Hi, I'm having a go at mapping with Trenchbroom, I seem to have mostly gotten the hang of brushes, lighting and entities but I'm not sure how to set the music and the skybox. Apparently the "sounds" field of the worldspawn entity lets you set the music, however setting this to track04 or any other track doesn't result in music playing when I run the map. 

Remove the word "track" and possibly the "0"

try

"sounds" "4" 

I believe that functionality was not in base Quake, skybox textures were set by actually texturing your skybox with them. Newer engines and FGD's allow you to input a skybox texture name in the worldspawn and it will load up in game as long as the skybox textures are stored id1 (or whatever the mod folder is)/gfx/env and one of the base skybox textures is used in-editor to define the sky. 

Alright I managed to get music working using Mukor's suggestion, however I'm still having issues with the skybox, I noticed this: https://s23.postimg.org/mbvhz0kyz/sky1.png when I opened the map.

How do you suggest I go about setting the skybox? Having to place the sky textures in that directory is a bit of an annoyance, and with this setup I'd assume anyone I shared the map with would have to do the same thing. I also tried leaving the sky field blank, as when I run the main game inputting "sky" returns: sky "", but this was also unsuccessful. 

Do you have a sky named "sky1_XX" in the folder?

you need to do it as follows:

"sky" "sky1_" 

Check that the .tga files are in, e.g:

quake directory/id1/gfx/env/sky1_XX.tga

The "sky" command in the engine console lets you load a specific sky, overriding what is in worldspawn, so you could enter: "sky sky1_" for testing. 

I think there's a bit of confusion, I'm not wanting to use a custom sky, just the standard purple, cloudy quake sky, is there any way to use the default sky without having to have these files in gfx/env?

Additionally, I loaded some sky files from Arcane Dimensions into the folder - rather than faffing about converting files - and attempted to load the skybox but I seem to be stuck with a blank grey sky, there was no output on the console. Do I need to run vis in order for the skybox to appear? 

Argh, alright, I had to surround the map with a big box for the skybox to be drawn on, that's that fixed, thanks for the help. 

Sky (or a custom skybox) will be drawn on every proper sky-textured brush. No need to box a map, just put sky brushes on the ceilings/outer walls where you want it to be. 

So I've finally plugged all the leaks in my map, but now I get this error when I go to compile:

http://imgur.com/r9kAtW7

What is a degenerate edge and how do I prevent it? 

"Argh, alright, I had to surround the map with a big box for the skybox to be drawn on, that's that fixed, thanks for the help."

The map was not sealed. If you look at the output from QBSP or check its log file, you will see it say LEAKED at some point. Although "boxing" the map will work to fix this, it's usually not the best way. 

 

"Pointfile Is Your Friend..."

In this case though, it wasn't a problem of finding a small leak. It appears to me that the basic concept of a "sealed" map had not yet been understood. 

... he basic concept of a "sealed" map had not yet been understood...

wow... so the advice to read aguirRe's Holy Mapping Bible is more than relevant in this case:

http://web.comhem.se/bjp/tooltips.txt

repent sinner... repent ! 

Is there any significant downside to creating a box around the map to simplify sealing? Only thing I can think of is that when you run vis, external surfaces that would never be seen will end up as being considered potentially visible which could hamper performance on larger maps compared to properly sealing everything off (just guessing here based on a loose idea of how vis works).

I'll have a look at the mapping bible, thanks! 

That's basically it. People still like to play quake on their potato computers, so lazy vising like that or no vising at all will make them grumpy. It's best practice to properly seal maps. 

Last thing I can think of at the moment, but what's a good way to make rock walls look good? Creating a wall out of small blocks and mangling them with the vertex editor works reasonably well but it's kinda labor intensive and its easy to overdo it. 

Perhaps try making one large wall, then cutting it into 8 or so pieces (using the clip tool and keeping both sides after the cut), then selecting all the pieces at once and using the vertex mode to drag some of the vertexes where the pieces join. That way they naturally conform to the shape of each other and hopefully its a quicker way to get natural looking rock. The more you cut up the wall, the finer the detail you will get. 

I think I found a good method, make a kind of "palette wall" that I work on to ensure it looks good, then duplicate chunks of it to make other walls. The first result was too angular but a repeat with smaller brushes should turn out well. 

I use hexenmapper's method and I'm quite proud of the rockwork I can build. I usually use either 16x16 or 32x32 (i think - going off memory here) brushes. It does take a loooong time but in my mind the results are well worth it. It would definitely be quicker if you used larger brushes, which would be fine depending on your aesthetic. 

Got a pretty decent looking wall this way: https://s31.postimg.org/wv6wbz3d7/spasm0000.png 

looks decent, but take care with light.

The dark blends show the lightfall is crossed creating the dark blur.
Changing the light to one "light40 wait 0.04" and another "light 200" could result in a more blended effect. 

Kim if youre using:

http://ericwa.github.io/tyrutils-ericw/

...turn that wall into a "func_group" and add "_phong" as a key with a value of 1.

This will smooth out the lightmaps on that specific wall. 

http://simonoc.com/pages/articles/rockwall1_1.htm

Looks like a good start, I'd try to stick with quads rather than triangles and maybe make the scale a bit bigger