Creating maps for Quake2World

This short guide assumes you are familiar with creating Quake II maps, and that you know how to setup and use the GtkRadiant editor for general use. You will learn how to setup GtkRadiant? for use with Quake2World, after which you will get a short explanation of the enhancements Quake2world has to offer for those wanting to create maps.

Enhancements

Quake2World comes with several enhancements for mappers, some of which are listed here:

• Full support for TGA textures, leaving the tired old Quake II palette behind.
• Support for alpha blending.
• Support for floating entities. Make items hard to reach!
• Greatly improved BSP compiler, resulting in a huge decrease of BSP-splits, which in turn means less polygons to render.
• Quadrupled lightmapsize, meaning maps will have prettier lighting than ever.
• Soon to be added support for sunlight and more...

GtkRadiant? setup

Setting up GtkRadiant? for Quake2World is very straightforward. First of all grab the latest SVN code using the instructions provided here. In the root of the source directory you will find a folder named 'radiant', which contains everything we need.

First, copy the file games/q2w.game to the games/ folder in your GtkRadiant? directory, so it's located next to any other .game files you might have there. This is also the time to open the q2w.game file in your favorite text editor and double check if all the paths mentioned are correct. Especially the following lines deserve special attention:

enginepath_linux="/usr/local/share/quake2world/"      ''This is your Quake2World data directory''
engine_linux="quake2world"      ''This is the name of your Quake2World binary''

Next, copy the folder q2w.game/ and all of its contents to your GtkRadiant? directory, so it's located next to any other .game folders you might have there.

Last, start the GtkRadiant? editor and select Quake2World from the drop-down list of games that GtkRadiant? will show you, or enter the GtkRadiant? preferences and select your game there.

Restart GtkRadiant? and congratulations, you can now start creating maps for Quake2World!

New features

Explained below are the various new features that Quake2World has to offer mappers.

Surface paramaters

nodraw

This is Quake2World's equivalent of Caulk used in Quake III Arena and other games. To use use it, select the face(s) you wish for Quake2World to skip while rendering, and apply the nodraw surfaceparm. The basic rule is that every face that Quake2World will render, but the client will never see can be given the nodraw surfaceparm, effectively cutting down on the amount of polygons being rendered. nodraw is also a mandatory component of the trans surfaceparm explained below.

• Click here for an example.

trans

This surfaceparm tells Quake2World to use the texture's alpha channel while rendering, giving mappers the opportunity to create gratings and beams a la Quake III Arena, without any noticable performance decrease. To use it, create a (thin) brush and apply the nodraw surfaceparm to all but one of its faces. Select the one face you wish to be alpha-blended and apply the trans surfaceparm to it. Currently, having one face marked as trans will also show the texture when viewing the alpha-blended face from the opposite side, although this behaviour might change in the future.

• Click here for an example.

warp2

A more agressive version of the warp surfaceparm, this makes the face it is applied to warp heavily.

• Click here for an example.

Spawnflags

Quake2World comes with a few additional spawnflags, as explained below.

trigger_push

spawnflags 4 Makes the trigger_push emit rings like a teleporter. You can use this make your jumppad more visible.

Pickups (weapons, armour and health)

spawnflags 4 Makes items that you can pick up, like weapons, armour and health, float in the air instead of fall to the ground like in regular Quake II.