3D GameStudio mapping tools and Blitz

I have seen sometimes in this forums that some people would like to see in Blitz tools like the ones that come with 3D GameStudio.

Well, I have discovered that this is possible now. 3DGS map editor, WED, is based on another program called Qoole. Qoole were discontinued and the source code to the program were made available to the public on Qoole's Source Repository: http://www.volved.com/qsr

You can get Qoole 2.5 there, which is exactly like WED. Here's a pic of Qoole 2.5 in action:



According to what the webpage says, Qoole "is now available free to the public. The Source Code held herein is not undergoing further updates or improvements. It is provided so that you may play, tinker, improve, and even create your own applications, using Qoole v0.99 as a base". And, according to the license file included with the package, "you may use the SOFTWARE for commercial use, granted that the SOFTWARE (created by LITHIUM) is given proper recognition as one of the design tools in the creation of the product or service for commercial use".

Qoole 2.5 is just 1.7 mb, but you can download a CD-ROM zipped version (220 mb). You unzip the file, burn the contents on a CD-ROM, and you have a great version of the program with autorun! :) Very cool.

Ok, my program BSP Factory will be published very soon by Binary People. With BSP Factory, you can import the BSP file generated by Qoole, and export it as a B3D file, ready to load in Blitz, and with all the entity information in it.

You must use Qoole in Quake1 mode in order to import the BSPs into BSP Factory. Ok, you may say, "Quake1 maps are crap". You're probably right, but the geometry information stored in a Quake BSP is EXACTLY the same as the information stored in a Half-Life BSP. The main difference is that Quake uses grayscale lightmaps, while Half-Life uses full color lightmaps, and that all the textures in a Quake WAD use the same 8bit palette, while Half-Life WADs have one palette for each texture.

Both problems are avoided by BSP Factory. BSP Factory generate its own lightmaps using the lights positioned in the BSP, and the textures are loaded from JPG files, so you can create a crappy quality Quake1 WAD (using Wally) just to make your map in Qoole, and then use the high-quality JPG textures to import the map in BSP Factory. So a Quake1 BSP and a Half-Life BSP will look exactly the same ^_^

BSP Factory will be available very soon for only $14.99

Nicely done I will definatly be using this for my interior levels in The Servant

This thing is ancient, and has bad floating point problems in the .map files.

hmm i've been making some tests and haven't had any problems... maybe a lot of people more will be able to try it when the demo version of BSP Factory appears and would tell if this works correctly.

Anyway, they can still use Quark.

Not to steal any thunder from your upcoming BSP Factory tool, but recent updates to Ultimate Unwrap have added import of several BSP file formats (all the Quakes and Half-Life) and Ultimate Unwrap can export to b3d file format (including a lot of b3d features like lightmaps.)

By the way Halo, now Ultimate Unwrap also imports Cartography Shop maps. Did you work with Brad on that?

CShop3 and Unwrap3D+LightBulb are both very great products. For those of you who already have one of them, BSP Factory is not of much interest. For the rest, I have simply made a tool which would suit their needs and which has a very low price. CShop costs 65$, and Unwrap3D+LightBulb cost 68$ (and you also need a modelling package). There are people (like me) who can't afford those great tools, and BSP Factory will probably be an alternative.

Cshop3 at least for me has been dissapointing. The Program locks up on me every 5 minutes for various reasons.. Giving an hour glass forever.. I have to exit out of it and back into it. Have lost so much work effort that I have stopped using it. Unwrap3D is great. I cannot comment on the others.

Why do you need Lightbulb? I mean, I use Lightbulb (good tool too!) but then I'm not converting BSP maps. A BSP map already has lightmaps. As I understand it BSP Factory will not carry over the lightmaps and must generate new ones, but I think Ultimate Unwrap will carry over lightmaps.

Also, why do you need a modeling package? As pointed out in your original post, there are free tools like Qoole for creating BSP maps.

Assuming my understanding of things is correct than the Ultimate Unwrap way is $35 (still more than your tool of course.)

Yep, Ultimate Unwrap imports lightmaps too. I only bought it a week ago, so it was a damn cool surprise when I found that little update.

One of the reasons why BSP Factory does not import the lightmaps is because it supports both Half-Life and Quake BSPs. Quake BSPs have very low quality lightmaps (grayscale lightmaps!), and even Half-Life lightmap quality is slower than the ones than BSP Factory generates.

With BSP Factory, you can import a Quake1 BSP and generate full-color lightmaps in BSP Factory. I don't know if you can do that in Unwrap3D. I'm sure that Unwrap3D is a great tool, but it is impossible to make an application that fit the needs of every programmer. I'm sure that there are a lot of happy Unwrap3D customers. I'm sure there will be some people too that will find more suitable to pay 15$ for BSP Factory.

I have a friend that had the same problem with Cshop locking up - he's an architect by trade so he has no idea about graphics drivers etc. The chipset was the Intel Extreme graphics (imbedded into the motherboard).

Upgrading to the latest Intel drivers solved all stability issues with Cshop.

-R

[UPDATE: The updated drivers have not solved the stability issue]