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Quake As An Architectural Design Tool
Snaller writes: "'Established architectural virtual reality modelling systems tended to be very expensive, Mr Richens said. "We get slightly better results using a £30 game running on a £150 graphics card. So it's extremely low-cost virtual reality.'
The man saying this is Paul Richens, director of the Cambridge University's Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, and he's talking about a project to use Quake 2 as means to visualize new buildings. It's difficult for people to read architectural plans, but if you can "run" around in a virtual building you get a much better idea of what it looks like. The project is quite serious and is intended to let architects' clients see what the end product would look like - of course the guns and monsters just had to go, lest clients start to get trigger happy and blast away. 'They were doing that originally but we had to take the guns out -- the head of the department didn't like that at all,' Mr Richens said." It's a fascinating project -- reminds me of my longtime hope to see driving games used to simulate actual upcoming trips, to learn what exits will be like, etc.
The man saying this is Paul Richens, director of the Cambridge University's Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, and he's talking about a project to use Quake 2 as means to visualize new buildings. It's difficult for people to read architectural plans, but if you can "run" around in a virtual building you get a much better idea of what it looks like. The project is quite serious and is intended to let architects' clients see what the end product would look like - of course the guns and monsters just had to go, lest clients start to get trigger happy and blast away. 'They were doing that originally but we had to take the guns out -- the head of the department didn't like that at all,' Mr Richens said." It's a fascinating project -- reminds me of my longtime hope to see driving games used to simulate actual upcoming trips, to learn what exits will be like, etc.
I tinkered with the Half Life level editor, and it was a lot more in depth than previous editors that I had worked with, however I never really got into it. Shame. I could have been doing architectual work!
God knows how complicated the Q3 level editors are. I haven't even seen one, let alone try it. My next project is to recreate my office space for me and my co-workers, probably for a Rogue Spear map. I'll have to check and see how good the Rogue Spear level editors are.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
hrmmmmmm
post offices, obviously....
Maybe certain public buildings like City Hall (TM), and other facilities where useless bureaucrats are stored and warehoused.
In Boston, this happens to be the Boston Housing Authority. Your city may be different.
and you know some sicko is going to suggest the local high school.
. . . or historic locations like Dealy (sp?) Plaza in Dallas where Kennedy was shot.
Extra Points for finding the politicians!
(It was just a joke, dammit! HEY watchit with those handcuffs .... OUCH!)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm hoping that a good reading of Christopher Alexander's architecture works (A Pattern Language, which inspired programming Design Patterns) will help me in my architectural/gaming mapping.
--
Marc A. Lepage (aka SEGV)
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Everyone knows that you need to ^D to get out of a Linux program!
Alex
I worked on a project doing this in 1998 for Blackbaud In Charleston, SC as a subject for a research thesis. I used QOOLE as my Building tool, and then I converted the BSP files to VRML. Overall, the process was pairly simple.
Leaving out information - that's an interesting comment actually. As a "published" mapper for the Half-Life Counter Strike mod, I've spent a lot of time working to create realistic looking but not overly realistic modeled environments for gaming. Basically if you put in too much physically modeled information, the performance of the game engine suffers due to the amount of detail it has to render. One trick when mapping for game engines is to not put in detail where detail is not required. Obviously you don't need to model the details of the top of a light fixture if nobody is ever going to "fly" up and look at the top of the light fixture. Also, there are times when you don't really need to model details, but just create the illusion of detail. For example, you would not necessarily model each exposed bolt in a beam, but rather would just render the "essence" of the bolts in the texture used on the beam solid. For an example of this, check out a picture from a map I am working on at http://www.vintnerd.com/images/fusama/fusuma20000. jpg You will see what look like complexly structured Japanese shoji screens. In truth, I am not modeling every little strip of wood - it is just an image of a shoji placed upon a flat brush (as solids are called in the gaming world). It's extremely effective, and it's not necessary at all to create the actual detail.
Another comment. It's very easy to model such things as doors, lights that switch on and off, elevators, etc. in a map. But there are other kinds of "interaction" that could happen. For example, an architect might actually build all the interior details of a typical wall, but then hide the details behind a flat sheet of virtual drywall. During a presentation, the virtual tour guide could "use" the wall, causing it to slide out of the way, and reveal the interior construction details. Then the virtual drywall could be put back and the tour continued.
An architect also might use the same idea to "remove" a wall to demonstrate how a remodelling job would change the appearance of a room. Eg, "Let's all go into the kitchen, and I'll remove that north wall as we are planning, and you'll see how you now have a view out to the back yard..."
"dditionally there would be some people who would wander aimlessly around a huge map in Half Life."
:)
LOL!!
As if we don't wander around campus aimlessly in real life? The way I see it, if someone ended up doing that on the simulated campus, that's quite an accomplishment. That is, unless they fire a rocket into the Dean's Office...
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
You won't find that at NaN yet. Blender comes binary only, with a copyright that you can only see once you have downloaded their package. See blender's beginner page to confirm for yourself.
It's nice that it's no cost, but it's not free! People who know where the free software foundation page is (www.fsf.org) will know what free implies and be missled by rash's orignial post. Those who don't know what free software is, and I imagine a general interest article about Quake and graphics will attract many of you, should visit the page cited.
Having looked at the article, it seems like it's the smooth movement, rather than accuracy or photo-realism, that is the key benefit. There is something about moving freely through the simulation that a perfectly rendered still, or even a walkthrough, can't do. I actually most enjoy Q3 for just walking around and admiring the scenery.
Kinda hard without a rocket, wouldn't you agree?
Ya gotta think, some people don't need moderator status. Some people still don't get that whole "giving away something doesn't make it free" concept. To someone who doesn't understand that, I guess that sounds like flamebait ;)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Huh, cool. I did a project a 2 summers ago that created a version of quake II that was linked to the O/S and could support file transfer/voice comm/spawning applications/etc. One of the things we thought it could be really cool for was grocery stores.
<sigh> well maybe someday : )
Yeah, I agree about Unreality etc.
The interesting thing is this _is_ still news. Despite large progress most people still think this kind of thing is way out of reach.
get an interest in these things for purposes other than games, then there'd be more funding for these things. Thus, we could get cooler and more advanced stuff quicker, and it would help out everybody. Game players would have better games, and real world situations can use these applications too.
NASA could test out the international space station, or a future mon base using one of these. Whole ships, like a complex aircraft carrier, etc. The possibilities are endless, and we get cooler games to play as well. Where's the down side?
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
hasn't unrealty been doing the same thing with the Unreal engine for quite some time? -m-
However,
Inclusion of this in a Quake 2 model would slow the system down and ultimately not be as detailed. In addition, you wouldn't be able to click on a wall section and find the exact parts needed, order replacements online, etc. like you can with more professional suites (without massive modifications to the code base).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
No shit, Sherlock.
The real Shoeboy has retired to spend more time with his boyfriend.
--Shoeboy
--Shoeboy
(posting anonymously to preserve my precious karma)
It seems to me that it would be rather difficult to have all the textures line up, and not repeat all over the place. Also, is it possible to get the kind of tight curves you often have in architectural designs?
I once got a mail from a friend who said he'd been in the Moller Centre and felt like he was in a Quake level. He claimed he'd run into some of the Churchill fellows[1] while in there, and had escaped alive, but with no ammo left.
[1] Note for Merkins: "fellow" is like a professor in the US, I think.
the boss of the level would be your parents.
(god, i'm getting to be a sicko this morning... must be the caffeine shortage0
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The surprised look on your client's face when he/she enters his new home.
"Hmm. I don't remember asking for an ammo dump in the kitchen, and why is my bathtub filled with toxic slime?!"
"Oh shit," you think as the Strogg guards begin to move in.
They were doing that originally but we had to take the guns out -- the head of the department didn't like that at all
I bet there's a little Easter Egg in there somewhere. Press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-ESC while mashing your mouse buttons to enable chainsaws.
With the chainsaw you could at least do some quick home improvements. "Honey, how would you like to have another window right here?"
I hope they at least left in the chain saw....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Some friends of mine did some work for the New York City MTA a few years ago... They did some models of subway stations using the Quake II engine... you can find some screenshots here....
FUD, FUD, FUD.
First of all, those architectural designs that people put together in cheesy programs are useful because it lets them tell the architect what they're looking for. Sure, people spend hours, perhaps even cumulatively days working on the plans, but so what? It's their time, and it lets them play with the design of the house, visualize their concepts, and decide what they do want, and what they don't.
Real design tools like AutoCAD of course are useful, but if you're not an architect, there's no point to it. You CAN get AutoCAD drawings printed, if you set them up properly, into blueprints. AutoCAD also has some limited 3D realization tools these days, which is a nice added bonus.
Even more than that though is the fact that AutoCAD drawings (DXF) are basically the de facto standard for 3D interchange; Almost everything will import and export them, including Lightwave, 3D Studio, Alias, and so on. It's just some basic polygonal data, anyhow. Once you bring them into your 3D package you can texture them, and render them into something very nearly realistic. While the expense and time used there doesn't seem to much be worth it on the consumer scale, doing such things for a buisness, showing them what a building will ACTUALLY look like has closed many a sale for design houses not afraid to embrace technology.
In fact, Lightwave 3D with its $5000 price tag (Which, BTW, holds fully half of the design/render seats in the 3D industry) does such wonderful things as network rendering, and radiosity. If you have three or four machines in the office, you can render out poster prints overnight with truly beautiful lighting that really do bear a disturbing resemblance to reality - And you can simply import the DXF files right into Lightwave Modeler for texturing. Bust out KPT Bryce, and you can even create a plot of land for the building to sit on.
Just because you've never gotten any good use out of 3D design tools doesn't mean no one can, any more than the fact that I can't use your tools to build a house.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am currently working on a project to make our office building (and warehouse) into a giant Half-Life level (deathmatch, not TFC). Of course, this is just so all of us can kill each other in our own departments after work, not because we are building a building. But I have thought that would be useful many times before, for finding people's offices and things, and of course, using racing games for trip mapping would be extremely useful!
-- Cameron
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Since then I always had the idea that some company should make a serious VR program our of one of these game engines, for an ultra cheap solution, with average detail.
For those of you who are still Duke Nukem 3D fans, the map was called liberty.map, and I think he uploaded it to some map sites. Its a large deathmatch only map.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
How about modelling schools?
Think about it, frustrated and bullied geeks can then take out their anger on a virtual school instead of blowing away their real classmates and teachers.
--Shoeboy
--Shoeboy
(posting anonymously to preserve my precious karma)
They used DOOM, too, but they got over that. One presumes that they've moved on to, perhaps, Counterstrike for SWAT/SEAL-type operations (it has still more realistic damage) and something homebuilt for combat in the wide open spaces. Perhaps when it comes out, they'll use the Unreal Game of the Year Edition for that, since it handles both enclosed and wide open spaces so handily.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is there more code available for Quake2 or something, eh?
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
5 or 6 years ago when DoomII was all the rage
I modeled one of my high school buildings
I was going to tak pictures of the brick, ceiling,floor, etc and use them as "textures" (in d2 i wouldnt call them "textures".) Digital cameras for the masses was almost nonexistent back then. I used a Polaroid camera and a 300dpi flatbat SCSI. I wanted to do a Carmegeddon/QuakeII/III type of game.
Columbine 2: This time it's for real.
You can be a member of the "trenchcoat mafia"
and tear up a school.
They should have just left the stairs out instead- force 'em to rocket-jump to the second floor.
Back in te Doom days, there was a .wad called houses12.wad which was our absolute favorite -- you were running through bedrooms, down halls, leaping over the couchi nto the living room firing the double-barrel shotgun....
I've often wished that there were realistic levels of malls, etc. for Quaking...
Maybe some of these architectural designs could be relased.... The one that's in the screenshots looks pretty cool.
These people might want to check
:)
out www.blender.nl
It has realtime stuff now. So you
can make games (like quake).
Or just make buildings and walk around in them.
It would be a lot easier and faster to do this in
blender.
And they can save in the licensing money of
Quake (blender is free
SO in short. I dont see anny benefit
from using quake instead of blender.
Actually (at least this is how I heard it) you're allowed to shoot them through the heart with a bow and arrow. Use a gun or miss by a couple of inches and you're fucked.
They took the guns out of the simulation. This obviously makes it less real. It's every Americans right to have guns in the house! ;)
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Maybe cause blender impossible to use without many
hours of training thats better spent modelling
Check out Maya games engine.. not cheap
but its great!!
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
I can't believe that the /. crowd missed the best detail: Mr. Bill Gates himself in a FPS environment! Sure, they think they've gotten all the guns out, but that just makes it more of a challenge for the hackers. Even if you have to get him into the elevator shaft, you too can frag the Man. Wow. The mind boggles.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
One of the architectural firms I worked had a lot of fun with this. We would make a model of the space plan of a given building in Qoole and setup lan games on saturdays or after hours when q2 came out. Part of the fun would be namimg the players as the clients who the project was being built for. You could frag the boss and the project managers for the realtor etc. Much deathmatch fun was had this way though we never did anything serious about it as far as a visualization tool. There was something funny about the whole unit scale in q2 though. The units don't convert right like 1,1,1 didn't equal 1'x1'x1' I think it worked out to something like 1.1x1.1x.83 I don't remember as it was a few years ago already (surely someone elso out there can post the right units). We didn't fancy up the textures or make the levels 100% accurate. We were just in it for the frags on a lan where DM would be with 4-6 players on nice highend CAD systems (21" monitors, 32meg GL cards, tons of memory etc..)The article didn't mention the incredible team building effect this has on the design teams though. In an office the little bit of competition added to the tons of fun made for a much tighter construction documentation team. This comes in quite handy when you have condoc's of 100 or so sheets and a need to assemble them quickly.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
I found earlier versions of their program to be a little flaky (save early and often) and sometimes did not meet the real architectural expectations of some folks (certain popular styles like Victorian were missing elements), because it was designed/coded in Germany.
Their file format is proprietary as well, so exporting to quake, etc would be a real pain.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
As an architecture major, I've wondered how the understanding of space and structure and all of that that i've been learning would translate to level design for games. I just haven't had the time to sit down and play with an editor long enough to actually make something. I remember reading that Bungie hired licencensed architects to do a lot of the level design for Oni, and that it was actually done in autocad. As far as I know, oni still hasn't been released, but I'm interested in seeing how that all turned out.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Seen this group at international CAD conference
;-),
... yes rocket launcher action.
in Atlanta. This work was a show stopper when
demonstrated, but was in effect one card
in a deck of very innovative blends of
visualisation and modeling.
Showman like crowd pleasers in this piece were
spatial/ambient noises --- cows mooing etc
and
Cheers,
Andrew
However, there was also interesting stuff wrt
actually getting the CAD model in and down
converting to the different set of constraints.
Also, the use of prerendering for the lighting.
I read a couple of years ago in Wired that the US army was using Quake models of US embassies around the world to train soldiers to know the layout. This is an obvious extension of that kind of thing. John Carmack has always insisted on the best real-time interactivity. It's no surprise that the Quake2 engine is handy for walking around architectural designs. What is a surprise is that this is "news".
At a place I worked at a little over a year ago, we got the most detailed CAD drawing of the chemical plant we could find and a program that would convert the CAD drawing to a half-life map and played it. FUN! :)
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the people who have started suggesting structures to build are doing the same thing: suggesting places such as the local post office, high school, or even their own house? Doesn't this strike anyone else as mildly odd? With all the hubbub about video games causing violent behavior, well, it seems to me it's the other way around. Here we have situations like the fabled postal shooting, or high school shootouts and the like, and people are emulating those in the games! According to what we're seeing here, it's real life that creates violent behavior in video games, not video games that cause violent behavior in real life. Just an observation. :)
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
O.k., Now, over here. If we take a look at the bathroom... AAHHH [rat tat tat] [bang!] [BOOM]
... Phew. O.k. I think you'll _both_ like this little touch. Note the oak panels and marble sink and...
Hey! A secret passage behind the toilet! Quick! In Here!
I approached 3D design in school with what can only be called fanaticism, learning every tool I could, hogging the high-end workstations night and day. It never made me a better designer, and it NEVER saved me ANY time.
Now I co-own a successful design-build firm. I work in AutoCAD, 2D tools exclusively, and I sketch. I am fast, the clients have a full understanding of the spaces, and my construction documents convey exactly the information they need to.
I stay on top of 3D developments. I know 3DS-Max well, I can work in Lightwave, Rhino, Form*Z, etc., I can hand-code VRML, I can do photo-realistic rendering, and I can animate the shit out of a walk-through.
But I don't do any of this for actual work, because the current tools are not very good for design, and they are horrible at producing construction documents. And when you get down to it, those are the only two things that really matter in architecture; developing the design and producing the instructions necessary to make it a reality.
I believe in the future of 3D for architecture, but the present is a sick joke.
------------
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I remember reading an article on Planet Unreal (www.planetunreal.com) about architects using the Unreal engine to create "virtual walkthroughs" for their customers.
Unfortunately, it was something like one year ago (before UT), I have since then lost the URL and PU's search services are down.
Does anybody have the URL?
"Fire in Harmony!" -- Alias
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
Quake's movement code, networking etc would take a long time to reproduce.
:)
Licensing fees? What licensing fees? You can do everything they say with a simple mod, just like say ctf or rocket arena. No need to go licensing the engine or anything. There are plenty of level editors, and the game source (not including graphics networking etc) is freely availible to remove the weapons. You can do an imressive amount just with the public tools released by iD.
Moderators, do some research
From where we stood that day, I made the usual mistake of being overly optimistic about the future of technology, and I figured it was about 4 years away. That was about 1994...
--
Wouldn't they be better off using the Quake3 engine, since it can support splines? Or the Unreal engine, which has already been used for high-quality architectural renderings.
Is it just that Q2 is cheap to license these days?
Ive been doing this for almost 2 years, using the worldcraft 2.1 tool for the halflife engine, Ive designed and built my own garadge using it. Ive also designed maps of my house, a school and the office. So this really isnt that new of an Idea.
>>Now the ComSci and Engineering dept. are trying to create a way to use quicktime VR to simutate a walk around campus for new/prospective students. I'm trying to convince them to use something like this instead, and this article should help.
I think that for this instance (walking around campus) Quicktime VR (QTVR) would be better. While Quicktime VR would probably require an expensive camera mount you would have a photo realistic image. You would also be able to mark locations easier. The college could also guide people around the campus easier, you would just click on a part of the image and you would be at the site where the next panaorama was taken. That and a QTVR tour would be much smaller than a Half Life tour. Additionally there would be some people who would wander aimlessly around a huge map in Half Life.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
this would be good for large complexes (like universities) to keep someone from getting lost when they actually visit the place. just dl'ing quake (free) and playing through the level (besides the people who would love this sort of thing (me) probably already have quake). Sure being able to walk and look freely throughout a building for several hours would probably help if you were say, trying to assasinate a president. good thing they took out the guns.
"Sorry, but I don't there's anything charming about ignorance and carelessness." -LordNimon
Silence! I will not hear anything on slashdot that is not of quake.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I live in the Bay Area and I have no idea what 287 is.
There is a 237 but it's in the south bay.
Are you Al Gore'ing this story out of nowhere?
The post was a troll. As others have noted, ID has GPLed significant chunks of software and, of course, are free of both fees and and other greed motivated restrictions.
No where did I suggest that anyone should die, though I would always recomend a free tool over one with restrictions. If fact, I have to commend these blender people for giving away what looks like a nice shiny binary. Greater praise, however, must go to those who GPL. If the issue is tiresome to you, go read some nice ZDnet stuff. I don't think I'll ever tire of telling people what a great idea free software is.
Virtus used to make architectural 3D design software. One of their success stories was James Cameron using their software to lay out the sets for The Abyss and realizing he could drop an entire wing of one set, directly saving him $1million in construction costs. They've reincorporated as Virtus Entertainment now, and taken their 3d modeling into the gaming arena with their subsidiary company Red Storm and other related ventures.
The included escape routes are: Swimming under the wall, climbing over chain-linked sections (not recommended), going through the sewers, and tunneling. A couple of people, who were very experienced at HL, have been able to fight their way across, so that is possible as well.
It was my first HL map, so don't send me any flames about it sucking. I got an A on the project anyway.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Does he suddenly become very disillusioned with how wonderful this new building will be as he craters on the pavement below?
Are we sure this is a good sales technique? :-)
--Kai
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom
While Blender looks like a fine product and is provided at no cost , it is not a source code distribution and is not free . Thank you for pointing to Blender, I may download it one day.
This is how I recall we got many technical advances: rayon, nylon, teflon, the Internet (back then it was Arpanet)... But then this happens.
The military had simulators long before the 3D FPS, but this particular application of 3D modeling technology didn't come directly from the military. It came from the gaming industry.
The armed forces have long had to acquire maximum resources for minimum capital and squeeze them into minimum space. That's why they conduct scientific research to create the ideal blend of Good, Fast, and Cheap to satisfy various cryptic requirements.
In that regard, the armed forces are nothing compared to the commercial software industry, which isn't working under contract to produce their goods, and consequently may lose their collective shirts if the consumers don't buy it!
So put the military on the back burner. Sure, they'll still innovate when they absolutely need to, or when a subcontractor has a nifty idea, but that's not where this particular nifty idea came from. More will come from there before it's done.
And by the way... there's another reason for people not to ban 'violent' video games. Do you think a game like Hello Kitty's Pie-Throwing Splatmatch would need a robust 3D renderer and realistic particle effects? Well, maybe, but what bugger would buy and play it?
If you prevent the industry from writing software up to the tastes of the adult player, then they won't bother writing software up to the standards of the adult player. Goodbye action, 3D graphics, any need for processor speed, or technological advancements. What use does a video-game written for a four-year-old have for any of those?
The innovations will come faster from those industries more dependent on them for their survival. And will come slower from those that don't need to use them. Legislating morality in this case will do the latter.
But I've been wrong before...
---
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
I saw this like a week ago, also I'm at Cambridge aand that guys a bit of an idiot!
Are American highways really that bad, that you feel you need to practise the drive between San Francisco and L.A.?
My most exciting driving experience had to be getting off 287 in San Francisco. Normally, when you take a highway exit, and you see the sign saying "Exit 35 m.p.h.", that should be mentally translated to "Keep it below 60, and start decelerating". There's an exit in San Francisco, however, where "Exit 25 m.p.h." means "If you are driving 26 m.p.h., you are about to die". Tight little loop that nearly threw my friend's car off the road, and nearly made me rear-end him trying to brake as fast as he had to.
Yeah, yeah, my fault. I'm normally a safe driver, though, I swear...
Why wait for a q3 editor. Go to mac.telefragged.com and grab Quiver, the q1 editor for mac. it is a really powerful design tool that is amazingly easy to use. I use to use virtual pc and a number of different pc quake editors. the day quiver came out, virtual pc magically disappeared off my drive, and all was right with the world :)
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Yeah, struck me the same way. Unless you're racing, the most pleasureable thing about driving is the unexpected you encounter on the way. Taking that away is like being told the entire story to a movie as you stand in line to see it, only worse 'cause movies suck today anyway.
Do you have the "level" online somewhere? It sounds interesting - I'd like to get a copy of it.
I had a kinda nutty teacher many years ago in school, and he was into quake, and would let us convert our designs into quake maps for extra credit. At first we were just doing it for fun, but it soon became evident how incredibly helpful this can be to your visualization skills. The after hours frag fests on our lan were a ton of fun, and actually helped bring the design teams closer together, and help us work more as a team. Im surprised professional architecture teams dont do something similar, so they can give their clients a rough walkthru of their design in a day or two, rather than the first walkthru happening after it is built.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Chinese and some Asian languages have many words that are pronounced the same but use different symbols, one has about 400 meanings for the same pronounciation (actually a different word), another was noted for about 100.
There is supposedly a writing that almost exclusively uses one of these "words". You have to read it to understand which one it means. If you have someone read it to you they would all be pronounced the same.
This could be cool. When I'm king of the world, all planning permission documents will heve to be renewed, and all diagrams will have to be supplied in the form of Quake III or Counterstrike maps: It should be much less effort to make your home/school/office/supermarket/whatever into a map!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
There is a program for Halflife's Worldcraft , which can translate AutoCAD drawings into a crude Worldcraft map. I do not know offhand, the name of the program.
If this tool would be for customers, you have to keep in mind that lighting would also be a big deal. Maps do not light themselves, i imagine it would be hard to accurately model all the light sources.
Also, compile times can be pretty bad depending on the complexity of thse map. If its a big warehouse with lots of detail, the compile time could run up to a day on a slow machine. At least 6 hours for a fast one. Do not use this if you expect to whip out a map for a customer to run around in, in a day.
I would reccomend Halflife over Quake x because VALvE, the creators of Halflife, are a lot more helpful (IMHO), and willing to support aspiring developers using their engine. Check out Http://www.valve.com and drop them a line, chances are they are willing to help.
~ Detonating a nuclear device within the city limits will result in a 500 dollar fine.
Instead, we used the quake1 level editor we got free somewhere. It was kinda lame, in our eyes, but the teacher loved it! Got an "A" if I remember right.
It's not hard to impress idiotic teachers.
It's not for everybody
I wanted to get a new desk, but I couldn't demonstrate exactly what I wanted to my wife on paper. So I fired up q3radiant (In Linux, of course), created a room with the exact dimensions of our bedroom, and created my desk. I then fired up Q3 and showed her what I wanted.
:)
Of course, I couldn't resist putting a rocket launcher in the opposite corner of the room.
This is necessary...life, feeds on life...
I made a Doom2 map of some of Mississippi State U.
ftp://ftp.netdoor.com/users/pms/campus.wad
Not finished, but you can play in the post office and run across the street to the Union.
Phillip
In my humble opinion, Activeworlds is alot better for this purpose, as it is actually designed to implement this kind of thing....using a game engine isnt exactly the answer....
I can't argue with any of these statements; Some of them because I'm not qualified, and some of them because I am qualified to comment, and you're right. But what I'm trying to point out is that while these tools might not help you build a structure, they might help you sell one -- So to say they have no merit is patently untrue.
That's always true of any new technology or use of technology, though. I do expect that eventually, we'll get to a stage where you design a house/cathedral/amphitheatre/orgy pit on the computer, it lays out structural members for you, you (a real live architect, not joe schmoe) slide them around and redesign choice bits for appropriate strengths and stresses, and then send the parts listing off to someone and get everything you need back, with spares of course. I suspect this will be used more for alternative building materials than for traditional, though. It seems much more useful for building large modern structures than simple rehashings of things we've been doing for decades.
Hopefully one day the tools will advance to the point where you can plug in a floor plan and an external appearance and it'll do all the work for you, and then you can concentrate on getting the work done. At that point architects, while potentially fewer in number, will work more on form than on function. As new building materials get cheaper (as do old ones, I hope) perhaps everyday architecture will advance still farther than it has today. After all, not so very long ago it was log cabins and stone houses with thatched roofs. I really do think computers will take us there; But in the meantime, I do agree that you can't fuck with traditional architecting (or whatever the appropriate word is) any more than a machine will bake the perfect cake for any occasion - And the cake's a lot simpler.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It means the architect in London, Geoff Cohen of RMJM, can take the sponsor, Microsoft's Bill Gates, in Seattle, on a virtual tour of the building watched by anyone who cares to join in - provided they surrender their guns at the door.
:-) Someone might cut the virtual tour a bit short. heh
I wonder why?
"Ok here you see your respawn point for again, now go... ok you are back to your respawn point"
--------
During College we used Quake2 and the Build editor from Duke Nukem for walkthroughs of theatrical set designs. The actors and directors could check out all the passages behind the set and they could tell what sight-lines they would have to deal with.
We also used it for Virtual sets that we could project up on the back of the physical set and the actors could interact live with the Virtual set via the VR operator.
If you want to check out more information about it all go to the WPI Virtual Reality Performance PageIs this the end yet?...How 'bout now...how 'bout now...how 'bout now?
"There are plenty of level editors, and the game source (not including graphics networking etc) is freely availible to remove the weapons. You can do an imressive amount just with the public tools released by iD."
As an architectural technologist, but not much of a gamer (no time), I am VERY interested in this. What kind of software exactly is availiable to do this kind of thing? I understand there are level editors, but I know very little about this.
Also, the article is low on detail, I wonder if they re-drew the buildings in the quake level editors, or did they import the 2d and 3d data from an external source, such as AutoCAD? I would love detail on the implementation of this technology. Can anyone help?
Bork! Bork! Bork!
People in past semesters had done 3-D renderings of the Parthenon, etc, but they had only generated still images. I figured I could use WorldCraft 2.0 which came with Half-Life to generate something historical that the user could walk around.
I started with the Globe theater. I dug up some sketches of the new and old buildings, and then set to work. About the time I was ready to start my first real attempt, we covered the Berlin Wall in class.
So, I quickly changed the focus from just walking through a historical monument, to trying to escape from East Berlin. Again, I did pleanty of research and put serveral historically accurate escape routes into the level. Added soldiers, automatic-firing machine guns, etc.
I wrote Valve and Sierra Software to asked them if they could help with the licensing issues, but I never heard back from them. So, with the help of a couple of cracks from www.megagames.com, I was able to put the whole 70MB game (after I removed all the uneccessary sounds and models from the .PAK file), and a webpage I made on the history of the Berlin Wall, on one CD, which I "lent" to my professor for grading. He loved it, gave me a 99 out of 100 on the project, and then returned the CD.
Now the ComSci and Engineering dept. are trying to create a way to use quicktime VR to simutate a walk around campus for new/prospective students. I'm trying to convince them to use something like this instead, and this article should help.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
-- reminds me of my longtime hope to see driving games used to simulate actual upcoming trips, to learn what exits will be like, etc
Timothy, you should patent that!
You can make maps for tux racer simply, using the directions found on their site.
I know it's not 3d building stuff with guns and explosions, but it's still cool when games come with built-in extensibility.
Here is the page:
http://www.tuxracer.com/faq.html#newcourses
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I've worked on largeish maps before for quake1 - it apparently has a BSP limit of 4096 brushes total if I remember correctly. Not a big deal for most killing pits, but on a whole building - or complex of buildings - it can run out pretty damn quick.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
American highways *can* be pretty bad.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
It is kinda cool the way useless games can push technology, 3D cards and rendering, forward until it is usable by non gamers in real applications. Kinda like ABS and active suspension developed in Formula 1 later made it's way to normal cars. It just goes to show that playing games is good for mankind. If only I could get my university to understand that.
"to learn what exits will be like"
Now that is planning ahead, folks! I'm doing well to have remembered to buy the ticket ahead of time or to know even what roads I have to take somewhere...
-----------
end communication
I'm puzzled -- how did you end up being attributed when you intended to be "Anonymous Coward?" Did you forget you were logged on?
Imagine if you would, a worldwide distributed effort to model the entire world. Every building, every house, every road, tree, sign. Every interior setting complete to the finest detail the particular author is willing to code.
:)
Yes, I realize this would be a huge project. Yes, I realize the quake engines probably wouldn't be able to handle it. Yes, I realize that nobody owns a HD large enough to hold all the data. Yes, I realize that it would take a LONG time, even if over 100,000 people participated.
I still think it would be a cool idea tho. I could expand on this idea further, but I'm going to stop now.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
... reminds me of my longtime hope to see driving games used to simulate actual upcoming trips, to learn what exits will be like, etc.
:-)
Is it just me, or does that notion strike anybody else as being pathetic in the extreme. Are American highways really that bad, that you feel you need to practise the drive between San Francisco and L.A.? If you're about to undertake an 8-hour drive, do you really feel the need to practise it before-hand? Are you that bad a driver? Or perhaps, you want to drive down to the circle-K to pick up some more cheap booze, but you've had a few already, so had best just practise and see if you're likely to kill anybody.
I can understand the prinicple though - engineers being able to "drive" down roads before building them to see if there are any danger spots, etc. and I have to admit that certain F1 racing games on the PSX are so realistic, that now when I watch F1, I know the tracks perfectly, and the on-board cameras just remind me of playing the game.
The idea of producing buildings like this though is... interesting. The problem is, that real-time rendering is not good enough yet to make this sort of tool life-like or photo-realistic. When it is, I'm sure that not only will architects spend their entire team building models like this and then converting them back to traditional architectural blueprints (rather than the principle of taking blueprints and producing models as the article suggests), but also that "violent" video games may actually cause real trauma. Now, there's a thought.
Back when I was in middle school, when school destruction was still taken as a joke, I used the most advanced technical feats I could muster in my early adolescence to make a game... I took pictures of the school with my 35mm camera, scanned them with a cheap black and white scanner, and wrote a role-playing game in QuickBasic. It was an instant hit - well, with the students anyway. :)
I had plans later on when my programming skills improved to actually rewrite the game with a 3d engine and make it a 3d role playing game - sort of a cross between the old Lucasfilm Monkey Island games and doom. Then some psychos had to go and actually shoot up their schools...
--- Replace ISA with USB? Great idea, I love more cables...
i need guns... lots of guns
i'm quite surprised that this hasnt been done before, because myself and several friends have been designing our own houses and the like in games since duke3d. actually i still use duke3d's BUILD to do such work as it is much quicker and easier than quakeworld and the like.
the fact that i can run around the house and blow stuff up is pretty kewl as well, not to mention the handy sprites that i think go quite well in my house (fempic1 anyone?;)
What you've said is all well and good and makes sense for the actual construction of the building, but how about the interior decoration ?
I can see a time when a client can VR through there home with an interior designer (or by themselves) and simply apply finishes real time to see how they look.
There's also another use for it.
When I was working as an apprentice draughtsman (a few years before CAD took over) there was a entire team of guys employed to build a 3d model of a refining plant that was being designed - they would take the plans and 3d isometric drawings from the draughtsmen and tediously construct a scaled down model of the plant.
Wouldn't that be a damn side easier on a computer ?
Rather than thrasing this idea to pieces and debunking it as bullshit, think about the possibilities it holds.
Sure, we don't have affordable solutions at present, but it's a progression toward that goal.
It's going to happen.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Another example for the use of Quake in architecture is the project Level5 / Next Level a seminary week held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Polytechnics (ETH) Department of Architecture at the Chair of Architecture & CAAD by Prof. Maia Engeli in November 1999. Students where creating Architectural Quake levels in a one-week crash course seminary.
Here in Helsinki, Finland, there is a long time project to rebuild the Töölö bay area. I asked the city officials to convert their CAD stuff to Quake maps and put them to the net as level files for the public to go for test walks. For public city planning that would be great. You could not only look at things, but test actual living in them, with other people.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Another option that would be good would be a tank game that you can drive around on the streets, but not end up getting shot by the cops when your tank gets caught on the fence when trying to get on the highway. The traffic sucks here, and a few people I know that have been to L.A. say that the traffic has become worse in Atlanta than it is there. It's pretty sad.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
On the other side of the coin, I have several friends who were at Cambridge University (UK) - Parts of Blue Boar Court off Trinity Street and all of Robinson College on Grange Road have a serious DoomII-alike look.
Big redbrick building with large courtyard entered through a bastion with portcullis gates. The courtyard is surrounded by tiers of flats with walkways going round. *Shuuudddder* where's a dark corner to lurk in?
Elgon
.. so they probably don't care about MacOS
"It means the architect in London, Geoff Cohen of RMJM, can take the sponsor, Microsoft's Bill Gates, in Seattle, on a virtual tour of the building watched by anyone who cares to join in - provided they surrender their guns at the door. "
Anyone up for a little hack session, we could frag good 'ol Bill!!! Maybe not as fun as real life but enjoyable I'm sure.
---
Planetunreal has this story about the work by Digitalo Design on VRND: the real-time virtual reality reconstruction of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. (There's also this article in Newsday Online.) Digitalo has modeled other stuff with the Unreal engine, including twelve acres of the Everglades.
Slashdot user "Vito" mentioned this in a comment on a July story, and appears to be working on a virtual reality office building tour package called "Unrealty" (being used but no yet being distributed).
P.S.: UT starts shipping for the Playstation 2 this week (before the PS2 itself ships), according to this story.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
make a game map of my old middle school. I even went so far as to try to dig up the blueprints for the building in the city records.
This wasn't because of any latent desire to blow up my school or go on a shooting spree there, it's just that the layout of the hallways and staircases and rooms and closets and such would have made for some great tactical possibilities. Really, I swear officer!
This was all before shooting up your real school became popular though...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
A buddy of mine worked for a building contractor a couple years back. He talked about using the Quake engine for 3D walk-throughs also. But his boss was too cheap, stupid, and non-forward-thinking to approve even preliminary trials.
We also used to joke. "Oh. There's Mr. Evans, your rude gasbag of a neighbor! EAT ROCKET PUSBAG!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Regardless, just remember that 8 map units equals one foot. You have 8192x8192x8192 units to play around with (1024 feet, or 0.193939393939393939 miles), so you could recreate the entire neighborhood!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
There will be soon. This guy is porting his Quake 2 and other various game editor to the Mac. He's also working on adding Q3A support to it, so soon we should have a map editor. Also if you have Mac OS X installed (as any slashdot going Mac user should), Graeme Devine has stated that he's working on Q3Radiant for OS X. So there's another option for you.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
At least you have a Mac. Some of us are forced to use Linux.
You are in a architect's plan. There are 2 floors, 8 doors, 5 rooms and 3 hallways. What do you wish to do?
Go left
How far?
2 paces
You have bumped into a wall.
Quit.
?
Exit
?
^Z
?
ESC
?
ctl-alt-del
?
Hello?
I'm still here. What do you wish to do?
<POWERS OFF>
Yeah, that's right. I want to take their designs and turn them into real combat levels!
You are all missing the point. This is a reason for actually having a quake server running on a highpowered university sponsored multi-processor server... finally the pointy-headed fellows are actually worth something...:-P* ****************
********************************
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
8th grade history project (in 10th grade now): Used WinQoole to recreate famous historical landmarks, such as Lincoln Memorial and Washington monument. Changed Axe to a small primitive knife, shotgun to...well, a different shotgun (Mind you, this was before the big school shootup stuff) 8th grade science project: We had to make a toothpick bridge (*yawn*) and instead of drawing it out on paper (lame) I made a Quake level and took screenshots...naturally the Quake modem held a LOT more weight than the actually toothpicks did...
---
There are currently 3 different sorts of 3D packages out there. The first would be consumer products such as Broderbund's, which as you correctly mention is basically worthless. People spend hours generating these sickly looking, pastel colored models and then hand un-scaled and impossible to build floor plans to a builder. Then the builder says, "That's nice, but I need real plans, and it's going to cost you 2-5 grand for 'em."
The second ones are "complete" design packages like ArchiCAD and AutoCAD Architectural Desktop. They typically sell for something north of 5 thousand for a single seat license. These tools are absolutely unparalleled when it comes to spending far too long on something that seems to be working great until you try to generate either real working drawings or nice renderings. Then you discover that the package doesn't do either one very well, and you spend even more time fixing everything, often in another program.
The final visiualisation tools are "pure" 3d programs like Alias, 3D Studio Max, etc. These are wonderful for creating stunning looking pictures that can't be built for anything even close to a realistic budget. They also do not generate any sort of functional working drawings, so you still have to go to another program for drafting.
What DOES work for architectural CAD? 2D vector drawing tools combined with real, hands-on knowledge of actual construction practices and the ability to hand-sketch 1 & 2 point perspectives for the client. Everybody has been blathering about digital architecture for about 5 years now, making ridiculous claims about what it allows designers to do, and it is all a bunch of bullshit. Again, 2D CAD, hand drawing, real knowledge. These are what you need, and these are the only practical tools that actually work.
The siren call of 3D toys is strong, and no doubt eventually they will be able to do what people dream they should, but the current reality is not even close. My advice to anybody looking for some sort of miracle, Swiss Army CAD program is to instead spend the money on manual drafting tools and learn how to visualise in 3 dimensions. If you don't you are just wasting your time, because I absolutely guarantee any decent architect can create real plans and renderings that the client understands in far less time than some 3D jockey with an SGI.
Here's a humourous look at Quake as architectural design software:h tm
http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/fargo/careers_a.s
Seriously, though, how many dozens of times have you seen a level based on an office building, house, school, or even a street? I would have really thought it was a non-issue using Quake for this sort of thing, since it's been done by fans for so long.
I think I'm going to die! But then I realize it's mph, not kph.
--
Marc A. Lepage (aka SEGV)
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
I remember hte time when I made my parent place in Quake 1. later came QuakeII and III levels. Fully decorated with scanned textures. I'm not surprised that a copany wants to use this technique. I'm only surprised they didn't do it sooner. my $0.02
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
... this little kiosk on the ground floor of public buildings. strap on a visor and goggles. and preview your trip through the buildlng. of course someone will have to try to hack it and offer guided tours through the electrical and/or plumbimg systems (maybe the IS?).
better living thru play. my kinda world
I hope that they get these bugs sorted out before they finish the meatspace version!
I've often wished that the home modelling programs out there would use the Quake engine (or some other good 3D shooter engine).
I'm having a house built right now... and the best consumer-level home designer program I've found has been Broderbund's "3D Home DesignSuite." It does offer 3-D peeks into the house plan... but it doesn't do texture-mapping, nor lighting, nor does it let you roam around the model in real-time, nor does it let you angle your view up or down. All it does is crude polygonal views.
Couple the modeller in "3D Home DesignSuite" with the renderer in Quake III, and you'd have a dream come true! Broderbund, are you listening?
Hello?
I'm still here. What do you wish to do?
Fuck off and die!
Is it because fuck off and die that you wish to do?
Smithers! Grease up the Lesbians!
Interesting. Do you thing of lesbians often?
Yes, you?
Uhm, we were talking about you.
Where's that W2K cdrom?
Starting X