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Mapping tools

From Quake Wiki

Mapping tools are devoted to the various tasks of Quake level development.

Level Editors[edit]

These are CAD-like programs used to construct and populate a level. They include tools to create and modify brushes, apply textures, place and modify entities, and set up simple scripting. Some of these programs have their own proprietary file format for saving levels, but they can all save or export your level to a map file, which is needed by compilers in order to generate a game-ready bsp file.

General Purpose Editors[edit]

Name Supported OS Author Initial release Latest release
BSP (level editor) Windows sort 1996 2/8/2022 (97q6)
CraFTEr In engine (FTEQW) toneddu2000 2017 2017 (alpha)
GTKRadiant
NetRadiant-custom Windows, Linux, Mac OSX Divverent, Spog and Niger 2015 2018
QERadiant
QE5 Windows MMilley 1997 2002 (v5.2.4)
QuakeEd NeXTSTEP id Software 1996 1996 (???)
QuArK Windows Armin Rigo, QuArK team 1996 2013 (6.6.0 beta 6)
Quest DOS, Linux, Windows Chris Carollo, Trey Harrison and Alexander Malmberg 1996 2002 (2.4)
Qoole Windows Pablo Zurita  ???  ??? (99 0.98)
Quiver Mac OS9 Scott Kevill 1997 1999 (1.2)
QuMa Windows Ben Williams / Negative Eddy Software 1996 1998 (1.6)
Standard 3D Linux Mark Skinner 2020 2024 (0.1)
ToeTag Mac OSX Warren Marshall 2008 2008 (2.30)
Thred Windows Jim Lowell 1996 1996 (0.9b)
Tread3D Windows Joe Riedel 1999 2009 (3.0 Alpha 3)
TrenchBroom Linux, Mac OSX, Windows Kristian Duske 2012 2/2021 (2021.1)
Worldcraft Windows Ben Morris / Valve Software 1996 1998 (1.6a)


Terrain Generators[edit]

These programs are specialized to generate terrain-like geometry out of brushes, but have no general-purpose editing capabilities. They generate map files that can then be imported into the general purpose level editors.

Map Converters[edit]

A number of games based on id Software's technology use map files as their level source format, but these files differ in format from game to game. Map converters are used to convert map files from one format to another, so that mappers can use a level editor that does not natively support Quake. Commonly supported game formats include Quake 2, Quake III Arena, and Half-Life.

ericw-tools converts: quake, quake2, valve, bp (brush primitives). Conversions to "quake" or "quake2" format may not be able to match the texture alignment in the source map, other conversions are lossless.

NetRadiant-custom allows copying and pasting (automatic conversion) between all map formats; handling Quake 1, 2, 3 and related games.

Model-to-Map Converters[edit]

These are programs that can be used to convert geometry of another file type, especially files exported by modelling software, into map files.

Unspecified user added a To-Do; unspecified work.

Map Compiling Tools[edit]

Tools to use for map compiling, a process that turns a map file into a bsp file.

QBSP, Light and Vis[edit]

  • Bengt Jardrup's enhanced versions of TxQBSP/TreeQBSP, RVis, Light
  • Ericwa's ericw-tools - Map compile tools for Quake and Hexen 2 based off of Tyrann's quake 1 tools tyrutils. These feature BSP2 support, a variety of detail brushes, and a focus on adding lighting features. Open-source with code available from the projects GitHub along with binaries for Linux, Mac, and windows.
  • Jury-Rigged BJP Tools, modified version of Bengt Jardrup's tools with BSP2 support, details brushes and several other improvements.
  • LadyHavoc's Hmap2
  • Tyrann's TyrUtils - Windows and Mac OS X binaries, plus Linux/Unix supported via source.

Skip Removal[edit]

Skip removal tools are standalone programs that can process a bsp file to remove all surfaces textured with a skip texture, so that those surfaces are not rendered in-game. This is really no longer needed since the most widely used map compilers do this automatically for quite a few years without the need for an external tool.

  • Ericwa's ericw-tools qbsp includes skip surface removal.
  • Tyrann's TyrUtils qbsp includes skip surface removal (since version 0.6)
  • metlslime's newskip

Map Decompilers[edit]

These are programs that can reverse-compile a bsp file back into a map file, with varying results.

  • bsp2map - This program generates a map file by creating brushes for every surface in the level. Large walls are split up into multiple brushes according to bsp polys.
  • winbspc - This program generates a map file by more closely trying to match texture/brush volumes. It has several options for decompiling a bsp file and usually produces far more usuable results than bsp2map.

Other Tools[edit]

Miscellaneous tools.

  • bsp2prt can generate a prt file from a BSP file without needing to rebuild it from scratch using QBSP.
  • bsputil part of ericw-tools, this utility has some useful feature dealing with Quake BSP files. It can run a basic set of tests to check that all internal data structures are self-consistent, can extract textures from a BSP to create a texture WAD, and extract entities to a text file with the .ent file extension.
  • Scrama's MapConverter [ File:MapConverter.zip ] can perform scaling and convert map formats from Half-Life to Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3
  • Quake CLI Tools [1] Quake CLI Tools are a collection of custom GNU style command line tools for working with Quake files.

See Also[edit]