I wanted to reach out to the Quake mappers out there. I was fiddling around with the GPL map sources released by Romero back in the days. For one part I noticed that there are some textures being used that are missing in the retail copy of the maps. Since their names are close to others their dimensions can probably be easily guessed or replaced.

On the other hand I noticed that e3m6 does not compile with iD's qbsp tool. I wonder if anyone knows why and how to fix it. The fix may be map wise or application wise..

This isn't the forum for that stuff really. There's a better forum for mappers questions here:
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=4&start=12085

and you don't have to register.

However, I might answer the question even though I don't do anything with mapping anymore: You need to read what the compiler tells you and you need to know what that error means.

To get educated on that, this file is very helpful: http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/tooltips.txt

But the following is probably the fix for your problem:

I remember that compiling some Romero's released source maps would cause qbsp to moan about certain textures missing from the .wad file or perhaps the .wad wasn't on my drive. So I changed the .wad key in the editor to the big ass quake.wad that contains all textures from the game (which of course you must have on your drive and setup the editor so that it can actually see it) and then save the map and compile it. Then it worked for me.

Moved to forum: Maps & Textures

Thanks for the links. They are indeed very helpful. Although some of the messages are considered non-critical they cause an abort in the original iD tools. I will try to coninue on that error and check the result.

FYI it is a "CanonicalVector: degenerate" error. I had the textures sorted out before.

I've never even heard of that particular error before. I highly recommend using Bengt Jardrup's compilers (TxQbsp, Light, Vis) instead of the ancient outdated originals - same site as the tooltips. They compile the map just fine.

e2m10 has the same issue I think. Not that it was an official map anyway.. I just wondered why the supposed-to-be original maps won't compile with the original tools. I will check the other compiler.The compiler I used is more or less the original iD tool but supports compilation without textures as it generates dummy textures itself in that case. For GPL maps etc..

It crashes on tjunc calculation. The original compilers had a -nojunc switch to disable it, which may have been used to compile the maps in question. However, it was then removed or commented out in the qbsp source code they released to the public, I think. And since the map sources originally weren't supposed to be released, there was no need for a cleanup or compatibility check on both ends. Well, so much for speculation anyway.

There's really no need to use compilers based on these old versions - newer ones offer much better results in terms of quality, speed, and compatibility. The textures can be replaced manually - find/replace in a text editor; some map editors can do it as well.

Thanks guys. Pro-Mapper tipps to the rescue. With Bengt Jardrup's tools and their default settings the maps compile just fine. It is just a matter of throwing the correct set of textures at them. But I think I now have the hang on it on how it works.

Ha, so I was right