A guide to your first map
Contents
This is a brief guide on the things to keep in mind when making your new map for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
After you've read this page, you should read the hands-on guide - Your First Map for ETQW
Getting Started
Recommended Software
- Lightwave - Used in the terrain creation process to convert an obj to an lwo, so it works in ETQW. Or for making small models for your maps
- Maya - Used for making the terrain mesh and any other small misc models.
- Photoshop - For creating masks, and any textures you may want for your map.
- Textpad - Very handy text editing tool, used for editing scripts, defs etc.
Planning Out Your Layout
It is a good idea to have a few pieces of paper handy, and a pen/pencil to help you plan the layout of your map. This will help you in advance so you know what you have to make, so you don't sit there making your map on the spot.
Gathering References For Your Map
It's a good idea when planning your map to find out where you want it to be located, so it's easy to find terrain/geology references for your terrain mesh, and other buildings that you may want to add.
Try using these places for some good references:
- http://www.flickr.com/
- http://www.google.com/
- http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1710
Terrain Editing
Internally we used Maya to make our terrain meshes for ETQW. You could use one of the following free packages to do a similar job:
You should've found enough references in your search to know what you want to make.
There are a few things to keep in mind with the creation of terrain for ETQW:
- A terrain mesh should be 32768 x 32768 units
- Has a subdivision equal to 256 x 256 units
- Try to keep it natural looking, with no sharp hard corners/edges
For generating a megatexture for your new terrain that you have created, please check through these articles:
Brush Work
When creating your new geometry try and make sure you keep on the 8 unit grid (number 4 on the keyboard). This way, it'll keep your work nice and clean and make it easier to edit in the future when you need to add models, clip and so forth.
Always block your work out first to the level that you are happy with, then add details and texturing as you see fit. If you constantly keep changing the layout or design after you have detailed and textured your geometry you will have to keep changing your texturing and details, which does waste a lot of time.
When building your outside geometry try and keep the deployment grid in mind. Each deployment square is 256 x 256 units in size, this way when you go to edit your deployment grid it'll make it a lot easier.
Get familiar with references
A reference is another map that you can place inside your main .world, for organisational purposes. They can be rotated as well, which makes things a lot easier if you want a particular building on an angle. You can use the same reference many times in the same map, which means that any bugs or changes you want to make to them only need to be made once.
Keep the deployment grid in mind when placing references as well.
Using entities
By right clicking on the radiant grid, it will bring up a menu which will list a lot of objects, these are known as entities.
Entities can all sorts of objects, ranging from player starts, vehicles, static models and so forth.
To be able to spawn in your map after it's been compiled, make sure to have an info_player_start point, this will designate the starting position when you load the map.
Essential entities that you will need to be able to run around in a map are:
