Manually creating .lit files

[drzel]

Hi guys,

I've seen some instructions for automatically creating .lit files which work really well for DM maps, but I'd like to create .lit files for a raft of Team Fortress maps, with red and blue glows depending on team.

Could anyone point me in the right direction as to how to manually create a .lit file for a .bsp.

Thanks!

[mankrip]

:/

Even though your solution was the best one, you weren't fully assertive. It happens.

[Seven]

[...]

I'll let you all know how I go.

Hi drzel,

Great, waiting patiently for your .lit files. Nightfright also said he was working on some maps/episodes several month ago, but I didnt hear anything from him since then...

Best of luck and keep us updated.

[PrimalLove]

To further comment on golden_boys point, I also believe you can use Quark to do this without decompile. Just load the bsp and you should be able to edit those values among other things like textures. Also, Quark now allows realtime rendering of lighting in editor so you can see what it would look like in game.

:/

[drzel]

Stumbled across http://www.quakewiki.net/archives/qe...utorial7.html:

- Open a .BSP file in Quark.
- Click on Open in Map Editor
- In the worldspawn frame, expand Entities
- Find a light entity and double click on it
- Click on the + to add a new variable
- Name the variable _color, then press ENTER
- Enter the RGB values in the new field. Example 255 0 0 for pure bright red
- Close the map editing window. CTRL+Q
- From the remaining window chose File->Save As...
- Close file from Quark
- Run Light.exe just as you usually do with original light.exe
- Run tQER_GLQuake and examin the results
- Run Light.exe -29 on your bsp to convert it to normal BSP for Quark editing
- Edit it some more

I'll let you all know how I go.

[drzel]

So it seems it is not feasible to create a .lit with coloured lighting for an existing .bsp?

I remember a bunch of .lit files being generated six or seven years after 2fort5r.bsp / well6.bsp etc were released. They weren't procedurally generated as they had colour and some added lighting didn't actually come from a map lighting source. The creator of these would've needed the .map files?

[Spike]

the lit depends upon the surfaces in the bsp. a decompiled/recompiled bsp will have different surfaces. the lits will not be compatible with the bsp.
id used threads to light their surfaces (read: the order is non-deterministic). if you don't consider the original lighting offsets, any lit file you generate will basically be randomised junk.
so no, if he actually recompiles the map, the bsp CANNOT be discarded like that.
using -onlyents can be discarded, but then that doesn't actually compile anything, it just replaces the entity lump, which *might* be discardable once the lit file is generated *depending on whether the light util supports relighting or not*.
as seven/mh says, decompiling a q1 bsp really is very much like trying to get the ingrediants back out of a cake. its a good analogy. q1 is not q3.

[golden_boy]

He only needs the .lit file so it doesn't even matter if the BSP leaks or whatever (as long as the compiler allows that.) The BSP can be discarded.

[Seven]

I remember MH comparing 'decompiling a map' one time with 'trying to convert a cake into it's ingredients'

[Spike]

'export bsp' should be 'qbsp foo.map -onlyents && light foo.bsp -relight' (or equivelent). decompiling q1bsps will not get you sane geometry, you don't want to actually compile a decompiled q1bsp. you'll just get junk for your efforts. plus you'd have to vis it again afterwards and that can take some time...

[golden_boy]

the lit file is separate from a bsp, but yeah.

"export bsp" should be "compile map" I'm pretty sure.

[drzel]

so just to confirm, to manually create coloured .lit file from .bsp file:
-decompile map
-open in favourite map program
-add lights
-export bsp
-extract .lit fie from new bsp
-this will work with existing .bsp

does that sound right?

[Zop]

I'm not sure where I found it, but I have one called winbspc.exe. It looks like it came from https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/WinBSPC , the second link.

I also have bsp2map.exe, which is in the link by Primal. I recall I had to get winbspc since bsp2map didn't work for some maps. Even then, it only worked on some, but not all problematic maps.

[PrimalLove]

@r00k

These are what I use. Some are better than others. Also included a converter if you were looking to convert say q2 maps to q1 or similar. Just be aware that decompiling maps will often lead to some errors or and brushes not being solid in game. Make sure you open up the .map file with an editor like Notepad++ and just make sure everything matches typical quake entities and worldspawn. If not these items will not show up in your map or other errors. Also, its a good idea to select all the brushes from the decompiled map and copy and paste them into a new fresh map. Just make sure before you do that all brushes in the .map file are linked to worldspawn before you move them over to a fresh map file.

Download

[R00k]

decompile the bsps, load the maps into trenchbroom (TF maps can't be too complex so you should be fine) and tweak the lights yourself.

Then recompile.

This kind of thing is what a map editor is for.

it's been years since i tried to decompile a map. I used to want to decompile the old id levels for CTF. But after they were released i just modded the GPL version.

Where can i find a valid working map decompiler?