Opening an existing map in TrenchBroom - ranguli/quake-jam-2024 GitHub Wiki

If you haven't already, download the original Quake 1 map sources. They make a great reference point for level design as well as testing your TrenchBroom setup.

In TrenchBroom, open E1M1.MAP from the download.

When running TrenchBroom for the first time, it isn't going to know where all your Quake stuff is. TrenchBroom supports lots of different games, so it needs to know where your Quake stuff in order to speak the Quake lingo and place Quake-specific things in the map like weapons, powerups, monsters, etc.

Select "Open preferences..."

Ensure you select Quake for the game, and "Standard" for the Map Format!

You should see the geometry of the map, as well as some of the 3D models in the "Entity" tab of the sidebar. If you don't see both of these, something went wrong.

Getting map textures to work

In order to address the missing textures from the map, select the "Face" tabe in the sidebar. Under Texture Collection, click "Show". Click the "+" icon to add a Texture Collection, and select the base.wad file downloaded in step 5.

Upon successful completion of this step, the map will now have textures.

You can follow along this same process when creating a new map as well.