Map locations

Mappers can (and usually do) include target_location entities in their maps; these are used by the game to display your current location in radio calls and team chat. You can also use these in normal chat, echoes etc by typing $location; to display the location your crosshair is pointing at, use $crosshair.

Some maps¹⁾ use trigger_location brushes for this purpose (the volume filled by a brush would be a single location); however, due to this approach having some issues, most mappers today stick to target_location entities. In this approach, your location is displayed according to the nearest entity. This is why on Algiers, the top of the stairs at the end of “spice street” is displayed as “the north spice storeroom” (take a look at the map and imagine a point in the middle of both of these areas: one of them is obviously closer). What is considered “nearest” also depends on direction you’re apparoaching the entity from: basically, locations can overlap a bit. Depending on the map structure, locations can also bleed into unexpected places and so on. Some maps are better than others in this regard: target_location entities do not have names that would need to be unique, instead they just contain a string, meaning the mapper can use several entities for each location. (Kingdom for example has 26 locations, defined by 110 entities.)

Abbey	Algiers	Casa	Kingdom	Prague	Tohunga_b8
Tohunga_b9	Train_dl1

These screenshots were taken in Quake 3 FFA using 1° FOV (in UrT, it’s locked to 90–110 range), using this script:

oshot.cfg

bind ENTER "vstr oshot"
set oshot "vstr oshoton"
set oshoton "r_gamma 0.5; cg_draw2d 0; cg_drawgun 0; noclip; cg_fov 1; g_speed 50000; r_znear 5000; sensitivity 1; set oshot vstr oshotoff"
set oshotoff "r_gamma 0.8;  cg_draw2d 1; cg_drawgun 1; team red; noclip; cg_fov 110; g_speed 320; r_znear 4; sensitivity 12; set oshot vstr oshoton; kill; wait 500; +attack; wait 100; -attack" // kill yourself and respawn (you may have to adjust the wait amounts)
 
bind BACKSPACE "vstr speedtoggle"
set speedtoggle "vstr speed1"
set speed1 "g_speed 5000; echo ^2medium speed; set speedtoggle vstr speed2"
set speed2 "g_speed 320; echo ^2slow speed; set speedtoggle vstr speed3"
set speed3 "g_speed 50000; echo ^2fast speed; set speedtoggle vstr speed1"

You’ll have to copy over your UrT zpak000_assets.pk3 to the Quake 3 baseq3 folder (this breaks the Q3 HUD, so remove or rename the PK3 once you’re done). You don’t necessarily have to use Q3, OpenArena or equivalent should work just fine. To take a screenshot, start the map in developer mode (/devmap ut4_mapname), run to the middle of the map, look straight down, press Enter and fly up until you see the whole map. Use Backspace to toggle between fast movement and fine position adjustments. If you fail, press Enter to start over. Be very very careful when moving the mouse: with that narrow FOV, it’s easy to lose the map completely. If you’re rotating the view to get nice straight lines and the map jumps to unexpected position, you have moved the mouse slightly up or down instead of sideways.

Due to lighting differences between Quake 3 and UrT 4.x, you’ll have to reduce the contrast and saturation of the screenshot using the graphics software of your choice.