From: Bernd Kreimeier <Bernd.Kreimeier@NeRo.Uni-Bonn.DE>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 21:24:11 +0200 (MET DST)
Message-Id: <199604171924.VAA10400@colossus.nero.uni-bonn.de>
To: quake-dev@gamers.org, bernd@marvin.nero.uni-bonn.de
Subject: FYI: info from John Carmack
The following are recent updates on the MAP and BSP
details. Note that the second one is intended to solve
the problem of distributing BSP files w/o including
the Mipmaps. The basic idea is to have a modified
"qbsp", or a separate tool, parsing a MAP file, and
emitting lines like
"_texture" "1 WALL14_5"
in the worldspawn entity. Reference WAD files might
be provided using "_wad" ".../base.wad" lines, or
parameters to whatever tool is used for BSP extension.
That tool will have to use the "_texture" key/value
lines to determine which Mipmaps to add.
I would still prefer a unified handling of PACK, WAD,
WAD2, and BSP, but that's a different issue. After all,
physicists always prefered GUTs.
b.
>From: John Carmack, Thu, 11 Apr 96
the current format has expanded miptex, sofs, tofs, and
flags to 16 bits. While we probably won't ship a level
with more than about 64 textures in it, I agree, 256 is
never really enough of anything. The limit on offsets
also prevented us from using >256 size textures in some
situations, which people will probably want to do even
before hitting the 256 unique textures limit.
>From: John Carmack, Tue, 16 Apr 96
On the subject of storing additional info in .map and
.bsp files, I decided that all key names that begin with
an underscore will be dropped by quake, so you can store
whatever you want in them for utility communication. I
am probably going to change all of our map uses of "wad"
and "light" to "_wad" and "_light" so I can remove the
unused dummy variables from the progs.