| Supported Map Formats Updated 29 Dec 2002 | Upper levels: - QuArK Information Base - 2. Map editing

2.8. Supported Map Formats | [ Prev - Up - Next ]

QuArK writes maps in a considerable range of formats, but also has the peculiarity of allowing (and indeed in certain ways promoting) the writing of faces with non-integer coordinates. This is considered to be profoundly evil by some people, and can certainly cause problems, although I don't think it's always so bad (especially for example with non-structural brushes). At the least, it can create problems in using QuArK together with map editors that don't tolerate floating point coordinates well.

Index

- - Floating Point Issues (29 Dec 2002)
- - Formats (29 Dec 2002)
- - Conversion from QuArK 6.2 (29 Dec 2002)

Floating Point Issues | tiglari - 29 Dec 2002 | [ Top ]

In Quake-engine games, the faces of brushes are defined by three points, which can be located anywhere on the face of the plane, as long as they don't sit on one line (note especially: they do not have to be vertexes of the face, although they can be). Early Quake editors and the build-tools required these points to have integer coordinates, but QuArK introduced floating point coordinates, which allow precise placement of rotated brushes, and are also necessary for its 'enhanced texture positioning' scheme, which provides more more flexible texture-positioning than the original 'Classic Quake' system. Unfortunately, floating-point coordinates can also introduce various problem, especially in conjunction with build-tools that can't read them. The way they were involved with enhanced texture positioning is particularly problematic, since repositioning textures involved moving the face-coordinates, and so could drag face vertices subtly and unfixably off grid, which tends to drives people crazy, whether or not it caused real problems. And furthermore, build-tools that can't read floating point coordinates are very likely to have problems with maps written by QuArK, even if floating-point coordinate writing is suppressed (since the truncations shift the faces around, and thereby can cause leaks). So QuArK 6.3 has a different internal representation for texture-scales than earlier versions (called 'tv6', since it involves a 'tv6' specific on faces that specifies 6 numbers), so that moving textures doesn't shift the face threepoints, and also has some tools for finding and fixing faces with non-integral threepoints. The finder, on the search menu, is the 'Find Non-integral Threepoints' command, and will produce a list of faces with non-integral coordinates. Then the fixer, on the commands menu, 'Integralize Selected Faces', will attempt to fix the selected faces automatically, by forcing threepoints that are slightly off-integer to integral values, and also coopting integral vertexes of the faces, if it can find enough. On exit, it leaves selected the faces it has fixed, so that they can be inspected (conveniently with 'Browse Multiple Selection' on the Selection menu) for bad effects on texture-scales, etc. Then you can run the finder again to see the recalcitrant cases, and decide what to do about them by hand. It is quite plausible that you might want to allow certain vertexes to be non-integral (for decorations, etc); if a group has a 'nonintegral' specific, the finder will ignore the nonintegral faces within it. With these tools, and the 'Don't Write Floating Point Coordinates' map option, it will hopefully be possible to control floating point issues adequately.

Formats | tiglari - 29 Dec 2002 | [ Top ]

Aside from the floating point issue, map formats have two aspects: features which are supported by particular games, such as texture-flags, etc, and features that are supported by particular buld-tools. The first are controlled by a combination hard-coding in the QuArK exe and some not-easily-editable flags in the setup files, while the latter are selected in the `Output Map Format' dropdown box in the configuration section for each game. The currently supported main types, choosable in the Output Map Format box, are: Classic Quake: the original, with hardcoded variants for Quake1/2/3, Hexen II, Sin. Limited in the range of texture positioning and scaling it can code. Quark etp: a variant of Classic Quake in which the texture position and scaling is given by the face threepoints, with a `TX' code 1 or 2 to indicate whether the texture should be mirror-imaged or not. This gives full flexibility in positioning textures, but makes essential use of floating-point face-coordinates, and therefore may be associated with some small errors in vertex positioning (it's not certain that this is really a problem in output maps). The 'tx' versions of qbsp for Q1 and Q2, and Zoner's tools, have full support for etp; other tools may or may not handle it with various degrees of success. Valve 220: Valve's enhancement of Classic Quake. Brush Primitives: Id's enhancement of Classic Quake, for Q3 and RCTW (will probably be supported for any games that GtkRadiant comes to support). The configuration defaults are set for the build-tools reccommended on the QuArK homepage; don't change them unless you have some idea what you are doing, or are experimenting in order to more closely attain this exalted state. Two other format options you can teak in the Map|Options section of the config screen are whether or not to write comments, and whether or not to write floating-point coordinates in the map files. QuArK normally writes a fair amount of information about brush-numbering etc. into maps; this may cause problems for some build-tools, so the first option suppresses it. The second option simply truncates the floating point coordinates, which can cause problems, although it again might be necessary to use in conjunction with certain build-tools. So this option should probably only be used in conjunction with the floating-point control techniques discussed above, to suppress floating point coordinates in structurally important brushes.

Conversion from QuArK 6.2 | tiglari - 29 Dec 2002 | [ Top ]

Because the representation of texture scales in QuArK 6.3 is different from that of 6.2, some care should be taken with transferring projects. First, make sure the project is backed up, then open it in 6.3 and make sure that the scales look correct, and that it builds correctly. Then, as you further edit the map, faces that are operated on will shift their texture-representation to the new one, so keep an eye on things to make sure nothing is going wrong. If problems occur, announce them to the QuArK forum, so we can figure out what has gone wrong. QuArK 6.2 will not correctly read .qrk's and .qkm's written by QuArK 6.3, so migration to 6.3 is basically a one-way street (we could probably come up with a retrogression tool if one was really wanted, but no guarantees; 6.3 is supposed to be better!)

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