glbsp(1)glbsp(1)NAMEglbsp - GL Nodes builder for DOOM ports
SYNOPSISglbsp [options] input.wad ... [-o output.wad]
glbsp @argfile.rsp
DESCRIPTION
glBSP is a nodes builder specially designed to be used with OpenGL-
based DOOM game engines. It adheres to the "GL-Friendly Nodes" speci‐
fication, which means it adds some new special nodes to a WAD file that
makes it very easy for an OpenGL DOOM engine to compute the polygons
needed for drawing the levels.
OPTIONS
Options can begin with one or two dashes. Running glBSP without any
options will show an informational screen.
-help Show a option summary screen.
-q Quieter output. Information about each level (like the number
of linedefs, blockmap size, etc) is not displayed when this
option is given, and a few other messages are skipped. Impor‐
tant messages, like failure to build a certain level, are still
shown.
-fast Lets glBSP can cheat a bit and re-use the original node informa‐
tion to create the GL nodes, doing it much faster. Use this
option to enable this feature. The message "Using original
nodes to speed things up" will be shown.
The downside to reusing the original nodes is that they may not
be as good as the ones glBSP normally creates, e.g. the special
checks to minimise slime-trails don't kick in, and the -factor
value doesn't have much effect.
-warn Shows extra warning messages, which detail various non-serious
problems that glBSP has while analysing the level structure.
Often these warnings show a real problem in the level (e.g. a
non-closed sector or invalid sidedef), so they are worth check‐
ing now and then.
-normal
glBSP usually detects if the normal node info (i.e. the non-GL
variety) is present: when yes, it is left untouched, otherwise
glBSP creates it. This option forces glBSP to replace the nor‐
mal node data with newly constructed nodes.
-factor <num>
Changes the cost assigned to seg splits. Factor can be any num‐
ber greater than 0, larger values make seg splits more costly
(and thus glBSP tries harder to avoid them), but smaller values
produce better BSP trees. The default value is known to be a
good compromise.
-pack Pack sidedefs, by detecting which sidedefs are identical and
removing the duplicates, producing a smaller PWAD.
NOTE: this may make your level a lot harder to edit! Therefore
this is most useful when producing the final WAD for public
release.
-noreject
Normally glBSP will create an simple REJECT map for each level.
This options prevents any existing REJECT map, such as one time-
consumingly built by a dedicated reject builder, from being
clobbered.
The following options are rarely needed:
-v1 .. -v5
Specify the version of the "GL Nodes" spec to use (either 1, 2,
3 or 5). V1 is considered obsolete now. The default is V2.
Giving -v3 or -v5 will force certain lumps to use the new for‐
mats, but is only useful for testing since glBSP will automati‐
cally switch to V5 format whenever the ordinary limits are
exceeded.
-loadall
glBSP will normally try to copy lumps from the input WAD file to
the output file instead of loading them into memory. This
allows you to run glBSP on very large WADS (e.g. 15 MB for DOOM
II) on a low memory machine.
This option causes everything from the input file to be loaded
into memory. This allows you to run glBSP using the same file
for both input and output, but I strongly recommend _against_
it: you could lose your original WAD if something goes wrong
(and you know Murphy...).
-noprog
Turn off the progress indicator.
-nonormal
Forces glBSP to not create the normal node information when it
detects that it is absent.
-forcegwa
Normally glBSP will automatically use GWA mode if the output
filename is missing (i.e. no -o option) or if the output file‐
name has the ".gwa" extension. This option forces glBSP into
GWA mode.
-prunesec
Removes any unused sectors that are found in the level. This
has the potential to cause problems, since in certain scripting
languages (e.g. EDGE's RTS, or Doom Legacy's Fragglescript) some
commands use sector numbers directly, and pruning unused sectors
can cause those references to become invalid.
-mergevert
Merge duplicate vertices at the same location into a single ver‐
tex. This is usually safe, but is not done by default because
some engines (e.g. Risen3D) need the duplicate vertices to stay
separate for a special effect.
-maxblock <num>
Sets the limit of the number of blocks the BLOCKMAP may contain
before we truncate it. Default is 44000. When the level is too
large to fit, glBSP will truncate the blockmap, so it covers
less area on the level. This means that in the parts it doesn't
cover (at the outer edges) there is no collision detection: you
can walk through walls and other objects and bullets/missiles
don't hit anything. On very large but sparse levels, using a
larger value (e.g. 60000) may help.
A more serious problem is when the blockmap overflows. The
blockmap created would be invalid, and could crash the DOOM
engine when used. glBSP will create an empty blockmap instead,
causing modern ports to build their own blockmap.
RESPONSE FILES
New in version 2.20 is support for response files. These are files
containing a list of options. You specify the response file by prefix‐
ing it with '@'. For example:
glbsp @argfile.rsp
The "@argfile.rsp" on the command line will be replaced with the con‐
tents of that file. New-line characters are treated like spaces.
Recursion (using '@' inside a response file) is not supported.
ZDBSP NODES
When the normal nodes overflow, older versions of glBSP would simply
write out the invalid node data. glBSP 2.20 now writes the node data
in the ZDBSP format (originally created for the ZDoom engine).
AUTHORS
Andrew Apted created glBSP and glBSPX and continues to maintain them.
Andrew Baker, Janis Legzdinsh and Andr� Majoral have contributed code,
and Marc Pullen helped with the documentation.
glBSP was originally based on BSP 2.3 (C) Colin Reed and Lee Killough,
which was created from the basic theory stated in DEU5 (OBJECTS.C) by
Raphael Quinet.
LICENSE
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MER‐
CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.
SEE ALSO
The glBSP Homepage: http://glbsp.sourceforge.net/
⟨http://glbsp.sourceforge.net/⟩
September 2005 glbsp(1)
