Quake Maps

Over the summer I want to make a quake 2 or 3 level render. Eventually I want to use BSP trees to improve efficency, but right now I just want to read in a map. Does anyone know where I can find the file format for these maps. I thought ID Software would have it on their ftp sight but I couldn’t find it. I know there are some programs with out there with released source that do this, but I’d rather do it from scratch. So does anyone know where I can find this info?

Go to the following page for qcspec34.zip which contains descriptions of all the file formats used by Quake 1:
http://www.bluesnews.gameaholic.com/cgi-sql/file-info.sql/12309

I used it successfully to make a Half-Life level loader (the HL map format is almost identical to the Quake 1 map format) for testing my 3D engine.

Ciao…
SHAYDE