Paul has the floor

As I usually do, in search of useful information, I have been hanging out at the Level Editing Forum hosted on Quake3World. When Paul Jaquays speaks, level designers usually listen, unless you are one of the select few who think you know more. First off, the question has been asked, “Can you use Team Arena content on a Quake III map [this goes for mods as well]?” Paul’s response, “No. Once you choose to use Team Arena content, you choose to make it a Team Arena only map….TA content is considered by id to be separate from Q3A content. It is not to be distributed for use by players who have not purchased Q3:TA.”

Paul continues on to clarify models and terrain in Quake III Arena. “I apologize for some things regarding the confusion about terrain use in Q3A. I asked for and got permission from the id partners to distribute and allow the use in Q3A maps of a limited number of terrain support content found in Team Arena. Forum member Sir_Fubar put together a nice package containing this content, along with his own insights and clarifications. This content can be found as a zip file at QERadiant. The TA terrain content that may be used with id’s approval for Q3A is as follows:

The tree models and their shaders and textures.
The four textures that were used to create the mpterra2 terrain surface.
The terrain textures were distributed to give mappers a place to start in making terrain. We hope and fully expect talented mappers and texture makers to create new and visually exciting terrain surfaces. id only scratched the surface of what can be done with these tools.”

As for the QER error I encountered last night, I used the advice that NRGizeR offered. I initially opened the .map file in QER and was unsuccessful in selecting the bad brush. I attempted to open and select the same brush in GTK. Again, it crashed. That left no choice but to open the .map file in a text editor, locate the brush and delete. After a bit of trial and error, I found the correct brush, deleted and went back to mapping, like nothing had happened.

As for my current attempt at level designing…it is titled ut_reactor and is approximately 1400 brushes at the moment. The level is laid out in a horizontal fashion, with many alternative routes to get from one side of the level to the other. I have a few new screen shots, but keep in mind I have not added any sort of lighting or sky box to these shots yet. I am hoping once I have the layout complete, I can hand the map over to the 2D guys who can then touch it up using different texturing. Now, onto the screen shots:

Had the opportunity to get first glance at Tub’s next map, which is slated to be released with Urban Terror Beta 2. The map is called village_docks and is the third in the Village Series [the others being ut-village and ut-abbey]. Unfortunately, at Tub’s request I must hold off showing any new pictures of his map. But if you have seen his previous attempts, then you have an idea at the style in which it will be modeled. The map is quite different from Docks by BattleCow. Currently Tub only has one section mapped out and has much work to do before the map is complete. I would suspect you will catch a glimpse of it in the coming week.

Today’s Link of the Day comes from Dog, a guy I LAN with at Netzwerk Terror. Nursery Photos, relive your childhood or infancy!