Gamespace Level Editor Plugin

#1 I haven't. Could be cool. I'd love to hear opinions, if opinions there be. :)

#2 Yeah, I hope someone has it. :)
I'd love a little more creative freedom as hammer keeps you pretty limited, just don't want to grab it and find out it's buggy or whatever.

#3 I had already posted a similiar request for info. Use the search function Luke :) Though no one had any real info then either, still no reason to waste space and processing power on GG's site by making essentialy duplicate threads :)

#4 My bad, I tried a search but it didn't turn up anything for some reason. Doh. Thx for the link to the other thread. :)

#5 Umm, I posted a "lengthy" reply in the above mentioned thread...

#6 Myself, I've heard bad things about it. If you like, I have a .map exporter for $20USD for trueSpace/gameSpace at www.digitalflux.com/mapexporter.html.

It's cheaper, and it actually works ;)

#7 I have the map exporter, it came with Gamespace when I purchased it, i'll see if I can find time to give it a work out soon.

I looked around and it seems the guy/guys behind the level exporter are listening to the problems and adding some nice features.

http://forums.caligari.com/gameSpace/showthread.php?s=05c4e3b2eee236d99e4c7d5e5b9e89b8&threadid=961

#8 @Ted
Don't take this the wrong way, but since you make a competing product i'd rather not take your word alone for how the other one works :p

The main reason I personally am looking at LE vs yours, is that the LE claims to allow you to build using more complex geometry, and it will break it up at export time to make it compatible with the game engine. Yours requires you to build under the constraint that nothing will be broken up/converted, which limits you. If i'm going to have to make everything basiaclly out of boxes and what not, I migth as well just use Quark to being with.

#9 @John: That's a fair way to assess things and I expect anyone spending money to know about what they're going to buy. Of course, I haven't used LE myself, and I've gone off comments made to me by others in forums and in emails that I know who have used it. I'm not about to tell anyone that it's better than mine if I hear that it can't do the job, it's just me being honest. But I do expect you to take it with a grain of salt and look at both of our products. If mine doesn't measure up, then I'll make sure that the next version will.

One of the advantages of mine is that in "tagging" the objects that you build your interiors with(and yes, until I get brush-style CSG working, you need to use the methods outlined in the tutorials to model interiors), you can create scenes in which you have interiors and geometry destined to be exported as DTS objects alongside it. In this, I have no idea how the other product works, but I do know that mine is geared towards helping you integrate your workspace. The only limitation is in the time involved, which does require the extra steps necessary to build concave shapes out of a series of convex ones.

Let me know what you think, and no matter which product you choose, I'll integrate your feedback into mine. At the least, the community gets a better product(or two) in the end. =)

#10 Well ive been messing with the Gamespace Level Exporter all day.
ERROR
ERROR
ERROR
map2dif refuses to even convert a simple cube.
C:\Documents and Settings\Jeremy\My Documents\Data\Assets\Interiors\Test>map2dif -o Output -t
textures test.map
Successfully opened map file: test.map
Parsing mapfile...Error processing entity brushlist on or near line: test.map: 11
Error parsing map file: test.map
The only item on line 11 is, an { and thats it
This is the map file that Gamespace Level Exporter creates for a simple untextured cube.

The only problem I see is everything after the texture. ffffff 0 0 0 1.0 1.0 0 0 0
Looking at Quark output there seems to be some more info after the texture.
WALNOGROOVE [ 1 0 0 -14 ] [ 0 -1 0 -4 ] 0 0.2 0.2

I tried it with half life and quake exportation and the format looks the same except if I check half life or quake, map2dif crashes.

If I check torque, map2dif gives the error above.

#11 I had the same luck.

#12 Sounds like you didn't sellect Valve220 as your output format in the Quark Configuration=>Torque panel.

#13 Rofl "Check the topic" ;)

#14 I did that and have received various errors. I've been on the GS forums and have mostly seen information about A6. I haven't gotten a map to export correctly into Half-Life or Quake, either. Haven't had a problem with A6, which is where the development seems to be taking place.

I'll be checking it out more thoroughly when Black Comedy is up and I'm finished with the audio editing on my film short. Then I'll probably be either extremely annoyed or feeling extremely stupid that I couldn't get it to export to anything except A6.

#15 As a side note, I've tried the original LE from Greenbriar and their new updated version. With neither one can I get ANYTHING into Torque. Heck, can't even convert the MAP into a DIF.

As mentioned above, dropping a simple cube into a scene and exporting (with or without a texture) doesn't work.

I'd guess that Greenbriar either didn't test this AT ALL with Torque, or we're all missing some vital setting to get it to work.

Ted's mapExporter is definitely working. See some other posts for more info.

As for which is better: well, one works pretty well, one doesn't work at all. At this point, there's not much else to consider :)

-Nerseus

#16 The only way I could get anything to work is by opening the .map file in Quark after export from Truespace. Using Map2dif on the command line gives error messages.

Even when importing into Quark and running map2dif from the Quark menus the geometry must be simple, no sphere, torus or boolean geometry. I turned on grid snap in Truespace and that helped.

Level Exporter is basically a toy that does not work. A waste of $49.

I am going to email Caligari. They may not support it, but they sold it.

#17 I was using the first version of the exporter in my previous messages. I've been able to load my maps into QuArK with the next release and then re-export them in Valve220 with no problems. I'm not sure if the newest version of QuArK fixed it (since I'd had some trouble with the map export in previous versions actually exporting Valve220 regardless of the box being checked) or if the newest version of the exporter fixed it.

I haven't used it in quite a while, though, as I was testing it because I got it free with GS and thought I'd play with it. I'm much more proficient in QuArK than I am in GS (which could also be a part of the problem).

#18 I obtained the level exporter on 9/9/04.
I'm using Quark 6.3c and Level Exporter SP1 with Truespace 6.6.
Part of the problem is inconsistency. The same map that both imports into
Quark and successfully compiles to DIF will stop compiling successfully with
even minor changes. If some of the geometry is moved (even with grid snapping on) then it stops compiling. I've even gotten shelled (hollow) Truespace objects to import to Quark and compile to DIF. You simply can't predict what will and will not compile to DIF.

I just wish Caligari didn't trumpet it on their website as exporting Torque compatible maps when, with respect to Torque, it isn't even alpha code.
(in my humble, but annoyed, opinion)

;-)

#19 Check the last post on page 6 of this thread in the Caligari GameSpace forums. I finally found some answers for getting the greenbriar exporter working.