Entity guide

Note from Spirit: Here is a good site to grab the info to fill these pages with: http://web.archive.org/web/20040607020324/http://www.annihilator.com/gameediting/quake/editing/editing_lvlentities.html

In Quake map making, an entity is any object defined in the .map file of a level, and can be divided into two types, point entities and solid entities.

A point entity is an entity that can be thought of as being at a specific point in the level, and its geometry (if any) is predefined. For example, a monster is a point entity. A level author might place many ogres in their level, but each ogre will be the same shape and behave the same way because they are defined by the game already.

Solid entities, on the other hand, are entities which are made by the level author out of brushes and can take any shape the author wishes. A door, for example, is something that the level author needs to be able to make out of brushes in order to fit into different themes, different sized holes etc.

The static level geometry itself is also defined as a worldspawn entity, but it is a special entity that is treated differently by the compilers, and depending on the level editor being used, its settings might be accessed from a different place to that of other entities. The worldspawn is always the first entity defined in a .map file.

Entity Settings

Key/Value Pairs

A key/value pair is the name given to a single entity parameter; The key is the name of the parameter and the value is what it is set to. For example, a func_door entity has a parameter that sets how fast it moves. The key is named "speed" and it's value can be set by the user to alter the speed of the door. For the purposes of this wiki, we will use the format (key : value) as notation for key/value pairs in text passages. (speed : 100) would mean the speed parameter of the door would be set to 100 units per second.

Note that sometimes the naming of keys is not particularly intuitive, so some editors hide the real key name and show the user something more easily understood. The names used in the wiki are the actual key names used by Quake, and are correct.

Spawnflags

Spawnflags is the name given to a particular key that all entities support and is used to store multiple boolean parameters (flags) in a single key/value pair. The value of spawnflags is a number typically between 0 and 4096 and is calculated by adding the values given to each flag together. The value for any single flag is always a power of two. This is so that when loading a level, Quake can understand from the value of spawnflags which flags were set and which were not.

One of the uses of spawnflags is to tell Quake whether or not to spawn entities into the level on level load. These flags are listed below:

Flag	Common Name
256	Not on Easy
512	Not on Normal
1024	Not on Hard
2048	Not in Deathmatch

Other flags are only valid when used with certain entities, but these four are universal and work with every entity.

Most level editors have a simple visual representation of spawnflags with checkboxes for each flag, so that the user does not need to calculate its value manually.

Entity guide

From Quake Wiki

Contents

Entity Settings

Key/Value Pairs

Spawnflags

Entities