Worldcraft Tutorial - Compiling Your Map

	Compiling Your Map
Run Map ? What exactly is that "run map" icon? It's a Gravis Game pad. The same one used in DCK. :)	Getting ready to compile Before you compile the level and run it in Quake you need tell Worldcraft where Quake is. Check under [Tools=> Options] and ensure that the quake directory is correct. Once you have it set just hit the run map button. A window will pop up giving you several options:
	Additional Quake parameters Standard command line parameters you want to add to Quake. ie: -nocdaudio -nojoy etc. Run QBSP: QBSP does the compiling of the level - it creates the BSP file. If you've only modified the entities since the last time you compiled the map then you can use the ENTITIES ONLY option to speed the process up. Run LIGHT: LIGHT creates the lighting on the level. If you don't run LIGHT then the level will be compiled fullbright, which is to say everything will be set to the maximum brightness. The EXTRA option can be used to get a 'smoother' look to the lighting effects, but takes 4 times as long to run. Run VIS: Basically VIS determines what areas of the map are visible from other areas. This speeds up game play since Quake has less to draw. It isn't very necessary while making the level, but it would be foolish not to run it before releasing a level. You can also use the FAST option to speed the process up. Don't run Quake will stop Worldcraft from loading up Quake. This is handy if you already have Quake loaded in the background. Save visible objects only deals with VisGroups which we will get into later. For now leave it off.
Quake Files: .RMF: Stands for "Rich map format" these are Worldcraft specific .map files they contain extra information such as VisGroups and camera locations. .MAP: uncompiled Quake map file, BSP program uses this to make a finished level. .BSP: Quake level. These files go in your " ...\quake\id1\maps\" directory. .WAD: are the texture files used to build Quake levels.	QBSP and Win95 If all goes well you should just hit enter and Worldcraft will run QBSP, light and Vis then load up quake and run the level thus far. Great in theory but in practice it isn't so reliable. QBSP is a system hog. Ideally you want 128MB of RAM, a lot of hard drive space free and probably a dual Ppro200. More than likely you have 16MB memory, a crammed hard drive, Worldcraft, Quake and probably Netscape running. If you get errors, especially an illegal operation try closing all your programs and doing it again. Also make sure you have a good chunk of disk space free, 150MB or so, for QBSP's swap file. As your maps get bigger and bigger QBSP is going to need more and more resources.