RTCW & WW
Return to Castle Wolfenstein Mapping
The following are a list of tutorials, posts, and related notes I have gathered over the years. Where appropriate I have cited credits to original authors, otherwise assume the rest is written by myself.
As with all tutorials, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I assume no responsibility for any loss or damages that may occur as a result of using the following tutorials. Exercise common sense and always use Best Practices to ensure your work is properly backed up before you make any modifications.
The following Tutorials apply to RTCW and its MODS, like the WildWest.
Accums Areaportals Bumpmapping Compiling, How To Console, Useful Commands Corona’s, Using EasyGen Tutorial 1 EasyGen Tutorial 2 Elevators, Multi-Floor Fog Maps, Max Vis, No Hom Hints, Removing Icons from Entities Lightning Bolts |
Models, Useful Info Pitch, Yaw and Angle Player Dimensions Portals and Blocksizes ROQ Videos Scripting Moving Entities Single Player (SP) Mapping Tips Sparklies, bad Staff Car Model Fix Tags on Models Waterfalls Waterfogvars, Fogvar, Skyfogvars |
Accums
Tutorial and Example Map by: shLep From the scripting definitions doc:
There are two things you can do with Accums. One is to give them a numerical value, the other is to use their current value to decide if a script should run. If you don’t understand scripting at all, you will need to read up on some basic scripting tutorials. However, I can tell you that accums are commonly used for script_movers and/or objectives that need updating (i.e. to prevent them from firing repeatedly). Generally speaking, set your accum to 1 0 at the beginning of your script – which is stating that it is off. Then, in the objective, or script_mover part of your script, you set accum 1 1 – meaning, it is now on. Accums are also needed to end an objective map – to update the game globally. Something like this:
If accum is not set to 1 1, then do not end the match! There IS more to be aware of when working with accums, especially when you get into complex elevator scripts or other scripted movers. But generally speaking, the accums you’ll see in the mp_beach, and mp_base scripts will cover most of what you need. I also would add a word of caution: accums are not always needed, so before you go building your script, riddled with hasty accum calls to the engine, be sure they are needed first! (i.e. try running your map without one) Example Accum Tutorial Map (WildWest) |
Areaportals
Original Tutorial by: Tunnelram Areaportals are used in a few rare scenarios to increase map performance (i.e. higher framerates). They do this by essentially preventing any part of the map outside the areaportal from being drawn (from the players point of view). Cool right?! Sadly however, it does have it’s limitations. And that is what I will primarily focus on here, as most people fail to get them to work period.
This means if you have four solid walls; with one door, and that door has an areaportal, then you shouldn’t have a problem. However if you add a window to the room then it wouldn’t be contained any longer, and the areaportal won’t be sealing the room and won’t work in the process. I’m sure you’re wondering whether or not they can be used in entities other than func_door and func_door_rotating. As far as I know they can’t. It seems that other entities such as func_explosive and script_movers aren’t able to turn the areaportal OFF. In the end, areaportals can only be used in a few scenarios. I haven’t used them often for the same reasons Tunnleram has cited… Multiplayer is typically better without func_doors to begin with. And the few real doors that you might have in a map, probably aren’t contained anyways… Example Areaportal Tutorial Map (WildWest) |
Bumpmapping
Originally Posted By: Ydnar, Omnix, demospawn, chavo one & shadowspawn All you have to do is take an image (TGA works best) that is a “standard” RGB encoded normalmap, and add the following to your shader:
It will be spread across the surface with the same mapping as the surface’s texture. For high-resolution lightmaps, I’d recommend using a fine-detail normalmap, and for lightmapped terrain, use a large, blurry normalmap.
An example shader:
Note: This requires a Photoshop plug-in called normalmapfilter. Your shader is going to be a q3map_normalimage used to display the texture properly. You can get the plug in here / here. Note: If you are using Photoshop 7, you will need this Photoshop 7 Targa fix – Download here. As well, the Photoshop 7.0.1 update contains all functionality included in this revised Targa plug-in, so check what version of PS you are running first. This is important because having the correct Targa plug-in will allow you to create alpha channels, which are needed to create Bumpmapped textures.
Example Bumpmap Tutorial Map |
EasyGen Tutorial 1 – Quick and Simple EasyGen
Tutorial by: demonspawn Select the “base” option and you will now have the ability to adjust the “base noise”, “base smooth” and “base scale” with a value between “0” and “2” Crank the base scale up to 2 and see what you have. A good judge to see the actual height of your terrain is if you have the “draw axis” check box checked then there will be a red and green line across the terrain. At the center of the map will be a red box. This box is the height of a character in RTCW. You now have a pretty good idea how your terrain will look in you map. If you find that you just don’t have the exact shape in any particular area of your terrain you can adjust individual vertices by doing the following: To move your camera view use the following key commands. If you wish to move several vertices at once, change the “modifier” to “LEVEL” (either circle diamond or square)
These key commands also work for the other modifiers that are available. Try them out to see what they do… but in general the ones I have explained will allow you to achieve any shape terrain that you want. Applying TexturesSelect the “ALPHAMAP” tab, you will notice that your nice grayscale terrain has now changed to black, not a problem, we’ll fix that in this step. You will now notice at the bottom of the “alphamap” command tab, bitmap images of the texture directory you’ve chosen. Make sure all your textures are the same size (256 X 256 is a good size) as when they are tiled across your terrain. Their tiling can all be increased or decreased and it will make for even tiling. There will be a series of black squares (16 X 16) across the top of the “alphamap” command tab. These will be your material choices. Although the materials won’t show-up when you export your terrain they will give you a good indication as to whet the texture you have associated with them will be. (Ex green material for a “grass” texture) I recommend that you choose only 3 textures for your map, when you get to understand EasyGen better there are ways to get more (I have 5 on my Operation Evil Eye terrain) Sub-step #1
Sub-step #2
Sub-step #3IMPORTANT
So now you have the basics of a terrain for your map. The next step will explain how to import prefabs and how to create holes in your terrain to accommodate buildings and tunnels for your map. Importing PrefabsIf you have a specific build layout that needs to work in unison with your terrain. (i.e. a road that leads into a underground garage, or a overhead walkway that leads to a cave entrance) Then you can easily import these objects into EasyGen and make sure that your ground is ready for them when you export your terrain. Simply select the objects in your map and make them into a prefab. This will make a prefab of the group of brushes for you to select and import into your map or in this case into EasyGen. The cool thing about this is it will come into EasyGen the same distance away from the center origin of your map as it was saved from allowing you to bring in a template of your map. You may be saying, “I don’t have any of the buildings yet? How is this going to help me?”. I will explain the benefits in a moment. These “pink” poly’s WILL NOT be exported with the terrain leaving holes in your terrain when you see it in Radiant. This will also remove the “shaded 3 texture problem” described above. This won’t seem to useful until you know where you want your holes in your terrain. If you apply your textures with this ability in mind you can maximize your terrain texturing ability. (Think about it, you’ll be surprised when you know what your doing with it, remember I have 5 textures in my map Operation Evil Eye)
Easy ExportThe only things you need to change:
Your don’t need to change the metashader’s name or the alphashaders name if you’ve saved your EGN file in the RTCW/main and have selected textures from the RTCW/main/textures directory, they should have the same name as your map. Written by Beau (demonspawn) Sutton. |
Lightning Bolts
Posted By: DeMoNeYe The original link to this tutorial is now dead. If a duplicate of the original can’t be located I will create another in its place. Example Lightning Bolt Tutorial Map Further Reading 1 |
Portals and Blocksizes
Tutorial By: B0ltyB0y The original tutorial link to this is dead. If I cannot locate a duplicate version I will create a new tutorial in its place. In the meantime, try checking out the Further Reading below. |
ROQ Video and In Game Videos
Tutorial By: Hewster The original link to this ROQ Creation Tutorial is now dead. Until I find a duplicate version, you can attempt to use the original .roq utility released by id software here. Additionally, you can use the following to play a .roq movie inside a map via a custom texture/shader set:
Note: Be sure to include the texture folder for the final .pk3 And while we’re talking about in game videos or movies, philby added “I would have used a flickering texture for the effect. Like this animation:”
As a final note, you can only have 1 .roq per map. You CAN play 1 .roq video both in the objective overview screen, and “in-game” at the same time, but indeed through my own tests, only 1 given .roq to a map regardless of their subsequent name /folder convention. Example ROQ Videos Tutorial Map Further Reading 1 |
Single Player Mapping Tips
Posted By: shLep After nearly twenty years since RTCW was released, finding introductory Single Player Mapping information was difficult. Here are the crucial missing bits I needed to get up and running.
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