.MAP files

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:08 am

Why doesn't anyone create a loader for .map files...

Murphy =P · Post by **Murphy =P** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:22 am

Well as far as Quake/Radiant type MAP files, I can think of a few reasons.

BSP is easier.

BSP is done already.

MAP files don't have lightmaps, and I think that's probably one of the attractions to BSPs.

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:41 am

ding ding ding ding!

Murphy =p is right!

loading a .map file would offer no attractive or advantage for the engine. A bsp is optimized and lightmapped.

Murphy =P · Post by **Murphy =P** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 6:32 am

The only real advantage I can think of is a faster workflow. But for testing only, really -- MAP is not an "end point" format.

I'll admit to having considered a MAP to MIM converter anyway, though. I decided that with OpenBSP, I didn't really care.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:35 am

yeah, but maybe someone can create the .map to load the lights with the irrlicht lights... cause i realize when I export a level from gmax, it containts light information for the bsp quake compiler thing. Why not just load that directly into irrlicht, and have irrlicht set the lights up as nodes and such...

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:20 am

Anonymous wrote:yeah, but maybe someone can create the .map to load the lights with the irrlicht lights... cause i realize when I export a level from gmax, it containts light information for the bsp quake compiler thing. Why not just load that directly into irrlicht, and have irrlicht set the lights up as nodes and such...

This could be done instead by extending the BSP loader, which I think would be preferable.

When I was writing the MIM and OCT loaders, I wondered if maybe there should be a standardized way to load lights from a file. This would be another reason to consider that.

You realize, of course, that loading those lights will have a very different effect than running it through the BSP lightmapper and using the lightmapped lights. No free shadows, and the accuracy is limited to the vertex density of your map. To see what I'm talking about if you don't know, go into your Q3A settings and switch the lighting mode from lightmap to vertex.