AQtion Mapping with Trenchbroom and EWTOOLS

[mikota]

Getting started

Mapping is fun and relaxing. It is also easy, even if you never did anything like it before. However, the first part, setting up all the tools, can be hard/annoying. The first part of this guide is supposed to help with that. The good part is once you set it up, you never have to do it again :)

The tools used are Trenchbroom (map editor), ericw-tools (map compiler) and Wally (texture editor/converter)

Get Trenchbroom from https://github.com/TrenchBroom/TrenchBroom/releases
Get ericw-tools from https://github.com/ericwa/ericw-tools/releases/
Get Wally from https://github.com/Ty-Matthews-VisualSt ... g/WallyDev

If you don't know how to download from github, you click on the link and scroll down until you see "Assets". Click on that and the download links will show:

[mikota]

Setting up Trenchbroom with AQtion

First, set the Quake 2 game path to the base AQtion folder in steam. Then go Configure engines -> Path, set that to the q2pro.exe executable in the base AQtion folder.



In Trenchbroom, create a new Quake 2 map. Make sure you choose the map format to be Quake 2 (Valve).


After the map is created, in the bottom-right corner, under mods, double click on action to make it enabled.



After that, it should work!

[mikota]

Setting up ericw-tools

Ericw-tools are map compiling tools, which if you don't know, they convert the map you're working on into a .bsp that can be played in AQtion/Q2.

If you don't understand what these do, watch the videotutorials linked below this post first!

qbsp:

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qbsp.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action -q2bsp mapname.map

vis normal:

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vis.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action mapname.bsp

vis fast:

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vis.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action -fast mapname.bsp

light normal:

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light.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action mapname.bsp

light superfast (super simple lighting):

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light.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action -dirtdebug mapname.bsp

light fast (simple lighting):

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light.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action -bounce 0 mapname.bsp

light slow (final release/hiquality lighting):

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light.exe -basedir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AQtion" -gamedir Aqtion\action -extra -soft mapname.bsp

[mikota]

HD-Textures (OPTIONAL)

Back when Q2 released, it only supported textures in the .WAL format. Nowadays all clients support HD-textures, meaning you can use .png/.tga/.jpg images instead. They can also be used as "external textures", meaning if there's a wall on a map that has for example CONCRETE.WAL texture, it can be "replaced" by putting CONCRETE.PNG in the same folder as CONCRETE.WAL. Even if the new HD-texture is much bigger and higher resolution than the original, it will all scale correctly.

Even though all the clients have supported HD-textures for ages, most people still create maps using .WAL textures and then create "replacement" external textures for certain walls/stuff. Trenchbroom by default will only show WAL textures in the editor. If, however, you want Trenchbroom to show the external/HD-textures in the editor, find the folder where Trenchbroom is installed. Go into \That-TrenchBroom-Install-Folder\games\Quake2\ and open GameConfig.cfg. Change line 15 in that file to:

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"format": { "extensions": ["jpg","jpeg","png","tga"], "format": "image" },

[mikota]

General mapping videotutorials

I learned the basics of mapping using dumptruck_ds's series of videotutorials. It is highly recommended that you watch this if you're new, even though the tutorials are made for Quake 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gONePWo ... AEt5xf74aE

There is also PalmliX's series of videotutorials for the Quake 2 Remaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDyfpSg ... XnaR73XvHQ

[mikota]

Tutorial/base Map

For the sake of convenience, I created a tutorial / base map that you can use a starting point for your map. It has everything setup including lighting. The textures used should all be available with base AQtion installation, but in case they're not, I included them in the .zip and you can extract them to your textures folder.

[mikota]

Sunlight

The way sunlight, and other types of lighting work in ericw-tools is shown visually in https://ericwa.github.io/ericw-tools/. You can read detailed docs on https://ericw-tools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/light.html.

You can see an example of how this is used in the tutorial map. The sun is a light entity. Its properties (color, intensity, penumbra, etc.) are controlled using the key-value pairs of that light entity. The direction of the sunlight is controlled with the placement of the info_null entity the light entity is targeting.


Other map lighting properites, such as lightbounce, dirtmapping (ambient occlusion) & secondary sunlight is controlled via key-value pairs of the worldspawn entity. Worldspawn entity key-value pairs are accessed by selecting any brush in the map.

[mikota]

Phong shading

Phong shading can be used to interpolate lighting on brushes, making it look smoother. This can be useful with round/curved scenery.

An example can be seen here:

The way to do this is to create a brush entity from the brushes you want to apply phong to. I do this by creating a func_wall (even though func_wall has other uses, but it seems to work).


After creating the entity, set the _shadow and _phong fields to 1: