To compile a .map file into a .bsp you need to go through 3 steps: QBSP, LIGHT and VIS.

• QBSP will make a .bsp file. You could load that in the engine already but it would be lit full bright and might run slowly.
• LIGHT will add the lighting information to the .bsp.
• VIS will do magic and add information about what parts of the map are visible at a given position.

For more in-depth information see http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/Qbsp/ and http://www.visi.com/~jlowell/tqu/utils.html

Be aware that some tools might work a little different.

Since the tools were open-sourced and all the implementation details were open and public there are many different tools available. Following is an overview of up-to-date Quake map compilers and their pros and cons.

TxQBSP

Bengt Light Coloured (Release 2)

This version was modified by MH and added coloured lighting and multi-threading to Aguirre's version.

For VIS there are no differences in the output of different compilers, so speed is all one should be interested in. In 2009 Willem released the MacOS and Windows versions of a multi-threaded port of Bengt Jardrup's VIS tool. This means on multi-processor/multi-core systems the VISing time is cut to a fraction. Some bug-fixing later wvis_20100119.7z is the latest version for Windows, the source is included. The MacOS binary is included in Willem's ToeTag editor (ToeTag_230.zip, ToeTag_230_src.zip.

Alternatives: