With this article I want to provide a quick guide to setting up GTKradiant and Wolfcam for mapping as many people were willing to try it out but had problems getting started.
Video Tutorial
Instructions:
1. Setting up Wolfcam
In order to be able to quickly test your maps without having to put together a .pk3 file after each compile you need to set up wolfcam. To do this, download and unzip the wolfcam archive linked above to any desired location on your harddrive (I suggest you make a special folder for all mapping related files) and copy all the .pk3 files from your
quakelive\baseq3\ directory to
wolfcam\baseq3\.
Can't find your QuakeLive folder? Click
here.
2. Setting up GTKradiant 1.6.3
GTKradiant is the editor used to create maps for several id tech 3 engine games. To make it work with QuakeLive you need to download the archive linked above and unzip it to your new map creation folder from step 1 or any other desired location.
If you launch the radiant executeable now, a popup will appear and you will be asked to specify the game you are looking to work with and enter the path to the game's engine directory.
Select QuakeLive and point the path to your wolfcam directory containing the wolfcam.exe (DO NOT ENTER THE PATH TO WOLFCAM\BASEQ3; CHOOSE THE WOLFCAM ROOT DIRECTORY).
When you are done, confirm your choice clicking the OK button; radiant will now load the game's shaders, textures and entities.
3. Learning the editor
Learning how to make maps requires patience at the beginning but once you learned the basics and got comfortable with the editor it will be a really fluid and fast paces process.
GTKradiant 1.6.3 is still a very young version of GTKradiant so there aren't any tutorials working with it. However, tutorials using version 1.4 and Quake III translate almost 100% to 1.6.3 so you can read those without any concerns.
GTKradiant Tutorials:
-
q3a.ath.cx tutorial
-
Bubba's GTKradiant tutorial mirrored by Delirium
-
Tutorials by Victor Karp (GERMAN)
4. Getting help
If you are getting stuck, feel free to ask more experienced map makers for help. Good places to ask are the
Quake3World LEM forum, the
#radiant Quakenet channel or this thread.
Playing your map offline in QuakeLive
The downside of using Wolfcam for QL editing is that it does not come with the QL physics. In order to test your map in QuakeLive you need to pack it up in a .pk3 and encrypt it using
quakelivedec.exe (link at the top).
.PK3 files are nothing but renamed .zip files and have the same structure as your baseq3 directory.
How to make a .pk3
Quakelivedec.exe uses a simple input-output system to encrypt files. To use it create a .bat file (make new .txt file, change extention to .bat) and enter:
<path to quakelivedec.exe> mymap_notencrypted.pk3 mymap_encrypted.pk3
Adjust the path (drop the <>) and the names to fit your pk3 file. To load the map in QL, drop the encrypted pk3 into your quakelivebaseq3 directory and set it to read only (right click, properties). Then use the QuakeLive ingame console to load up the map (map mapname).
Submitting bug reports, getting involved
GTKradiant is a community driven project. It lives from dedicated people putting time and effort into coding and testing. If you want to report bugs or get involved with the project check the
GitHub repository.
Hope this helps. If you got questions, post below or join #radiant on Quakenet.