Since a lot of people have been asking about making maps, I thought I'd just post some tidbits here, since there aren't really any tutorials left around.
Fist: go to the
files page and grab "BSP with Paintball2 Support"
Second: Follow the installation instructions included with the zip.
Third: Start up BSP with paintball2, I just do start|run|c:\bsp\bsp -game pball2
File|New
Press "L" to load textures. Select "PBALL" for the default textures. Choose a texture from the texture window. Start laying out some brushes:
To make a brush, simply click and drag. Start with a large grid size, like 64, for the initial layout. The brush may not line up to the grid perfectly, so hit Alt-S to snap it to the grid. To resize the brush, simply click to the right or left of it (or above or below -- wherever you want to move it) and drag. Also, you can click directly on a vertex and move it if you want to create angled brushes. To deselect the brush when you're done, hit ESC. To select a brush, shift-click on it, or simply click on it from the 3D view.
Ctrl-space (clone brush) is a handy shortcut if you're making lots of similar brushes. Unfortunately it offsets 16 unts, so when working with a large grid, you either have to set the grid size down temporarily or hit alt-s to snap it again.
Clipping planes:
These are the real beauty of BSP. Quake2 uses planes for the world, so editing via clipping planes lets you create optimal maps. Basically it's like cutting a slice off of a block of cheese. You can do it any which angle you want -- great for making rocks and irregular shapes. Simply shift+right click to set points for the clipping plane. You can set up to 3, but will probably just use 2 most of the time. ESC cancels. To perform the slice, click the little "carve" button. Looks like:
[_\Alterntively, if you want to keep both halves of the brush (useful if you want to carve holes and windows out of things) you can click the "split" button (right next to it).
Maneuvering BSP:
To move around in the 2D windows, just right click and it will recenter the view there. In 3D, us the arrow keys (shift+arrows to move vertically). DEL looks down, PGDN looks up. PGUP resets the view.
Texture alignment:
PLEASE align all of your textures. If you can't take the time to do this, don't even bother making a map. What I usually do is make an object, say a crate, where it's lined up on the grid (use a grid size of 64), then press Alt-L to lock the texture. Then you can move it wherever you want and not worry about having to line up the texture. If you do need to fix up texture alignment, though, hit "S" to bring up the surface properties. You'll see: S, T, R, SX, SY, which stand for horizontal offset, vertical offset, rotation, X scale, and Y scale respectively. Select the face you want to modify (click on it in the 3D window). Adjust the values, then click "apply face". Or, if you're doing something like a half-sized crate, put .5 in the X and Y scale, then press "apply brush" to apply it to the whole box. Negative values can be used on the X and Y scales if you need to flip a backwards texture.
Clip brushes:
Another biggie in my book. If you're not going to bother clipping areas people can get stuck on, don't bother making a map. Clip brushes are basically just invisible walls. You can shoot through them, but not walk through them. They're for detail type things -- like supports and door frames -- that stick out just a little and can be really annoying when you're in the heat of battle then get naled because you got stuck on the stupid door frame. To make a clip brush, simply create a brush using the "clip" texture. It will have the appropriate flags already set for you.
Ladders:
The best way to make ladders is to create your ladder, then put a clip brush over it, then, with the clip brush selected, hit "S", check "Ladder" and hit apply brush. If your ladder has a back side that goes nowhere, make the clip brush only cover the front part of it so the bots don't get stuck on it.
r_speeds:
Another biggie. Type r_speeds 1 at the console. It will display the polygon counts. wpoly is the world polygon count (your map). epoly is the entity polygon count. You want to keep wpoly as low as possible, like under 1000. Epoly isn't as critical, but if it's really high then you probably have too many entities in one location. You can reduce this by spawning players with equipment (
but don't spawn everyone with autos -- that just sucks).
Cylinders and barrels:
Create a brush, then with it selected, go to the drop-down next to "Make -->" and select N-sided brush, then press "Make -->" For barrels, I use a radius of 24 with 8 sides, usually.
Lighting:
Usually the easiest and best way to achieve lighting is to use light-emitting textures. Most of them start with LIT. Don't be lazy and apply the light texture to the whole brush. This looks crappy. Instead, use a metal texture for the brush and apply the light texture to just one surface. You can adjust the brightness of the light using the value in the surface settings (hit S).
