The Quake Editing FAQ
and Beginners Guide


ver 1.0


Last Updated 6/11/98



The purpose of this document is to help out those who are just beginning to get into creating their own Quake/Quake2 maps, and to provide answers to the most common editing questions that come up. This document will be constantly updated with information and solutions to questions that arise. Most of the Q/A is taken from our very own Mailing List. I hope my few years of map making knowledge will help anyone out who reads this, and I hope its entertaining enough to keep you from passing out on your keyboard whilst reading it.

- Hal 9000



Introduction
I. Map Basics/How They Work
II. Map Limitations
III. Editor Choice

Construction
I. Brushes
II. Getting Started
III. CSG Subtraction (oh no, math!)
IV. Entities
V. Lighting









Map Basics / How They Work

Back in the days of Wolfenstein 3d and Doom/Doom2 maps were made up of simple 6 sided cubes, or sectors that could be joined together to create the playing area. Very simple. You assign a texture to each face, or linedef, of the cube and you're ready to rip. Linedefs could be tagged to operations such as doors, platforms, teleporters, etc. All these sectors existed inside a "void" and had to be completely sealed off. That was the old way...

In Quake (and Quake2, but I'll simplify and just say "Quake" from now on, unless there is something specific to one or the other) you are creating a more realistic world, or environment, for the player. Instead of attaching sectors together, you are creating a real 3-dimensional solid world. Quake maps are also created in a "void" and must be completely sealed off from it.

Maps are created by making hollow solids; the hollow area being the playing area. You can go about doing this in two fashions. You can create solids, or brushes and hollow them out using your editor's hollow operation, or build the playing area up from scratch, placing individual brushes for the walls, floor, and ceiling. The most important thing to remember when creating maps for Quake is to keep the inside area totally sealed off from the void. Any hole, or leak to the void will prevent the map from compiling due to the method of hidden surface removal that Quake uses.

What the heck is hidden surface removal you ask? When Quake is drawing the screen, it only draws what is visible to the player from his point of view. This increases the rendering speed by a tremendous amount. Rather than drawing every single face of every single brush in the entire map for every frame, it drops the unseen ones and draws only what you see.

However, just because the rendering speed is increased by surface removal, doesn't mean you can create anything you want in a map. There are limitations, which I'll get to in a minute. For internal structures, like columns and crates, you simply place solid brushes inside the hollow area. You can put them anywhere, including overlapping other brushes, and at any angle, shape, or size.

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Map Limitations

You will notice in your editor an x,y,z coordinate system for your map. You can begin anywhere (you dont have to start at 0,0,0) in the void. However, the maximum size for any Quake map is 8000x8000x8000 (or 4000 in any direction from 0,0,0). I doubt you would ever come close to creating a map that would be that sprawling.

There really is no limit to the number of brushes in a map; however you will want to keep it under 3000 just for compiling time's sake.

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Editor Choice

This is not an easy subject, as choosing an editor is entirely based on you. All the available editors out for Quake are very powerful, but each with its own feel. Some are made to run in openGL, and some are software rendered. I prefer the openGL for faster 3d view rendering, but my editor of choice (glideQoole) is missing a few features that other editors have.

The only way to find out which editor you want to use is to try them all out and see which fits you best, kind of like shopping for shoes. qeRadiant is fully featured, but a bit intimidating. DeathMatchMaker is very simplified, but not very well featured. Qoole and qED seem to be the editors of choice for most of our mailing list, as they are packed with goodies and are very user friendly.

When I made the transition from Doom2 and Duke3d editing to Quake, I spent about two weeks trying all the editors that were available at the time. WorldCraft was probably the best one out, but I loathed its interface, and went with the now-defunct Thred, even though it didn't have half the features of WorldCraft. Download them all, spend a few hours learning them, and delete the ones you dont want. The retail editors all have shareware modes that will allow you to make small maps, so you can see if you want to fork over the cash for the program.

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Getting Started

Since every editor is different, I will try to be as general as possible here, and not use specific functions of any particular editor.

Create your room by inserting a new solid brush in the size and shape you want. Hollow it out. Boom. You've got a room. However, this room will be all one texture on every face. This does not make for an interesting map. Give the floor, ceiling, and walls different textures. Now you have a pretty room. But wait, if you compile this map and try load it in Quake, it will crash. Why?

Good question. You need to have at least one info_player_start entity in the map, even if you're making a deathmatch-only map. Now you're ready to compile and look at the map, right?

Wrong! You need some light in that there room! Place one or more light entities in the room. (Quake2 has a cool feature that allows you to set a texture to give off light, but we'll get to that later on). Now when you compile, the map will load and be lit up (probably pretty garishly on this, your first map), and you can run around in circles to your heart's content.

You can continue adding rooms and halls and outdoor areas and lava pits and anything you can come up with.

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Brushes

No, we're not talking painting or Photoshop here, but solids. Remember how you made that room from one big solid brush, then hollowed it out? It then became six separate brushes to make up the room. Everything (well, just about) in a map is made up of brushes. Crates, ladders, light fixtures, even water or lava. You insert a new brush and shape it to what you want, say a 64x64x64 crate, and place it in the map.

There is one important thing to keep in mind about your editor's ability to create complicated brushes. Solids such as spheres, cones, or many sided cylinders can be created in the editor but will be too complex for Quake to handle. I'm not saying any sphere or cylinder will cause problems, but ones that have lots of faces will. Not only can they cause problems in the map, they will also affect framerates (see the section on R_SPEEDS for more) and overall gameplay because they are too complex.

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CSG Subtraction (oh no, math!)

No no no, I was only kidding about the math. CSG subtration is a neat little feature that lets you carve or cut away at brushes. Think of it as the all powerful hot knife and your map is the butter. The most common use for subtration is cutting doorways. Lets say you have two rooms side by side and you want them to be connected by an opening.

To do this, you would create a new brush in the shape of the opening you want between the rooms. Place this brush overlapping both walls, extending into each room at least 4 or 8 units. When you have the brush in place, and everything is kosher, CSG subtract that brush. When you move the brush or delete it, you will have a cut out hole in the walls, leaving a doorway between the two rooms.

Click here for a screen shot

Some caution should be used when subtracting. You can wind up with some funky shaped brushes afterwards. If you know ahead of time where doors, windows, etc will be, construct the walls or floors with these in mind, building around the opening.

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Entities

If you did some Doom editing, you will remember Things. Entities are the same. For those who didn't do Doom editing, an entity is either a game function or object, other than solid brushes. Does that make sense? All the guns, ammo, monsters, health, player starts, doors, trains, etc are entities. There are also entities for functions like buttons and triggers that the player sets off. All of the Quake2 entities can be found on our Q2 Entity List page, with most of them linked to tutorials.

When first getting into editing, you will most likely only use a few of all the entities available, like the ammo and monsters. You should learn to use them all, especially the triggers and targets, as they can be used in a million different ways to create a million different situations or predicaments the player can get into.

The most common entity question that arises is with the weapon entities, and how they are placed in a map. If you place a weapon entity directly on the floor, where most other entities go, it will drop through when the map is run in Quake, and be gone forever and ever and ever. Weapon entities need to be placed at least 24 to 32 units up off the floor.



Lighting

There are two methods of lighting maps, one of which is not present in Quake1. So let's do the generic method first.