archiveDisenchant.nethttp://disenchant.net/archive/Disenchant.netikiwiki2019-06-10T09:05:53ZTyrQuake v0.62 - Still Tinkeringhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2019/0609/TyrQuake_v0.62_-_Still_Tinkering/2019-06-10T09:05:53Z2019-06-08T14:30:00Z
<p>This one has been a long time coming. Lots of under the hood
changes that have been hanging around unreleased since 2009(!), but
mostly I wanted to make myself sit down and finish off the
video-mode handling for the GL renderer. Every time I've gone to do
this, I've let it get way too complicated and then side-tracked
onto other unrelated things. This was a nice lesson in
self-discipline to just get it done!</p>
<p>TyrQuake v0.62 Changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Model animation/movement interpolation (r_lerpmodels,
r_lerpmove cvars)</li>
<li>SDL video/input/sound target, now default for MacOS instead of
X11.</li>
<li>sndio sound target for OpenBSD (thanks Tony Spets/Jacob
Meuser)</li>
<li>Support for BJP1/2/3 and FITZ(666) network/demo protocols</li>
<li>Support for Darkplaces and RMQ style BSP2/2PSB file
formats</li>
<li>Work around buggy timers on some windows systems/drivers
(thanks MH!)</li>
<li>Removed vid_win dependency on SciTech MGL (thanks MH!)</li>
<li>Netmasks can be used with qwsv's addip/removeip; e.g. "addip
192.168.0.0/24"</li>
<li>Fixed remote screenshots from QWSV</li>
<li>Improved build system including new OSX, Win64, SDL
targets</li>
<li>Lots more code sharing between NQ/QW</li>
<li>Use non-power-of-two OpenGL textures when extension is
available</li>
<li>New cvar "m_freelook" to replace need for manual editing
"+mlook" in config</li>
<li>Improvements to handling of GL textures</li>
<li>Support changing video mode in GLQuake/GLQWCL (finally!)</li>
<li>Ten years (almost) since v0.61!</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> page.</p>
20140909http://disenchant.net/blog/2014/0909/20140909/2014-09-09T06:36:22Z2014-09-08T14:30:00Z
<pre><code>Sep 9 15:54:00 disenchant.net -- MARK --
</code></pre>
<p>I don't really have anything to update on so I thought I would
just put up a quick entry to say "I'm still around". I'm kept busy
working two jobs at the moment and that doesn't leave any time
really for games and the like, but life is good. And I know that
Quake will still be here when things get back to some kind of
normalcy.</p>
TyrUtils v0.15http://disenchant.net/blog/2014/0216/TyrUtils_v0.15/2014-03-27T23:05:40Z2014-02-15T13:30:00Z
<p>Time for a new release. The main updates here are fixes for
-onlyents compiles, properly parsing texture names containing '{'
(for e.g. alpha mask textures) and fixing a bug with minlight
clamping when using coloured lighting.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.15 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>qbsp: Cope with textures names containing '{' or '}' (e.g. for
alpha mask)</li>
<li>qbsp: Increase MAXEDGES limit from 32 to 64</li>
<li>qbsp: Make transparent water the default (same as txqbsp)</li>
<li>qbsp: Improve some clip hull errors with map source line
numbers</li>
<li>qbsp: Ignore func_detail entities on -onlyents compiles</li>
<li>light: Fix bug with minglight clamping with coloured
lighting</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / BSD / Linux / Source).</p>
Destinationhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2013/1119/Destination/2013-11-19T11:23:43Z2013-11-18T13:30:00Z
<p><a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/1119/why_not.jpg"><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/1119/Destination/512x-why_not.jpg" width="512" height="384" alt="Why Not?" class="img" /></a></p>
TyrUtils v0.14http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/1003/TyrUtils_v0.14/2013-10-03T01:53:45Z2013-10-02T14:30:00Z
<p>Qbsp can now parse Quake 2 map format - you still need your
textures in WAD format, but qbsp will automatically strip the
leading path from the texture name and ignore the extra surface
attributes that are not used by Quake. And by popular demand, we
can now output RMQ style BSP2 ("2PSB") format bsp files again with
the -2psb command line.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.14 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>qbsp: Added Quake 2 map compatibility (extra surface attributes
ignored)</li>
<li>qbsp: Add -2psb option to output in RMQ compatible BSP2
format</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.13http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0930/TyrUtils_v0.13/2013-09-30T06:51:53Z2013-09-29T14:30:00Z
<p>TyrUtils v0.13 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Fix handling of func_group/detail entities with no solid
brushes</li>
<li>Fix automatic adding of animated texture frames</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.12http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0929/TyrUtils_v0.12/2013-09-29T07:41:56Z2013-09-28T14:30:00Z
<p>TyrUtils v0.12 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Implement the Darkplaces (LordHavoc) style BSP2 format and use
as default</li>
<li>Still support the RMQ style BSP2 format (but don't create any
new ones)</li>
<li>qbsp: Fix bug causing sky brushes to be non-solid</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.11http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0924/TyrUtils_v0.11/2013-09-25T06:07:30Z2013-09-23T14:30:00Z
<p>TyrUtils v0.11 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support BSP2 format (qbsp requires the "-bsp2" command line
option)</li>
<li>qbsp: Fix animating texture bug when brushes are textured with
alt-animations</li>
<li>qbsp: Fix a crash in tjunc calculations</li>
<li>qbsp: Exit with error if verticies exceed 65535 (BSP29
limit)</li>
<li>qbsp: Add experimental "-forcegoodtree" command line option
(thanks Rebb)</li>
<li>vis: reduce "leaf recursion" error to a warning and continue
processing</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.10http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0425/TyrUtils_v0.10/2013-07-01T02:29:00Z2013-03-24T13:30:00Z
<p>Another quick release to fix a pretty glaring bug in v0.9's vis
util.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.10 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Documentation added for bspinfo and bsputil</li>
<li>Fix vis bug due to missing vertex copy in v0.9 portal clip
changes</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.9http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0424/TyrUtils_v0.9/2013-04-23T23:54:36Z2013-03-23T13:30:00Z
<p>Hot on the heels of v0.8, here is a quick update to fix one very
annoying qbsp bug with pointfiles, making leak hunting next to
impossible.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.9 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>qbsp: fixed bad pointfile generation</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.8http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0423/TyrUtils_v0.8/2013-04-23T00:39:13Z2013-03-22T13:30:00Z
<p>The tools have gotten some wider testing now, revealing a few
bugs in the skip/detail implementation which have now been fixed.
So time to cut another release. Big thanks to than, FifthElephant
and mechtech for helping out with test cases for the bugs they
found.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.8 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>qbsp: fixed surface edge corruption when using skip
surfaces</li>
<li>qbsp: fixed portal generation for transparent water and detail
nodes</li>
<li>qbsp: added "-noskip" option for troubleshooting skip related
problems</li>
<li>light: reduce "no model has face ###" to a warning</li>
<li>vis: fix portal stack corruption in ClipStackWinding</li>
<li>bsputil: added a "--check" option (beta!) to check internal
data consistency</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0423/circa-2002.jpg" width="480" height="300" alt="Never-ending triangles..." class="img" /></p>
TyrUtils v0.7http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0410/TyrUtils_v0.7/2013-04-10T05:37:08Z2013-03-09T13:30:00Z
<p>Things have slowed down a bit now that I have caught up with
most feature requests. The main one still outstanding is 'phong
shading', which I will take a good look at in the not too distant
future. I'm hoping to get a release of TyrQuake out soon too - it's
been nearly 4 years since the last release!</p>
<p>I think the coolest new feature in this release is the bmodel
shadows and self-shadowing.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.7 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Unix man page documentation for the main tools (qbsp, light,
vis)</li>
<li>HTML and text documentation is generated from the man page
sources</li>
<li>qbsp: added support for using WAD3 texture wads used by
Hammer</li>
<li>qbsp: include clip brushes when calculating bmodel bounding
box</li>
<li>qbsp: enable creation of clip-only bmodels</li>
<li>qbsp: recognise and remove *waterskip, *slimeskip and *lavaskip
surfaces</li>
<li>qbsp: added hintskip texture support</li>
<li>qbsp: fixed some bugs parsing empty func_group/func_detail
entities</li>
<li>light: implemented self shadowing and full shadows for brush
models</li>
<li>light: implemented the "-soft" command line option</li>
<li>light: implemented the "-addmin" command line option</li>
<li>light: implemented the "<em>anglescale" (aka "</em>anglesense")
key and cmdline</li>
<li>light: remove support for negative color components (never
worked properly)</li>
<li>light: removed the "-nominlimit" option (now the default
behaviour)</li>
<li>light: removed the "-compress" option (a bad idea from long
ago)</li>
<li>light: make -gate command line affect linear falloff lights as
well</li>
<li>vis: changed the default testlevel to 4</li>
<li>vis: added the '-noambient*' options to disable auto ambient
sounds.</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page as usual
(Win32 / OSX / source).</p>
TyrUtils v0.6http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0307/TyrUtils_v0.6/2013-03-07T23:23:42Z2013-03-06T13:30:00Z
<p>Nothing like keeping the momentum going. I've had loads of fun
this week really digging into the code and adding the most
requested features (and more coming soon!)</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.6 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>qbsp: respect floating point texture rotation and shift in map
files</li>
<li>qbsp: support for Valve's 220 map format used in later
Worldcraft/Hammer</li>
<li>qbsp: support func_group entities used by Radiant and similar
editors</li>
<li>qbsp: surfaces with the skip texture are now removed from the
compiled bsp</li>
<li>qbsp: hint brush support similar to Quake 2 for hand-tweaking
the PVS</li>
<li>qbsp: fixed a problem where leak files were not written for
hull0 or hull1</li>
<li>light: fixed a race condition in multithreaded coloured light
processing</li>
<li>light: fixed bug preventing use of all 4 light styles in a
common case</li>
<li>light: implemented attenutation formulae "delay" 4+5, ala
Bengt's tools</li>
<li>light: removed old bsp30 support</li>
<li>light: lit files now automatically generated when coloured
lights detected</li>
<li>light: implemented 4x4 oversampling with -extra4 command
line</li>
<li>light: implemented the -gate option to help speed processing
(default 0.001)</li>
<li>light: implemented the "_softangle" key for spotlights</li>
<li>light: implemented minlighting for brush models</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page (including
Mac OS X binaries!)</p>
TyrUtils v0.5http://disenchant.net/blog/2013/0225/TyrUtils_v0.5/2013-02-26T02:11:39Z2013-02-24T13:30:00Z
<p>I've been doing some work on my map utils and now that there's a
few features worth using, I thought it must be time to make a
release. Some overdue changes here, but the one I want to get
people to test is the detail brush support. After it took 36 days
for my map to vis on a fairly decent 8-core machine I knew it was
past time that we had something like this for Quake.</p>
<p>I've tried to improve my documentation a bit, so check out the
included text files for the information on how to make use of
it.</p>
<p>TyrUtils v0.5 changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>light and vis both now multithreaded on Unix and Windows
platforms</li>
<li>vis now writes a state file every 5 minutes so it can resume if
needed</li>
<li>qbsp and vis now support a form of detail brushes, similar to
Quake 2. See the included qbsp.txt for further details.</li>
</ul>
<p>Download from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page.</p>
<p>This is also a new website, and in theory it should be possible
to leave comments. Assuming that works, please let me know if you
find any problems and what features that are still missing that
would be most useful to add.</p>
TyrQuake v0.61http://disenchant.net/blog/2009/0705/TyrQuake_v0.61/2009-07-04T14:30:00Z2009-07-04T14:30:00Z
<p>Just putting out another release of <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> since a few minor fixes for various
things have accumulated now. Not much else going on with me right
now - certainly not much in the way of mapping.</p>
TyrQuake low res fixhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2008/0620/TyrQuake_low_res_fix/2008-06-19T14:30:00Z2008-06-19T14:30:00Z
<p>Quick (well, kinda) bugfix release for <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a>. This fixes a crash that can be
triggered by some mods when some of you <em>old skool</em> players
are using the software engine at very low resolutions (and I mean
real low, like 320x200). Ah, takes me back to 1996...</p>
TyrQuake with fixed SOE supporthttp://disenchant.net/blog/2008/0426/TyrQuake_with_fixed_SOE_support/2008-04-25T14:30:00Z2008-04-25T14:30:00Z
<p>Time for a new <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> release
because, well, it's been a while ;). There a couple of bug fixes in
there which people have been asking for which help with the
<a href="http://www.quaddicted.com/soe_full.html">Soul of Evil</a>
and <a href="http://kell.quaddicted.com/convoked.html">Contract
Revoked</a> mods.</p>
New Utils Releasehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0925/New_Utils_Release/2007-09-24T14:30:00Z2007-09-24T14:30:00Z
<p><a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrUtils</a> version 0.4 is up now. This
release was mainly to fix a glaring bug in the light util, which
caused a crash when trying to compile any map with "lit" style
coloured lighting. Also included is a little bit of optimisation
work I've done on qbsp - it can be significantly faster, depending
on the map.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0916/TyrQuake/2007-09-15T14:30:00Z2007-09-15T14:30:00Z
<p>New release of <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0916/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a> (v0.58) is up. This
fixes the MAX_PRSTR problem a number of people reported, along with
a bunch of other minor fixes and code cleanups.</p>
TyrUtils Returnshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0823/TyrUtils_Returns/2007-08-22T14:30:00Z2007-08-22T14:30:00Z
<p>Who would have thought I'd ever get back to another release of
<a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrUtils</a>? Version 0.2 is up there now since
qbsp is now somewhat usable as my main compiler. I thought it's a
good time to cut a release before I get back to some more
optimisations. Currently it's not very fast but at least it can
handle the worst of my maps.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0818/TyrQuake/2007-08-17T14:30:00Z2007-08-17T14:30:00Z
<p>The next <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0818/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a>
(v0.57) release is out. Nothing terribly exciting, just some bug
fixes and basic 64-bit support on Linux. I still have some patches
sitting around for Win64 which I'll probably incorporate
eventually.</p>
<p>Still not much happening on other fronts, though I have recently
taken a positive step to reclaim some of my free time by quitting
World of Warcraft. It was fun while it lasted, but the amount of
dedication required to participate in the higher level raids and
such was just too much for me.</p>
TyrQuake with PPC Supporthttp://disenchant.net/blog/2007/0214/TyrQuake_with_PPC_Support/2007-02-13T13:30:00Z2007-02-13T13:30:00Z
<p>Time to push another <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> (v0.56)
release out the door. This release was primarily for adding support
for Linux on PPC.</p>
Year Endhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/1230/Year_End/2006-12-29T13:30:00Z2006-12-29T13:30:00Z
<p>So another year has passed without me having produced any new
maps - kind of sad really. Anyway, not to dwell on that too much I
have hopes that 2007 will bring some more good things. This has
been a very difficult year for me personally but I'm glad to say a
lot of the issues which were preventing me from spending any time
on my hobbies are behind me now.</p>
<p>Most likely this web site will evolve a bit to become more than
just purely Quake stuff. I'm not sure how much more
<em>Quaking</em> I have in me, but a couple more maps at least, I
think. For Quake mapping to remain interesting I'm probably going
to need to get involved with some work on the map editing tools.
The current editors are getting a bit frustrating to work with.</p>
<p>I don't really know what 2007 is going to hold, but I'm actually
looking forward to finding out.</p>
TyrQuake now on FreeBSDhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0924/TyrQuake_now_on_FreeBSD/2006-09-23T14:30:00Z2006-09-23T14:30:00Z
<p>New version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> (v0.55) is
out. This release includes some patches from the FreeBSD port and
reworking the CD audio drivers. Taking the next step from my
maintenance of individual patch files, the source for TyrQuake and
TyrUtils are now stored in a Git repository. The history going back
to v0.47 (where I started keeping track of my changes) has been
imported just to get things started.</p>
<p>The utils stuff is coming along, but a bit slowly. Thanks to
those who emailed me some encouragment to finish the idbase map.
Sorry to the beta testers who were expecting the next version a
while ago. I can't promise anything other than that I will finish
it eventually.</p>
Qbsp pulledhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0828/Qbsp_pulled/2006-08-27T14:30:00Z2006-08-27T14:30:00Z
<p>It seems I made a mistake and added the wrong version of qbsp to
the utils package, so I've taken it down for now. It might take a
little while for me to find my old changelogs, but I'll try to
upload a fixed version soon.</p>
TyrUtils v0.2http://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0826/TyrUtils_v0.2/2006-08-25T14:30:00Z2006-08-25T14:30:00Z
<p>Good news! Greg Lewis got in contact with me and gave me the
okay to go ahead and use his source code under the GNU GPL. Thanks
Greg! I've now updated the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page with
info about the new packaging. <strike>Version 0.2 is up there
now.</strike></p>
New Utils Packagehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0723/New_Utils_Package/2006-07-22T14:30:00Z2006-07-22T14:30:00Z
<p>Just a quick update. I was going to put up a booth at <a href="http://www.quakeexpo.com">QExpo</a>, but I just don't have the
energy right now. Anyway, just to get this out there, here is
version 0.1 of <a href="http://disenchant.net/archive/files/utils/tyr-utils-0.1-win32.zip">tyr-utils</a> (and <a href="http://disenchant.net/archive/files/utils/tyr-utils-0.1.tar.gz">source</a>). This packages
together my light and vis utils, as well as bspinfo and the
beginnings of a bsputil tool. The version of tyrlite included is
unchanged from version 0.99b, but the version of vis has a few
tricks added to reduce compile times. I'll update the utils page
later to reflect this new packaging. Qbsp will be added later, once
I get a clean GPL version done (the TreeQBSP source isn't GPL
compatible as far as I can tell, and I haven't been able to contact
the author to get it changed).</p>
Perpetualhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0711/Perpetual/2006-07-10T14:30:00Z2006-07-10T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, I thought this might happen - Yes, I have to confess that
I don't think I'm going to have the map ready for QExpo.
Disappointing, but better than spoiling the map by rushing it
through without enough testing and polish. I will have something to
release during the expo though - I've got some updates for vis I'm
going to release, which help make it a bit faster. Hopefully the
map won't be a long way off after that, but I'll stop boring you
with these minor updates until it's actually done now.</p>
SP4 First Betahttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0702/SP4_First_Beta/2006-07-01T14:30:00Z2006-07-01T14:30:00Z
<p>Finally, the first beta of my new map is in the hands of the
testers. Still a little bit of work to do and then a long compile
job (my previous estimate of 48 hours was only off by 14...
<em>days!</em>), but at least it's looking like there's a
<em>reasonable</em> chance I'll actually be able to have it ready
for Quake Expo.</p>
Deadlines Loomhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0613/Deadlines_Loom/2006-06-12T14:30:00Z2006-06-12T14:30:00Z
<p>Finally after a couple more mapping sessions I feel like I've
turned a corner with the map. The end of the excruciating
rock/terrain triangle brushes seem to be in sight, only a little
further to go. It was a big relief to get enough done that I could
seal the map up and compile it again for the first time in over a
month. Good to see that the compiler still isn't a problem. Up to
44k+ clipnodes now, but that's totally unoptimised. Now it's
becoming apparent that the long vis times required (~48 hours I'm
guessing, still waiting...) will be a bit of a problem for testing.
I'll have to hope that a fast vis will be good enough for the
testers, otherwise there could be a bit of a problem making the
QExpo deadline. Fingers crossed.</p>
<p>I've uploaded another update to <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> (v0.54) as well. This includes the
removal of the <code>gl_texsort 0</code> rendering path, which
isn't really an advantage on any cards I know about (and usually a
big disadvantage on slower cards). Like I said with my May update,
this also makes sure the particle rendering looks correct. Other
than that, nothing else really user-visible; just more juggling of
the code internals as usual.</p>
Triangle Jungleshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0611/Triangle_Jungles/2006-06-10T14:30:00Z2006-06-10T14:30:00Z
<p>Gah! I'm in hell. Shit like this is all I've been staring at for
the last three days...</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0611/make-it-stop.jpg" width="512" height="512" alt="Never-ending triangles..." class="img" /></p>
<p>Sometimes it seems like this map is never going to be done.
Still, the QExpo is only a month or so away and that's what I'm
aiming for right now (though I would understand if you were
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20020107161630/http://qexpo.condemned.com/booths/booth.php?n=39">
still a bit skeptical</a>).</p>
Particle Fixeshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0513/Particle_Fixes/2006-05-12T14:30:00Z2006-05-12T14:30:00Z
<p>Uploaded a new version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a>
(v0.53) which fixes the particle depth buffer bug in glquake (used
to make the particles look like triangles when rendered in front of
water textures). The fix was taken from <a href="http://www.celephais.net/fitzquake/">Fitzquake</a> (thanks
Metlslime), which has had this fixed for ages. I thought it was a
lot more complicated than that, so I had been avoiding doing it.
Also for those building from the source package, the build system
has had a fairly major overhaul. Now it's got proper
auto-generation of header dependencies, which makes it a bit nicer
to deal with from a coding point of view.</p>
<p><em>Update:</em> Note that you'll need to make sure you set
<code>gl_texsort 1</code> for the particles to look right. I'll
have to make sure that's the default next time (and probably remove
the option altogether).</p>
Lit Fixeshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0411/Lit_Fixes/2006-04-10T14:30:00Z2006-04-10T14:30:00Z
<p>Uploaded <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">tyrlite</a> <strike>v0.99a</strike>
v0.99b which fixes a silly bug with the memory allocation when
calculating lit file coloured lighting in v0.99. Thanks to <a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">Bengt</a> for picking up on
that.</p>
<p><em>Update:</em> fixed the silly colour data alignment bug in
v0.99a.</p>
Util Updateshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0409/Util_Updates/2006-04-08T14:30:00Z2006-04-08T14:30:00Z
<p>Just some minor updates to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a>
this time:</p>
<ul>
<li>tyr-qbsp: new version fixes a rare problem with surface
subdivision</li>
<li>tyrlite, rvisplus: new versions allocate more bsp data
structures dynamicaly, removing most of the hard coded size
limits</li>
</ul>
<p>I also added a <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">maps in progess</a> section so
you can see what maps I'm currently working on (or not working on,
as the case may be).</p>
More Clipnodeshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0309/More_Clipnodes/2006-03-08T13:30:00Z2006-03-08T13:30:00Z
<p>Ok, I spoke too soon. I couldn't sleep last night and got to
thinking about the clipnode limits. Today I experimented with it a
bit and came up with a patch. So, here's the new version of
<a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> (v0.52). It should be able to
handle a BSP with up to 65520 clipnodes, but so far my test map is
only topping out at around 37k clipnodes.</p>
Clipnodeshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0308/Clipnodes/2006-03-07T13:30:00Z2006-03-07T13:30:00Z
<p>No engine updates this week - I've been busy mapping <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";-)" /></p>
<p>This week I finally came up against the dreaded clipnode limit,
requiring me to add a hack to <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">tyr-qbsp</a> to
properly handle the (short) integer wrap around. Somewhat
disappointingly, this now means that I can't test my map in my own
engine until I make the necessary changes there as well. Luckily,
<a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/">Bengt's</a> engine can
already handle this, so I don't have to stop mapping to fix it up -
I can just use his and fix mine later.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0225/TyrQuake/2006-02-24T13:30:00Z2006-02-24T13:30:00Z
<p>My third weekly update - I haven't been this consistent for a
while... Anyway, another <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0225/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a> update (v0.51) has been
uploaded. There's been a whole lot of changes, but mostly it's just
re-organising the code. I've now completed replacing all the old
command completion code with my new <em>string tree</em> approach.
Probably the only user visible change would be the slightly cleaned
up console printing for command completion. Not sure if/when I'll
get to doing any renderer enhancements - there's still a few more
things I want to finish up with the console first.</p>
Tab Completionhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0218/Tab_Completion/2006-02-17T13:30:00Z2006-02-17T13:30:00Z
<p>Yet another <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">engine</a> update. This one
actually brings together some of the things I've been working on
previously. It's now possible to use tab completion on the console
for looking up map and demo names. e.g.</p>
<pre>
]/map e1<i><TAB><TAB></i>
e1m1 e1m4 e1m7
e1m2 e1m5 e1m8
e1m2ish e1m5duel
e1m3 e1m6
</pre>
<p>The same thing goes for the playdemo and timedemo commands. It
should be relatively easy to add others as I go now, at least for
other file based completions (e.g. exec, play, ...)</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0212/TyrQuake/2006-02-11T13:30:00Z2006-02-11T13:30:00Z
<p>I've uploaded another update to <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0212/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a>.</p>
<p>The most interesting change is the addition of a
<strong>maplist</strong> command. You can type
<strong>maplist</strong> to get a list of all map files in the
current search paths or, type <strong>maplist</strong>
<em>prefix</em> to get a list of all maps starting with
<em>prefix</em>.</p>
<p>Also, the ABI issues with glXGetProcAddress and the problems
with Nvidia's really long gl extension string under linux should
now be fixed.</p>
TyrLitehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2006/0110/TyrLite/2006-01-09T13:30:00Z2006-01-09T13:30:00Z
<p>I've uploaded a minor update to <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a>
which fixes the <em>Not 3 values for ...</em> errors (now only a
warning as it was supposed to be). Lacking time, I've just blindly
made the change and compiled it, so if there's anything wrong with
it <a href="mailto:tyrann@disenchant.net">give me a yell</a>. Also,
I've decided to try and keep my changes to <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> better organised and make the
individual patches available.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2005/1231/TyrQuake/2005-12-30T13:30:00Z2005-12-30T13:30:00Z
<p>I had a few interesting things to work on in the last week, so
I've uploaded a new release of <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2005/1231/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a>. Thanks to Steven for
sending through a bunch of patches (some from <a href="http://uhexen2.sourceforge.net/">uHexenII</a>, some his own work).
Cheers, mate. This version sees a working brightness control (gamma
cvar) in GLQuake, fixed mousewheel and CD volume in Linux and a few
other bits and pieces.</p>
<p>As for the map - It has progressed a fair bit since the last
update, but again, I've had several months where I either didn't
have time to map or I was just too sick of it to get started again.
Anyway, it's still coming... eventually.</p>
Lots of brusheshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0710/Lots_of_brushes/2005-07-09T14:30:00Z2005-07-09T14:30:00Z
<p>Wow, a lot of time passed - again. I had another one of those
periods where it feels like nothing is getting done, despite
working myself to the bone. Anyway, the map is progressing again
over the last two weeks. I think I'm getting a feel now for what
the size and layout of the final map will be. Very big.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0710/sp4-pre7.jpg" width="313" height="241" alt="Lots of brushes... and lots more to go!" class="img" /></p>
TyrLitehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0417/TyrLite/2005-04-16T14:30:00Z2005-04-16T14:30:00Z
<p>I made a bit of an attempt at tidying up some of the glitches
I've been seeing with lighting at the edges of certain shapes of
polygons. It's improved a little bit, but I haven't solved all
cases yet. An updated version of TyrLite is available from the
<a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0417/sp4-pre6.jpg" width="512" height="384" alt="Yet another preview screenshot" class="img" /></p>
Still Mappinghttp://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0328/Still_Mapping/2005-03-27T14:30:00Z2005-03-27T14:30:00Z
<p>I still seem to be finding some time to map, so things are good.
This map keeps getting more complex, but I think I can see the end
in sight now. I think I've got about 80% of the architecture
complete and most of the lighting for what is there too. At my
current pace, it may still be a couple of months before I'm done
though.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0328/sp4-pre5.jpg" width="512" height="384" alt="Preview Screenshot" class="img" /></p>
Renewalhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0203/Renewal/2005-02-02T13:30:00Z2005-02-02T13:30:00Z
<p><strong>New Site</strong> - The name has changed, but not much
else has. You'll find all the familiar stuff here. If you've never
been here before - It's all about <a href="http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/quake/">Quake</a>.</p>
<p><strong>New Engine</strong> - I got some inspiration and
actually implemented something useful in my <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">engine</a>. There's now a cvar
<em><em>gl</em>drawhull</em> which can be set to 0, 1 or 2 (make
sure you set <em>developer 1</em> first). Setting this to 0 draws
the map as normal, but setting it to 1 or 2 will make the engine
draw the collision hulls. It's not really polished yet, so on map
change you'll have to manually flush the old hull data by setting
<em><em>gl</em>drawhull 0</em> again. Oh, and as the cvar name
implies, this is currently only for the glquake variant and not
available in software mode (yet). It's also pretty slow right now
as every poly in the visible hull is drawn every frame (i.e. no
culling).</p>
<p><strong>New Compiler</strong> - <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">Qbsp</a>,
that is. Using the new engine goodies mentioned above, I was able
to make some improvements to my qbsp compiler. It should now
generate much smoother collision hulls for angled brushes,
especially for things like terrain. This comes with a bit of a
speed hit, since more calculations are involved to process the
extra clipping planes and can sometimes result in a higher clipnode
count. However, I made some separate improvements in that area so
the effect is largely cancelled out. For me, that's not the most
exciting thing though. I managed to tweak the precisions used
internally well enough that I can now correctly compile the base
map I started working on back in 2001 (Holy crap! Has it been that
long?). So, yeah, I'm quite persistent.</p>
<p>Oh, this page looks too boring without a screenshot on it. More
later.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2005/0203/wicked-pre2.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Preview Screenshot" class="img" /></p>
Dead Driveshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0926/Dead_Drives/2004-09-25T14:30:00Z2004-09-25T14:30:00Z
<p>What an eventful month. First one of my hard drives died, which
just happens to be the one containing most of my work. Luckily I
had a backup of all my mapping which was only a few weeks old, so I
didn't lose much of that. I just lost a whole lot of time while I
re-configured all the basic services on that PC. What a pain - I
want my RAID back 8).</p>
<p>On top of that, a couple of weeks ago I moved into my new house.
Actually, I'm quite suprised at how easy that was. I feel like I'm
all settled in already.</p>
<p>I've also had another burst of creativity and done some work on
my map for the slow moving project that Tronyn, R.P.G. and myself
are working on. Necros was helping out too, but he seems to have
bowed out. He did kindly leave his unfinished work though, and
Tronyn thinks he can turn it into something nice.</p>
<p>Minor site update - I added information about my Coagula map to
the <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">maps</a> page (including source).</p>
Quick Fixhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0731/Quick_Fix/2004-08-30T14:30:00Z2004-08-30T14:30:00Z
<p>It turns out that I stuffed up that fix I included in the last
<a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a> version. A new version has been
uploaded that works correctly. I also made a small optimisation to
make maps with lots of lightmaps load a little bit faster in
GLQuake. I did that for <a href="http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=20026">Menkalinan</a>,
which is a really cool (and large) map - go play it.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0829/TyrQuake/2004-08-28T14:30:00Z2004-08-28T14:30:00Z
<p>More fixes to <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0829/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a>. This version fixes a
problem with sound that I accidently introduced in the last version
and properly remembers the default vidmode (I broke that a long
time back). Non-standard sized console backgrounds should also now
look correct.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0813/TyrQuake/2004-08-12T14:30:00Z2004-08-12T14:30:00Z
<p>Another version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0813/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a> uploaded - there
shouldn't be any behaviour changes in this one, just some code
re-organisation. I've been playing with the net code a bit, so I
hope I haven't broken anything. Oh, and I changed the version
number scheme to something a bit more sensible. At least it fits
better on the space in the corner of the console now.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0729/TyrQuake/2004-07-28T14:30:00Z2004-07-28T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, I'd be suprised if anyone still checks this page, but I've
uploaded a new version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2004/0729/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a> with a fix for a fairly
obscure crash - thanks to Morfans for describing a way to reproduce
it on <a href="http://www.celephais.net/board">func_msgboard</a>:</p>
<pre><code>"There is indeed a bug in e2m2 whereby if you shoot one button and then
bunnyhop across the gap the trigger inside the door will hang quake
if you are on easy skill..."
</code></pre>
<p>I <em>may</em> end up being around for a little more Quake stuff
now, but the next few weeks will tell. Life is unpredictable.</p>
TyrLitehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2003/1221/TyrLite/2003-12-20T13:30:00Z2003-12-20T13:30:00Z
<p>A new version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> has been
uploaded. Just minor tweaks - raised some limits on texture and
lightmap sizes. Mostly just source cleanups. Actually, <a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">Bengt</a> has been getting ahead
of me a bit with his light util work, so I'll be looking at some of
the stuff he's done for inclusion in future versions.</p>
<p>I actually have some holidays coming up after Christmas, so I
hope to get some time to finish up a few things I was working on
for <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">TyrQuake</a>, getting my (currently very
broken) development environment into a workable state and maybe
even do some mapping (how novel!)</p>
Coagula Contest 2http://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0823/Coagula_Contest_2/2003-08-22T14:30:00Z2003-08-22T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/quakerev030814.html">Coagula
Contest 2</a> pack finally got released, so there's finally a new
map of mine out there for you to play. The folks over at the
<a href="http://www.planetquake.com/sda">Speed Demos Archive</a>
have even started collecting demos of speedruns on the maps. It's
the first time one of my maps has been given the treatment and I
must say, <a href="http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~sda/mkt.pl?level:tyrcoag">it's pretty
cool to watch</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0823/tyrcoag-pre1.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="TyrCoag - Outside In" class="img" /></p>
<p>I had hoped to upload an update to <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> this update, but I've been too busy to
finish it off. I know a couple of people were waiting for this -
sorry, maybe next time.</p>
Quake Expohttp://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0712/Quake_Expo/2003-07-11T14:30:00Z2003-07-11T14:30:00Z
<p><a href="http://www.qexpo.com">QExpo 2003</a> is now on and
there's tons of interesting Quake stuff happening all this week
over at the site, so <a href="http://www.qexpo.com">go and take a
look</a>.</p>
<p>The Coagula contest is nearly over and I've now submitted my
entry and put together a quick start map to tie the pak together.
Watch the <a href="http://www.qexpo.com">QExpo</a> site and
<a href="http://www.qexpo.com/booths.php?id=34">Underworldfan's
booth</a> for the release.</p>
<p>Also, a new version of TyrQuake is available from the <a href="http://disenchant.net/tyrquake/">engine</a> page. This fixes a visual corruption bug
with some larger maps.</p>
TyrQuakehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0607/TyrQuake/2003-06-06T14:30:00Z2003-06-06T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, the <a href="http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=221">Coagula
contest</a> deadline got moved forward to co-incide with the
upcoming <a href="http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=3358">Quake
Expo</a>, so you won't see my finished map until then. I'm not sure
how the project with Tronyn and Necros will go - there's still a
lot to organise for that. I'm skeptical of whether it will get done
in time.</p>
<p>Since I already let a couple of others know about it, I suppose
it's ready enough for general release - <a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0607/TyrQuake/">TyrQuake</a>. It's my modified quake
engine I've been toying with for a while. There's nothing terribly
exciting really, the changes are all quite minimal. It's mostly an
exercise to practise my coding and fix a few bugs as I find them.
There's a new link up the top of the page for the engine that will
be there from now on.</p>
<p>I decided to release the source files to my previous maps, so
you can now find them at the bottom of the <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">maps</a> page. Enjoy.</p>
Coagulahttp://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0310/Coagula/2003-03-09T13:30:00Z2003-03-09T13:30:00Z
<p>Over on <span><a href="http://www.qmap.org">QMap</a></span> <a href="http://www.celephais.net/board">func_msgboard</a> someone started
another <a href="http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=221">Coagula
contest</a>. The idea is to make a map that is floating in the
void, in the style of <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/tertiary">Elek's</a> Coagula series.
Here's a couple of screenshots from my forthcoming entry:</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0310/coag-pre1.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="Coagula Map - preview screenshot 1" class="img" />
<img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0310/coag-pre2.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="Coagula Map - preview screenshot 2" class="img" /></p>
<p>The angle on these shots doesn't show too much, because there's
a bunch of unfinished brushwork just above. r_speeds are likely to
be quite high (> 1000 in a few places). Working with the old
e1m5 textures is fun though 8).</p>
<p>Little else happening right now... too much work.</p>
A Picture is worth 1000 wordshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0201/A_Picture_is_worth_1000_words/2003-01-31T13:30:00Z2003-01-31T13:30:00Z
<p>Here's a screenshot of something that I've been working on. It's
got a long way to go before it's complete, but what's there I'm
pretty happy with.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2003/0201/wicked-pre1.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="Something wicked this way comes... - preview screenshot" class="img" /></p>
<p>There's been another move for QMap - this time to a new
replacement coded by <a href="http://celephais.net">Metlslime</a> -
"<a href="http://www.celephais.net/board">func_msgboard</a>. I
think that's the last move we'll need for a while, though I'm not
sure what's going to happen when <a href="http://www.peej.co.uk">Peej</a> returns...</p>
<p>Other than that, I've been having lots of fun playing with my
new laptop that I got about a month ago - it's very compact and
light (~1.1kg) and thus very easy for me to carry around. And it
can even play GLQuake decently too; my other (heavy) laptop
can't.</p>
Marching Onhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/1122/Marching_On/2002-11-21T13:30:00Z2002-11-21T13:30:00Z
<p>Just a few little bits worth mentioning this month. Some talk
has begun around another Quake Expo in 2003 - follow the discussion
<a href="http://forums.inside3d.com/wwwthreads.pl?action=list&Board=QExpo">
here</a> if you're interested in contributing. The medieval project
I mentioned previously will probably get released as a part of this
- yes, we're all taking it really slow and not pressuring ourselves
too much.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.qmap.org">Qmap</a> died - in case you missed
the transition, we've all moved <a href="http://qmap.peej.co.uk">here</a> for now since Peej is away on
holidays and there's nobody to reload the old database. The new
site isn't quite complete, but most things work, so it's a good
alternative for now.</p>
<p>And finally, <a href="http://www.supermariosunshine.com">Super
Mario Sunshine</a> is proving to be great fun!</p>
Oops!http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/1027/Oops__33__/2002-10-26T14:30:00Z2002-10-26T14:30:00Z
<p>Looks like I messed up in the qbsp version I last uploaded.
There was a minor error in brush.cc which caused it to detect
non-convex faces where there were in fact none. Fixed version is
now uploaded as v1.76-tyr3, available on the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page.</p>
Loose Endshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/1019/Loose_Ends/2002-10-18T14:30:00Z2002-10-18T14:30:00Z
<p>It's been brought to my attention that the last copy of TyrLite
I uploaded was compiled using i686 instructions so it was unusable
on any processors earlier than PII/Celerons. I've uploaded a
recompiled version now that should work on pretty much any
processor >= i386. I also uploaded the last version of TreeQbsp
that I worked on, since work on that has stopped for now.</p>
<p>Two months since the last update and that's all that's happened?
That sucks. Actually, I have started work on some medieval stuff
for a joint project that <a href="http://tronyn.planetquake.gamespy.com">Tronyn</a>, <a href="http://necros.planetquake.gamespy.com">Necros</a> and I are
thinking about; but nothing's guaranteed to come from that yet.</p>
Transitionshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0818/Transitions/2002-08-17T14:30:00Z2002-08-17T14:30:00Z
<p>Ah, it's been a pretty hectic month with lots of (real life)
changes. The biggest change is that now I am working full time,
which is taking a little getting used to. It takes a while to get
used to having to go to bed by midnight each night, since I'd
gotten quite used to staying up till 3am most nights of the week. I
could make it through when only working two or three days, but not
five in a row on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I've been playing a couple of games too. I picked up a copy of
GTA III for my PC and had loads of fun playing that. Lots of varied
and interesting missions and a wonderfully free and interactive
playing environment. Also picked up a copy of Morrowind which was
quite nice. Miles of beatiful landscape, some really nice
architecture in places and a storyline with enormous scope and
freedom. I might take a look at the mapping tools included
sometime, but I suspect it's mostly a bit of landscaping and
placing prefabs to suit.</p>
<p>Almost no Quake stuff happening right now, since I usually feel
completely drained of energy by the time I get home from work. I
have done a small amount of work on my engine, but still nothing
too exciting there yet. Somebody is going to scream at me, but I've
decided to scrap the idbase map I'd been working on for a while and
start again. I will be reusing parts of what I've done, but I'll be
very careful about doing stuff to confuse the compiler this time
=). Hmmm, yes I still haven't fixed qbsp =(.</p>
Dark Ritual Releasedhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0706/Dark_Ritual_Released/2002-07-05T14:30:00Z2002-07-05T14:30:00Z
<p>Alright, I finally got it done. That texture work was a real
pain but once I got the last part done, everything just clicked.
Some last minute changes to the item placement seem to have
improved the gameplay a bit too, so altogether I'm quite happy.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0706/ritual-pre3.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="Dark Ritual - screenshot" class="img" /></p>
<p>For those who don't know yet, it's a deathmatch map for Quake.
Best suits around 2-8 players. Get yourself a copy from <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">here</a>. Now, where did I put that single player
map...</p>
*Cough*http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0704/__42__Cough__42__/2002-07-03T14:30:00Z2002-07-03T14:30:00Z
<p>Due to an extremely busy week at work followed by a bout of the
flu, the map isn't done yet.</p>
<p>I need to modify some of the textures a bit to give it that
finishing touch that it needs. I suck very badly at this, so it's
very time consuming trying to get it right. I should have most of
this weekend free to work on it so just maybe... soon.</p>
Leak Lineshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0619/Leak_Lines/2002-06-18T14:30:00Z2002-06-18T14:30:00Z
<p>Recently I've been doing some more hacking on TreeQBSP with
<a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">Bengt</a>, trying to sort
out the problems with the leak line simplification. We ended up
coming up with an effective fix and also made the simplification
process a lot quicker. The changes should show up in version 1.75
which will find <a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">here</a>
sometime soon.</p>
<p>I've also continued working on my experimental TreeQBSP, trying
to fix the bad leak and clip hull problems I've had with other
maps. Still no huge successes yet, but I've decided to try and
upload my changes to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page
periodically. Keep in mind that this compiler will usually be less
reliable than the standard version. It's just for the
curious...</p>
<p>Beta testers for <strong>Dark Ritual</strong> have been very
quiet, so I assume they're all busy or just forgetful. I'll
probably just finish up this weekend without any more feedback.</p>
Beta Testinghttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0601/Beta_Testing/2002-05-31T14:30:00Z2002-05-31T14:30:00Z
<p><strong>Dark Ritual</strong> is into the beta testing phase and
all is looking good. I managed to get five volunteers to test and
they should all have the map in their hands now. Depending on what
they find, it should be ready to release within the next two weeks
or so.</p>
<p><a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">Bengt</a> has been
doing some interesting things with qbsp recently, so mappers should
keep an eye on his <a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">homepage</a>. He's currently
working on some stuff to help tracking down leaks in hulls 1 &
2 which will help with those more troublesome maps (<em>cough
cough</em>).</p>
Distractionshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0520/Distractions/2002-05-19T14:30:00Z2002-05-19T14:30:00Z
<p>I've had some pleasant distractions this week. On Thursday night
I got my <a href="http://www.nintendo.com/systems/gcn/gcn_overview.jsp">GameCube</a>
and have been playing it a lot since then. Then on Friday my friend
loaned me <a href="http://www.dungeonsiege.com/">Dungeon Siege</a>.
I'm not normally an RPG fan, but I'm finding this one quite
addictive.</p>
<p>I'm anticipating a fairly hectic week at work this coming week,
but I hope that by next weekend I'll have <strong>Dark
Ritual</strong> ready for some outside testers.</p>
Dark Ritualhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0512/Dark_Ritual/2002-05-11T14:30:00Z2002-05-11T14:30:00Z
<p>I've gotten some more work done on my deathmatch map this
weekend and it's getting close to beta stage. It's structurally
complete but there's still a bit of work to do on some of the
texturing and lighting. I've decided to call it <strong>Dark
Ritual</strong> due to the subdued lighting and dominant blue
colour. Here's a couple of screenshots to whet your appetite:</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0512/ritual-pre1.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="Dark Ritual - preview screenshot 1" class="img" />
<img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0512/ritual-pre2.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="Dark Ritual - preview screenshot 2" class="img" /></p>
TyrLite 0.94http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0507/TyrLite_0.94/2002-05-06T14:30:00Z2002-05-06T14:30:00Z
<p>Ok, another update to TyrLite is now available. This release
fixes a problem that light compilers have had with QuArK maps from
the beginning of time. Lightmaps weren't correctly generated for
surfaces using QuArK's extended texture placement. Check the
<a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page for download details.</p>
<p>What else have I been up to? There's a new DM map coming soon
based on some stuff I scrapped a few months back. I want this one
to top <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">Aggressor</a> for intensity and depth of
play and it's looking good so far. It's a little bit bigger,
beautifully connected and very vertical. Might be finished in a
couple more weeks depending on RL stuff.</p>
New site designhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0314/New_site_design/2002-03-28T13:30:00Z2002-03-28T13:30:00Z
<p>I finally got a chance to finish my new design and upload the
pages. Still no news archives, but they'll be available soon for
what it's worth. I've only tested with Mozilla (0.9.8 and 0.9.9)
and Internet Explorer (5.0 and 6) so let me know if you see
something that doesn't look right.</p>
Not the panacea I had hoped...http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0314/Not_the_panacea_I_had_hoped.../2002-03-13T13:30:00Z2002-03-13T13:30:00Z
<p>Well, it turns out that the QBSP fix isn't quite so good as I
hoped. Bengt ran it on about 30 test maps with varying results. I
do believe that the fix is thoeretically good, but it probably
suffers from the same roundoff problems as any other part of the
program. I'm going to provide a download for the program on my
<a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page anyway since it does seem to
work better in some cases, just not for every map.</p>
A better QBSP (soon)http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0312/A_better_QBSP___40__soon__41__/2002-03-11T13:30:00Z2002-03-11T13:30:00Z
<p>After not even thinking about the QBSP problem for several
weeks, I got the urge to try again. This time I had a little more
luck. <a href="http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k">Bengt</a> has been
working on some modified tools for a little while and I decided to
check out his version of TreeBSP (treeqbspbjp), which uses double
precision floats (more accurate). The extra precision solved some
of the problems, but not quite all.</p>
<p>So, with a little more poking around I found a problem with the
code that generates the clip hulls (used for collision checking)
which has been in the tools even since id's original version. Now,
you know how anytime you try to get creative with your brushes,
almost always you end up with places where the scenery goes
non-solid? Well, I think I've got it fixed. Damn, I feel proud.</p>
<p>I've sent off the changes to Bengt and I'm just waiting for him
to get back to me. At this stage it's not really worth me releasing
my own Qbsp since Bengt's been working on his for a while, so I'll
let him take care of releasing an updated version. Of course if he
decides not to for some reason then I'll upload something
myself.</p>
<p>Oh, and yes, this means I'm going to start working on my new map
again. =)</p>
Checking inhttp://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0219/Checking_in/2002-02-18T13:30:00Z2002-02-18T13:30:00Z
<p>Not much mapping been going on as of late, but I've been
spending a bit of time going through the Quake engine source. So
far it's been pretty slow while I learn my way around and clean
things up, but I've managed to fix a few things here and there.
Nothing ground breaking, but it's fun to do. I'll probably upload
what I've done once I feel it's sufficiently cleaned up. It'll just
be like regular quake for now, but hopefully with less bugs. After
that, I have a few ideas of where I want it to go, but time will
tell...</p>
<p>One recent annoucement that I found interesting is that
Mindcrime has decided to <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/nehahra">start another game/mod</a>
based on the Quake engine. This time there's no uni or <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> taking up my time,
so I'll probably be talking to him when he starts looking for
mappers.</p>
TyrLite v0.92http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0113/TyrLite_v0.92/2002-01-12T13:30:00Z2002-01-12T13:30:00Z
<p>Another update to TyrLite, this time a new feature: .lit
support. For those who don't know, this is another way of saving
the colored light information for your maps. Instead of putting the
information into the bsp, it is kept in another file with the
extension ".lit". This format is supported a number of the
available modified engines, e.g. <a href="http://tomaz.quakesrc.org">TomazQuake</a>.</p>
TyrLite v0.91http://disenchant.net/blog/2002/0105/TyrLite_v0.91/2002-01-04T13:30:00Z2002-01-04T13:30:00Z
<p>Thanks to a couple of the regulars on <a href="http://www.qmap.org">QMap</a>, a rather large bug has been found
and fixed in <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a>. It affects any map
compiled with "-nominlimit". It would cause all the lights cast to
be double brightness. That's the only real change, so don't bother
updating if you don't use "-nominlimit".</p>
<p>As for the qbsp stuff... well, don't ask. I'm leaving it alone
for a while because it was getting on my nerves and I was having no
fun. The map you've seen in my screenshots previously will still
get finished eventually, but I'm probably going to start another
one first because that one has gotten quite stale in my head. I
need to come back to it later with a fresh prespective.</p>
Thankshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2001/1019/Thanks/2001-10-18T14:30:00Z2001-10-18T14:30:00Z
<p>I just wanted to say thanks to all the folks who mailed me and
offered advice about different things I could try. Some people
pointed out that I hadn't tried TXQbsp, which comes with quark, but
unfortuanely that doesn't quite work either (problems seem the same
as those with WQbsp). Right now I'm having a look at the Qbsp
source myself to see if there's anything I can do there. Time will
tell...</p>
QBSP still biteshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2001/1007/QBSP_still_bites/2001-10-06T14:30:00Z2001-10-06T14:30:00Z
<p>Not much to report... since I took a whole month away from the
editor. I took another stab at getting something done last night -
no luck =(. I'm sure I will finish the map eventually, but it's
going to be a fight all the way. If anyone wants to volunteer and
apply some numerical analysis skills to the algorithms in qbsp
(which I think must have some serious problems), then please do and
let me know.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2001/1007/sp4-pre4.jpg" width="400" height="270" alt="Single Player Mappage (With fatal errors...)" class="img" /></p>
<pre>
TreeQBSP v1.62 by Greg Lewis. Source supplied by John Carmack.
Input file: sp4_78e.map
Output file: sp4_78e.bsp
---- LoadMapFile ----
*** WARNING 06: No info_player_deathmatch entities in level
23806 faces
3936 brushes
252 entities
85 unique texnames
1477 texinfo
Processing hull 0...
---- Brush_LoadEntity ----
3894 brushes
---- CSGFaces ----
23555 brushfaces
64454 csgfaces
16494 mergedfaces
---- SolidBSP ----
24036 split nodes
9957 solid leafs
13430 empty leafs
650 water leafs
44817 leaffaces
40978 nodefaces
---- Portalize ----
*** WARNING 12: New portal was clipped away in CutNodePortals_r
14080 vis leafs
43406 vis portals
---- FillOutside ----
5728 outleafs
---- MergeAll ----
11007 mergefaces
---- SolidBSP ----
7519 split nodes
3777 solid leafs
3511 empty leafs
232 water leafs
18743 leaffaces
15241 nodefaces
---- Portalize ----
3743 vis leafs
12042 vis portals
---- MakeFaceEdges ----
---- GrowRegions ----
Processing hull 1...
Processing hull 2...
*** WARNING 08: Point (-2976.000 384.000 -1024.005) off plane by -0.1289
*** WARNING 08: Point (-3024.000 304.000 -1023.992) off plane by -0.1021
*** WARNING 08: Point (-3024.000 240.000 -1023.981) off plane by -0.0806
*** WARNING 08: Point (-2960.000 240.000 -1023.981) off plane by -0.0806
*** WARNING 08: Point (-2912.000 288.000 -1023.989) off plane by -0.0967
*** WARNING 08: Point (-2912.000 378.576 -1024.004) off plane by -0.1270
*** WARNING 08: Point (-2925.068 384.000 -1024.005) off plane by -0.1289
*** WARNING 10: Reached occupant at (-1696 1216 -1080), no filling performed.
Leak file written to sp4_78e.pts
---- WriteBSPFile ----
4909 planes 98180
18581 vertexes 222972
7662 nodes 183888
1477 texinfo 59080
15411 faces 308220
27093 clipnodes 216744
3874 leafs 108472
18913 marksurfaces 37826
61041 surfedges 244164
40042 edges 160168
85 textures 831644
lightdata 0
visdata 0
entdata 19204
390.580 seconds elapsed
Bytes used: 35761135
</pre>
No Titlehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2001/0804/No_Title/2001-08-03T14:30:00Z2001-08-03T14:30:00Z
<p>Ok, this map is really driving me nuts...</p>
<pre>
TreeQBSP v1.62 by Greg Lewis. Source supplied by John Carmack.
Input file: sp4_76a.map
Output file: sp4_76a.bsp
---- LoadMapFile ----
*** WARNING 06: No info_player_deathmatch entities in level
23769 faces
3930 brushes
252 entities
85 unique texnames
1477 texinfo
Processing hull 0...
---- Brush_LoadEntity ----
3888 brushes
---- CSGFaces ----
23518 brushfaces
57053 csgfaces
16698 mergedfaces
---- SolidBSP ----
24528 split nodes
10180 solid leafs
13652 empty leafs
697 water leafs
45349 leaffaces
41553 nodefaces
---- Portalize ----
14349 vis leafs
44164 vis portals
---- FillOutside ----
5795 outleafs
---- MergeAll ----
11318 mergefaces
---- SolidBSP ----
7596 split nodes
3792 solid leafs
3559 empty leafs
246 water leafs
19069 leaffaces
15509 nodefaces
---- Portalize ----
3805 vis leafs
12229 vis portals
---- MakeFaceEdges ----
---- GrowRegions ----
Processing hull 1...
Processing hull 2...
*** WARNING 10: Reached occupant at (-192 928 -384), no filling performed.
Leak file written to sp4_76a.pts
---- WriteBSPFile ----
5200 planes 104000
18853 vertexes 226236
7739 nodes 185736
1477 texinfo 59080
15679 faces 313580
31630 clipnodes 253040
3936 leafs 110208
19239 marksurfaces 38478
62010 surfedges 248040
40784 edges 163136
85 textures 831644
lightdata 0
visdata 0
entdata 19204
411.510 seconds elapsed
Bytes used: 41331559
</pre>
Operation: Urth Majik Released!http://disenchant.net/blog/2001/0727/Operation:_Urth_Majik_Released__33__/2001-07-26T14:30:00Z2001-07-26T14:30:00Z
<p>I think the title up there says it all, Operation: Urth Majik
has been <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">released</a>!</p>
<p>Operation: Urth Majik is a new single player episode for Quake.
It's the creation of <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fat
Controller</a>, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/tronyn">Tronyn</a>, Apollo and myself.
Check out the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">home
page</a> for more details and a download.</p>
<p>I had planned to release my new single player map today, but (as
usual) things went amiss right at the end. QBSP insisted on spewing
out silly inconsistant errors at random stages of the compile
process. After much trial and error I discovered the section of the
map that was causing the problem, but the only way to fix it seemed
to be to redo the whole section from scratch! So that's what I did,
and now the compiler has settled down again. Now I've got to redo
the lighting and fix all the entity placements before it'll be
ready. I reckon a couple of days should do it. Early next week I
should be done I think.</p>
<p>It's been an interesting month, lots of stuff happening, largely
thanks to the <a href="http://qexpo.condemned.com">Quake Expo</a>
being on. Make sure you pay the site a visit and have a browse
through the <a href="http://qexpo.condemned.com/boothindex.php">booths</a> because
there's loads of stuff worth checking out. My booth is right
<a href="http://qexpo.condemned.com/booths/booth.php?n=39">here</a>.</p>
Bits 'n' pieces...http://disenchant.net/blog/2001/0604/Bits___39__n__39___pieces.../2001-06-03T14:30:00Z2001-06-03T14:30:00Z
<p>After far too long, I've released a minor update to <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> which fixes a problem people were having
using the color key in entities other than lights. Specifically,
the program would exit if you didn't have three values in your
color field. Some custom entities such as the popular force-field
code use a single color value, so I have reduced this to a warning.
Don't bother updating unless you are affected by this.</p>
<p>Last month, to go along with the screenshot I released here, I
uploaded a set of three screenshots to <a href="http://pipeline.telefragged.com">Pipeline</a>. Pipeline is a new
site where map authors can upload screenshots of their work in
progress so that interested Quakers can check out "What's in the
pipeline...". I was holding off posting the info here while the
site got some testing, but it looks pretty stable now so <a href="http://pipeline.telefragged.com">go check it out</a>! You can get
directly to my screenshots <a href="http://pipeline.telefragged.com/shots/15_l1.jpg">here</a>,
<a href="http://pipeline.telefragged.com/shots/15_l2.jpg">here</a>
and <a href="http://pipeline.telefragged.com/shots/15_l3.jpg">here</a>.</p>
Quiet timeshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2001/0504/Quiet_times/2001-05-03T14:30:00Z2001-05-03T14:30:00Z
<p>First of all, this is something I've got in the works...</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2001/0504/sp4-pre1.jpg" width="640" height="480" alt="More Single Player Mappage" class="img" /></p>
<p>Also, something called "QExpo" is happening in the week (and a
bit) from July 20th - 29th. The idea is to revive a bit more
interest in the good old Quake. <a href="http://forums.inside3d.com/showflat.pl?Board=Inside3D&Number=3470&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5">
here</a> is a description of the original idea, and over <a href="http://forums.inside3d.com/wwwthreads.pl?action=list&Board=QExpo">
here</a> is a discussion board where most of this is being
organised.</p>
<p>Shambler has decided to run a mapping contest to see who can
make the best "natural terrain" based map. Basically you have to
make a map which is at least 75 percent natural terrain as opposed
to man-made structures. Check the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">TeamShambler</a> news
page for more details (look for news posted on Tuesday, May
1st).</p>
OUM Looms...http://disenchant.net/blog/2001/0226/OUM_Looms.../2001-02-25T13:30:00Z2001-02-25T13:30:00Z
<p>So what's happening?</p>
<p>Well, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> is
on the final stretch. No really, I mean it this time... Tronyn,
Fatty and myself all agreed to aim for a release by the end of
February, which it looks like we're going to miss, but it did cause
us to stir things up quite a bit. There's only a few little bits
that need finishing now. The first three maps as well as the
penultimate map and the finale are all done, barring a couple of
tweaks here and there. Speedy is supposed to be sending a beta of
the forth map any second now, and that will complete the set. Five
full maps, plus a smaller start and finish map. Not too bad.</p>
<p>As to other matters, they haven't really progressed since all my
mapping time is focused on OUM right now (and so it should be!). I
haven't invesigated any further the skip bugs which I mentioned in
my December update. DM map nuber six is still sitting on my
harddrive awaiting some lighting and other bits of polish. It
should see the light of day pretty soon after we get OUM done.</p>
<p>And if you haven't seen it already, check out the footage of
Carmack's next engine running on the GeForce3. If you just saw the
screenshots, then you haven't seen anything. The real impressive
stuff is when you see it all moving. It's got some bloody amazing
dynamic lighting - just check it out. Mappers will be impressed!
Click <a href="http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?section=645&file=56348">here</a>
for the zipped ASF file (~13MB) or click <a href="ftp://ftp.zdnet.com/gs/action/doom3/doom3_pc_1.mpg">here</a>* for
a higher quality MPG version (~25MB).</p>
<p>* Hmm, that second link seems unresponsive as I type this, but
I'll leave it there in the hope that it'll start working again.</p>
D'oh!http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/1230/D__39__oh__33__/2000-12-29T13:30:00Z2000-12-29T13:30:00Z
<p>Just a quick update this time. I thought I should mention that I
have found some unexplained visual errors in parts of my map due to
the use of my skip program (from the below update). What happens is
that certain polygons disappear when you stand in a particular
place in the map, facing a particular direction. Almost like an
error in the visdata except that it happens without the help of
vis.</p>
<p>So if you are going to use it on a map you plan to release, make
sure you are pretty thorough in checking it before you put it out
the door. I'll let you know if I come up with a fix...</p>
Seasons greetings (or something like that...)http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/1227/Seasons_greetings___40__or_something_like_that...__41__/2000-12-26T13:30:00Z2000-12-26T13:30:00Z
<p>Work on dm map number six is coming along nicely. Very nicely.
Yes, I think you're going to like it. I just need to force myself
to stop playing against those pesky omicron bots long enough to get
some lighting done and fix up a few rough edges. There's plenty of
FFA action to be had in here and it happens to play quite nicely as
a 1-on-1 map. This was the one I planned as FFA only by the way. My
other DM map has fallen behind a bit since this one started going
so well.</p>
<p>I hit a bit of a snag with <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/tronyn">Tronyn's</a> <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> map which I'm just
finishing up now. We had some trouble with an actor jumping off a
boat when he was supposed to ride along, but <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fatty</a> seems to have gotten
that sorted now. God knows how this project is going to feel when
we put it all together, but I guarantee* that there's some fun to
be had in there <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";-)" /></p>
<p>In the process of working my DM map, I got rather annoyed at the
number of wasted polygons in some of the scenes which were obscured
by brush based entities, yet still getting drawn (and adding to the
r_speeds). So I spent some time going through the Quake engine
source learning how it works out what to draw, and come up with an
idea. I wrote a small program that goes through a compiled BSP and
takes any faces with a texture named "SKIP" and removes them. It
seems to work fairly well from the tests I have done. You can try
out a preliminary version of the program <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/tyrann/files/skippy-0.0.zip">here</a>
if you are adventurous (very minimal instructions). I will post
another version with some decent instructions and source code soon
(probably next update). If you do try the program, <a href="mailto:tyrann@planetquake.com">let me know</a> how it works for
you.</p>
<p>One more little thing, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/tronyn">Tronyn</a> asked me if he could
use the tree prefab from Moonlight Assault in one of his projects,
so I decided that I may as well put it up here and anyone else can
use it too. You can download the (tiny) map file <a href="http://disenchant.net/archive/files/moontree.zip">here</a>.</p>
<p>And the results are in... I passed my exams! Actually everything
happened really fast and I had my graduation on the 21st of
December and it all went great. So I'm not the proud owner of a
piece of paper that should open a few doors, jobwise (...and if
"jobwise" isn't a word, then it should be).</p>
<p>Later,<br />
Tyrann - BSc Maths/Comp Sci</p>
<p>* Guarantees may not be honored.</p>
Holidays! (and a tense waiting period...)http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/1129/Holidays__33_____40__and_a_tense_waiting_period...__41__/2000-11-28T13:30:00Z2000-11-28T13:30:00Z
<p>Hi again. Well, my exams are over and now begins the waiting
game... waiting for those results to be posted. As long as I've
passed this lot (and I pretty confident I will), then I'm done with
uni for a while. That's it, I'll have my degree and then it's off
to find some kind of job out there... It's a bit scary
actually.</p>
<p>But you don't care about that, you want to hear about Quake
stuff right? Well there's quite a bit happening behind the scenes
here, but there's not too much I can show you right now. I've been
working on those two new DM maps that I mentioned last update and
there both coming along pretty well.</p>
<p>One will be focused on FFA play for about 4-8 players, while the
other is meant for duels. I'm trying to get a bit of a slower
playing duel map for more tactical battles. Both Elbow and EDC were
really very small which lead to short but intense battles. I'm
trying for something a little different here.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a>. What can
I say, progress is being made. "Shut up and show me the PAK" I hear
you say. Well, call me optimistic, but I plan on seeing OUM out by
christmas. I can't guarantee it on my own, but I'll be doing
everything I can to make my little self imposed deadline
(especially now that I've stated it publicly).</p>
<p>To diverge away from things Quake for another minute here, I've
also been doing some more programming lately. I've been messing
around with a few things in Linux, in particular, using Gtk. Having
never done any GUI programming before it's pretty interesting
changing to an event driven programming model. Not nearly as hard
as people had me beleiving it would be though. Nothing too exciting
yet, but most big things need to start out small...</p>
<p>And just quickly jumping back on topic again (I'm all over the
place today, aren't I?) I've updated my links page. I can't believe
how badly out of date it was. It still doesn't have too much on it,
but it does show you some of the sites that I visit and recommend.
The authors section is looking particulaly dated, but at least I
fixed up all the broken/dead links.</p>
What's happening?http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/1007/What__39__s_happening__63__/2000-10-06T14:30:00Z2000-10-06T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, it's been bloody ages since I've updated, so I thought I'd
let people know what I've been up to and what I'm doing at the
moment.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a lot of my time has been spent away from the
editor, getting on with uni projects an other commitments. I can
now say that my map for <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> is complete, at
least until we place all the maps together. It may need some
tweaking to get the balance right when flowing from the previous
map, to mine and to the next. Right now I'm doing some work fixing
up <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/tronyn">Tronyn's</a> map
since he was feeling a bit stuck on it. Since he's already done so
much work on it, it's taking me a while to learn how it all fits
together, but Tronyn is helping me with that.</p>
<p>Right now I also have two deathmatch maps partially completed
from which you may see a screenshot or two soon. I probably won't
have time to finish and release either these maps before my exams,
so it might be up to two months before they see a release.</p>
TyrLite goes GPL!http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0721/TyrLite_goes_GPL__33__/2000-07-20T14:30:00Z2000-07-20T14:30:00Z
<p>Well I did promise to release the source to TyrLite eventually,
so now I have. Since <a href="http://www.idsoftware.com">id</a>
re-released their tools under the <a href="http://www.gnu.org">GNU</a> GPL, I have used the GPL as well.</p>
<p>Now, before I let you at it I must say: don't expect it to be
too pretty.</p>
<p>Besides me not having written any other C programs, I coded this
thing to serve my mapping needs, not to make a beautiful program. I
think that my changes are pretty self explanitory but they may not
appear that way to someone else. I am happy to answer questions
about the way the code works if anyone cares to ask. I am also
happy to take advice from coders who want to share their wisdom
with me. Becoming a better coder is something that I do want to do,
but usually takes second place to my mapping. Enough rambling from
me, go the the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page and grab it.</p>
OUM progresshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0711/OUM_progress/2000-07-10T14:30:00Z2000-07-10T14:30:00Z
<p>Ah, it's been a good couple of weeks. I've had plenty of time to
spend mapping and I've gotten a lot done. In fact my OUM map has
reached a beta stage and a copy is in the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fat Controller's</a> hands right
now. He's updated the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM Project Page</a> with a
few screenshots. So <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum/screens.htm">go there</a> and
check it out.</p>
<p>Oh, and while I'm here I may as well mention that if you haven't
stopped by <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">TeamShambler Quake Level
Reviews</a> in the last week or so, you really should do so.
There's been <em>5</em> new maps reviewed, each well worth checking
out (and we expect no less of the Shambler ;-).</p>
<p>See ya soon.</p>
Editor insighthttp://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0617/Editor_insight/2000-06-16T14:30:00Z2000-06-16T14:30:00Z
<p>About time for an update. I've been pretty much buried in my
study lately so there hasn't been a great deal to say. I've been
working on my <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> map a fair bit
though, and it's starting to come together nicely. Apart from a
couple of wierd clipping bugs where you seem to just sink into the
floor (qbsp doesn't like undulating terrain =), it's looking very
good and I think it's some of my best work so far. Since there's
not much else to say and a few people have requested this before, I
thought I'd post a shot of the map in the editor. (click the image
for full scale shot ~400k)</p>
<p><a href="http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0617/oum-ed.jpg"><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0617/Editor_insight/512x-oum-ed.jpg" width="512" height="390" class="img" /></a></p>
<p>As you can see, the geometry is getting pretty complex and hard
to work with due to the combination of hi-tech and natural terrain.
It's all worth it to see it in the game though.</p>
New TyrLite, new mapping community sitehttp://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0501/New_TyrLite__44___new_mapping_community_site/2000-04-30T14:30:00Z2000-04-30T14:30:00Z
<p>I've just uploaded a new version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a>. This is version 0.7 which has quite a few
improvements over version 0.5 which I expect most people would
still be using (unless you've been playing with the colored
lighting support in the 0.6 versions). So head over to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">utils</a> page and see if this program is for you.</p>
<p>**note: Until the mirror sites update, they will still be to
version 0.5beta. Use this link temporarily (file will be removed
from here at a later time).</p>
<p>Now for something far more interesting: <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/peejnfrib">Peej 'n' Fribs</a> is gone!
But wait, it's actually good news. You see Peej has been hard at
work coding a wonderful new site that is totally dynamic and
community driven. The site is called Qmap, and you can have a look
by clicking the funky new button on the left of screen. In case
you've had a really hard day and don't feel like moving the mouse
right over there, I've provided a closer link <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/qmap">here</a>. Gee I'm good to you,
aren't I?</p>
Hmmm, some picshttp://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0309/Hmmm__44___some_pics/2000-03-08T13:30:00Z2000-03-08T13:30:00Z
<p>Ok, I keep talking about these things that I'm working on but
you haven't seen any of it yet. So here are a couple of screenshots
from my map for the upcoming <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> mission pack. Most
of the level is indoors (<em>you are exploring the base after
all</em>), but I think I'll keep that experience for the finished
pack =).</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0309/oum-pre1.jpg" width="500" height="338" alt="Preview - OUM (coming soon...)" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0309/oum-pre2.jpg" width="500" height="338" alt="Preview - OUM (coming soon...)" class="img" /></p>
<p>Nice and brown, just the way us quake players like it =P.
Seriously though, I think we're going to have a pretty cool set of
maps for this one, and hopefully we'll be able to back it up nicely
with a background story and plot - I haven't seen much of the story
yet, but apparently it's coming along nicely. Ok that's all I've
got for now, cya next time.</p>
Oh, I almost missed February...http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0228/Oh__44___I_almost_missed_February.../2000-02-27T13:30:00Z2000-02-27T13:30:00Z
<p>Yep, I started back at Uni today, but this year it's gonna be
quite different. Because I have almost finished my degree, I get a
very light subject load this time around, in fact I only have to
attend three days a week =). I don't plan on getting extra work
during this time, instead I'm going to make the most of the next
six months, spending my time pursuing my interests and improving my
abilities in areas that I like.</p>
<p>What this means is that I'm probably going to be churning out a
bit more "Quake Gear" than I have been recently. I won't be
spending all of my time on mapping though. I'll be spending a
significant amount of time improving my programming skills, and one
way I intend to do that is to design and implement a few mapping
tools. That way I get the benefit of practicing my skills and
hopefully getting a useful tool at the end. I'm not going into
details now on what I have planned because it's going to take a
while (since I'm still learning the C/C++ languages).</p>
<p>It pisses me off that they refuse to teach this stuff (which is
the most commonly used in the real world) in university, because
the lecturers are too caught up in their ideals. I agree that there
are (a lot) of superior languages, but that doesn't mean shit if
all the job ads say: <em>requires experience programming in
C/C++</em>. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/ohwell.png" alt=":-/" /></p>
<p>Anyway, getting back to the point, the discussion on
standardising BSP formats has moved to a private mailing list, but
not too much has been discussed yet. The general feeling is that we
will use a seperate file that contains all of the extended
information (e.g. colored lightmaps). As soon as the details are
worked out I'll be looking to push version 1.0 of <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> out the door - and when that happens I hope
to release the source as well.</p>
<p>Progress on my <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> map has started to
take off finally, which is good. Apperently we are aiming to
release late March or early April. I haven't looked at my
deathmatch map for a while, so it's still stuck where it was
before. I'll have to do something about that soon =)</p>
Update (oh yes, it is Y2K =)http://disenchant.net/blog/2000/0121/Update___40__oh_yes__44___it_is_Y2K___61____41__/2000-01-20T13:30:00Z2000-01-20T13:30:00Z
<p>Hi all, my apologies again for slow updates on this site, but
contrary to what this lack of updates might suggest, I've actually
been doing some work! And it's Quake related work too! (actually,
it was quite embarressing when the main PQ newspage gave my work
some coverage, but I hadn't updated my page yet!)</p>
<p>The most exciting thing that I've done lately is to add coloured
lighting to TyrLite. This is largely thanks to the guys from the
<a href="http://qsg.telefraged.com">Quake Standards Group</a>
website, who posted some tutorials on enhancing the standard light
tools. Well, I followed their file format, but implemented all the
extra features you've come to expect from TyrLite.</p>
<p>All the attenuation formulae work as before, but you also get
the option of coloured sunlight and coloured minlight. It's been
tested by a few people, and seems to generally work well. I'm still
tracking down a few specific problems, but if you want to try it
out and help with testing, then you can grab the file <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/dl/dl.asp?tyrann/utils/beta/tyrlite.zip">
here</a> and a copy of the text file is available <a href="http://disenchant.net/archive/tyrlite.txt">here</a>. Because this version still needs some
testing, I'm leaving version 0.5 on the utils page until I'm sure
this one works properly.</p>
<p>I wanted to keep it so that there is only one Tyrlite executable
needed to do both standard lighting, as well as coloured lighting,
so this version is completely backwards compatible with previous
versions. So even if you don't want to use coloured lighting,
please give the new version a try so I can squash any compatability
bugs that may have crept in.</p>
<p>I'm currently discussing with several groups, the possiblity of
a unified format for 'extended bsp' binaries. This could go one of
two ways - we could decide upon one agreed bsp format that can
contain arbitrary lumps of extended information for lightmaps,
shaders (ala Q3), etc. The other way we could go is to produce a
standard BSP that is compatible with the original Quake, and
another file to go with that which contains only the extended
information. The advantage of this is that people could distribute
their maps as a bsp file, along with the extended information file,
and then anybody could play the bsp. If they wanted, they could use
a newer Quake executable and take advantage of the extended bsp
format. The downside is more files in your map directory.</p>
<p>Any comments on these issues are welcome. You can send them
<a href="mailto:tyrann@planetquake.com">here</a>.</p>
<p>As far as the mapping is going, the answer is good but slow. I'm
really happy with what I have gotten done so far on my <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum/">OUM</a> map, but progress
is pretty slow. I expect this to speed up as a reaquaint myself
with th IKBase texture set more, and I'm getting the hang of those
rotating entities too. My deathmatch map has come to a virtual
standstill. The layout feels <em>killer</em>, but the texture set
just won't gel. I'm thinking of starting again from scratch,
working with the current layout as a reference, but with a
completely new theme.</p>
Ray of Sunshine =)http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/1214/Ray_of_Sunshine___61____41__/1999-12-13T13:30:00Z1999-12-13T13:30:00Z
<p>Ok, I've updated TyrLite and you can now use your skybrushes to
cast sunlight in an arbitrary direction - pretty cool if I do say
so myself =P. You can check out the new version on the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">Utils</a> page.</p>
<p>On the new deathmatch map - I'm having thoughts of making it
into a Quake3 map, but I'm still not sure. I just got the game
today so I'm still making my mind up. The style of the game overall
just feels really cool - I love the feel they have created with the
new texture set and all those shaders look pretty damn cool too.
The intro cinematic was a nice touch =)</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I just got inspired the other day and drew some (more)
sketches of some ideas for an <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> map. Damn I gotta
get some of this stuff into the editor <em>real</em> soon! Hell
it's too hot to do anthing but sit in front of the computer
anyway.</p>
Wot now?http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/1207/Wot_now__63__/1999-12-06T13:30:00Z1999-12-06T13:30:00Z
<p>Well exams are over, and they went ok - no distinctions or
anything but I got through which is enough for me since I'm so sick
of uni right now. I've spent the last week doing nothing useful
whatsoever and enjoyed it immensely =). Checked out a few movies,
the most notable being 'Fight Club'. That has to be one of the best
movies I've ever seen! - recommended =)</p>
<p>Yesterday, however I spent most of the day in the editor and my
6th DM map is on it's way. The layout feels killer, but there's a
lot of work to do yet to get it looking good. It's primarily a 1on1
map, but it looks like it will also work well up to 4 or 5 players
as well. I'm pretty excited about this one, but I'm struggling a
little to find the right texture set...</p>
<p>I started working on adding a few extra features to <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> including the use of a mangle key to set
spotlight direction and 'anti-lights'. I'm also going to try to add
some extra information to some of the error messages to help
authors track down map bugs. These features shouldn't take long, so
I'll probably have at least some of them done in a couple of days
(depends how much time I spend mapping instead <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /> )</p>
Stress isn't very relaxing...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/1113/Stress_isn__39__t_very_relaxing.../1999-11-12T13:30:00Z1999-11-12T13:30:00Z
<p>A whole month gone? Better post a quick update then <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>Not a whole lot to report since the vast majority of my time is
still taken up with study - but only 12 days to go! Arghh! I can't
wait =). What I have been doing is drawing out a couple of ideas on
paper for my <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a>
map. I've got some interesting stuff there which is going to be fun
trying to put into the editor. I tried a few things with rotating
entities - which I hadn't used before - and that gave me some ideas
as well.</p>
<p>Other than that, I have had a bit of a play with QERadiant in
preperation for Q3A mapping. It looks like quite a nice editor -
the main thing I noticed was the speed difference I got compared to
my usual editor (BSP), since I was able to use the OpenGL
acceleration of my TNT. Very cool.</p>
<p>There was one other thing to say, now what was it... no I don't
think there was after all. Hmmm. After a while you run out of
things to say when you keep updating your site with news about
nothing...</p>
Hey!http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/1013/Hey__33__/1999-10-12T14:30:00Z1999-10-12T14:30:00Z
<p>Hello again, did you miss me? No, I thought not =). Well, I'm
sort of back now - I don't really have the time for this stuff, but
I'm gonna make the time, damnit. I can't beleive that I've been
working 12 hour days for the last 4 weeks and I'm still catching up
on my course work. Still, the lure of Quake and the unholy editor
becomes too much eventually <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>I suppose I've missed out on a fair bit of news around the
place, although I've tried to stop by the <a href="http://games.terrafusion.com/qboard">Qboard</a> when I can.
Speaking of which, there's an interesting thread over there where a
few people have posted pictures of themselves. So if you ever
wondered what mappers look like, <a href="http://games.terrafusion.com/qboard/thread.asp?show=0&threadid=178">
have a look</a> (and no, my picture isn't up there... yet).</p>
<p>It looks like <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/gonzo">Gonzo</a> has <em>finally</em>
released <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/gonzo/ownwork/warfare3.zip">Warfare 3 -
Nubian Chicken Sexer</a>. I haven't seen or played the final
version yet, but I did see a couble of the beta versions where
Gonzo was having trouble with compile errors, and I can tell you
that the map looks <em>damn sweet</em>.</p>
<p>The festivally plump <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fat Controller</a> has been on
to me about my <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> map, which is
obviously not making much progress. Luckily for me the rest of the
project seems to be going just as slowly, so I don't feel quite so
bad about having contributed so little so far. Despite all these
delays, the project has not been cancelled and is still in
progress.</p>
<p>There is another Q1SP project on the brew - <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/nehahra">The Nehahra Project</a>. I was
approached to map for this project, but unfortunatly didn't have
the time (and still don't). I got to see an early version of some
of the new AI/monsters/weapons and I was really very impressed.
Keep an eye on this one.</p>
<p>I finally got around to adding Rvis+ to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">Utils</a> page. If you haven't heard of it before; it's
a version of the rivs program by Antony Suter, which I modified to
add a progress indicator to give you some idea of how much of the
vis job is left to go.</p>
<p>That's about it. I'll probably be spending some small amounts of
time mapping over the next 3-4 weeks - after that I'll have to
concentrate on my exams. Here's what I'm doing - Number Theory,
Coding and Cryptology, Fields and Geometry, Computer Networks,
Advanced Programming Paradigms and Operating Systems. The computer
science subjects are actually quite fun and rewarding but the pure
mathematics can be a bitch. Maybe I'll actually have some news on
<em>my own</em> mapping work next update... we'll see.</p>
Busy, busy, busy...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0916/Busy__44___busy__44___busy.../1999-09-15T14:30:00Z1999-09-15T14:30:00Z
<p>You've probably all noticed that I've been spacing out my
updates a little more than usual lately, which is simply because I
have little to say. I've done very little mapping in the last 3
weeks due to a neverending (almost) stream of assignments/projects
due at uni (I know, I know, I should stop complaining about that
here =P ). Unfortunately things might stay this way for a while
yet, so I wouldn't expect a lot of updates any time soon. The
positive side is that I'm stocking up on some cool ideas, as soon
as I do get some free time, I'll be hard to stop =).</p>
Level of the Weekhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0908/Level_of_the_Week/1999-09-07T14:30:00Z1999-09-07T14:30:00Z
<p>I missed this earlier in the week, but it appears that Moonlight
Assault has been selected as this weeks <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/lotw/q1-lotw9699.shtm">Q1SP level of
the week</a>. So if you haven't yet (shame on you! =P), go take a
look and then grab a copy of the map.</p>
Stuffhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0903/Stuff/1999-09-02T14:30:00Z1999-09-02T14:30:00Z
<p>I've been away for a little while, and it seems that <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">TeamShambler</a> has
taken up the job of selecting a <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/lotw">Level of the Week</a> here on
planetquake. Make sure you check out his recommendations each
week.</p>
<p>Well, I'm a bit late off the mark with this, but I wanted to
mention that <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fatty</a>
has released a new deathmatch map entitled 'Ministry of Love'. I
had some fun testing this one, and it comes recommended. You can
get from <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">his
page</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks to all those people that mailed with their thoughts on
Moonlight Assault, it's nice to know that you had fun with it =).
There's nothing really worth reporting on my current maps at this
time. I'm working on two new single player maps as well as one
deathmatch. These will likely progress quite slowly though, since
deadlines are fast approaching for many of my uni subjects
(<em>sigh</em>). Later.</p>
Some plans for the immediate future...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0816/Some_plans_for_the_immediate_future.../1999-08-15T14:30:00Z1999-08-15T14:30:00Z
<p>At first it seemed like a case of really bad timing, when
<a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">Mr. Shambler</a>
thought he wouldn't be around this at all this weekend to review
the 'feast' of single player maps that coincidently all got
released at the same time. Well, it turned out that his plans fell
through so, if you head over to the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">TeamShambler</a> website,
you'll find reviews of 3 new releases: 'Runners Delight Episode',
'Castle Gothgola' and my very own 'Moonlight Assault' =).</p>
<p>I've decided to take the rest of the week to focus entirely on
my course work at Uni, since I have a bit of catching up to do. If
I get everything done, I'll be starting this weekend on my map for
the Fat Controller's <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">Operation Urth Majik</a>
project. This is gonna be a lot of fun =). I'll also be having a
look back at the beginning's of a 6th DM map that I laid down a
little while ago.</p>
<p>Oh, don't tell anyone, but I've also begun woking on a secret
little side project. I'm not going say anything much about it for
quite some time, because it will take a long time, and may not
actually amount to anything anyway. What I will say is that it is
something new for me, and it is mapping related. So why did I
mention it now? Well, I wanted to say something, but... ermm... I
think I'll just shut my mouth now. =P</p>
Moonlite Assaulthttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0813/Moonlite_Assault/1999-08-12T14:30:00Z1999-08-12T14:30:00Z
<p>Well it's been a long time coming, but it's finally done. So,
without further ado, I present to you: <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">Moonlight
Assault</a> - my latest Single Player Quake creation. Enjoy.</p>
<p>On a less Quake related note, I'm moving house tommorow. Things
have supposedly been set up at the new place for me to have access
to the net straight away, but if I disappear for a few days or so,
that'll be why.</p>
A quick teaser for yahttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0812/A_quick_teaser_for_ya/1999-08-11T14:30:00Z1999-08-11T14:30:00Z
<p>The second beta test has come and gone, and I've got the map
pretty much the way I want now. I'm just going to run the final
compile when I upload this update, then I'll probably release the
map tommorow.. err, tonight (it's now 12:30am, Friday).</p>
<p>The map will be titled 'Moonlight Assault' and Vigilante was
kind enough to write me a background story to include in the text
file - but here it is a little early to get you started:</p>
<pre><code>"We are taking a few hours break now. My feet are burning, as we just
</code></pre>
<p>walked for over eight hours. I'm not sure how Jones can manage
though. He's in pretty bad shape, but the lieteunant is pushing us
forward. He thinks that even this is a waste of time. He says that
we should be nearly at the pickup already, but that's just madness.
It would take at least two days for a troop to travel from the
valley to the pickup. And yet we have managed to get this far, on
foot, in 32 hours. And not only that, but we have had all the
wounded to carry. There is a great deal of walking to be done
though, until we can reach the hills now seen on the painfully
distant horizon. I just hope that our ship hasn't arrived at the
pickup already and left us stranded down here. But as I haven't had
the time to write anything in nearly a week I might clear some
things up. Especially why are we here. I can't beleive it has been
five days already, it feels like it happened just few hours
ago...</p>
<pre><code> We have had troubles ever since the initial landing. I hear that the
</code></pre>
<p>commanders didn't have much faith in our side's ability to
penetrate the castle to begin with. Our chances of actually finding
the rune and escaping alive were even worse. Doomed right from the
start. First the pods from Mickey's squad deviated at least 15
klicks from their assigned location, landing the whole squad in a
distant swamp. We managed to keep radio contact for only a few
hours. Captain Rodgers didn't tell us what had happened, but I
think we all knew that it was just as well. The day after that our
camp was assaulted by a pack of fiends. They broke through the
outer barrier in a matter of seconds, hitting our main encampment.
Eventually we managed to drive them away, but with considerable
casualties. Many worried wispers made there way though the camp
that night, after the attack. The men knew it was unusual for
fiends to appear in such a large pack, and to seem so organised in
their attack as well.</p>
<pre><code>And still our bad luck continued. Two days after that a large
</code></pre>
<p>contingent of Quake's troops ambushed us while we were
traveling. We had come to a narrow pass between two steep hills.
Captain Rodgers sent scouts to the hills, but they never came back.
The lieteunant still wished to travel that way though, as it was
the fastest way to the castle we were supposed to siege. Our long
line was cut in three parts, the last one totally annihilated in a
few short moments. I was in the leading squad, and we kept our
ground pretty well, until one of the grunts got a lucky shot at
Captain Rodgers. After that our lines broke. Then the lieteunant
ordered a retreat. A few groups made it back from the 2nd and 3rd
ranks, and strengthened our numbers. But most of the force didn't
manage to break through The Horde. The lieteunant kept our lines
together, and we succesfully escaped the ambush. It was obvious
that we couldn't siege the castle with these numbers, although
Ensign McKenzie wished to take a few volunteers and still proceed
to the objective. I was very surprised when the lieutenant
agreed.</p>
<pre><code>Well, we kept radio contact for only a couple of days. Ensign
</code></pre>
<p>McKenzie's small squad was against vast odds, and it wasn't long
before they had been all but obliterated. There were some distorted
messages that said one of the men had fought very bravely, keeping
the squad alive and planning the attack even after Ensign
McKenzie's death. We didn't get his name, but I believe he was
their last survivor.</p>
<pre><code>After that we got to a beautiful valley. I'm sorry that we couldn't
</code></pre>
<p>stay there for long, as it was a welcome change from the
seemingly endless wastes, but we had to get to the pickup as fast
as we could. The lieteunant kept us going 20 hours each day, giving
us only two two-hour breaks. There was more waste to cross, but not
anything like the first. Soon enough we had entered another valley
where we stayed a while, bandaging our wounded and burying the
dead. We had some time to prepare, but the first of the Horde was
closing in behind us.</p>
<pre><code>Fortunately they didn't attack in great numbers, seeming disorganised,
</code></pre>
<p>and they were easily defeated. 32 hours after leaving the
valley, crossing another blasted wasteland, our goal was in sight.
Somewhere in the hills on the horizon was the pickup point. With
over two thirds of our force wiped out, there was no hope for us to
regroup and return for the rune. Ensign McKenzie's squad had given
us something to hope for while we concentrated on getting the rest
of our force back to saftey, but even the strongest of us cannot
place that hope on one lone surviver...</p>
<pre><code>It is 5 minutes to departure now. We had just reached the beginnings
</code></pre>
<p>of the hills when we stopped to rest. The scouts are just
returning now, and they've brought bad news. There is a large force
directly in our path. By the looks on their faces I am not sure if
we can reach the hills in time..."</p>
<pre><code>- John "Cannonball" Velasquez, last journal entry
</code></pre>
<p>You will play the part of the lone surviving soldier from Ensign
McKenzie's suicide party. It's up to you now to take on the forces
guarding the castle and retrieve the rune single handedly... (isn't
it always up to you? =). See you soon.</p>
Now we're getting somewherehttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0731/Now_we__39__re_getting_somewhere/1999-07-30T14:30:00Z1999-07-30T14:30:00Z
<p>The first round of beta testing has gone pretty much as I
expected, making little changes to the amount of ammo and health in
certain areas of the map. The other main point that my testers
raised was the fact that the texture set is pretty small, which
takes away a bit from the otherwise impressive architecture. The
main reason I had for doing this was to save space in the bsp file,
but with my most recent optimisations I've managed to make some
more space and I've hopefully improved this situation a bit.</p>
<p>This brings up one of the things that have made this map very
hard to make. Normally the only real tradeoff a mapper has to
decide on is a perfomance/looks kind of thing. In this map I've had
all sorts of other tradeoffs to make, since having everything I
wanted would cause errors in the map.</p>
<p>Anyone else who is considering making a huge Quake1 map should
think carefully before starting because there are undoubtably a
million problems you will face that you didn't even think existed.
I know that I'll be considering making several smaller maps
instead, next time a vision so grand comes to my mind =).</p>
<p>With any luck (and I think I have some coming to me ;-), I'll
have the map done and released within two weeks. So I'll (probably
foolishly) give myself a deadline of August 15th.</p>
Size Does Matterhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0725/Size_Does_Matter/1999-07-24T14:30:00Z1999-07-24T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, it's been a tough week, optimising the map to stay
<em>just</em> under the limits allowed by Quake. I've had some
pretty obscure errors too. Anyway, the first beta is compiling
right now and as long as there is nothing seriously wrong with it,
when it's done I'll hand it over to my testers. It's gonna be good
to actually get somebody else's opinion on what I have done because
it's taking so long to get the damn thing done =)</p>
<p>Actually, I had three friends over last weekend and they all had
a go. Even though the map was severely lacking in ammo at the time,
they all said it was great fun. And it was cool as hell to see them
jumping in their chairs as a monster unexpectedly whacks them in
the back of the head. Hehehe.</p>
<p>I'll update again once I get some feedback from the testers.
Later.</p>
Erm, yeah...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0720/Erm__44___yeah.../1999-07-19T14:30:00Z1999-07-19T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, I've got all of architecture in place now as well as a
finalized the main route through the level (as well as plenty of
shortcuts possible for those skilled enough ;). Today I've been
going through the level trying to better balance the
ammo/health/armour/monsters for the hard skill setting. It's all
looking pretty good and I'm tweaking the lighting and other details
as I go.</p>
<p>The current brush count stands is about 4700 <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/idea.png" alt="(!)" /> and with 4 hour compile times, a
lot of guesswork is involved working out the item/difficulty
balance between compiles. While building the map, I even had to
compile a special version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> to
handle the huge number of planes and surfaces in the map.</p>
<p>All being well, I'll be looking at sending out a beta (of the
map) to a couple of people this week. Oh, and please don't ask for
the beta, I already have some people in mind. If I need more
testers, I'll let you know.</p>
Struggling...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0707/Struggling.../1999-07-06T14:30:00Z1999-07-06T14:30:00Z
<p>I'm grappling with some errors in the map at the moment. Because
I've been trying to cram so much into the map, I'm going very close
to a lot of the limitations built into the Quake engine. I may end
up having to split the map into two seperate maps, but I don't want
to do that.</p>
<p>Because of the way I've tried to make the map not feel too
linear, there is no obvious place where the map can be split as the
player's path winds back on itself all over the map. So if I end up
needing to do that, it will mean more delays still because I will
have to redesign most of the flow through the castle. (Sigh).</p>
<p>I've started tossing around a few ideas for the layout of DM map
number six. Nothing solid yet but I should start work on that soon
(but the SP map has priority right now).</p>
Return to regular programming...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0630/Return_to_regular_programming.../1999-06-29T14:30:00Z1999-06-29T14:30:00Z
<p>Hi all, just a quick update to let you know I'm now back on the
job. Exams are over... for now - I got sick half way through, and
wasn't able to attend my last two exams, so I'll have to re-sit
them later <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/sad.png" alt=":(" /></p>
<p>For those of you who have been frequent visitors of <a href="http://www.peej.co.uk">Peej's</a> and <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/frib">Frib's</a> page(s), you may be
pleased to know that they have decided to join forces:</p>
<pre><code>After our efforts to provide the custom map community with up to the
minute news, views and rants, myself(Peej) and Frib have
decided to combine efforts to create the ultimate news source for the
custom map scene.
</code></pre>
<p>These guys know their stuff, so go pay them a visit at <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/peejnfrib/main.shtm">Peej 'n' Frib's -
Custom Quake Map News & Banter</a>.</p>
Devastation Revalationhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0620/Devastation_Revalation/1999-06-19T14:30:00Z1999-06-19T14:30:00Z
<p>First order of business today is to tell you about <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/damaul">Damaul</a>'s latest single
player map, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/dl/dl.asp?damaul/damaul6.zip">Bestial
Devastation</a>. Dressed up in the texture set first used by
<a href="http://headshot.terrafusion.com">Headshot</a> in his
deathmatch map <a href="http://headshot.terrafusion.com/files/dead.zip">Dead Bodies
Everywhere</a>, this map has a feel that hasn't been seen before in
a single player map - as well as being an absolute blast to play.
Stop messing about and head over to <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/damaul">Damaul's Place</a> and grab it
(make sure you read the <em>important note</em> while downloading
the map).</p>
<p>Also released recently was <a href="http://www.born-robotic.net">Bal's</a> latest DM creation,
<a href="http://www.planetquake.com/dl/dl.asp?bal/baldm6.zip">Scrap
Metal</a>. I haven't had the chance to play it properly yet, but I
took a quick run through. The open layout of the 'main atrium'
reminds me of <a href="http://jvox.terrafusion.com">Jvox's</a>
<a href="ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/zappa/Quake/visi_qw_maps/jvoxdm2n.zip">Jakie
Brown</a>, but this map has it's own original look and feel, with a
brand new texture set as well. Highly recommended =).</p>
<p>Hmmm, what else... ah, there's been a few more mappers moved to
planetquake since my last update: <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fat Controller</a>, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/freshteam">Fresh Team</a>, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/hotcakes">Hot Cakes</a> and <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/ogro">Ogro</a>. And there's more to
come from what I hear!</p>
<p>Unless something exceptional happens that I just have to report,
I won't be back here to update for another ten days (June 30th).
Just four exams to go...</p>
No Titlehttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0612/No_Title/1999-06-11T14:30:00Z1999-06-11T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, it looks like I had some 3000 people through my site with
that mention on pic of the day - Hopefully a few of you found
something you liked an will continue to drop by =). I made a couple
of small adjustments to the page - I removed the borders from the
news headings and messed around with the left frame a bit to make
it behave a little better in Netscape at higher resolutions.</p>
<p>I haven't touched my editor since last update - I've got my head
buried in the books, studying for exams right now - so there's no
progress to report. Quite a few of my fellow mappers have made the
move to <a href="http://www.planetquake.com">PlanetQuake</a>
recently, the newest additions being <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/excessus">Excessus</a>, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/cheshire">Cheshire</a>, <a href="http://wouter.fov120.com/">Aardappel</a>, <a href="http://vondur.net">Vondur</a>, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/ninja">Ninja</a>, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/damaul">Damaul</a> and <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/wrath">Wrath</a>. All the links on my
err... <span class="createlink"><a href="http://disenchant.net/ikiwiki.cgi?do=create&from=blog%2F1999%2F0612%2FNo_Title&page=links" rel="nofollow">?</a>links</span> page should be up to date now as
well.</p>
New Host, New Design.http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0607/New_Host__44___New_Design./1999-06-06T14:30:00Z1999-06-06T14:30:00Z
<p>Well I got the offer to move my site to planetquake so I took
it. Then I figured, what the hell, I may as well do a bit of a
redesign (it seems to be the trendy thing to do these days anyway)
and here it is. I'm quite proud of the artwork, which I managed to
do by myself. <a href="mailto:tyrann@planetquake.com">Let me
know</a> what you think or especially if I messed anything up.</p>
<p>For those of you who don't know about me, I'm Tyrann - Quake
mapper extraordinaire (well, extraordinaire might be pushing it
<img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /> You can find out a
little more about me by looking in the <a href="http://disenchant.net/about/">About</a> section of the site. If it's maps you're
after, then head on over to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">Maps</a> page
and have a look around there. If you're a mapper yourself, you
should probably go to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">Utils</a> page and
have a look at my fancy light program <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>
<p>Currently I'm working on a medieval style single player map
which I have said should be release early next month (when I get
some holidays to finish it). If you poke around in my <span class="createlink"><a href="http://disenchant.net/ikiwiki.cgi?do=create&from=blog%2F1999%2F0607%2FNew_Host__44___New_Design.&page=archived_news" rel="nofollow">?</a>archived news</span> you should find a few
screenshots of this map which I have posted along the way.</p>
<p>Once that map is out the door, I'll be focusing my efforts on
the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/oum">OUM</a> Single
Player Project being run by the multi-talented <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/fatty">Fat Controller</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, with all this single player madness surrounding me I
probably won't be able to stop myself starting a new deathmatch map
<img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
I 'aint got the time for interesting news headlines...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0604/I___39__aint_got_the_time_for_interesting_news_headlines.../1999-06-03T14:30:00Z1999-06-03T14:30:00Z
<p>I've been trying to think of something I could update my page
with but really I haven't got anything to say 'cept that I'm still
working hard... I have exams coming up soon, so expect me to
disappear for a couple of weeks for that.</p>
<p>I've been stacking a few more monsters and stuff into my map and
I'm quite surprised at how much fun it is to play so far! I was
starting to worry that after all this work building the structure,
the map might not have the gameplay to match, but it's shaping up
quite nicely =).</p>
<p>Exams finish up at the end of June, and after that I have three
weeks holidays (yay!). After all my promises, I <em>have</em> to
get this map finished by this time and I'm pretty confident about
an early July release. (If I told you late June, that's just
because I stuffed up my exam timetable, sorry.)</p>
<p>The mapping scene seems to have been a little quiet of late but
you can find catch up on pretty much anything you missed between
<a href="http://www.planetquake.com/frib">Frib</a>'s and <a href="http://www.peej.co.uk">Peej</a>'s pages. One thing of interest
that I saw on the <a href="http://games.terrafusion.com/qboard">Qboard</a> was that Mattias
Konradsson (aka <a href="http://www10.torget.se/preacher/walkover">Preacher</a> of <a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/a-c/aerowalk.zip">
Aerowalk</a> fame) is currently involved in a big project for a
site 'leveldesign.com'.</p>
<pre><code>One of our main missions will be push for authors and maps. To provide
a channel through which we can make things a bit more "official", wish
us luck :)
</code></pre>
<p>Good luck mate! Apparently they are hoping to launch the site
'this summer' which I think is late winter here in Oz. Sounds
pretty good to me.</p>
Fribbles Frenzyhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0523/Fribbles_Frenzy/1999-05-22T14:30:00Z1999-05-22T14:30:00Z
<p>After about 6 weeks absense, the map making machine known as
<a href="http://www.planetquake.com/frib">Mr. Fribbles</a> is back,
and he's brought with him, not one, not two, but 3 new maps!! They
are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/efdm9.zip">efdm9
- Tangerine Dream</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/efdm10.zip">
efdm10 - WhiteChocolateSpaceEgg</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/efdm11.zip">
efdm11 - Maelstrom</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I've got no time for elaboration, but all these maps are
beautiful so make sure you get them all =).</p>
<p>Ok, here's that final 'preview shot' I promised...</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0523/sp2-pre4.jpg" width="400" height="270" class="img" /></p>
<p>And now it's back to work for me.</p>
Q3 Overdosehttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0517/Q3_Overdose/1999-05-16T14:30:00Z1999-05-16T14:30:00Z
<p>Early this week, the Win32 version of the Q3test was released.
I've got two words for you - LAN Party =). Ok, so it wasn't that
much of a party, there were only 3 of us, but it was very cool.
Once everyone had gotten used to the feel of the game, we had some
really fun games. The 2nd map in the test is an absolute blast in
FFA and it's not bad for a bit of a fun 1on1 game. You can get some
unbelievable railgun shots on this one. I never liked the railgun
in Q2, but it fits in with this map perfectly. This game seems to
feel better all the time.</p>
<p>I've been working on my map most of the weekend, but I don't
really have anything new to show you right now. I think I'll post
one last screenshot later this week to keep people interested
(yeah, like they're interesed now <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
Progress Reporthttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0510/Progress_Report/1999-05-09T14:30:00Z1999-05-09T14:30:00Z
<p>...or lack thereof. I've been working like crazy all this time,
and I've only had a few spare hours to work on my map. I'm still
making progress, which is the important part. My editor is grinding
to a halt now under the size of this map due to lack of memory (and
I have 128MB!). Hopefully I'll be getting a bit more money soon
from all this work I've been doing and I'll buy some more memory to
speed things up a bit.</p>
<p>What else has been happening? Well two excellent maps have been
released - on the same day I believe. The first of these is from
<a href="http://www.peej.co.uk">Peej</a>, the next in the 'strafin'
series entitled <a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/planetquake/peej/strafin6.zip">strafin6 -
Quake Addiction</a>. The second is from <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/pingu/">Pingu</a> called <a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/planetquake/pingu/a2.zip">Return to
Atlantis</a>. Stop right now and just download both these maps.</p>
<p>I've been told that I'm allowed to feel smug now. Head on over
to <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/mpq">Multiplayer Quake</a>
and have a look in their top 10 reviews section. I think you can
see where this is heading... <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>Q3A test for windows should be available later tonight...</p>
Penguin Power!http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0502/Penguin_Power__33__/1999-05-01T14:30:00Z1999-05-01T14:30:00Z
<p>While I've got a spare minute I thought I'd do a little update.
<a href="http://www.clanworld.dk/team-cotv/reviews/index_review.htm">Vigilante</a>
sent word that he has <a href="http://www.clanworld.dk/team-cotv/reviews/reviews.htm">a
review</a> of EDC on his page, so have a look at that...</p>
<p><a href="http://www.quake3arena.com">LinuxQuake3</a>. What can I
say? This game is awesome. I've been playing a bit on a few servers
I could find around here and I'd have to say this is one
<em>addictive</em> game.</p>
<p>The whole thing just works beautifully. The player models are
easily the best I've ever seen - no more skating when you run and
shoot. The sound FX deserve a special mention. These are really
bass intensive and you just have to play this game with some decent
speakers hooked up (the shotgun sound is my fave ;). I can't wait
for the win32 version to be released so I can get this baby going
on my TnT =)</p>
<p>The networking code is very good at hiding the effects of lag.
Most of the servers I played on, I had a ping of about 550-600,
which felt about the same as 300 in QW. There does seem to be a few
problems with it though. When more than 3 players were in the map I
seemed to be getting about 30-40% packet loss, but suprisingly the
game remained playable (although worse than before obviously). I'm
not sure about this yet - it may have something to do with the
server I was using...</p>
<p>And if you're wondering what the hell 'Penguin Power' is all
about just look <a href="http://www.linuxgames.com">here</a> for a
clue...</p>
<p><em>(later in the day)</em>: I fixed the site graphics so it
doesn't go all white in 256 colour mode in <a href="http://www.netscape.com">Netscape</a> (I must have been really
bored to bother with that...)</p>
Scanned and Parsedhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0428/Scanned_and_Parsed/1999-04-27T14:30:00Z1999-04-27T14:30:00Z
<p>Ow, my head hurts! Yes, uni work comes down on me again and it's
a killer. (You know it wouldn't get so bad if I didn't have the
urge to spend every minute mapping or playing Quake. I guess I
bring it on myself <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>Check <a href="http://peek.terrafusion.com/">Peekaboom's
page</a> for a rather large update, including <a href="http://peek.terrafusion.com/authors/tyrann.shtml">my own author
page</a> =). The page has a review of EDC and makes a few good
points about the map. However I just thought that I'd clarify
something - EDC was not intended to be the total DFA
frag-per-second map that Aggressor was. It's a step back and I hope
people can appreciate the more tactical 1on1 setup. Ok, it's not
that tactical - but I like it <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>My SP map is getting there, most of the architechture is there
and I'm starting to stock the map with weapons/ammo/monsters/etc
and tweak the lighting. Have I said this map is huge before? Anyway
I hope to get a preliminary version done soon (read: about two
weeks - hey, it's a lot of work and I'm busy <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /> and have a few friends test it.
We'll see how it goes from there.</p>
<p>I've been messing around with some of the <a href="http://members.tripod.com/~cruickro/">Fat Controller's</a> stuff
for the <a href="http://members.xoom.com/CruickRo/oum/">OUM
project</a> and it's gonna be fun. I won't be mapping intensively
for this until I finish 'the castle map' but I'll be tinkering with
it now and then.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.quake3arena.com/">Quake3Arena</a> - Bloody
hell!! With the release of the test on the Mac there's <a href="http://www.q3arena.net/screen/mac1.shtml">screenshot's-a-plenty</a>
hanging about of the test levels. I'm getting <em>REALLY</em>
excited about this game. From all reports, the movement physics and
gameplay are perfect and we all know that it looks great <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /> I hope it's as good as they say
'coz I wanna do some fancy mapping with coloured lights and curves
=)</p>
<p>I might disappear for a week or so while I catch up on some uni
work and finish my SP map. I'll still be hanging around - so feel
free to bug me, but I prolly won't update my page for a while. Cya
soon.</p>
More bot stuffhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0422/More_bot_stuff/1999-04-21T14:30:00Z1999-04-21T14:30:00Z
<p>Gibbie has posted a Frogbot waypoint file for EDC over at
<a href="http://www.botepidemic.com/fmods/">FMODs</a> (in the
Maps/Waypoints section - and you'll find there is also one for
Aggressor). If you know how to use this, then great. If not then
you can find more information at <a href="http://www.telefragged.com/metro/">Metropolis</a> and <a href="http://www.botepidemic.com/fmods/">FMODs</a>... or to make things
a little easier, I've made a progs.dat to replace the one in your
frogbot dir which supports a few of my favourite maps:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/a-c/aerowalk.zip">
aerowalk</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/a-c/agenda.zip">
agenda</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/a-c/aggressr.zip">
aggressr</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/a-c/bless.zip">bless</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/dead.zip">dead</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/edc.zip">edc</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/efdm5.zip">efdm5</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/d-f/efdm8.zip">efdm8</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/m-o/pinion1.zip">
pinion1</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/p-r/rapture1.zip">
rapture1</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/s-u/spinev2.zip">
spinev2</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/s-u/ultrav.zip">
ultrav</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/v-z/warfare.zip">
warfare</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/v-z/ztndm3.zip">
ztndm3</a></li>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/levels/deathmatch/v-z/ztndm5.zip">
ztndm5</a></li>
</ul>
<p>So, in short, to get going just download the latest <a href="http://www.telefragged.com/metro/">frogbot</a>, unzip it into a
directory named 'frogbot' under your quake dir, then unzip my
<a href="http://www.planetquake.com/dl/dl.asp?tyrann/misc/progs.zip">progs.dat</a>
into your frogbot dir, replacing the old progs.dat. Then just start
a game from the command line something like this:</p>
<pre><code>QUAKE.EXE -game frogbot -zone 1024 -listen 16 +map edc
</code></pre>
<p>Once you're in, just type addbot a few times at the console to
add some bots.</p>
A penny for your thoughts...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0421/A_penny_for_your_thoughts.../1999-04-20T14:30:00Z1999-04-20T14:30:00Z
<p>I just uploaded the latest version of <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">TyrLite</a> which adds support for <a href="http://www.ritual.com">Ritual Entertainment's</a> <a href="http://www.ritual.com/scourge">Scourge of Armagon</a> map
extensions. I don't think that there's much more to add for now. I
also put up a <a href="http://disenchant.net/utils/">Utils</a> page for the program
and added a button on the sidebar for it.</p>
<p>Paul has upload a whole load of reviews on <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/mpq">Multiplayer Quake</a> which
includes a review of EDC (got 5/5 - Yay!). There's quite a few good
maps up there, including <a href="http://quake.axg.net/cheshire">Cheshire's</a> latest piece
'Ergonomic Aftermath' which is quite spectacular (he pulled a 5/5
as well).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.planetquake.com/skorpion">Skorpion</a> has
uploaded the <a href="http://www.botepidemic.com/gladiator/obots/obots.html">Omicron</a>
route file he made for EDC. I seriously recommend getting this file
from <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/skorpion">his site</a>,
because using this map with that route hardcoded into the map makes
for a very challenging and even somewhat tactical game. Cheers
Skorp =)</p>
<p>Overall response to EDC so far has been unbelievably positive.
Thanks to everyone who sent me their comments and to all the people
that play my maps. You could say I'm 'happy as a sand boy' (right
<a href="http://members.tripod.com/~cruickro">FC</a>? <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
Eternal Dismemberment Complexhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0418/Eternal_Dismemberment_Complex/1999-04-17T14:30:00Z1999-04-17T14:30:00Z
<p>Like the name? - Eternal Dismemberment Complex <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>Yes, I finally got the thing done, so go to the <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps/">Maps</a> page, look at the screenshots and download it!
This has definately been the hardest map to finish, but boy am I
glad tht I did. Another thing, <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/skorpion">Skorpion</a> has made a kick
ass route for the map so go to <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/skorpion">his page</a> and grab it
(<em>Note</em> It might not be there immediately so if not call
back later...)</p>
<p>Now it's time to get my butt in gear with respect to my single
player map and then on to some mapping for the <a href="http://members.tripod.com/~cruickro/">Fat Controller's</a> OUM
pak. Later.</p>
Another review :)http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0413/Another_review_:__41__/1999-04-12T14:30:00Z1999-04-12T14:30:00Z
<p>I got a mail early this morning from Vigilante of <a href="http://www.clanworld.dk/team-cotv/">Team COTV</a> telling me that
a review of Aggressor has been posted on his page, along with
reviews of <a href="http://headshot.terrafusion.com">Headshot's</a>
'Hidden Agenda' and <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/peej">Peej's</a> 'Infinite Skill'. Have
a read <a href="http://www.clanworld.dk/team-cotv/reviews/index_review.htm">here</a>
(look in the 'newest reviews' section).</p>
<p>Beta testing(DM) has been going pretty slow since nearly all of
my beta testers were busy or on holidays last week, but I've been
assured by a few that they will get back to me soon.</p>
Tyrlite Updatedhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0411/Tyrlite_Updated/1999-04-10T14:30:00Z1999-04-10T14:30:00Z
<p>TyrLite now lets you to set a minimum lighting level for your
map, allowing you to eliminate the totally dark spots in your map
easily, without altering the lighting anywhere else. This means
that TyrLite is now 100% compatible with Arghlite as well as
offering the attenuation formula from IKLite. Grab the updated
version <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/dl/dl.asp?tyrann/utils/tyrlite.zip">here</a>
(39k).</p>
<p>For those who asked, here are the links for <a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/utils/level_edit/bsp_builders/arghlite.zip">
Arghlite</a> (43k) and <a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/planetquake/ikq/iklite.zip">IKLite</a>
(62k).</p>
The Lite of my life...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0410/The_Lite_of_my_life.../1999-04-09T14:30:00Z1999-04-09T14:30:00Z
<p>Well, I was gonna be lazy and not update about this until later,
but it seems some people are already interested and linked to my
page <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /> Anyway if you
have been reading the <a href="http://games.terrafusion.com/qboard">qboard</a> you might have
noticed that I released my lighting tool for quake,
<strong>'TyrLite'</strong>.</p>
<p>Basically it allows you to use the features of ArghLite and
IKLite at the same time, in the same map. I haven't made a page for
it yet, but you can see the readme <a href="ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/planetquake/tyrann/utils/tyrlite.txt">here</a>
and download the zip <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/dl/dl.asp?tyrann/utils/tyrlite.zip">here</a>
(39k).</p>
<p>I made this program for my own use and only released it because
a few others were interested in using it. I want to make it clear
that this program is unsupported. Feel free to mail me with bug
reports but I make no guarentees that I will fix it <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>
Beta testing is underway...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0405/Beta_testing_is_underway.../1999-04-04T14:30:00Z1999-04-04T14:30:00Z
<p>Just thought I'd stop by and let everyone know that my DM map
has been sent off to my beta testers. I bet a few people were
beginning to think this map would never reach beta (me included ;).
Anyway, I guess that means the final release is soon...</p>
<p>I've also added a whole heap Author Sites to my <span class="createlink"><a href="http://disenchant.net/ikiwiki.cgi?do=create&from=blog%2F1999%2F0405%2FBeta_testing_is_underway...&page=links" rel="nofollow">?</a>links</span> page. Here are the additions:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://quake.axg.net/ninja">Nin's Asylum</a></li>
<li><a href="http://quake.axg.net/cheshire">Cheshire's Map
Place</a></li>
<li><a href="http://junior.quakeintosh.com">Junior's Maps</a></li>
<li><a href="http://kjdmx.terrafusion.com">Killjoy's Map
Outpost</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www10.torget.se/preacher/walkover">Preacher's
Walkover</a></li>
<li><a href="http://xl.terrafusion.com">XL Repository</a></li>
<li><a href="http://retinal.terrafusion.com">Retinal's Broken
Machine</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www-student.lboro.ac.uk/~coajm">Pingu's Map
Igloo</a></li>
<li><a href="http://huizen.dds.nl/~artey">Borsato's Quake
Levels</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I know I've still forgotten quite a few people, but I'll just
keep adding to the page over time. A much better resouce than my
lame effort is the <a href="http://games.terrafusion.com/qboard/custom.asp">Custom Map
Resources</a> page over at the <a href="http://games.terrafusion.com/qboard">qboard</a>.</p>
Hooray for 1K!http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0329/Hooray_for_1K__33__/1999-03-28T14:30:00Z1999-03-28T14:30:00Z
<p>And the winner is... little_horn!</p>
<p>I never expected the site would get this much attention when I
put it up at the start of the year. Thanks to everyone who has
taken an interest in my work and given me feedback from time to
time. As little_horn said: "here's to the next thousand" <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
Who will be the lucky 1000th?http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0328/Who_will_be_the_lucky_1000th__63__/1999-03-27T13:30:00Z1999-03-27T13:30:00Z
<p>Damn, I almost got it finished. Oh well, take a look at this new
area of the map below. There is still one part of the map which I
am not happy with, so I will be holding off on the beta for
now.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0328/dm5-pre3.jpg" width="400" height="270" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0328/dm5-pre4.jpg" width="400" height="270" class="img" /></p>
<p>I sent off an interview form to <a href="http://peek.terrafusion.com">Peekaboom</a> so you can find out
what I had to say when he posts it on <a href="http://peek.terrafusion.com">his site</a> soon. Feel free to send
comments on the shots above, as usual.</p>
My two and a half day weekhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0326/My_two_and_a_half_day_week/1999-03-25T13:30:00Z1999-03-25T13:30:00Z
<p>Looks to me like my weekdays no longer belong to Quake, so now I
live, eat, breathe and sleep Quake on weekends.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">Mr.
Shambler</a> is always encouraging me and saying nice things, so I
always feel like apologising to him for the amount of time it is
taking me to complete my single player map. Here are the main two
reasons. Firstly, because I have almost no free time all week and I
only get the weekend to do any editing (or even playing) of my most
beloved game. Secondly (and this is the kind of reason people like
to hear) it is because this map is HUGE! In terms of depth it's
about average, but the area (i.e. overhead view), the map covers
about 3 quarters of the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE SIZE!!! (max size is 8192
x 8192 units). I'm spending quite a bit of time to make each area
look good and play good, which takes a hell of a lot of effort on a
map this size.</p>
<p>Trust me - The map <em>IS</em> coming =)</p>
<p>I hope to get the beta of my DM map ready this weekend so it can
be sent off for testing. Next weekend will be <em>very</em> cool
for me - Easter weekend = 4 days w/o sunlight = lots of mapping and
fun!</p>
<p><a href="http://peek.terrafusion.com">Peekaboom</a> has put up
his review of Aggressor so go <a href="http://peek.terrafusion.com/authors/q1single.shtml">read it</a>
(it's currently the third map down the page). He compares it to
some of my all time favourite maps, which is very gratifying.
Thanks Peek =]</p>
<p>Also, Thanks to all the people who mailed me with encouragement
after I posted the last screenshots of my DM map, I really
appreciate it <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /> Whew!
That turned out to be a pretty substantial update after all!</p>
Tada!http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0321/Tada__33__/1999-03-20T13:30:00Z1999-03-20T13:30:00Z
<p>Ok, here's a couple of shots of the 'main' atrium. The lighting
is still a little bland, but you get the general idea.</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0321/dm5-pre1.jpg" width="400" height="270" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0321/dm5-pre2.jpg" width="400" height="270" class="img" /></p>
<p>The rest of the layout is almost finalised, but there's some
tedious texture alignment and lighting tweaks to go. Item placement
is all in my head atm, so that's why you don't see any. I wanted to
go for a fairly original style here - hope I've done that <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>
Not much to say...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0319/Not_much_to_say.../1999-03-18T13:30:00Z1999-03-18T13:30:00Z
<p>Nearly two weeks since my last update, so I thought I'd just say
hi again. It's been another busy couple of weeks where I only got
the chance to lay about 5 brushes in my maps. Anyhow, I'll be MMAO
(mapping my ass off) all weekend so <em>hopefully</em> I will have
a couple of screenshots of my DM map by Sunday night. Cya then.</p>
<p>Oh and by the way, if you haven't already, check out <a href="http://www.avault.com/pcrl/movies_temp.asp?movie=q3a&size=9.94">
these Q3A videos</a>. Bring a sponge to whipe up the drool...
<strong>Gibbies!!!</strong></p>
Those humans stole my mapping time...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0307/Those_humans_stole_my_mapping_time.../1999-03-06T13:30:00Z1999-03-06T13:30:00Z
<p>Well, I started back at Uni this week and wouldn't you know it,
it's taking up my mapping time! Why couldn't I see that coming.
Guess I got too used to being on holidays... oh well. Anyway, I
spent most of this weekend working on my maps - Single player made
some great advances, but I've hit a small snag in my DM map. Sorry
to those people I was gonna send the beta, but I'm not sure how
much longer to go... maybe I'll just say 'when it's done' <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>
New Screenshotshttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0228/New_Screenshots/1999-02-27T13:30:00Z1999-02-27T13:30:00Z
<p>Well, I was away for a bit longer than I would have liked, but
I'm back and here, as promised, are a couple more screenshots from
my single player map in progress. This will likely be the last set
of screenshots that I post for this map. This is because I don't
like to give too much away in a SP map, and that seeing these new
areas for the first time is really half the experience. Anyway,
here they are...</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0228/sp2-pre3.jpg" width="400" height="270" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0228/sp2-pre1.jpg" width="200" height="135" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0228/sp2-pre2.jpg" width="200" height="135" class="img" /></p>
<p>I'm really happy with the way the connectivity in tyr_dm5 is
turning out since I restarted. I should be ready for beta testing
in about a week... time permitting of course.</p>
<p>Also, I got an email from <a href="http://ggh.terrafusion.com">Odd</a>, letting me know that
Aggressor is now on the currents rotation on <a href="http://ggh.terrafusion.com">GGH</a>! So everyone go over and have
a big bloodbath for me. (the map selection on this server seriously
rocks! <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile4.png" alt=";)" /></p>
<p>Another thing that I forgot to mention last update was that
<a href="http://www.gibbed.com/skorpion">Skorpion</a> has made an
<a href="http://www.demigod.demon.nl/omibots1.html">Omicron</a>
route file for Aggressor. It helps the bots go for the MH. Check it
out at <a href="http://www.gibbed.com/skorpion">his site</a>.</p>
Delays, delays...http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0218/Delays__44___delays.../1999-02-17T13:30:00Z1999-02-17T13:30:00Z
<p>I've been messing around with the layout of tyr_dm5 (I'll call
it that for now 'coz I get sick of writing 'my next DM map') and
came to the decision that the layout needs to be completely
rebuilt. This is not as much of a setback as you might think though
since I already have the texture set, architectural details and
general theme nailed down.</p>
<p>I'm going to be away for the next five or so days, so I'll hold
off on posting the next set of SP screenies until I get back. This
map will be every bit worth the wait - I'm looking forward to
playing the finished version myself!</p>
Bits 'n' Pieceshttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0213/Bits___39__n__39___Pieces/1999-02-12T13:30:00Z1999-02-12T13:30:00Z
<p>So far I've had really positive feedback on Aggressor - so
thanks everyone <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /> Compile
has done a review of the map which you can read over at his site
<a href="http://www.xs4all.nl/~compile">AmberDawn</a>.</p>
<p>I've added the map page for Aggressor now and a few more sites
to the <span class="createlink"><a href="http://disenchant.net/ikiwiki.cgi?do=create&from=blog%2F1999%2F0213%2FBits___39__n__39___Pieces&page=links" rel="nofollow">?</a>links</span> page. Think I might post a couple
more screenshots of my SP map soon - stay tuned...</p>
Aggressor Released!http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0209/Aggressor_Released__33__/1999-02-08T13:30:00Z1999-02-08T13:30:00Z
<p>My latest deathmatch map 'Aggressor' is finished and released,
and the first place you'll find it is over at <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/gonzomatic">Gonz-O-Matic</a>. So head
on over, read the review and pick up a copy of the map <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>
<p>Sorry about the delay on the release of the map, but you'll be
glad to know that the time wasn't wasted. I'm already about 30%
done on my 5th DM map, and it's looking nice - using a few
converted Quake 2 textures this time. I'm sharing my mapping time
between this and my single player map which is also progressing
nicely (I'd estimate about 75% done).</p>
<p>Also, the news for January has now been archived.</p>
Aggressor release soonhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0125/Aggressor_release_soon/1999-01-24T13:30:00Z1999-01-24T13:30:00Z
<p>Been talking with <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/gonzomatic">Gonzo</a> about 'Aggressor'
and it looks like it will be released over on <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/gonzomatic">Gonz-O-Matic</a> on
February 2nd (give or take a day).</p>
<p>I've been constantly playtesting this map and I have to say, you
won't be disappointed (unless you have something against id base
textures as some people seem to...).</p>
Aggressor in betahttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0116/Aggressor_in_beta/1999-01-15T13:30:00Z1999-01-15T13:30:00Z
<p>Ok, my new DM map is now officially in beta and it has a name -
'Aggressor'. Oh, I can't resist any more, here's a couple of
screens:</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0116/aggressr-pre1.jpg" width="200" height="135" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0116/aggressr-pre2.jpg" width="200" height="135" class="img" /></p>
<p>Traditional base textures again... hmmm - anyone other than me
still love these?</p>
Err, a bit longer to wait yethttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0113/Err__44___a_bit_longer_to_wait_yet/1999-01-12T13:30:00Z1999-01-12T13:30:00Z
<p>I'm having a bit of a rethink on some of the texturing on the
map after some comments from one of my friends. I'm working on a
couple of custom textures to fit the theme, so maybe 3-4 days more
before the beta.</p>
Omicron Routeshttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0110/Omicron_Routes/1999-01-09T13:30:00Z1999-01-09T13:30:00Z
<p>I got an e-mail from Skorpion today, letting me know that he has
posted Omicron bot routes for my map Spare Elbow (this is extra
cool coz omicron is my favourite bot:). Stop by <a href="http://www.gibbed.com/skorpion">Skorpion's Omibot page</a> for
loads of other routes on all the best custom maps. I also added a
'bot resources' section to the <span class="createlink"><a href="http://disenchant.net/ikiwiki.cgi?do=create&from=blog%2F1999%2F0110%2FOmicron_Routes&page=links" rel="nofollow">?</a>links</span> page. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, you can find the omicron bot home page there. There
are also heaps of useful bot related links on Skorpion's page.</p>
<p>My next DM map (I really need to think of a name soon...) is
almost ready for beta testing. If anyone wants to test it, <a href="mailto:tyrann@disenchant.net">mail me</a> and I'll send a copy out
to a few (lucky?) people.</p>
Added Linkshttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0105/Added_Links/1999-01-04T13:30:00Z1999-01-04T13:30:00Z
<p>Ok, I've put in the links section now. I'll keep adding to this
as I think of extra stuff.</p>
<p>A big thankyou to <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">Mr. Shambler</a> for
mentioning my site on his news page. This doubled the hit's on my
site overnite! =). Remember, for quality single player Quake
reviews, it has to be <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">TEAMShambler</a>!</p>
<p>Work on the maps continues...</p>
Up to speed + first peekhttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0102/Up_to_speed_+_first_peek/1999-01-01T13:30:00Z1999-01-01T13:30:00Z
<p>If you want to check out maps I've done previously, take a look
at the maps page. I've recently released my latest deathmatch map
Spare Elbow. It's quite small, being designed for fast furious
1-on-1 play. Grab it and let me know what you think <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>
<p>Mr. Shambler of <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler">TEAMShambler Quake level
reviews</a> recently dug up my first map Escape from Actaltraz and
wrote a glowing review on it. This inspired me to start a new map
which I have a couple of shots of below...</p>
<p>I'm currently working on another DM map and a new SP adventure.
I haven't got a name for either yet, but I never usually think of a
name I like until it's nearly finished. Ok, here's a couple of
(early) screenshots of my next single player map, as yet
unnamed:</p>
<p><img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0102/sp2-pre0a.jpg" width="200" height="135" class="img" /> <img src="http://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0102/sp2-pre0b.jpg" width="200" height="135" class="img" /></p>
<p>As you can see, it's set in a castle. I know this theme has been
done over and over, but I'm trying to design this place to inspire
a feeling of grandure - I won't release it if I think it's going to
turn out 'just average'.</p>
<p>Absolutely anyone who is still into Quake(1) DM, particularly
mappers, should stop by at <a href="http://headshot.terrafusion.com">Headshot</a>'s new <a href="http://headshot.terrafusion.com/board.htm">qBoard</a>. This looks
like it is going to be an outstanding resource for all aspects of
Quake DM and is regularly posted to by all the 'big name'
authors.</p>
Happy New Year And Welcomehttp://disenchant.net/blog/1999/0101/Happy_New_Year_And_Welcome/1998-12-31T13:30:00Z1998-12-31T13:30:00Z
<p>Well it's about time I got my act together and got this webpage
up and running. This is my first effort at doing this \ stuff, so
If you see anything that doesn't look right, <a href="http://disenchant.net/archive/tyrann@disenchant.net">let me know</a> (remember to mention what
browser you're using). As you can see, I'm not much good at doing
graphics, but I'm getting some help later so things should improve
then.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is to be the home for all my Quake related stuff.
You can have a look at the maps I've already done in the <a href="http://disenchant.net/maps">maps</a> section. This news page will have information
about maps I am working on at the moment and anything else I feel
like writing. How frequently will I update? I have no idea - wait
and see <img src="http://disenchant.net/smileys/smile.png" alt=":)" /></p>