Easy Entity Modding

[Cerez]

Regarding the following intriguing entry in the changelog (that @@mrwonko brought my attention to):

 

Added ability to substitute BSP entities with ones from an external .ent file when loading a map (for easier entity modding)

 

This sounds like an incredibly useful feature. How does it exactly work? Is it available for SP as well, or is exclusive to MP for the moment?

[Raz0r]

I'm pretty sure it's exclusive to MP at the moment. The file format is 1:1 match of the entity string at the end of BSP files.

[ensiform]

I added to SP a while ago:

 

https://github.com/JACoders/OpenJK/commit/eb9e983013531e3af429da3408067e612beac543

[Smoo]

awesome work

[Cerez]

Absolutely amazing guys! For cutscenes, scripting, and level design, this one truly is a chain-breaker! Works like a charm, too!

[Clan FJA]

Yeah, very nice feature !

 

That means : we can add a map.ent file which will be loaded with the .map file ? Nice !

[Cerez]

Yupp! You can add new entities to a compiled map (without the need to recompile it). Which makes map modding, level scripting, and camera work a lot easier.

 

@@ensiform, I'm indebted to you for this one.

[ensiform]

Just be clear that you cannot actually add brush entities ("bmodels") aka triggers, anything that is an entity but you had a brush rather than a point entity/box.  You MAY be able to re-use existing ones but i'm not sure that'd work out so well.  You should be able to edit the ones that exist without changing their model field "*number"

[Cerez]

Well, I've successfully assigned a new cinematic script trigger to a door, added a new NPC entity, and I'm about to try out camera work with newly added reference tag entities. So, at least for scripting, this is incredibly useful.

 

In fact, it's what I've been missing all these years. I never understood why we had to alter the map (source) files to add NPCs, script triggers, and camera angles to a level. This makes sure we don't need to do that anymore.

 

Update:

 

Adding new reference tags works perfectly! Get ready for JKA real-time movie time!

[Clan FJA]

one question : do the *.ent file replace all entities of the *.bsp or entites are just added to the entities already present in the map ?

Do I need to extract entities from the *.bsp before ?

[Cerez]

Do I need to extract entities from the *.bsp before ?

I would assume so. I think if the ENT file is present, the game will read it instead of what is in the BSP. Though it may read both with a preference on the ENT file's contents -- I'm not sure. @@ensiform?

[Raz0r]

Indeed. If the file exists, it will not read from the BSP.

[ensiform]

Well, I've successfully assigned a new cinematic script trigger to a door, added a new NPC entity, and I'm about to try out camera work with newly added reference tag entities. So, at least for scripting, this is incredibly useful.

 

In fact, it's what I've been missing all these years. I never understood why we had to alter the map (source) files to add NPCs, script triggers, and camera angles to a level. This makes sure we don't need to do that anymore.

 

Update:

 

Adding new reference tags works perfectly! Get ready for JKA real-time movie time!

 

Actual entities which are brush in radiant based cannot be added.  They can be altered but not added. (trigger_multiple, func_door etc)  They must be compiled in due to how they work other than the key/value pairs.  The model key with the *# tells it which brushmodel to use etc which is not in the entity information.

 

Because entities are encoded into the bsp as well.  So why would you not need to alter the map source file?  The onlyents flag works well too but its sketchy at best since it modifies the bsp file anyway.

 

And yes, you must extract them with the q3map2 flag to export a .ent file.  As it will not just append entities it uses it instead like Raz0r said.