Anyone tried gameSpace for making RtCW/ET maps or models yet? I just noticed the link in a Google ad at the top of RtCWFiles.com, and it looks pretty interesting from what I’ve seen. It exports to most of the major game engine formats, including Quake.
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/
Anyone that could give me a review on it?
Eww…I actually just found some reviews online by Googling the following:
gamespace and review
I came across this page, and gameSpace’s interface looks like ass, honestly…
http://www.gamersnews.com/gamespace.asp
I think I’ll pass.
THe interface takes some getting used to - gamespace is based on truespace which I’ve used in the past.
It’s ok, I mean there’s only so much ‘intuitiveness’ that can go into such a complex 3D program. I mean, Max or Maya are equally as tricky to learn, but can you afford to buy them?
As for whether it’ll work with ET, of course - most modelling programs can (I’ve used max on occasion). You just need to find the right converter programs to end up with .ASE and away you go. If they claim it exports straight to .MAP format then it might be useful, but then you’d lose all the pretty texturing (which is radiant’s / .MAP format’s only real failing.
As for better - well, you can bet it’ll be more flexible, but whether that translates well to better maps is ultimately up to the mapper.
Thanks for the info. Honestly, my main concern was whether or not it could actually compile a map (and whether it’d compile it the same as Radiant would). Honestly, I’m more comfortable with 3ds max, but can you actually create functional maps in 3ds max?
Well, I wouldn’t ‘risk’ it. While it was possible, I’m still not good enough in max to attempt it, and (something I didn’t realise until recently from a comment Ydnar made) was that automatic clipping for ASEs is a bit of a hack. Most likely fine for small objects, but an entire map done like that is bound to have a few iffy collision bits to it - although what form that would take I don’t know. (Not that normal maps don’t have their collision issues). I’m also not sure how VIS would work - you’d definately need to caulk in radiant and it’s possible you’d have to manually split up the model in MAX into lots of little models to give the VIS structure something to work with (since I believe models aren’t subdivided - they are either ‘drawn’ or not.)
And of course, you’d still have to place all your entities etc in radiant so no 3D program would be a complete replacement.
I guess to see how bad the problems would be would be to create a map in max - or possibly create a map in radiant, export to ASE and then create a new map with that ASE. Personally I don’t see the point, so although I’m curious, I’m not curious enough to try it out.
I’ve done a couple of Q3 test maps in Max, export to ASE, caulk hull in radiant, autoclip… I still can’t decide whether it’s worth pursuing doing a full map that way. The potential to destroy any chances of being able to BSP the map due to their being billions of unique planes on the autoclip brushes for something like the average cave is scary. In Q3 I found bots getting stuck in completely unlikely places (standing turning on the spot in the middle of a relatively flat floor). Although possibly the main reason I’ve not really pursued it is that I hate UVing stuff 
Collision iffiness could easily arise because the Max model won’t have all its vertices on the grid unless you’ve been exceptionally anal about it during construction (which throws away the potential speed advantages you get by making your less regular geometry in a high-end app). When you compile I think the autoclipping will try to put everything on grid like GTKR does, hence a mismatch. My first test maps had glitchy bits you could get stuck on, the second had triangles that didn’t seem to get clips generated. You could usually fix these by moving some verts around.
You could do a map in Max, but it would need a lot more testing and fixing for even relatively simple geometry. And it’ll generally be a much bigger BSP than an equivalent brush based map. Although you can compile your ASE with autoclip, decompile the BSP and manually optimise the clip brushes. Tried this too, it gets boring quick 