Tutorial

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previous : How are Quake maps made ?

- First-time configuration
- The sample map
- The 3D view
- Making a second room
- Connecting the two rooms
- Textures
- Monsters, lights, etc.
- Making a door
- Map organization

## First-time configuration

The very first step, after you started QuArK, is to select the game you plan to make a map for. You do so in the "Games" menu. Then, as explained in the introduction (which you should read first), you begin building your new map by clicking on the button "new map" . What you get is a small map made out of a single room and a starting position for the player inside the room.

The first thing you should do is trying to run Quake with this sample map, so that you can figure out how it exactly looks like. Search for the "Quake" menu (or "Quake 2", "Hexen II", "Heretic II", depending on the game you selected). For Quake 2 and Heretic II, choose the command "Fastest" ; for Quake 1 and Hexen II, there is no such command, so you can choose "QuickGO" instead. In the description below, I'll assume you are using Quake, but it's the same for all games.

At this point, QuArK will tell you it doesn't know where Quake is, and ask you whether you want to enter the path now. Answer Yes. This opens the Configuration dialog box, which you can reach again later from the Options menu. In the box "Directory of Quake", enter the full path to Quake, or click on the dots "..." at the right of the box, and select the Quake directory there.

Before you can go on, be sure you installed the Build Pack (see the overview) somewhere. These programs are required to prepare your map so that you can play them in Quake. They actually create a file with the extension ".bsp" in a directory called "tmpquark" within your Quake directory. Warning : don't use the wrong build pack ! Each one contains programs that produces ".bsp" files that will only work with the game they are designed for !

Enter the path and program names for the build pack in the Configuration dialog box, too, below the box "Directory of Quake". In each of the boxes "Path to QXXX", enter the path to the program or click on the dots "..." and select it. There exist several versions of each of the programs, with slightly different names; in the Build Packs, the program referred to as `QBSP` or `QBSP3` is actually called `TXQBSP.EXE` or `TXQBSP3.EXE`, and the program referred to as `QLIGHT` or `QRAD3` is actually called `ARGHLITE.EXE` or `ARGHRAD.EXE`.

When you are done, close this box by clicking on Ok, and then try again to run the map in Quake with the "Quake" menu. This time, everything should go right : you should see a black window with text scrolling in it, and then Quake will automatically be started with your map. If something goes wrong, read carefully the error messages and check again the Configuration dialog box ("Options" menu). If the map is completely dark in Quake 2, be sure you selected "Fastest" in the "Quake 2" menu and not "GO!" nor "QuickGO!".

## The sample map

This tutorial will guide you step-by-step through the making of a simple map. The finished map (for Quake 2) is available in the file Tutorial.qrk. You should try to follow the instructions below without consulting the finished map, however.

The sample map is rather small. The general process to build larger maps is to add more rooms beside this one, and connect them via doors, pipes, lifts, and so on. What you should not do is make a very large area with four walls, a floor and a ceiling, and then build your map inside by adding walls, horizontal separations between upper and lower floors, and so on. Although this seems to work, you will soon reach Quake limitations. Quake doesn't like large areas at all. You can make very large maps, but you need to make it out of a lot of not-so-big areas. The idea is that from no point in the map you must be able to see too many places simultaneously.

You should already know the basic manipulations on polyhedrons. Let's add a new polyhedron in the map by clicking on the "cube" button (upper left). The new cube appears in the middle of the map, and it is selected by default. Now try to get the feeling of what really occurs when you move, resize, and distort the cube on each map view.

You can scroll, rotate, and zoom in and out the map views. This can be done with the image block with the big compass, or with mouse shortcuts : holding down the right mouse button on a map view and moving the mouse, you have the view scroll; holding down the middle mouse button, you make the views zoom in and out. If your mouse has only two buttons, hold down the two buttons together instead.

## The 3D view

To let you better understand what you are doing, open a 3D view ("Layout" menu, "New 3D view"). This view displays your map as if you were playing it in Quake, with some differences : you are always "flying" instead of walking, and you can fly through walls. Note that you can also edit your map in this 3D view, not just look at it. To fly through the map, hold down the middle mouse button (or the left and right buttons together) and move the mouse around. The right button alone will let you view up and down as well.

It is often easier to walk long distances by dragging the "eye" icon with the mouse on the 2D views. The third way to walk in 3D views is by using the keyboard, which is easier than the mouse in my opinion. Move the mouse over the view first, so that the 3D window is activated (it gets a blue caption). Then hold down the Up key. This makes you walk forward. The main keys are the four arrows, the Q, A and Z keys to look up or down, and the C and D keys to fly up or down.

If you have a 3DFX card, you can activate it in the Configuration dialog box ("Options" menu), in the "3D view" page. In the same box, you can also choose the keys you like, change movement speeds, and so on.

Now try moving and resizing your new cube in the map views. See on the 3D view how the cube moves and what you are exactly doing you understand how it works. If you unselect the cube by accident, select it again simply by clicking inside it. You may have to click several times, because any other object "before" will be selected first. This is true for both the 2D views and the 3D view. In fact, almost everything that is true for 2D views is also true for 3D views : you can make a whole map with the 3D view only, if you like.

## Making a second room

There is a reflex you should get with QuArK : right-click ! You will get a pop-up menu almost wherever you click the right mouse button. The second reflex is the Undo feature : you can undo any number of operations if you think it was not right, and you can also redo them if you think it was not so bad after all. This feature can be accessed from various points, including the Edit menu and the pop-up menu you get when you right-click on the map view besides the map.

We will now add a second room to our map. You already created a cube if you followed the previous instructions. Move this cube outside the room and make it bigger, roughly as big as the original room. Don't forget we are in 3D space : you have to resize it in three directions ! For our example, be careful to give the cube exactly the same height as the original room. Moreover, the bottom of the cube should be aligned with the top of the floor, and the top of the cube should be aligned with the bottom of the ceiling, as shown in the figure at right.

Now the trick : right-click on the cube in the map, and choose "Make hollow" in the pop-up menu ! Hey, what occured ? What's this circle ? The circle appears because several polyhedrons are selected. The original cube was changed into six flat polyhedrons, one per side, and now you have a nice room with four walls, a floor, and a ceiling. All six polyhedrons are selected, that's why QuArK displays the so-called linear mapping circle for multi-selection (more about it later). Simply click besides the polyhedrons to remove the selection. Now you see that there are really six polyhedrons, making a second room. You will also notice that the walls of the second room are not as thick as the walls of the first room. In our case, it's not important, but if you want, you can set the wall width the "Make hollow" command will use by clicking on this button (inflate/deflate by).

You should save your map often. The first time you select "Save" in the "File" menu, you will be asked if you want to save it in the QuArK Explorer. It is generally a good idea to answer Yes. The map editor will close and bring you back to the QuArK Explorer, where you have to select "File", "Save" again to save the contents of the Explorer. In this case, it is just a single map, but you could put several maps and other things in the Explorer. All this is saved in a single file with ".qrk" extention. To open the map again, double-click on it in the Explorer (it's called "New map" by default, but you can change this name like you change a file name in Windows' Explorer, by clicking once on the name).

## Connecting the two rooms

This is all well, but the two rooms are completely disjunct : if you try your map in Quake now (from the "Quake" menu), you will start in the original room and cannot walk into the second room. I will show two common ways to connect rooms. The first one is by adding a passage betwixt and between ; the second one is by moving the second room nearer and simply making a door.

Let's make a passage. We use the same technique to make a pipe-shaped area : we make a cube hollow. This time, put the cube between the two rooms. Make the cube long enough so that its ends enter each room. Use the 3D view to be sure the cube is really coming inside each room. Then make this cube hollow. On the 3D view, you shouldn't have noticed a big change, because this created six flat polyhedrons around the whole cube (get rid of the circle by clicking anywhere). We created a pipe, but there are too many walls around it : if we want to be able to walk through the pipe, we will have to remove the two flat polyhedrons at the end of the pipe. Do so by selecting them and pressing the Del key or clicking on the "recycle bin" icon. You can select them on the 3D view if you like, just by clicking on the ends of the pipe when you see them.

You will quickly notice that something goes wrong. There are still walls in the middle of the pipe. It's the walls of the rooms that go throught the pipe ! We need to make a hole in these walls. But how ? If you try resizing these big walls, you will notice that you cannot make a hole : you can only reach simple shapes. Theoretically, you have to replace this large wall with four wall parts : one above the pipe, one below, one to the left, and one to the right. Don't worry, you don't see lines between these wall parts when you play your map in Quake. But don't break the wall in parts yourself, QuArK can do it for you.

You must first put a cube exactly where you want a hole to appear. In our case, we can put two cubes inside the pipe, one per wall to big. It's simpler to put a single, larger cube instead, a cube that would fit inside the pipe and go through the two walls to big. There is an even simpler solution : choose "Undo" in the "Edit" menu three times - you should undo the following operations : delete one end of the pipe, delete the other end, and then make hollow. This brings you back to the point shown on the picture above. The cube is the original one that was made hollow for the pipe. What else could better fit the pipe's shape ? Here is the cube we will use to make the holes in the two walls ! Right-click on it, and select "Brush subtraction". Ignore the circle and click on the cube again. Now the two room walls have a hole in them. To see it, move the cube away and walk around with the 3D view.

Now, if you moved the cube away, bring it back exactly where it was (use Edit, Undo !), make it hollow again, and delete the two end polyhedrons again. This time the passage is ready, and you can try your map in Quake !

## Textures

If you play your map in Quake, you will notice that in the first room we see the sky, but in the second room we don't. How can we see the sky anyway, there is a ceiling polyhedron, right ? Right, but it's the trick : this polyhedron is the sky ! In Quake, you always have to close the whole map. There must be no way to go "outside" the map, even not upside. You make the sky by giving the pseudo-sky ceiling polyhedron a "sky" texture.

What are textures ? They are the images displayed on the walls. There are tons of images to choose from. Try to select a polyhedron. You will see at the bottom left a flat wall image : it's the texture it has. Now click on this image or on the "choose texture" button above. This opens the texture browser. This is the place where all textures can be found. There are hundreds and hundreds of textures to choose from, sorted in groups (left). Once you found the texture you want, double-click on it and the polyhedron selected in the map editor will take this texture.

You can actually set different textures for the faces of a single polyhedron. Select a face by clicking on its lightblue handle on the map - the handle becomes white and a gray dot handle appears. You can then choose a texture for this face by clicking on the "choose texture" button .

The texture image bottom left is more complex when you select a face than when you select a polyhedron. The image actually shows the face shape with the texture on it, and with cyan lines over it making an "L". This "L" represents the position of the texture on the face. You can move it with the mouse by dragging one of four points on the "L" : the two ends, the middle point, or the additionnal detached dot. Try dragging each of these points (on a big face, you will better see what you are doing).

## Monsters, lights, etc.

Your map now has two rooms, but it is completely empty. Press the Ins key, or open the "Commands" menu and select "Insert map item". The "New Items" window opens. Open the group called "Monsters". Here, you have the list of all monsters of the game. To put one in your map, double-click on it. It will be inserted at the screen center, but you can move it elsewhere by dragging the icon handle. Don't forget that you are in 3D space, so you must set the correct vertical position as well, otherwise the monster will appear inside the floor or above the ceiling !

If you zoom on the monster entity, for example by clicking twice on the "zoom" button (upper left), you will see that it is shown as a box. This is roughly the size of the monster, and you must put the entity in a position where this box doesn't enter any wall, otherwise the monster will be "stuck" in the wall. It is not required to put the bottom of the box exactly on the floor : if it's higher, the monster will fall on the floor before you can see it.

Another common type of entity are lights. Normally, you have to put lights to make your map bright. You can put more or less lights, and make them more or less bright, to make various parts of the map brighter or darker, and to create nice shadow effects. In Quake 1 and Hexen II, if there is no light in the map, it is completely bright instead of being completely dark. In Quake 2, it is not the case; that's why you have to select "Fastest" in the "Quake 2" menu : this command completely avoids brightness computation. Once you have put some lights in your map, you should use "QuickGO!" for all games.

Light entities are in the group "Lights" of the "New Items" window. The most common lights (invisible light sources) can also be obtained by clicking on the "light" button upper left. Move the light to the desired source point, and set its brightness on page 2 . It is the "light" Specific, at the top. With Quake 2, you can also set a light color (3DFX only). Click at the right of the "_color" Specific.

## Making a door

We are now going to add a third room and connect it to one of the other rooms through a door instead of a "pipe".

Instead of making the third room like we made the second one by making a large cube hollow, we will use another technique. Click on one of the outside walls of the rooms. We want to enlarge the room. Try moving this wall away from the room. You will notice that neither the other walls nor the floor or ceiling are following it : you are just moving a single polyhedron, which is not what we want (see the 3D view if you are unsure).

To enlarge a room this way, we have to resize each of the connected walls, floor and ceiling polyhedrons, too. There is a way to do it in one operation. Put this wall back to its original location (undo!), that is, next to the connected walls, floor and ceiling. Now right-click on this wall, and select "Extended selection". You will notice that the whole room turns red. In fact, all adjacent faces have been selected, so that if you move the polyhedron now, the adjacent polyhedrons will follow it. Be very careful and only move the polyhedron away from the room, not left or right. This does exactly what we want. (If you moved it left or right, you'll get a message about invalid polyhedrons because you "crushed" the adjacent polyhedrons to a zero or even negative thickness. In this case simply click Cancel and try again.

Ok, now we have a long room. Let's add a wall through it. Put a new cube, make it more flat, and move and resize it until it separates the room in two. Don't forget to set its height as well. Use the 3D view to be sure it's all right.

We first make a hole in the wall : add one more cube, move it so that it goes through this wall (be sure it doesn't goes through anything else !). I suggest that you move it down on the floor so that we will have a hole for our door with no step. I also suggest that you don't resize it vertically up to the ceiling. When you are ready, right-click on the cube and select "Brush subtraction". This made the hole in the wall.

This time we can use the same cube as a shape for our door. For this purpose, make the cube thinner as the wall itself. It you cannot do so, lower the grid size - the grid is what you see as dots all over the map, and that let you keep things aligned. If you want to move something by smaller steps, choose a smaller grid size. To do so, click on the button besides the number "32" (this number is the current grid step). Select for example "grid 16" or "grid 8". When it's done, try again to make the door cube thinner. Important : normally, you should never work with no grid at all !

We are going to have to work with the tree view of polyhedrons. Select the page 1 by clicking on its button. You should see a long list of polyhedrons all called "new cube". The last one, selected, is the one we want to use as door shape. Ok, let's make the new door now. Press the Ins key, open the group "func_ entities" (Quake 2) or "Doors & Plats" (Quake 1), and double-click on "func_door". This inserts the "func_door" entity in your map.

The door entity, like all brush entities, comes with a cubic polyhedron attached to it by default. Usually, you will simply reshape this cube to suit the expected door shape. In our case, we already have a door polyhedron. Open the func_door entity by clicking on the "+" sign at its left, and you will see the attached polyhedron, "poly". Move "poly" to the trash with the mouse. (the trash is just above, besides the compass). Then click on the last "new cube", the one we want to use as door shape, and move it with the mouse over the "func_door". It's done !

If you run your map now, the door probably won't work as expected. The door opens by sliding in a direction, but we did not set this direction yet. To do so, go back to page 1 and select "func_door" again. Look on the map : the red dot handle shows the opening direction of the door. Move this dot so that the door opens by sliding "inside" the wall (don't worry, you don't have to actually make a hole in the wall for the door to open). Hold down the Ctrl key while moving the red dot to force the angle to the grid direction.

The same procedure will let you set the direction for any entity : for monsters, for example, it is the direction they face when the game starts.

Try your map in Quake ! If you think the door would be nicer with a "door"-style texture, and the walls should not be all identical, feel free to use the texture browser. Remember you can scroll, resize and rotate the texture. You can also try to make a few non-cubic polyhedrons, simply by taking a cube and rotating its faces.

## Map organization

The last thing you have to know is pretty easy to learn, but quite important. Noticed how long the list of entities and polyhedrons of page 1 already is ? For larger maps, you would quickly get lost. That's why it is important to group your objects. For example, select all polyhedrons that belong to the second room (to select several objects together, hold down the Ctrl key). Then click on the "new group" button . All the polyhedrons are put in a new group. Rename this "group" with a more explicit name, for example "Second room". You do so by clicking once on the name, as you do with files in Windows' Explorer. Likewise, you can rename "Border walls", which contains the first room's walls, into "First room".

If you've put monsters and lights in these rooms, you could also put them in the correct group. You do so by dragging them inside the group, always on page 1 .

If you open the group "First room", you will see that the polyhedron themselves have explicit names. If you feel like, you can rename your polyhedrons, too. If you open a polyhedron by clicking on the "+" sign, you will see all its faces, and you can rename them, too !

The file Tutorial.qrk contains the map I decribed step-by-step above, with a few entities, lights, groups, and non-cubic polyhedrons. There are some QuArK specialities not described in this tutorial; see the Objects reference section.

next : Objects reference
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