Hey everyone,

As I've been working on Detonator Q3A I was curious about the whole subject of adding new items from your mod into maps.

Rather than replace existing items in Q3A such as powerups with my fragments, I've added my fragments as unique items on their own, so they don't replace anything in the game. My assumption as I've been working on the mod has been that I'd need to create new maps for the mod because the existing Q3A maps don't have spawn points in them for my fragments. I created a .def file to add these spawn points to any maps made.

But it occured to me -- rather late in the mod's development -- that there are mods out there using the standard q3a maps that have new items in them, so obviously they got their mod-specific items in there somehow.

So my question is, how? Did they decompile the .bsp and add them in? Or did they have some process where their mod code somehow adds these items without needing to mess with the map at all? A friend of mine raised the Lithium mod as an example of such a mod.

Anyone here have any experience with this who could clue me in? (Note to Rev. Ted: I still have the ent email you sent me relating to this subject, but I'm wondering how other mods did it). Aside from one more thing needing coding and the models needing some skins, my mod is essentially done and ready for playtesting. If I could get my items in the standard q3a maps that would save a lot of time. (I'd still like to create new maps for my mod.)

Thanks!

Well, with Single Player Action Quake 2 I use 3 different methods.

The first method being that I replace existing items in the game with new items. I do that by looking inthe SpawnItem functions and basically going

Code Sample

if(item == "olditem") {  item == "newitem"; }

The second way I do it is with .ent files.
Basically when the map loads and it starts spawning in static things like ammo, weapons, etc, I open a file called mapname.ent and start reading it in. It holds in it basically the structure used to define items, with a classname, location, any other variables I need. Then as I read them in I just call the spawn functions and spawn my items into the world.

The third method is used to create coop spawn points in maps that weren't really designed to have a bunch of them.
What I do is search through the player spawn entities, find one, then spawn the player at an offset to it, making sure he isn't in a wall, floor, or ceiling.

What I would recommend for you is to look through the item spawns in the map and just pick one and spawn your fragment there, maybe giving it a little forward and upward velocity to make it shoot a little ways away.

And the last but the best way, is add your item spawn point on the .map, (Like q3dm17.map), and only do a "Entities recompile" which only add the entities on the map, letting the brush/lighting work like it is.

Of course, you need the q3dm17.bsp on your maps folder as well as q3dm17.map...

If you read her site about her mod, they will have custom map and custom model, so you will need to download a .pk3 anyway.

I don't think it's the greatest idea to strip out ent info from maps shipped with the game, then recompile and distribute them since they are intellectual property.

When I did this for KtMwtB, I made sure that it was clear with the developer and the publisher.  (Thanks to Hellchick and Kenn Hoekstra for their assistance with that.)
Their stipulation was that the map be labeled so that there was no question that it was an altered map, and neither created nor supported by the developer.

Torchy clued me in about the CTF-enabled mp_finca - he compiled another BSP using "ignoreleaks" "1" that only had the new triggers and entities, and then inserted this into the original bsp by doing an ents-only recompile with an added misc_bsp entity.
However, this means that his pk3 has to contain both the (recompiled) original bsp and the accessory bsp.

Which brings up an interesting issue:

What if, instead of an accessory .ant/.ent file that only contained new entities in standard .map format, you could have a system that would automatically insert an accessory bsp file as a misc_bsp - allowing you to include new triggers as well as entities?

This is how it works with SP AQ2:

http://users.bigpond.net.au/abcgi....101.htm

I didn't write it, but it's how people write .ent files for my mod.

I don't see any reason why you can't add triggers to a map using .ents?

Gotcha.

Thats what I was referring to though, certain types of triggers CAN be added in an .ent file.

Ah, I see.
Yeah, trigger_always isn't like the other triggers in that it's an actual point entity, and the engine doesn't require (or even allow) it to be bound to a brush.
Any trigger that a player has to "trip" by walking into it will require a brush, and must therefore go through the compile process to be viewed in-game.