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How is this different from other Open Source editors, like GtkRadiant and QuArK?

Something I've noticed about the doom3, quake4, and enemy-territory communities is that a majority of mods strive for cross-platform code. It seems unfair for valve to assume that their mod writers are too lazy to recompile for other platforms. So unfair, that I'm willing to wager that support of the mod community was not a driving factor in their choice to rip cross-platform support out of the engine. Also, does cross-platform support really cost that much to a company? ID software, which provide[s|d] support for the three games I listed above, has a single employee maintaining all aspects of the linux ports: patches, documentation, and SDK including build scripts.

As a concession to that point, it is true that a handful of the mod tools are unavailable for linux. None of the specialized editors are available for linux, but these are essentially just glorified text editors with syntax highlighting for id's scripting and gui languages. This is not a barrier to entry, since anyone can write text on any OS. The map editor built into the engine is not available for linux, but GtkRadiant is.

As a side note, as a mod author myself, I can say that cross platform code isn't that hard to write. I am developing a more detailed inventory system for doom3 and I haven't gone out of my way to ensure the ability to compile my code on all available targets: it just does. With that (admittedly, anecodtal) evidence, I would be willing to say that breaking cross compatability seems to be something that is a very concious decision.

Well according to the website http://www.qeradiant.com/?data=editors/gtk it currently supports the following games: Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake III: Team Arena, Quake III Arena modifications, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Soldier Of Fortune II, Heretic II, Half-Life, and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force - but there's no mention of Quake 4 anywhere, though. It's indeed very extensible: each game supported in GtkRadiant is put into something called a 'game pack'. That includes everything specific to the game, tools, documentation, models, helper textures etc.

Radiant.

Widely supported, runs in Windows and Linux, has a huge community behind it, and I'm sure a little digging will turn up plenty of furniture for your lev^B^B^Bhome.

Can someone moderate parent "-1 missinformative"?, for anyone that has a clue about 3D graphics knows that mixing D3D and OpenGL makes absolutely nonsense. You can be quite sure that _all_ graphics in Doom3 are done with OpenGL.

As for the other DirectX APIs someone else mentions, it might be, but I doubt they depend on them, they have been releasing cross platforms games for a long time without problems, I don't see why Doom3 should be any different in this respect. (Note: except the editor, that apparently for historical reasons has a lot of windoze-only code, but then you can use GtkRadiant which is very well supported on all platforms)

And I don't like "me too" posts, but I'm also eagerly awaiting the Linux version! And the release of the Quake3 source, thanks John! you rock, and good luck with Armadillo!

The screen shots look suspiciously similiar to Half-Life 2 though, what's up with that? Even some of the monsters look HL1 like. I have a feeling this isn't going to have nearly the popularity as Doom1 did (well it might but that'll just be riding there fame). It's kinda like movie sequels, you're so excited about a new edition, but then it always ends in disappointment..

That might have something to do with the fact that, as mentioned by other posters, HL's story line is a blatant ripoff of Doom's story line (or Quake's. They were pretty much identical).

From a more technically graphical standpoint, I still say they look nothing alike. It's like saying Quake3 and Unreal Tournament look the same. The only thing they have in common is that they come from a similar hardware/software generation and therefore have about the same limitations and advantages to deal with. Even the settings are completely different. One is a modern, post-apocalyptic eastern European city setting while the other is a super shiny, futuristic space station on Mars. And don't get me started on the art styles or monster concepts.

If HL2 and Doom3 battled I wonder who would win? I wonder if the fundamentals of the game will be the same between the two, and if Worldcraft (or hammer) is going to work on both as well?

Worldcraft supporting Doom3? HAH! Try using GtkRadiant, as it's FAR more likely to support both than any other editor. Especially one made by Valve.

While it's cool that Doom3 will have D3Radiant built into the engine, it's my understanding that it's a fork of Q3Radiant which means it may not have all the enhancements that were later added to the GtkRad tree. Maybe the editor code will be in an external dll so you can create a plugin for any editor you had the source for? That would be sweet.

The q3 level designer (GTKRadiant) is not terribly easy to learn, but not very difficult either. If you have a good understanding of 3d space concepts, and don't mind reading through the manual, you can get going in a couple of days.

Something I would suggest to an aspiring mapper is to map something your friends will want to test (like a dorm building or similar). I managed to throw together a q3 map of our dorm (in about a week of blood and tears) and the thing was an instant hit :). You get loads of feedback on where the bugs are an where to put weapons/powerups and similar.

Then, once you have the basic skills down, start thinking about gameplay, layout and similar.

Speaking as a player, I'd encourage you to seek out any competitive communities built around the game(s) you're interested in designing for. While Neverwinter Nights is a cool enough game, I'd also reccomend you check out getting some experience with the "Quake-related" FPS games.

One of the tools that's used to create maps for several game is Radiant (supported on both Linux and Windows) and supports a bunch of games. Mappers familiar with Quake3 were able to transfer that knowledge to RtCW when it came out, and in turn that was transferrable to ET. Plugins for other games (Half Life, Soldier of Fortune, and some others I'm blanking on) is also available.

Couple that with experience working with 3DSmax (or gmax if you're on a budget) creating models, and you should be good to go.

If you're also looking for ideas on what to make maps of, I'd suggest trolling around and seeing if you can find a competitive community for the games you're interested in designing for. Stuff like Half-Life and its mods (most notably Counter Strike), Quake3/RtCW/ET, and the MOHAA/CoD stuff are going to be hot ticket items right now. Organizations like The Team Warfare League or the Cyber Athlete League might be worth a look to get an idea of how people are using the games and what kind of maps and what features they'd benefit from.

Looking to the future, everyone's pointing at stuff like Doom3 and Half-Life2 (obviously). But it might be worth taking a look at games like Far Cry and Painkiller as possible sleeper hits coming up on the horizon.

Good luck in your efforts. :)

And the level editor for ET (and many other games) also runs fine. Get a copy of GtkRadiant and start making your own (mediocre) maps.

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it doesn't matter how cool a game is, how many copies it's sold on the PC... if it's not profitable, it will not be ported. period.

I would liken this to a kind of litmus test! Profitable games, are generally really fun games that have that super-addictive quality to them. To me, this is a good thing, this filtration. If anything, I want to buy a Mac even more, now that I've read these responses.

I would be using the Mac primarily for level design, texture and cinematics. I wonder... any news on a Mac level design proggie for DooM 3? Maybe there's something on qeradiant.com, but I'm guessing it's going to be a while before the tools come out for DooM 3. Maybe a month or two after it releases.

GtkRadiant is the latest version of the Quake3 level editor. Other games are supported of course.

- Latest version can be downloaded here
- Or by using the download selector
- The list of supported games

GtkRadiant is the latest version of the Quake3 level editor. Other games are supported of course.

- Latest version can be downloaded here
- Or by using the download selector
- The list of supported games

GtkRadiant is the latest version of the Quake3 level editor. Other games are supported of course.

- Latest version can be downloaded here
- Or by using the download selector
- The list of supported games

It basically contains a Makefile which uses Wine to run the Win32 versions of the tools. The README has more information on my experiences with it (some of the web links are down now, though). This was before the 1.17 point release for Linux but it should still be able to run the latest Win32 tools.

BTW, I think versions of GtkRadiant have the Linux Q3A SDK 1.1 in the package. E.g., see this link: (search for SDK at planetquake.com and linuxgames.com): FilePlanet mirror.

One thing to note is that the 1.2x SDK release broke mod compatibility, so running the old native Linux SDK tools will produce code that runs only in pre-1.17 Q3A. It may be better off to use Wine to run the latest Win32 tools so that your mods can run on the latest Q3A. And bug Timothee of GtkRadiant to release the updated SDK for Linux.

Hope this helps,

Y.

What would make this a fabulous story is if gtk finally made it to MacOS-proper. A year ago this project reportedly had an experimental build of the Gimp running on OS 9, but work stopped there a long time ago.

Like a lot of Mac users, what I really want out of gtk-on-MacOS is not a free Photoshop clone but a proper port of GtkRadiant (still stuck in X11-land on the Mac for now... not a terrible thing, but a barrier to some people), so I can make Quake 3 maps. ;-)

It's always all about teh Quake...

If I recall, Carmack was thinking about making id tools Java-based during Q3's initial development. Although that never panned out, work is being done (by TTimo's team at QERadiant.com) to make the existing Q3 tools cross-platform with a common code-base by porting the Linux GTKRadiant port Loki developed back to Win32 (they just recently made their first Alpha release).

Incidentally, this will all be moot with the next Doom title as far as id engines go, as the rendering/level architecture will allow the editor to be built into the game executable.

Still, it'd be nice if GTK+, QT, or some other cross-platform widget lib gained acceptance among developers for home-grown utilities. Hell, it'd be even better if applications in general used cross-platform libs more often (how difficult are Win32-OSX ports now?), but that's probably years away at best.