Importing Valve Hammer Maps

aguilmet · Post by **aguilmet** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 3:31 am

Is there any way to import a valve hammer editor map (.map or .rmf) into a scene-node? Maybe a conversion program to convert it into something Irrlicht can load or a snippet to load it in directly?

vitek · Post by **vitek** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:08 pm

Not yet, but you could always write one.

roxaz · Post by **roxaz** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:35 pm

Valve Hammer Editor is really handy tool to use, but i dont think that it will be usable with irrlicht soon. Editor cant open compiled maps. There are several decompilers but they arent good enaugh to decompile map and make 1:1 project file as before compilation. So if there arent good decompilers - we would have sereous difficulties too while writing importer. I think better solution is MilkShape. It looks very similar to Valve Hammer Editor. Ofcourse there is lack of several features, like selecting in 3d view, but its the best solution if you want something like Valve Hammer Editor.

Strong99 · Post by **Strong99** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 6:59 pm

but the quake maps are also compiled, aren't they?

roxaz · Post by **roxaz** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:04 pm

with q radiant i opened one quake3 map just from game dir so i gues they arent, just saved in bsp format. dont get tricked, quake and half life maps are totaly different, no matter that extension is same.

Acki · Post by **Acki** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:30 pm

strong99 wrote:but the quake maps are also compiled, aren't they?

Well, yes and no - only the main level geometry is decompiled all other entyties are ignored by Irrlicht...

Maybe there is a reference to the data structure avilable so someone could write a decompiler (loader) for it (at least for the geometry)...

Strong99 · Post by **Strong99** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 11:26 am

there are many halflife bsp decompilers, maybe one is opensource so you can use it for a loader?

Luben · Post by **Luben** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:01 pm

Acki wrote:
strong99 wrote:but the quake maps are also compiled, aren't they?
Well, yes and no - only the main level geometry is decompiled all other entyties are ignored by Irrlicht...

Maybe there is a reference to the data structure avilable so someone could write a decompiler (loader) for it (at least for the geometry)...

When you compile a quake map, you run it trough some processes such as a BSP-partitioner and a lightmap-making program. When we open those compiled maps in irrlicht, we dont decompile them, right? Irrlicht just loads the compiled data. It would be very confusing if irrlicht decompiled them instead

Acki · Post by **Acki** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:17 pm

Yeah, go on, screw me up !!!

Yes, you're right !!!

What I had in mind was the pk3 file what is in fact an archive holding all map datas...
So the "map-decompiling" I thought about then is "unzipping the file"...
And the geometry data then is stored in the bsp file (AFAIR)...

So what I meant is: you have to analyse the map-data file and learn the way the geometry is stored there !!!
Then you can write a loader for it...

aguilmet · Post by **aguilmet** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:39 am

I was going to implement a .map loader for irrlicht but when I found out that each quad was actually the intersection of planes defined by three points, I decided that I value my sanity more than a .map loader!

I might just do it make a python script that will translate it another format that irrlicht can load. I've been working on the pseudo code but I wouldn't expect it anytime soon...

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:05 am

you can select in 3d view in milkshape, i believe its Alt+click to select vertices