Description of the Map Editor

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- Introduction
- What you see
- Basic selection and edition
- The panel at the left
- Saving your maps

## Introduction

The map editor is the main part of QuArK. A Quake map is a 3D world in which you can play; the map editor lets you build your own 3D worlds, and you can use Quake to play in the worlds you built. When you run QuArK, the first window you see in the "Explorer" : in this window, you can organize complex worlds made out of several maps, QuakeC code, and so on. To begin building a new map, click on the button "new map" .

The main part of the Map Editor screen is divided in two views of your map. The largest one, which is light brown by default, is the top-down view of your map. The other view, above the previous one, and by default light yellow, is the side view.

Basically, a map is made out of mathematical polyhedrons in 3D space. Each of these polyhedron will be shown in Quake as a wall, floor, ceiling, furniture, or just anything with a fixed 3D shape. Monsters, weapons, and other entities are not made out of polyhedrons, and you cannot use the map editor to build their shape. We will speak later about exactly what you can put in your maps.

## What you see

By default, the views display your map in a wireframe style : all the edges of all the polyhedrons are drawn as lines. Polyhedrons "above" other ones don't mask them; you see through. Entity positions are shown as a little cross. The default new map that you are seeing has six polyhedrons and one entity : four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and the starting point for the player.

On the map, you select objects (polyhedrons or entities) by clicking on them. If a single object is selected, it is shown on a blue background. On the center of the object, you can see a handle (a black square, an icon, or something like this). You can use this handle to drag the object around with the mouse. Some objects have additionnal handles.

## Basic selection and edition

For example, try clicking on the small cross inside the room, on the brown (top-down) view. This small cross is the entity that represents the starting position of the player, when you play the map in Quake. You will notice that the selected object is not this cross, but a large rectangular object : it is the ceiling polyhedron, which gets selected first because it is above. Click again. This time, the small cross is selected. An icon appears . You can use it to move the entity around. There is also a red dot handle, which you can use to change the facing direction of the player when he starts playing.

When you select a polyhedron, you get more handles : a black square to show you the center of the polyhedron and let you move it, and a number of blue handles. Each blue handle is at the center of one face of the polyhedron. You can use them to resize the polyhedron. When you click on one of these face handles, you also get an additionnal gray dot handle, which lets you rotate the face to distort the polyhedron.

All handles are also a common place for right-clicking with the mouse, which pops up a context-sensitive menu with interesting commands you can apply to the object. Some commands are only found in these menus, not even in the menu bar, so don't forget to try pressing your right mouse button often !

## The panel at the left

At the left of the screen, the half down part is probably the most important part of the editor, besides the map views themselves. This part of the screen contains five "pages", or modes. QuArK usually switches automatically between the pages, but you can do so manually with the buttons below. These buttons also tell you which page you see.

> The first page always begin with "worldspawn", and contains the hierarchical organization of your map - in large maps, you should make groups and sub-groups to help you find what you are looking for, instead of keeping all polyhedrons and entities in a large flat list. For example, the six polyhedrons of your first map are grouped in "Border walls".

> The second page lets you view and change information about the selected entity or entities. This information is known as Specifics/Args. More about it later.

> The third page holds information about the selected polyhedron or polyhedrons.

> The fourth page holds information about the selected face or faces. If you selected a polyhedron, switching to this page will show you and let you change information for all the faces of the polyhedron.

> The fifth page is a 3D representation of the currently selected objects.

Above this "multi-pages panel", there is a big compass image. Use it to rotate to map views. This lets you see your map under any angle. The rightmost slider is the most important : it lets you zoom in and out.

## Saving your maps

The recommended way to save your map is by storing them in the QuArK Explorer (you will be asked if you want to do so when you leave), and then save on disk a ".qrk" file from the Explorer. This lets you put several maps in the same .qrk file, for example to keep an old version.

Warning : you can save maps in the ".map" file format, which is the standard for Quake editors, but if you do so, you will loose a lot of information that cannot be stored there : the organization of the map in group and sub-groups, and duplicators, diggers, negative polyhedrons, etc. That's why you should always keep at least a copy of your map in a QuArK-specific file format. ".qrk" is a good idea. If you want to save just a single map, you can also make a ".qkm" file.

next : How are Quake maps made ?
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