Mapping

🚧️ TODO: Some knowledge may have to be ported from Old/Mapping.

Mapping or 'level-making' for Unvanquished is fun to learn but difficult to master. Creating maps is highly open ended — anyone can use any of an infinite variety of techniques to make a map, for both fun and showing off via release.

This page provides resources and tutorials for all skill levels, from beginner to demi-goat.

Getting Started

• Getting started with NetRadiant — installing and setting up the mapping tools
• Level editors — Comparison of level editors.
• Mapping tools — List of mapping tools.
• Mapping guide — From start to finish, assuming little previous knowledge.
• Tremulous Mapping Tutorial ^Rehost? — still applicable to Unvanquished
• Map testing hints

Techniques and Features

• Colour Grading — Changing colour-schemas
• Reverberation — Testing and adding reverberation effects (natural sound echo)
• Minimaps — Current minimap system. Will eventually be replaced with automatic model.

Mapping Approaches

• Modular environments — making maps out of pre-made components

VIS and optimisation

Unvanquished employs a VIS (visibility) system to improve game performance. Only a visible subset of a whole levels is 'rendered' at any one time, because rendering things you can't see wastes performance. Although the compiler can do this itself, more efficient VIS systems can be enforced by doing it by hand.

• Understanding Vis and Hint Brushes ^Rehost?
• Advanced VIS and hinting tutorial ^Rehost?

Compilation

Maps must be compiled by a compiler to get them into a format the engine understands.

• Compilation overview
• Wikipedia article on 'Quake Engine' — brief description of map mesh optimisation.

Migrating content from other quake engines

• Entity Changes — entity changes from Tremulous and Q3

Old guides

Content in these should either be used in new guides or updated to be useful.

• Old mapping page — old mapping page, some content has still not been merged.

Design with bots in mind

Unvanquished supports bot players, but those have rather limited intelligence. While mapping, it might be a oood idea to keep in mind that when there are bots, they might completely break balance if they are too dumb to take some paths. While it is hoped that their brain will be improved, some commands can help debugging and improving their behaviors.

• Navigation mesh — View navmeshes.