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Quake3 Arena Mapping Tutorial
3. Lighting and game entities

In the previous room example all our light came from the ceiling texture. This is a special instance, normally lighting comes from specially defined light entities. These are what we will look at next.

First select the sky brush using shift and left mouse button and choose metaltech04final from the textures window to replace it. Now place the mouse near one of the corners of the room in the plan view and click the right button. From the list that pops up select light. A small menu will appear allowing you to specify the brightness of this light, enter a value of 300. You can select and move the ligth like any other brush or object. Move the light to a good position near one of the corners and hit escape to deselect it.

Now create another light and put it in the opposite corner, but before you deselect it press k. This brings up a palette menu that allows you to change the colour of the light you have placed. Choose something appropriately lurid and click ok. At this point you can recompile your map and take a look.
Here's a quick note on how to do this again:
Use the menu file -> save followed by bsp ->bsp_FullVis
Then run Quake3 and bring up the console ~ and type /sv_pure 0 followed by /devmap mymap1

But these lights appear to be hovering in space. This might be ok but its better to have something for them to shine onto or from. So first, in the plan view click the right mouse button on a spot just next to one of your lights. From the popup menu select weapon and then weapon_plasmagun. Move the bounding box into a position just above the ground and below the light source, then press escape to deselect it. You should see a model of a plasmagun appear in the 3D view.

Move to the other light in the room and click the right mouse button. This time choose misc from the menu followed by misc_model. You should see a file/folder menu appear, these folders are where you can import .md3 models into your map so select one called kmlamp1. The model should appear in your views (If another menu also appears, listing various details about the object you can dismiss this by pressing N). Move the model under the light and deselect it (Make sure the base of the model is touching the floor, otherwise it will appear to be floating!). You can then reselect the nearby light (shift and left mouse button) and reposition it directly above the lamp model(see above). Then recompile the map and test it out in Quake.

There are two types of object used in Quake3 map, we have used both types here. The first type, known as entities are things like weapons, ammo, powerups e.t.c. These objects can change, re-spawn and trigger events like doors or lifts. Entities are closely controlled by the program and it is very difficult to create new ones in addition to the built-in set from Quake3.

The second type are called prefabs or .md3s, these are just 3D models of objects like lamps, statues and furniture e.t.c. These items do not change once they are placed in the map and can be created by map makers for use their own projects (using an application like milkshape, or even in Radiant itself). Prefabs can really add to the atmosphere of a level, however they can be complex and often increase the polygon count of a level by a significant amount.

Next we can look at more advanced texturing techniques.

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