I'm seriously considering making a spiritual successor.

[Xeropace]

I think I was a little too hopeful in my assumption of the data in a .MAP file...

http://i.imgur.com/Cqke1Lz.png

 

[Thothie]

quake 1 can run half-life 1 maps

Nah, it won't. It doesn't like WAD texture format, nor the HL1 particle system. The decompiled .map formats vary too much between two to be used as well.

I think I was a little too hopeful in my assumption of the data in a .MAP file...

http://i.imgur.com/Cqke1Lz.png

Modeling programs tend to work in poly's made up of three vertexes. The map format works in objects with any number of vertexes (in this case six, since they are boxes). Thus you are never going to be able to convert between the directly, lest you make rather sophisticated program that breaks the objects down into triangles.

However, the Quake3 .map format stores its shapes in similar fashion. So, if you have a program that converts Quake3 .maps, your best bet is to rig up a script to convert the HL1 map to a Quake3 .map, and convert the result.

 

[Xeropace]

I've just spent hours tweaking and rewriting this: https://github.com/stefanha/map-files but getting no where...

Might just ditch the idea of importing the maps =/ Whilst it would have been nice, I would have wanted to redo every map anyway.

This time would probably have been spent better on networking D:

 

[ceriux]

quake 1 can run half-life 1 maps

Nah, it won't. It doesn't like WAD texture format, nor the HL1 particle system. The decompiled .map formats vary too much between two to be used as well.

ehh both darkplaces and FTE run halflife maps. infact theres a qc mod that lets you play through the half-life 1 campaign .

http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/s ... -open.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWl1S20sxug

as far as im aware the only difference between the two bsp formats is the texture format, and the hullsizes.

 

[Thothie]

Operative word being mod. Half-Life1 can run Quake1 maps with mods as well, but if you put either maps inside the other game, without modding the game or converting them, they explode in a glory of errors.

I've just spent hours tweaking and rewriting this: https://github.com/stefanha/map-files but getting no where...

Might just ditch the idea of importing the maps =/ Whilst it would have been nice, I would have wanted to redo every map anyway.

This time would probably have been spent better on networking D:

Is this the program designed to convert Quake3 maps for use with Unity?

 

[ceriux]

the only thing thats modded is the games entities... the maps will still load in the engines.. you just wont see doors and lazers and expected scripted sequences ect... it doesnt mean the engine cant load them and as far as im aware you cant load quake maps in half-life unless they've been converted some how.

matter of fact just to test what we've been saying. i just went to this website: http://www.pro-hl.com/downloads/hl_files/maps/

chose a random map (eden)

when to my darkplaces folder put the bsp in id1/maps

started up dp typed (map eden) in the console and the map loaded up 0 problems, 0 errors, vanilla quake 1 progs.dat, 0 mods.

the engine developers over at i3d are the people you need to talk to if you want to look into implementing some kind of working half-life bsp into your game.

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/q ... slXNm6C1uA

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/q ... iWpB55BLuw

 

[Thothie]

Darkplaces is a mod. (One that rebuilds huge swaths of the engine, at that.)

Both engines are capable of loading Doom3 maps, Crysis maps, Unity maps - hell, probably maps from games being made 50 years hence, with enough tweaks.

But neither will load them as is. You have to mod either the maps or the engines.

 

[ceriux]

thats because the games like half-life are coded as part of the engine. all of quakes code is handled by a progs.dat ofcourse tweaks but either way if you have a map with different entities than whats already defined in the new engine you have to change something. , either way it's still the place to go if you want to know how to get another engine to load it, id probably cross post there and at some unity forum.

with the combined knowledge they might be able to figure something out.

 

[Thothie]

If you can find a Quake1 coder willing to dedicate his life to MS:Q, fine... But at the moment, in case ye haven't noticed, I can't even muster enough coding power to make a scrolling text box. Nevermind the fact that I'd much rather we migrated to a newer engine, rather than an older one, regardless of the number of mods stuck on.

 

[Jelly]

I'd much rather we migrated to a newer engine, rather than an older one, regardless of the number of mods stuck on.

This.

 

[ceriux]

If you can find a Quake1 coder willing to dedicate his life to MS:Q, fine... But at the moment, in case ye haven't noticed, I can't even muster enough coding power to make a scrolling text box. Nevermind the fact that I'd much rather we migrated to a newer engine, rather than an older one, regardless of the number of mods stuck on.

im just saying that if he needs information pertaining to the requirements to get a half-life bsp map running in something other than half-life those are the people to talk to, not necessarily that he should use quake.

 

[Xeropace]

Well I don't think porting bsps or maps will happen any time soon, it's more complicated than I can manage I think.

I'm currently checking out a Hammer style brush editor in Unity, it's a lot better than working directly in blender. Whilst not great for complex meshes, it's ideal for basic level design.

I retried my networking solution over WAN and it doesn't work. No idea why. Not sure if it's my Firewall, router, port in use, ISP or what

Once I have that working and a simple multiplayer working (i.e. you can see/move around with other players), I'll get more serious on the level design and probably block out a basic map. After that, maybe a basic mob, basic combat system, etc.

I'm all for porting it to a new engine (obviously) but it'll be a lot of work. My major concern is say people did want to help make maps for it, they would need Unity and all the Unity Assets (paid assets that is =/) I use for it to work. Unless I make a custom editor but that won't exactly be easy.

 

[ceriux]

yeah, id stick to remaking your maps from scratch. i remember reading something in the past that even though those quake engines did support half-life bsp, that using half-life bsp in a standalone game might cause some kind of legal problems with valve and im sure that if thats true then it would apply to any engine that isnt goldsource.

 

[Thothie]

Distributing a map from Half-Life itself might be a copyright issue, but an original compiled map contains no copyrighted data. (Tis why Svencoop's installer takes the maps from your existing Half-Life install and patches them - though, given all the other copyrighted stuff they distribute with their mod, it maybe more about conserving space in their distro. Still, half a gig of maps would be pushing it.)

But again, without the original Half-Life renderer (or perhaps Dark Place's), you aren't going to be able to render a Half-Life BSP. The .MAP files are not optimized for display - they need to be compiled. So your only real hope there, is to convert the Half-Life .MAP files into Quake3 .MAP files, and use whatever tool Unity has for converting Quake3 maps.

 

[ceriux]

from what iv seen .map comverters never really work out. theres always errors with the brushes.

 

[Thothie]

from what iv seen .map comverters never really work out. theres always errors with the brushes.

Well, ya can't cleanly decompile a Goldsrc BSP cuz the data for the shapes isn't included - only the rendering leaves. (Unlike Source, the guys who wrote the Quake1 core were still trying to save space, I suppose - had to squeeze those maps and Trent Reznor's music on the CD and all.)

But porting a .MAP from Goldsrc to Source works fine. End result is ugly as hell, but it's accurate.

Porting between Quake1<->Goldsrc .MAP's should be simple, and I've seen it done, but I've not been able to pull it myself, and I've never figured out why (missing a bracket or something somewhere, carriage return differences, f*ck if I know.)

Goldsrc->Quake3 .MAP should be similarly possible, but I don't have a Quake3 map source to work with, let alone the compile tools.

...and I'm not entirely sure if this Quake3->Unity thing works, and whether it's converting a .MAP source for use with Unity's editor, or if it's somehow converting BSP's directly into the game.

 

[FER]

Xeropace, you might want to check out some free plugin for Unity called FPScontrol which add some tool and stuff to make FPS games, plus theres tutorials on youtube.

 

[Xeropace]

Thanks FER, I did try to find one but failed! The default Unity FPS controller is awful. It makes me feel sick using it. Plus it has different sensitivities for the x and y axis, blegh.

I've been practising and experimenting with the Hammer style editor. I found two pretty fatal bugs with it -_- I reported them to the dev team and they said they are working on it!

The network engine I have been waiting for should release today or tomorrow. So maybe in a week or so time, there will be an actual game for the log-in server to log into Even if it's just a flat cube with some cylinders running around.

 

[Xeropace]

That Plugin released and I've been following the tutorial for the past couple of days.

It works. It works -really- well. I got it at a discounted price as he PM'd a few people a secret link and it was a bargain for what it does, people would easily pay 3-4 times at least of what I paid.

I've just been testing it with Skilla and it syncs the positions, animations, etc all pretty perfectly. It's currently Third Person and WoW style controls so I'll need some time to rewrite his tutorial to use a different style of control.

Other than that, I'm really hopeful. I'll be hooking into that registration/log in script I wrote as I want to test and use the authorisation stuff and character database from the start.

I've also been practising with the level editor, I took a brief side trip in to shaders, materials and lighting just to get a feel for what it'd all look like. This has lead me to a design problem though, What style should MS:U be? Are we aiming for realism, cartoon, painted, cell shaded, vertex shaded, low poly, high poly, etc. I would really like some input on this.

Hopefully I can bring these projects together and get a solid ground base for MS:U going shortly.

 

[Dridmar]

Text based RPG game

 

[Skillasaur]

^
+1

 

[zeus9860]

-9001

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Are we aiming for realism, cartoon

I think it needs to strike a balance between realistic and cartoony. The Goldsource engine captures this perfectly and I think we should strive to reproduce that aesthetic as much as possible.

 

[Xeropace]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking myself really. I think Skilla called it uh... Something like "Fantasy Realism". As in, we don't want gritty, dirty, brown/green/grey everything kind of realism (like Gears of War, CoD, etc), but a realism full of unrealistic things, like swords made of ice, elaborate fire temples, etc.

Is anyone here a texture artist ?

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking myself really. I think Skilla called it uh... Something like "Fantasy Realism".

That would be called romanticism!