Hola. I've been out of the SoF scene for a year now, and with SoF2 coming up, I want to get back into mapping for it(and finally finish my SoF1 map for this and MoH).

If you remember me at all, I like details. I think a mapping FAQ for the Q3 engine should be posted here and at sofcenter.com to get people up to speed and start mapping asap. My questions are(based on anyone's knowledge of the Q3 engine and Radiant):

- What are the typical player dimensions?
- Is it true that 16 units is roughly equal to 1 foot?
- What are the texture file format requirments and limitations?
- How big can a map be?
- What's the max/typical showtris (or whatever) number to shoot for?
- How big should doors be?
- How high can a player jump?
- How tall is a player when crouched?
- Does this engine use mp3 sounds at all?
- Can you import Q3, Q2/Halflife, and SoF1 prefabs into it?

Feel free to post anything else I might have missed! :)


- Clong

Since sof2 isn't really out yet and we can't edit anything to write the faq accurately, we could probably pre-answer some of these questions.

BTW.. since I no longer work at sofcenter, I won't be supporting mapping there. I will be here to answer questions and help where I can.

Since we are still dealing with the quake engine, the unit measurements should be about the same. If someone here familiar with Q3 editing can verify this.. players are about 72 units tall and 48 units wide, door should be about 96 units high, players are about 52 units tall when crouching.

Players can jump higher now since a combo jump crouch makes a difference.

The engine will handle mp3 audio.

You can import the prefabs from the games mentioned since those are recognizable from radiant. Entities will need to be replaced as they will not import.

Maps can be about 10 times more complex, but I don't know about the map size. The game can handle r_speeds of about 10,000 as opposed to the 1,000 of sof1.

Textures can be 1024 x 1024 and I think will be in jpg (possibly tga) format.

I was thinking of finishing my other map for Medal of Honor, and then porting it over to SoF2 when it came out, since both are Q3 engines. I think that MoH takes .tga and .jpg, but have seen no real info on that.

Do you know if the engine splits up faces differently, or just in general can handle 10x more polys? Just curious how my current 900-1000+ wp SoF1 map might compile as in Q3.

Also, how does everyone feel on prefab generic and advanced buildings made available for the public? Personally, I think it's a plus for those that have great ideas for a layout, but neither the time nor immediate expertise to build a lot of detail into their map. A couple hours or so of making a simple warehouse or apartment can be better spent adding the little details that really make a map great.

- Clong


P.S. Is the ezboard forum still active at all, or does everyone hang out here instead?

hehe, we all hang out here. Beats EzBoard any day!

*.png can also be used in sof2.

thats good to know

ive been mapping using quake 3 and all seems to be exactly the same

so whats up guys.....longtime no see
how is everyone doing?

Darkone... nice to see youre around and well.

oops.. my other alias.. forgot to change it on the laptop. :P