw. Tried Blender and its driving me mad. I’m used to useing Terrain Generaotor to manipulate terrain easily, but that wont output a mesh. If anyone can recommend any program they see that is more simplified than these full blown 3d programs i would be grateful. I cant remember if fate outputs a mesh, i’ll check that out. Heres hoping.
[edit] : just a thought, i see i can convert .map file too ase. Would a terrain which started out as a .map converted too .ase work. So I can use the software i have now.
wow! all those formats! 
can’t you guys just post a screenshot of the map editor or something? :bump:
The real issue is not going to be the supported file types but rather the immense size of the megatextures. Maybe someone of the community can come up with some sort of progressive compression routines, similiar to uzip for unrealed to further compress the megatextures, and then ‘unpack’ them into their game ready format.
Also - I wonder if the game engine will support traditional tiled texturing, allowing 3rd party mappers to skimp on terrain detail to keep the file downloads of a sane size.
The MegaTextures are highly compressed in their final form, from about 5GB of source data to an average of 500MB in a format suitable for streaming from disk. The size can be decreased even more at the cost of visual quality; 500MB is the point where we found the best balance for our needs.
You’re not required to use megatextures on the terrain mesh (nor are you required to have a terrain mesh at all.) Designers are free to do what they like to create the gameplay that they desire.
