TrenchBroom (Simplest Map Editor Ever) + Quake2 Addon

[Null]

OUTDATED: Please get TrenchBroom V2:
kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/

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XXX OUTDATED XXX:

TrenchBroom V1 - Unofficial Quake2 Starter Pack

TrenchBroom for Q1 is one of the most intuitive and speedy map editors around, and frankly it's something Quake2 lacks!
It doesn't yet officially support Quake2, but I was able to create an addon that lets you use it anyway. Official support is said to be on its way.
TrenchBroom is simple yet powerful enough so anyone, even beginners, can use it effectively with very satisfying results.
Check out the following videos:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1pM55k4WM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr9FR1W1JFE

To get started, download and unzip Trenchbroom:
kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/downloads.php

Once unziped, copy the Resources folder to the main TrenchBroom folder.
(Alternatively you can just copy the quake2_addon.fgd definition file so it end up in TrenchBroom\References\Defs folder)
Copy the files from the Build folder to your quake2\baseq2\maps directory (you'll need them later to compile the bsp)

If you have Quake1 installed, copy Addon dir to Quake1 root folder. If you dont have it, just skip the previous step.
Open up TrenchBroom, and from the main menu select View -> Preferences...
For Quake path click Choose... and select the root folder containing the Addon dir
(Pick either Quake1 dir or if you didn't copy, just the main folder containing the readme file)

Next go to Edit - > Map Properties...
You will see two drop down combo boxes as seen in the screenshot below. For the first one select quake2_addon.fgd
For the second select "Addon", (which is the folder containing the quake2_addon.pak file)
(If you copied the Addon folder into your Quake1 folder, it'll be listed like a q1 mod would)
For the Texture Wads, click the + sign and select the supplied quake2_addon.wad file in Addon folder.




Click Close.

Voila, you're now ready to start Mapping for Q2 in Trenchbroom!

The Entity tab should contain quake 2 entities, items, guns etc.
The Face tab should now show standard quake 2 textures :-)

[Null]

It's worth mentioning that the rar file also contains a sample Quake 2 map called addon_level.map.
This way you can easily experiment with Trenchbroom before diving in deeper :-)

Note: You might get an "Unhandled exception" error when clicking in the entity menu.
There's not much that can be done about this as far as I know, other than just hit "Ignore" ;P

After you make your map, save it to quake2\baseq2\maps directory.
If you haven't already, copy the supplied files from the Build folder to your quake2\baseq2\maps directory
Edit the Build.bat there, so the mapname variable reflects your filename. Currently it's set to "addon_level".
Also if you're not using r1q2.exe change this client to whatever you're using.
Next double click on the batch file to build and run your map in Quake2
(You might get missing colormap.pcx error if your client is quake2.exe so start the map manually)

If you get a map that's leaking you'll see something like this when building:
---- qbsp3 ----
entering E:\root\_12_08_14_a1\quake2\baseq2\maps\addon_level.map
0...5... (0)
**** leaked ****

files.volved.com/qsr/Qoole99v099.exe

To fix this, after you compile your map with the batch file, open it in Qoole editor (above link). Click the blue faucet icon at the far right of the toolbar.
This will show you exactly where the map is leaking in 3d view. Use the yellow bird icon, to fly around to see better.
Note: Do not save your file in Qoole! This editor is known to be super inaccurate in terms of floating point precision and will result in more leaks if you do save there!
All you want to do is visually display and examine the source of the leaks, since you can't do that with the batch file
Then you can go back to Trenchbroom in order to make proper adjustments, i.e. close the gaps and cracks.




Also if you notice that a certain entity doesn't show up in the game, you might see a similar error in console:
droptofloor: item_some_thing startsolid at (296 912 24)

To fix this you can adjust the entity's vertical position by dragging it with the mouse and holding down the alt key.
Alternatively you can open up quake2_addon.fgd and edit this entity' bounding box by adjusting it's size value so it doesn't clip the floor so much.
For example you can change the size from: size(-10 -10 -10, 10 10 10) to size(-10 -10 -20, 10 10 10) to adjust its bottom.
Try not to make the bounding box too large though because in these cases ex: size(-80 -80 0, 90 90 140), the rotate tool will stop working.

Also note, TrenchBroom doesn't properly support content flags, so you'll need to inject them manually with a text editor.
To come up with the proper surface flag values, and to know which brushes got tagged, you can use Qoole to assign them, but remember to save to some temp file.
Then cut and paste them to your final file in a text editor. Remember to only do this as your last step, since you'll no longer be able to load it back in Trenchbroom.

[Null]

Some random thoughts...

3d editors, and their UI design decisions are a real fascinating subject to me, so this was a great find

I've tried many editors and I got to say TB has done a lot of things right. After all, I can't stand Quark nor Radiant which feel totally hacked together by coders and awkward to operate. Hammer/Worldcraft is kind of slow to use. Tread3d and Qoole are way more intuitive than most, but one is slow, and the other inaccurate. If trenchbroom fixed the crash bugs, it'd be fast enough to make mapping fun again.

Most people don't like having to constantly rotate views to select, and waste time in the process, so little design decisions make a big difference overall. I especially like TrenchBroom's rapid grid box extrude, obstructed face selection, and vertex options. What it still needs are selection marquee, proper entity selection cycling or selection list, and in-view drag texture scaling (sort of like Quark's 3d view texture face adjustments) I've yet to see an editor with fast texture adjustments (or replacement) across many surfaces. And this is one of the reasons Map Mixer was created, which isn't really a 3d editor, but a rapid texture replace tool that works directly on the BSP file. It's also a first crack at it so UI could have been better. I wish TB could have similar options.



I still remember Duke Nukem's Build which was one of my early favorite map editors. It made for quick & easy mapping, and that's what I miss most of all, a speedy grid workflow. You could also visually adjust textures and heights of ceilings and floors really fast all in 3d view with shortcuts and mouse. Anyone could create the most intricate maps and this was way back in 1996! I can't say that even today's commercial editors really evolved that much in terms of intuitiveness. In a way 3D Studio R4 from 1995 was easier to use than it's successor and re-write lol. Packages like 3ds Max and Maya could have been way more intuitive, instead they just kept adding options. A few years back I had access to the Autodesk Dev Team, and got an insight into problems resulting from inter-dependencies on large shared projects. Since features get constantly added and built one ontop of the other in every new release, naturally some unsavory things slip through the cracks and become part of the overall fabric. Later it's hard to undo and decouple them, once they get built on. So they end up with all sorts of debug and messy spaghetti like code becoming part of the overall structure, ex: maxscript & sdk. Rarely, once in a while they are forced to re-write things from scratch but then users have to learn things over again.

Autodesk's Mudbox seems like it was build from scratch, so it's way more intuitive than Zbrush, which in turn feels like it was designed and appended to by artists over a long time. Unless you are constantly working in ZB, you'll forget how to use most of the options. A quick, universally understandable and intuitive navigation is key for any 3d app and workflow. One of the things Maya got right was the 'space' triggered quick menu, which TrenchBroom could incorporate for speedy option selection:




As far as open source 3d packages... I can't stand Blender. Every time I fire it up, I feel like I'm staring at an alien landscape, full of cluttered menus and dials, and I have to relearn everything over again. The UI is so disorganized, and most menu items don't need to be there at all. It's like Blender was made by a disjoint committee of artists. I guess that's what you get in open source apps that have been around the block one too many times. It's great that they are free, but most of the ones in python at least end up looking clumped and static, and I never can get used to them.

"Where there are six cooks, there is nothing to eat" ~ proverb :-)


Anyway, Trenchbroom feels like it was made by a solid mapper with mappers in mind! This tool is great for people frustrated with the currently available options (myself included). It's author seems to understand the ideal workflow and is determined to get it right, which is rare! I really hope he perfects this, because this is close to being great, and such an editor is long overdue. This would be a breath of fresh air for the mapping community. Also lets hope Autodesk or others don't get to him, and ruin things, because the current direction is solid and straight enough on its own

[Deleted]

Learn to use a editor takes time and a lot of practice.

I've been using nearly ten years the Quark editor.
unfortunately in Quark editor , making complex rocks with rotation is just not possible without destroying the poly brush...... there is no vertex support..pity pity....

Yeah....TrenchBroom looks very promising and easy to use in the youtube movies.

[Null]

Aug 17, 2014 5:30:24 GMT -5 @margaalq2 said:

Learn to use a editor takes time and a lot of practice.

See that's how some editors differ from others: almost like night and day. For some it's all about elegant design decisions to make it easy for their users.
Editors like Trenchbroom can be learned and understood in a day, while editors like Quark have you scratching your head going WTF every time you try using it!
There are some good things about Quark, but overall the lack of intuitive interface and navigation makes it a pain in the ass. And looking back, I'm actually glad I didn't have to waste too much time in it.

Anyway, here's my first public map made in Trenchbroom. Probably around 6 hours of pure fun in the making, as opposed to 24+ hours of nail biting horror in Quark:

www.netdoo.com/wodx/files/watchtower.rar

I didn't spend much time on textures, and mostly focused on fun deathmatch gameplay here. Was going for bunker obstacle course with a paintball feel.
And since it's my first attempt, workflow can be refined even more with prefabs and next time I'll probably be able to get it done in half the time

[NIN-Kitsune]

I was quite impressed by the result considering how daunting I found mapping to be when I first looked into say Quark and Qoole years ago, and then seeing this result with Null who's never truly mapped for Quake 2 before come up with this result so quickly really tickles my interest! I've been using Map Mixer for so long because it offered a powerful means of changing a maps appearance and entity and lighting placements and values, but I've always deep within wanted to get into creating maps according to my own vision from scratch (I have some experience with Doom map editing and had made some interesting ones to a degree, and I'd love to convert those concepts into Quake 2), and I hope this eventually can become my ticket to doing so and shall be trying it out over the next few days and see what I can do!

I look forward to potentially joining the ranks of the few mappers that still exist who still love working with Quake 2 and providing for it's community! I've gained a fair bit of knowledge about how maps and everything in them functions over the years through map mixer and using other tools alongside it to modify them in rather awkward and hacky ways and often pushed those tools abilities to alter maps to the limit, but now it's looking like I can finally do much more that I wanted soon! =^.^=

[Null]

Aug 18, 2014 4:02:15 GMT -5 NIN-Kitsune said:

I was quite impressed by the result considering how daunting I found mapping to be when I first looked into say Quark and Qoole years ago, and then seeing this result with Null who's never truly mapped for Quake 2 before come up with this result so quickly really tickles my interest!

In some ways I guess the TrenchBroom author thinks like me. And it's probably why I was able to quickly and seamlessly sync with this interface, making the controls an extension of my fingers
Who knows, it's yet to be seen if this is a proper mind-meld for everyone though lol.

[NIN-Kitsune]

Aug 18, 2014 5:53:55 GMT -5 Null said:

Aug 18, 2014 4:02:15 GMT -5 NIN-Kitsune said:

I was quite impressed by the result considering how daunting I found mapping to be when I first looked into say Quark and Qoole years ago, and then seeing this result with Null who's never truly mapped for Quake 2 before come up with this result so quickly really tickles my interest!

In some ways I guess the TrenchBroom author think like me. And it's probably why I was able to quickly and seamlessly sync with this interface, making the controls an extension of my fingers
Who knows, it's yet to be seen if this is a proper mind-meld for everyone though lol.

As slow of an interface learner I am (Especially compared to you, inhuman machine ), I will truly be the ultimate test as to if this is really able to be used by anyone on earth ! I've so far popped into it a little bit and felt the controls and navigation and so far it feels much more intuitive than anything else yet, but still I'll need a bit more time and I'll see if I can create something in a reasonable timescale (I do know roughly what I want for a first few couple simple maps, and that's a large part of the battle, knowing what you want and what Quake 2 can handle and do), cause after all it's not flat out impossible for me to do things in the other tools, but it'd take me a century to get over the mental indigestion of their 747 cockpit interfaces compared to what I was used to in say Doom builder. Time is always of the essence in my line of work on the server as you know.

[Null]

I created a map in Trenchbroom in just a couple of hours

[Null]

General Troubleshooting & Solutions

A few issues have been brought to my attention.

1) You might get stuck during the setup stage. I now realize that the above setup instructions might have been somewhat unclear for the step dealing with the Quake Path. You must set this path, otherwise the second dropdown in Map Properties will be blank. So the Quake Path must point to the parent folder that contains the Addon directory shipped with the rar.

2) Some video card drivers have issues with Trenchbroom's OpenGL instancing, so if you're one of the lucky few, you must turn it off under preferences, where it says "Use OpenGL instancing". Another work around is to reconfigure the automatic graphics processor of choice for this app to be GPU instead of integrated graphics. Otherwise you'll get an error like this in red:
"Unable to compile InstancedPointHandle.vertsh, compilation output was: ERROR: 22:1: '' : extension 'GL_EXT_gpu_shader4' is not supported"


More on this error:
github.com/kduske/TrenchBroom/issues/380


3) If you're on Win7, when clicking on one of the Items in the Entities tab, you might get an unhanded exception in which you don't even see the text for the buttons, like so:



So if you're wondering which one is the "Ignore" button that you should click, here's a clue:



4) If you go into the vertex mode using V, and you get a crash soon after dragging some vertices around, here are some possible causes.


Vertex mode might crash when you're trying to create illegal shapes by dragging one vertex beyond the legal boundary of another. At the moment the editor doesn't check for all these cases. If you plan to spend much time in the vertex mode, you should read up more about convex shapes and how vertices and triangles interact to form faces and quads. This way you'll know what to avoid and what not to do


Here are 4 quads composed of 8 faces. For example if you do something weird like drag vertex 2 beyond the boundary of 1 in the direction of 0 you might get a crash.


In the following picture the example on the left shows some valid shapes, where each face is a legal triangle and one quad, while 2 examples on the right are distorted too much and invalid:


So the simplest shape you can hope to achieve is a triangle, or a brush with all triangles on all sides. Also if you want to create complex shapes, just snap together multiple brushes into a seamless group, instead of using just one complex brush. This way you'll avoid most crashes.

5) If you do get a crash though, and you hope to restore your work, you can. Check the directory where you last saved your map, there should also be a autosave folder there. Note: this folder might not contain the most recent version of your map, but it's still better than nothing.

6) If you notice that the editor starts to lag, this might be the result of complex brushes in your map. For some reason Trenchbroom tends to lag in some cases when dealing with such brushes, especially ones created using the face split method in vertex mode (when dragging on a vertex in the middle of a face.) To alleviate the lag you can try splitting these brushes into simpler primitives to see if that helps.(One way to do this painlessly is using the clipping options by pressing C. Remember you can cycle clipping modes using Ctrl-Enter).

7) To open a .map file in Qoole, do a File/Open, and in the dialog for "Files of type" select All files (*.*) from the drop down. Alternatively you can type "*.map" for File name and press enter to see just .map files.

[NIN-Kitsune]

Progress on my first time mapping for Quake2! Absolutely everything from scratch, no prefabs or cheating like that, it's clipping tool, quick and easy creation of brushes placements, it's all so intuitive I've mastered it in just a few days! And I'm as hopeless as an interface learner can get!

[Deleted]

looks all good, in short time...

i understand it`s first map,practice.....
try keep it on scale, i mean...quake2 model player is 64x32 or 64x40.
good start rooms are 256x256 or 256x128

keep it simple for yourself so that you understand what you're doing at all times.

Good luck!.

oh and Thanks Null for all the technical explanations...
,soon I'm going to start with rocks in my map, and try out TrenchBroom myself..

[NIN-Kitsune]

Thanks =^.^=, I probably ought to redo the start room a bit once I finalize the map, I'd say it's about 80% done now, I didn't start the map with a plan that was very advanced, it was supposed to be just practice but it sure took off into something that was more than that! Trench broom actually keeps up with my thought process well enough as I go! Even though from now on I need better planning ahead of time to ensure good flow in the map, but for WOD-X, I think I hit the nail on the head well enough.

I still need to fix quite a bit and get the airlock door to rotate with a switch so one can go out and get bfg in the UFO etc. if anyone wish to check the map in it's unfinished state (lighting and texture corrections badly needed) hop onto whale at 74.86.171.203:27910 and enter "vote map kitsune1" in the console to check it out!

Before I'm totally finished with it despite my good success I'm sure I'll have many questions to ask you all! I'm still new to mapping nonetheless and there are a few things I'm trying to figure out. I'll see if I can sort them quick enough before I need to take a short break to tend other work on the whale server.

[Null]

Damn, I got to say that this is your best work to date! For me, this is certainly good enough for full blown death-match. It even has the feel of an operational space station or mother-ship dock, almost like you've been there. Now you just need some sounds to go with it, or perhaps something to spice up those narrower hallways at the midpoint, like a secret area. Way exceeded my expectations as far as first time mapping is concerned. And by the looks of it, with Trenchbroom soon enough you'll be making maps like a pro!

[NIN-Kitsune]

I intend to add sounds indeed, the map is intended first and foremost at this point to be artistic, so sounds are going to be the icing on the cake for ensuring a feel of a classic Quake II N64 style map, yes, I said N64 Quake II style, because I loved that game way way back in my younger days! It heavily inspired this map and I took inspirations from three levels in particular as seen in these videos. Take note of the hangar in the end of the first video. And the third video set the overall style in the main room. I love the blue wires and conduits, reminds me of a blue coil light I used to have, looked like the blue N64 railgun too almost (You should add the blue railngun skin to WOD-X!) =^.^=

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdtFIQFdZg&list=PLE0E1E045A92D1250&index=6
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHyuGfoaYc8&list=PLE0E1E045A92D1250&index=18
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9myqLvOtfk&list=PLE0E1E045A92D1250&index=19