Introduction

The basics

The CTF map overview generator is a system used to generate overhead shots with a user-controlled entities display, like the Threewave map overviews. Being familiar with the way those overviews work will help a great deal in understanding the system and this manual. It will probably help to keep those overviews available for reference in another browser window. If you have Threewave installed, for better speed you'll want to reference the map overviews that were installed along with the Threewave mod manual on your computer locally, instead of using the online version at the link above.

There's basically three reasons a CTF mapper would want to use this system:

Stripped down to basics, the system is conceptually very simple: take an "overhead view" screenshot of the map using a Quake 3 mod (Birdseye), then run the .map file through a Perl script (Entifier) to find the entities and place them on the overhead view. And for an error-free map with no unusual entity behavior, using the generator actually is just about that simple. But there are a lot of options available if you want or need to use them, and some style rules to follow to generate the best overview. (That's why this is a six-page manual rather than a short readme.)

Manifest

You should have unzipped this archive in a manner that preserved its folder structure. As a result, these are the files and folders that should have been created:

birdseyeThe Quake 3 mod used to help generate overhead-view map images; this folder contains birdseye.pk3 and source.zip.
changelog.txtA file showing the current version number and version history.
docsThe folder containing the six pages of this manual.
entifier.plThe Perl script Entifier, which generates the overview Web page and checks the map entities.
entity.cfgA configuration file used by Entifier; it describes the properties of the standard map entities
entity_iconsA folder containing 38 GIF image files: 37 icons used to represent entities in the map overview (small versions of the Quake 3 item icons), and transpixel.gif used in displaying label text.
entity_listsFor example purposes, a folder containing containing the original entity lists and their annotated versions for all 39 map overviews from the Threewave manual.
genpages.shFor example purposes, a shell script showing the command lines used to generate the Threewave map overviews.
iconmanager.jsThe JavaScript used by overview pages.
page_graphicsA folder containing 5 miscellaneous graphics files used by overview pages.

The non-graphics files in this distribution, except for these Web pages, use "Unix style" linefeeds instead of "DOS style". Most text editors should not have a problem with interpreting the linefeeds correctly. Windows Notepad will be confused though. (So use something else.)

Installation

Instructions

This manual is both for describing the basic procedure for using the overview generator system, and also for providing a complete reference to all the options. And besides describing the technical aspects, the text will also cover "good practices" (style rules used in generating the Threewave map overviews).

If this is your first time looking at the manual, you should go through the sections in order. And the manual will make more sense if you actually have a CTF map available to try this out on.

Step 1: Generating the map image
Step 2: Annotating your map entities
Step 3: Creating a Web page
Step 4: Interpreting the messages
Step 5: Packaging for upload