Congrats gb, you made a room that looks like any other Doom3/Quake4 related room. 

How dare you not make the most original architecture ever in a game engine you're working with for the first time??? 

Luke(gb) you have the force, you are just in the wrong path 

It looks like Doom 3? Good, that was kinda my goal :-P 

It looks like a combination of tools is the way to go with Doom 3, ie. build the basic geometry and place the basic lights and entities in GTKRadiant or DarkRadiant, and use D3edit (under wine, if necessary) and Blender etc. as needed and to fine tune stuff like spotlights, and GUIs etc., although like Quake, Doom's .map format is plain text and you should be able to use a text editor to create anything that's still missing. Learning how things like GUIs and movers work is the biggest hurdle, but there is a lot of info out there (doom3world.org, katsbits) and once you have grokked it you should be able to write the stuff you need.

I hope. :-E

Resources:

About lighting:

http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/dynamic-lighting-principles.php

http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/dynamic-outdoor-lighting-techniques.php

Clean Materials pack:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6025

(if the links are dead, I have it and can upload it)

Common prefabs (although you can probably rip stuff out of the original maps and use that as a starting point, as with handrails, consoles, movers and guis):

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14677

Hi-res replacement textures project (insane):

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23332

This last one is a reason to largely use the original textures, since your maps will then profit from replacement textures as time goes on.

Lots of the links at doom3world.org are dead, though. 

http://doom3-hr.com/Main_Eng.html

Hi-res texturing project site. 

You guys are going to make me re-install Doom 3, aren't you? :) 

on prefab rails:

doom3 is remarkably weird when it comes to prefabs. some areas have full mapobject (prefab) railing, some areas have railing completely made out of patches (more common) and some are a mix and match.

i would find it more easy to make railing in 3ds max (you can just use the spline tool and don't need to fiddle with ugly patches). thankfully, doomedit has a feature to export brushwork as an obj so you just need to import the the obj brushwork into your 3d editor, make your railing and export. 

Good tip necros. The prefabs are largely a bit questionable anyway, since you can make a lot of things yourself in a matter of minutes... I guess prefabs can be useful for things like shelves, ladder/handrail combinations, typical lifts, and maybe certain GUIs. The computer/console arrangements are probably also handy to have a prefab for, and just modify that, since they look a little time consuming to get exactly right. A lot of common things already come as entities, I saw.

People have been saying that you can also start making terrain out of patches, then export that and tweak / reduce polycount in a modelling suite, then re-import as a mapobject. 

more on prefabs,
a lot of computers and machines are prefabs and an even larger number are not. when i first started, i kept searching through all the models looking for things i'd seen and coming up empty.
in the 'objects' category of textures, you'll find textures that can be used (unsurprisingly) to make objects out of brushwork. a lot of the fancy consoles were built this way with patches and brushes.

about terrain,
i personally find it stupid to make terrain with patches if you've got access to a 3d editing suite. i have an old version of bryce (version 3) that i use as a fractal terrain generator. i export the greyscale heightmap bitmaps into 3ds max and use the 'displace' modifier on a plane that has been subdivided. this yields a terrain that can be modified for higher or lower resolution.
tbh, since i skipped the quake3 era of mapping and went straight from quake to d3, i never became attached to patches like those guys who did a lot of q3 mapping and i can't stand them at all. they are incredibly fiddly and texturing them is an absolute pain. i build everything out of models when i can. besides, building things out of models and then blocking out the area behind with caulk makes vising and portals much easier to handle because the surrounding brushwork is so simple. 

good advice, thank you. 

gb: Thanks. Do I just put the clean.pk4s in the base directory or do I have to rename/unpack them?

necros: Rails aren't the problem. But it kind of sucks that all interesting shapes (rocks, flesh, outsides) are made of meshes and can't be made inside the editor easily, like in Source games. 

Anyone know how I can make models from Quoth custom map objects move (like a body sliding along the floor or something)? I seem to recall seeing it somewhere :E 

negke: I think you should rename the clean materials pak to zzzwhatever.pk4, so it is loaded after all the normal paks (alphabetically sorted). It goes in the base folder.

I unpacked the models/ folder from one of the pakfiles because it has the mapobjects, and you'll probably want to unpack the sounds as well.

Individual files override things in pk4s. 

Ne_tower by Necros was Quoth-based and had a body dragging. He should be able to fill you in. 

as for the knight drag, it's actually from when preach coded in model support. previously, you couldn't assign a model to a func_ because the game would complain about not having it precached.
there was supposed to be a func_train_point made specifically for assigning models, which is what i would have used, but that entity is actually broken, because it's still coded to set the func_train_point as SOLID_BSP which is not allowed with a .mdl (or external bsp afaik), so the dragging knight is actually a func_rotate_train (which is never solid).

http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60352&start=36 

was made with a func_rotate_train.
preach added the ability to assign a model to (i think?) every entity.

unfortunately, he didn't allow for models on entities that have SOLID_BSP (ie: func_train) which is why you can't use a func_train for this.

it's been a year, so i don't really remember the specifics, but essentially, you set up a func_rotate_train + path_rotate entities exactly like you would if you were building a rotating train path, except you don't specify any rotation (but you could, if you wanted to-- the model will rotate just like it would if it was a bmodel).
once your rotating train entity and paths are set up, just set the 'model' key to the path to your custom model. finally, on your func_rotate_train, set the target field to 'null' (or anything that is not used). this is because the entity does not work unless target is set, but since we have the model directly on the train, we don't need to target anything.

you can also tie custom models (via mapobject_custom) to bmodel movers via rotating entity functionality as well. you could, for example, make a lift with torches attached to it. note that you'd need to use mapobject_custom instead of the normal torch entities because torch entities are made into static entities and static entities cannot move and they also automatically emit the fire sound which may not be good since they will be moving around.

as you know, you target a func_rotate_* entity to rotate_object entities in order for those to rotate.
you can also target any other entity in the game (including monsters!) and the rotating entity will also move them as well. for an example of this, check out sm156: http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60375 for a map which uses this behaviour.
there are two boats that drive around with rocketeers stuck inside them with the rotate_train trick so they don't fall out as well as droles attached to a flying airplane type func_rotate_train.
i posted the map source for it in post #10 of the thread (or just get it here: http://necros.quaddicted.com/temp/sm156_necros_map.zip ). 

that when you attach mapobject_custom entities to a func_rotating_train, you can't rotate it. this is because entities attached to the rotater this way won't change their angles when they rotate, they only change their position.
so you'll have models that just slide around. 

if i had read the responses, i would have seen purple's post and wouldn't have had to retype all that. lol. ^_^ 

Heh so it is a bit more complex than I was hoping. I was trying to avoid rotating stuff as its such a pita :p
Still, the amount of fun I've been having playing with various triggers and relay sequences, it was kind of inevitable it would come in at some point...
Thanks for the posts though will try it out.

Nice to be reminded of the exact map I saw it in too :) 

Is it possible to use some func_moving_object with skip textures applied to not-quite-all sides of it to simulate dragging a model? I recall levitating a Shambler once in one of my speedmaps using a similar technique. But, then again, my recollection isn't what it used to be :) 

well, if you are using hipnotic or quoth, you can just use func_movewall with func_rotate_train as they are fully invisible.
but i don't see why you couldn't put skip on a normal func_train. 

I'll admit that at the time of release I knew that using custom models on func_ type entities was tantalizingly close. However, it was actually a side effect of code that guarded against unprecached models on the first frame (where it could be prevented). The main application I had in mind was to combine it with the newly added fixed-angle sprites for alpha transparencies, to make lifts with mesh floors or similar.

I probably could have added a 'NON_SOLID' flag to the func_ entities quite quickly, but I wanted to convince myself first that there was no way to automate the process. The uncertainty remained, so the idea was left unfinished.

As a quick straw poll: What would be the preferred implimentation?
� Create new classes for non-solid entities
� Add a flag which sets such entities non-solid
� Add the flag, and set it by default in the fgd file for _point classes
� Add a flag, and create a new wrapper class which sets the flag then calls the regular code(aka throw it all at the wall and see what sticks)
� Break all existing maps by making func_ non-solid with a flag to make them solid again

I also have this idea of fiddling with the modelindex so that you could create a BSP hull model to make it solid and still have another model visible using just one entity, if I can just sort out the entity issues. That might change the whole plan... 

well, my first instinct is that _point versions should automatically be SOLID_NOT because i was surprised when the func_train_point failed with a model. the thing is this would be an inconsistent behaviour because things like trigger_*_point MUST be SOLID_TRIGGER.

ideally, it would be better to just make a func_train_entity instead of having to abuse func_rotate_train. oh and i'd also update the hipnotic rotation code to take entity angles into account when being targetted by rotaters. (possibly with a flag to toggle that behaviour). 

The _point versions are supposed to be exactly identical to the regular version, so much so that they even strip the classname of the _point extension. They only exist because of limitations in worldcraft which prevent creation of a point entity with the classname of a solid one. I'm pretty sure changing them now would break maps.