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mapping:cawe:porting [2006-07-30 00:38] 127.0.0.1 external edit |
mapping:cawe:porting [2008-03-04 08:21] Carsten Revised the text wrt. Material Mismatches |
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| ====== Importing Maps from other Games/Editors ====== | ====== Importing Maps from other Games/Editors ====== | ||
| - | If you have already made worlds for other games (e.g. Half-Life, Quake3 or Doom3), | + | If you have already made maps with other editors for games like Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Quake 3 or Doom 3, |
| - | you possibly wish to convert them for a Ca3DE MOD, like the //Ca3DE DeathMatch MOD//. | + | you possibly wish to use them with CaWE and Ca3DE as well. For this purpose, several importers are provided that can load such maps directly into CaWE. |
| - | You save a lot of work by doing so, and in general, porting "foreign" worlds to Ca3DE is easily done. | + | |
| - | Most likely, there are only two problems you will encounter: texture and entity mismatches. | + | |
| - | The following list summarizes what you have to know and consider about porting: | + | {{mapping:cawe:importmaps.png |The "File Open" dialog also imports maps from other games and editors.}} In order to import a foreign map, just activate the **File -> Open...** menu item or press **CTRL+O** in order to open the file open dialog. |
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| + | The drop-down box near the bottom presents a list of all file types that CaWE can directly load or import. | ||
| + | Just choose the desired file type and proceed to open a map file of that type as usual. | ||
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| + | After the import, there are normally two additional problems that you may encounter: material and entity mismatches. | ||
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| + | //Material mismatches// are caused by the fact that the material systems of all game engines are different from each other. While we can create new materials in Ca3DE under the same names as those that occur in the imported map, converting the used textures and other material details is generally not feasible. Some importers therefore substitute all material occurrences in the imported map file with native Ca3DE materials that are valid, but have different names. | ||
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| + | In all cases, you'll have to re-texture the imported map manually with native CaWE materials. | ||
| + | This is recommended and frequently desired for best results anyway. | ||
| + | Employing the powerful [[mapping:cawe:editingtools:editfaceprops|Edit Surfaces]] tool and the [[mapping:cawe:dialogs:replacematerials|Replace Materials]] dialog gets the job quickly and conveniently done. Making use of the "Only show USED materials" checkbox in the [[mapping:cawe:materialbrowser|Material Browser]] is also helpful. | ||
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| + | The following list summarizes what you have to know and consider about //entity mismatches//: | ||
| * Because the existing entities in your world were defined and made for another game, they will mismatch with the Ca3DE MOD entity definitions! Note that there are two kinds of mismatch: | * Because the existing entities in your world were defined and made for another game, they will mismatch with the Ca3DE MOD entity definitions! Note that there are two kinds of mismatch: | ||
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| - If you are very experienced, you might solve many mismatchings directly by loading the ''map'' file into a text editor. | - If you are very experienced, you might solve many mismatchings directly by loading the ''map'' file into a text editor. | ||
| * Although Ca3DE ignores unknown entities (e.g. entities left from other games), and fills-in default values for unknown properties, it is still best to do the conversion carefully in order to avoid unexpected results. For example, be specially careful with ''func_wall'' entities: you'll have to reset their //rendermode// properties (translucent, blue becomes invisible, ...) //explicitly//! | * Although Ca3DE ignores unknown entities (e.g. entities left from other games), and fills-in default values for unknown properties, it is still best to do the conversion carefully in order to avoid unexpected results. For example, be specially careful with ''func_wall'' entities: you'll have to reset their //rendermode// properties (translucent, blue becomes invisible, ...) //explicitly//! | ||
| - | * The worlds have to be //re-textured//. Re-texturing can either be done with the "Replace" tool of CaWE, or (if you are very experienced) directly within the ''cmap'' file with a text editor, or even with a Perl script. In most cases, you'll have to work with the "Edit Face Properties" function though, replacing textures by hand. | ||
| - | * Copying models and textures from other commercial games to Ca3DE is (usually) a copyright infringement. Please make sure that you only use those materials with Ca3DE whose author you are, or whose author gave you permission to use that materials with Ca3DE. | ||
mapping/cawe/porting.txt · Last modified: 2013-01-07 12:07 (external edit)