Re: Convert Quake III Map to UT Map

[gopostal]

Not as far as I know. My guess is that there are no direct conversions already because it's either very hard or just not possible.

[FraGnBraG]

If you find a way to do it now I would love to hear about it I did "convert" a quake 2 map (fact3 "sudden death") to UT-2004, but this was a manual process. At the time I looked for automatic conversion tool(s), talked to some guys who programmed quake engines, etc, there was no interest and nothing practical that way. BUT - GTKRadiant 1.4 was free so I used that to deconstruct the map and made some nice orthogonal view images (i.e. 2d views) on grids so I could essentially construct 100% accurate BSP using UED3. Running and testing the layouts in both environments was rather fun to do and the POV and movement differences were amusing. Obviously I had to adjust the UT2k4 version afterwards for better flow and added some manouver space etc but the essence of the Q2 duel map came through. Some things like the Q2 rising lava traps were not practical to do in 2k4 ... It took me about a week to "convert" that map. I'd recommend the approach if you're intersted in getting the relative scale accurate - too many people I think tried to make Quake maps in Ut by "memory" and if you played them in quake123 a lot then you DO notice that the layouts are "off" sometimes a lot, when you play the UT versions...
Good luck

[UTPe]

Hello,
I had the same idea some weeks ago because I found "The Simpons" map for Q3A and wanted to convert it to UT99. I talked about this work (with partial results) on my clan forum, see the link of the thread:
http://www.teamcon.net/forum/viewthread ... #post_8503

Converting a Q3 .BSP to a UT .T3D is possible, the main problem is the parsing of the exported .T3D and its final internal format and this is, damn, a really big issue. A .T3D file, in order to be imported in UEd 2.0 (UT99 v436), must have a standard format, take a look at these UnrealWiki pages:
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:T3D_File
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:T3D_Brush

There are softwares around (yes, they exist!) that can export .T3D files from Q3 format-compliant files (.BSP, .MAP, .OBJ) but in most cases the parsing is different from that exposed on UnrealWiki. For example, AC3D, a well-known 3D modeling software (http://www.inivis.com/features.html), can import a Q3 BSP and export it directly to UT format but unfortunately this file is not imported into UEd 2.0 as map, nor as single brush, because the internal format is not recognized. There are many ways to convert a 3D format to another one but the main issue remains always the last step, the parsing of the .T3D format.
As you can see from my first link, I found a way to export a Q3 geometry from GTKRadiant to UEd 2.0. A Q3 .BSP map file was first decompiled into a .MAP file, which was then opened in GTKRadiant and exported to a .OBJ file. This .OBJ file was opened in 3D Object Converter (http://web.axelero.hu/karpo/) and then converted to .T3D format ("UnrealEd 3" format as say the export options). Finally, I was able to import this file in UEd 2.0 only with "Brush > Import" and the entire Q3 geometry was imported as a single brush. A friend of mine tried to build the map but UEd crashed because it had too many nodes.
This was a first crappy result but I have also to add some other infos about this damn work. The only software I've seen till now that parses correctly a .T3D file is Google SketchUp which is able to do this work through a special plugin. I talked about it and its use in UT99 mapping in another post, pay attention to it:
http://www.teamcon.net/forum/viewthread ... #post_8461

SketchUp's .T3D files are standard-compliant and they can be imported without problems into UEd 2.0. So, after the previous method, I've tried this one to see how it goes. A first simple test went fine so I decided to redo the entire conversion starting from the .OBJ file exported by GTKRadiant. I opened the .OBJ file in SketchUp and then exported the map to .T3D format by using the plugin but during conversion SketchUp crashed. Truly, I see 2 reasons for this:

A) my old Toshiba notebook (P4 Mobile 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 7000 Mobile 64MB) is not suitable for this kind of operations
B) there are too many nodes in the original map and the software is not able to manage them.

If A, then I simply must use a better pc.
If B, then the "solution" is to apply the conversion Q3/UT99 to smaller parts of the original map (single brushes like buildings, houses, etc...). Maybe this is not compulsory for all maps but surely for the most complex ones. In this case, I think a good knowlegde of GTKRadiant is required to edit the original .MAP.

This is what I found till now. If you find a way to improve this workflow, please, let me know.
Thanks to all.

greetings,
Pietro

[TheDane]

man, I tried once exactly because I also saw the simpsons map ... I couldn't dig aything up too ... but ok, It's not that time demanding for a skilled mapper as you FraGnBraG? i mean, you make some of the most complex artistic maps i've seen, so two monitors, one with Qed and one with Ued eh? lot's of coffee and time .... viola .... not Copy/paste, but Look/Redo?

[FraGnBraG]

@UTPe - Hey thanks for the detailed post Some of this sounds familiar (the part about the "one-big-brush") but for me that was like 6 years ago and I can't remember exactly what I tried, heh! Long ago I wanted to make a ut version of "bouncy map" (hey that could be fun, right?) just for a silly fun time - but never got round to it ... well I might get arsed to follow your procedure and see what happens (since that bsp is not really that complexed, iirc)

@dane - yeah, lots of coffee, but only one monitor, and a printer, and a pencil, lol!

Anyways, some people might groan, but I actually liked Q3 (still play it once in a while) dunno why - something about the feel and flow, and all those goofy "evil" themes

hmm... I don't have that "simpsons" map... maybe i should go get it

Cheers