119 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
119 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
reflex2q3
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A tool to convert Reflex Arena maps to idTech .maps for use in map editors.
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Forked from chronokun's ReflexToQ3.
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Features, and Responsibilities of the Program: For Mappers
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The converter is equipped with the following features:
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- Converts map geometry from Reflex
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- Converts entities such as, but not limited to
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- player spawn points
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- item pickups
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- teleporters and respective targets
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- race checkpoints
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During the conversion process, face related data (texture & color) are
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preserved. This is both because of the differences between engines and the
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numerous games built in idTech engines. That is, the map converter does not
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attempt to retexture the map with generic idTech engine equivalents or
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per-game equivalents. It is the individual mappers' responsibility to
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appropriately adapt the map for the target game. Some of the following
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tasks for mappers remain:
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- Redesigning specific map geometry so meta/gameplay tricks work.
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- Sealing leaks allowed by Reflex Arena, but illegal in idTech.
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- Texturing the map.
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* Extends to applying lava and slime effects to brushes.
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- Providing light to the map.
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* The converter handles Point Lights; however some entities and
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textures in Reflex emit light while target game equivalents
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do not.
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Program Design: For Programmers
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The program can be summarized as two distinct phases:
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1. Converting worldspawn (map geometry).
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2. Converting entities.
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These are split into two distinct phases because of the difference between
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engines. While it is acceptable for worldspawn brushes and game entites to
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be in which ever order in Reflex, worldspawn in IdTech engines must not have
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entities with in it. Entities must be handled separately after worldspawn.
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Both phases will write to the output file, the format determined by a
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function pointer to the outputting function- the function to call being a
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"variable" determined in main. Both phases convert and write to file single
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instance of a game object (brush or entity) at a time.
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Converting Worldspawn
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This is the phase that passes through the input file, parses Reflex's
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.map format, and converts brushes for the idTech format.
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Functions pertaining to this phase are written to be easily changed to
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deal with either from-memory or from-file operations. For example,
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functions for parsing brushes for the first phase will deal with input
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and output file streams, but later in the next phase they are used to
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deal with stringstream. If for any reason, the entire contents of the
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input file should be stored in memory, no major rewrites are needed.
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The parsing functions for each game object (brush, faces, vertices)
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expect and operate on the contents underneath the respective keywords.
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As the two engines are very different, entities must be converted and
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written to file at a different phase. The converter will store the
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strings of an entity to a vector of vector of strings (STL). A vector
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was chosen because the entity converter needs to prescan the container
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for teleporters and targets. The vector permitting multiple passes FIFO
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and pass by reference; where instead STL queue is either destructive or
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requires copying the queue.
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Converting Entities
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This is the phase that operates on the container of entity strings,
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converts, and writes them to file. Entity names for pick up items will
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vary per target game; to easily adapt to multiple games, a plain text
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file is used, containing Reflex map entity id's corresponding to the
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target game entity names.
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In order to determine the teleporters and the corresponding target
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locations, the entity container is prescanned.
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Major Code Changes in Forking
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- Can be compiled for g++ and by extension mingw, and Linux systems.
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The original project was for Microsoft Visual Studio; however even
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manually compiling the source resulted in errors from syntax acceptable
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by Visual Studio, but rejected by g++.
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- Removal of ckmath, original author's custom C++ library for linear
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algebra
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This was because the attempt to compile ckmath results in several
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warnings and errors. Addressing the compilation errors would have
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warranted its own tests to see if the output is unchanged.
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This was scrapped for Eigen.
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- Addition of Reflex version 8 map parsing
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The original code had a reported Issue where it did not parse V8, the
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current format of map files for the game.
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- Addition of output to Net Radiant's brush definition
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The original code's output was the legacy brush definition used by GTK
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Radiant or older map editors.
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- Addition of converting map entities.
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- Addition of translating texture definitions.
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Previously these were kept as placeholder values.
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- Severe bug fixes
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The old converter crashed on converting Pocket Infinity, and had
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distorted geometry for certain maps e.g Sky Temples. The main cause
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for such issues have been addressed and will not occur on maps
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featuring similar cases.
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Minor Code Changes
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- Improved memory usage
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- Added new command line arguments and robust handling of.
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-h, --help, displays help
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-gtk switch to output to GTK's map format
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-e <FILE> entity conversion
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- Added test cases to verify correctness of operations pre-commit.
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