Hello everyone, I am currently working on my 6th map and I need a little help. Can anyone here advise me step by step on how to create a trigger lightning? The way I plan on making it is when u hit a button and the lightning shoots out (like a trap).

Thank you for your help :) 

Have you tried this? http://www.planetquake.com/worldcraft/entity/standard/std2.shtm#1

If not, try it. That's probably described about as well as I can do it. 

Your fix worked!

Give me a new contact when you can. I've got a beta almost thru vis. I can't wait to finish it and seal it in the can. 2nd map is progressing. 

I'm back at work, yaaaay!

I'm sending the e3m1 wad to Leviathan tomorrow, along with the progress bsps for start, e1m1 and e3m2, so I'll CC: you into the mail 

Quake gamers have the same problem, mapping standards. New types of map items added have no real standards in spq or dm levels. So, you can get these maps/mods combos from said designer with some cool goodies, but unusable with your favorate mods, q1/q2 mission pack, Killer quake pack, Ultimate weapons mod, just to name a few. Since, they have some special weapons, items, monsters, etc that makes them unplayable with anything but the mod that comes with the level. So, you just play the level/mod combo in god mode for some good action and eye candy. Or for that matter, as a level made for specific mod and can't be used for any other mod.

At the other end, you have the vanilla quake level with no special goodies that work with all mods. We all love these levels, but having the goodies like flamethrower and freezethrower as ground pickups are just plain fun.

With mapping standards between mod makers and mappers, you could have the middle ground. So, I'v decided to make up a list of standard map items i'm aware of. It will list the title and description of what they do and maybe damage level. For now, here some first thoughts:
weapon_flamethrower
weapon_plasma_cannon
weapon_freezethrower
weapon_gatlinggun
item_rune
random_rune(dm)
random_powerup(dm)
proximity_mine(dm)
plasma_mine(dm)
Also, I found something called "cut scene construction kit" out of an old mod as another possible standard. Give it some thought for a while. I'll post the URL at a later date, maybe a cross post at quake stanards.

as


as 

using the old bsp2prt utility, I've now added that functionality to my BspInfo utility. It has large capacity and generates a more accurate .prt file with fewer leafs/portals which helps vis.

I think I've also found the cause of the elusive CutNodePortals_r: New portal was clipped away warning in qbsp and added coordinates to help finding the problem spot. It seems to be the same cause as many other qbsp-related problems; tiny brush misalignments.

You'll find the updated tool versions at http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k . 

i've got some prob
i'm making map in gtkradiant, and when i compile it with q3map2 it finds phantom leak (tho, the map has no any holes, i'm sure).
but, q1 compilers after convertiong map to q1 format, compile it with no probs.
anyone know any workarounds for that?
maybe some util that will process .map file for error brushes or something? some kind of .map file refresh utility? 

maybe that bengt's new qbsp might help, because i started to get 3 cutnodeportals errors in a row.... 

Does the portal file get created & vis run in q3map2? If so I wouldn't worry too much about it - the bsp part of q3map2 always seems to report leaks to phantom entities in my maps but it doesn't stop it from vising & working ok.

I presume you've tried to load the pointfile into gtkr. 

How hard would it be to add dubsp type
functionality to your bsp progs?
(ie compile HL/Hammer maps for Q1)
How much of a difference is there between
HL .map and Q1 .map formats? 

yeah, q3map2 vises and lights map fine.
i think it's some q3map b0rkage or something indeed. good thing that q1 compilers eat this .map fine, this is what important :)
i just worry a bit about that phantom leak, but seems like i shouldn't. 

well, i was trying to fix that cutnodeportals thingy using coords that qbsp printed. well, it pointed to some spot in the void. no misaligned brushes nearby... there are some edge manipulated brushes tho, but they're all aligned to the grid properly... when i edited some nearby brushes, reported spot coordinates moved slightly, but still coords are in the void... 

CutNodePortals warnings can be pretty tricky to fix, especially if they're in hulls 1/2. I assume that this is your case and that's why you get coordinates that are not near any edges/vertices.

If you remember my ramblings about the expanded brushes, you'll have to visualize this expansion and try to imagine where the brush junctions might be then and then track back to which real brush it might be.

I've done this extensivley for a couple of days and it can be rather time-consuming to track down the CutNodePortals warnings for hulls 1/2, but so far I've managed to fix them.

It should be noted that AFAIK, they're still non-critical warnings; you probably don't have to fix them. They might be regarded as potential problem spots.

If you need more help, send me the zipped map+wad and I'll see what I can do. 

I've thought about this myself, I have the source for DuBSP so it's more of a decision whether I want to add and maintain this functionality in my versions.

IIRC there were a number of issues to consider regarding map file format, wads and even an extra crouching hull(?). There is also the problem with testing; I don't have or use Hammer myself.

I dismissed the idea then, I might take a look into it again as I see there are a number of Hammer mappers. No promises though ...

Then there's the question if Riot's going to maintain DuBSP or he's through with it. Maybe he could answer that. 

wouldn't it be easier to make a seperate program to simply convert hl maps to q1 map format like sleepwalkR's mapconv.exe does for q3/q2 to q1? that way you don't have to worry about any of the ducking hulls and such, it seems more straight forward that way...
mind you, i really don't know anything about that... :P 

yeah, i generally ignore this warning. i just thought that maybe for some reason these tiny brush misalignments can cause q3map2 generate phantom leak. so i hoped that by fixing this warning q3map2 will start compiling my map w/o errors. but as glassman said, i can ignore and that q3map's phantom leaks too. well, for me qbsp output is much more important of course, so while everything is ok there, there's no need to worry much ;) 

That's a good idea. I've already in my ConvMap utility the ability to convert Q2 map format into Q1 (similar to mapconv).

There's an additional problem here though. Hammer (like QuArK) can probably generate more variants of texture positioning than the standard Q1 map format can handle.

This means that either there still needs to be changes in the compilers to accommodate a new format or the conversion must go via the QuArK ETP format.

Any suggestions are welcome. 

Can you please confirm which hull the warning appeared in? 

and corresponding wads (zipped, please) to test a quick fix I've just made for my compilers. It looks promising on the few Hammer maps I have.

At this time, it only enables my compilers to interpret the Hammer map files (with its native texture definitions), wads must manually be converted into WAD2s using e.g. TexMex and there's no support for extra hulls or other frills. I hope this is not a big problem.

Since [Jimbo] and MisYu have showed interest in this issue, maybe you could send me some test material? 

here goes the paste from qbsp output:

---- MakeFaceEdges ----
----+----+
---- GrowRegions ----
Processing hull 1...
----+----+
----+----+
Processing hull 2...
----+----+
----+----+
*** WARNING 12: New portal was clipped away in CutNodePortals_r near (428 2400 -800)
---- WriteBSPFile ---- 

as I hoped, that's why it's more difficult to fix. My usual method is to look in the nearby area for brushes with non-axial planes and delete them and rebuild to see when the warning disappears (or changes). As I said, it can be quite time-consuming ...

Thanks for the info. 

the prob is, the whole map is built mostly with brushes with non-axial planes ;)
anyway, i'll ignore this warning 

I emailed you a link to a zipped rmf map and
wad.
Let me know if the link works. 

Please don't include the rmf files as I can't open them anyway (I don't have Hammer). 

vondur, you don't need to worry at all about that. call me sloppy, but on average per map, i get about 2 dozen of those warnings... :P