How To Make .aas Files For RTCW

Basics

Area Awareness System (AAS) files are used as part of the AI navigation system so AIs know what is navigable and how to navigate it. These are generated using your map's BSP file with the utility BSPC. The BSP file is the compiled version of your map that the game will run. You can compile it using GTK Radiant or from the command line using q3map2 directly.

Prerequisites

You will need a version of BSPC designed for the game you're generating AAS files for. While GTK Radiant 1.4 includes the RTCW-related files, as of 1.6.7 it only includes a version for Quake 3. You can download a copy of the RTCW BSPC files from our mirror. Extract the ZIP archive to a folder of your choice.

Folder view showing aascfg_lg.c, aascfg_sm.c, bsp2aas-rtcw.bat, and bspc.exe — Figure 1: BSPC Folder Contents

Automatic (Batch-file) Generation

Drag and drop the BSP file you compiled earlier onto the bspc-rtcw.bat file. If there are no errors with generation you should see mapname_b0.aas and mapname_b1.aas in the same folder as your BSP, where "mapname" is the filename of the BSP you used. If there were errors, you can check the bspc_b0.log and bspc_b1.log files for what went wrong. Common errors include the map having leaks, or being built with a version of q3map(2) that doesn't match what BSPC is expecting.

Manual Generation

Open the command line (On Windows 10, click on Start -> Windows System -> Command Prompt), then change to the folder you extracted BSPC to. Note the paths to the BSP and BSPC folders then run the BSPC command, substituting the folder paths you copied for the placeholder in the example below.

cd /d "PATH TO YOUR BSPC LOCATION"
bspc.exe -threads 1 -ext _b0 -cfg aascfg_sm.c -forcesidesvisible -bsp2aas "PATH/TO/MAPNAME.bsp" -output PATH/TO/MAPS
move bspc.log bspc_b0.log
bspc.exe -threads 1 -ext _b1 -cfg aascfg_lg.c -forcesidesvisible -bsp2aas "PATH/TO/MAPNAME.bsp" -output PATH/TO/MAPS
move bspc.log bspc_b1.log

If there are errors on either generation step, see the previous section for troubleshooting.

Using the AAS Files

Unless you're using a custom development folder, e.g. for a mod, the folder main\maps under your RTCW install folder should have your .bsp, both .aas files, and your .ai (AI scripting) file. The first time you load the map RTCW should also generate .rcd files. To distribute the map, check out the PK3 (map package) creation tutorial.