Decompiling maps

ThorsMapper

Okay I found my maps co_plague_b4 and co_plague_mvm. Now I need to edit and update. However, I can't find the original files because I had a hard drive failure about a year ago, and everything's gone. Would someone suggest a program to decompile the map?

SteveR

Decompiling maps rarely leaves you with anything usable. Everything that isn't an entity is turned into one cohesive block of solid world brushy goodness.

decompilers can get point entity (and brush ent?) information out of maps easily but if you've lost the originals you are looking at a full re-do. Sorry mate!

ThorsMapper

Yeah that's the thing. I'd rather fix up what's left of it, rather than starting from scratch and ruining everything.

Kouji_San

If you decompile a map, it creates 1 grid unit thick wall and all of these brushes are made up out of triangles (created by the compile tools).

There is no way it can be used to recompile it. You can only use the decompiled version as a scale/texturing referance and entity placement, but nothing more... Meaing once you have recreated a wall, you have to delete the decompiled brush version of that wall.

But hey, Bast and Nancy were recreated using this method ^_^

A_Boojum_Snark

Since a picture is worth a thousand words... I thought I would show you just how messy a decompile is and what a pain to work with. This is a TFC map of mine I still had the source for, for comparison. <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v401/aboojumsnark/decompilenono.jpg" target="_blank">clicky</a> (and note all those angled lines that extend out hundreds of thousands of units beyond the grid edge, beyond what you can even see)

SteveR

It's like your map got attacked by caffeine spider!

ThorsMapper

Thanks for the replies. I might just use the map as a reference when I'm rebuilding it =] Would someone be kind enough to do it for me? I've tried, and yet failed.