Mapping Tips & Radiant Setup

[Tempust85]

Mapping Tips

 

1) Round some of the blocky details but only where it makes sense to. Like you wouldn't round a square beam, but you would round a blocky archway.

2) Light the levels from obvious light sources, unlike the original game which has lighting but often no light source (lamps, etc).

3) Please read Moondog's tutorial on mitre faces: https://jkhub.org/topic/10084-mapping-efficiency-mitre-faces/

 

 

Radiant Settings

 

I encourage everyone to use GTKRadiant 1.5, as that's the most common mapping tool used amongst the DF2 Mod devs. After you've grabbed the mod from the dropbox link (PM me if you need the link) and you've moved the mod files over to your JKA directory, setup radiant for your copy of JKA as normal (if you haven't already). Then under Project Settings:

 

Select mod : Custom JA modification

fs_game : DF2

Mapping mode : Single Player mapping mode

 

For those of you who use GTKRadiant 1.6.6, I've added an updated EXE & new bitmaps here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pkvt3eoy0yjq3s3/radiant.exe?dl=0

 

This updated EXE tells the texture browser to ignore "_NH", "_RMO" plus a few others so you'll only see the diffuse/radiant editor image now. Also added toolbar buttons for drag vertices and edges.

 

 

 

Build settings

 

You need to add "-custinfoparms" to your BSP compile line like so:

 

[bsp] -meta -custinfoparms "[MapFile]"

 

This enables custom content & surface flags to be used (eg. batteryacid), without having to use a custom q3map2.exe.

 

 

Entities

 

Download the updated sp_entities.def file from here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/utlv4awsihtydet/sp_entities.def?dl=0

 

Now to update your sp_entities.def for radiant. Goto here : ~install_dir~\GtkRadiant 1.5.0\ja.game\base

 

rename the existing sp_entities.def to sp_entities.def.old, then copy over the new one included in the mod (found in the DF2 folder).

 

 

 

Two entities of note, one new and one existing but has been fixed:

misc_cubemap
"name" - Cubemap name (optional)
"radius" - Parallax radius. Default 1000.

Reflects the levels' brushwork.

.

misc_model_ghoul
SOLID - Movement is blocked by it with the MASK_NPCSOLID & CONTENTS_BODY.
LOOP - Loop animation.
START_OFF - Starts off until used.

"model" - Ghoul2 .glm file to load
"modelscale" - "x" uniform scale
"modelscale_vec" - "x y z" scale model in each axis
"renderRadius" - Default "120" model render radius
"rootbone" - Default "model_root" animation root bone
"startFrame" - Default "0". animation start frame
"endFrame" - Default "0". animation end frame
"animSpeed" - Default "1.0". animation speed
"skin" - Default "<model_dir>/model_default.skin". Skin file to load

- Use "startFrame" to set the start frame of the animation.
- Use "endFrame" to set the end frame of the animation.
- Use "animSpeed" to speed up or slow down the animation.
- Use "renderRadius" for models larger than a player model if you notice the misc_model_ghoul disappearing when moving the camera.
- Use "rootbone" to change the bone that the animation will play from, instead of animating the entire GLA. Use wisely.
- Use "skin" to choose a skin. "models/players/kyle/model_red.skin" is an example. Only need to specify if using a skin other than model_default.skin.
- Use START_OFF to have your model appear & become solid (if checked) when triggered. Animation will always play regardless though.