So I understand the general wisdom is never do it, however I would like to know if there are any particularly instances of it that can be okay or must be avoided and such... the BSP I'm trying to put together atm is doing my head in :E 

it's not inherently bad.

Example: you want to make a cross shape. You can do this with only two brushes, keep everything lined up to the grid. no problems. The only potential weakness to this example is you won't have control over which brush will determine the texturing on the intersection -- so the wood grain may end up going vertical or horizontal on that spot. (in actuality i think qbsp always uses the brush face of the later brushes in the map file, when two brushfaces are coplanar and overlapping like that.)

Main thing to avoid is things being off-grid or sloppy on the part of the brush that is inside other brushes. You should still keep things clean and on-grid even if they are buried. 

It's fine. I do it loads! id software did it loads. It's a good way of saving brushes. 

what metl said. if you have two brushes intersecting and their faces are sloped, you have to remember that the intersection will create vertices, and if those vertices (which are generated at bsp time) are not on the grid, they will be snapped to the grid and this is usually what causes all those weird problems like falling through the world or just plain bsp failure. 

What engine?
-
JoeQuake

Do you actually have a track 11?
-
Quake sees track 11 as track 10/the last track;
try "cd play 2" in the console - it plays the Q theme

Does it work if you load it while a map is loaded?
-
Yeah the song plays if I'm ingame (both menu & loaded level), but I have to type in "cd play 11"

CD or files?
-
CD 

BSP snaps vertices to the grid, e.g. uses integer coordinates? That's ludicrous - why does it do that? 

But is it because Quake .bsp doesn't support float? 

But the hull system doesn't, which is where it all goes to pot. 

bsp.exe does work with float coordinates, but rounds them to the nearest integer? And what do you mean by "the hull system doesn't"? Could you explain that a little more? Thanks! 

long story short i used the quake converter for worldcraft 3.3 , and was wondering why is it that when i use the texture application for a paticular face of a brush, or when i click the 3D window in general, it doesnt select anything at all? im sorry if this question was asked/answered before but it seems to be so obscure of a problem in terms of google. :(
any help is appreciated guys :D 

i think i might have been wrong in my post.
on reflection, perhaps bsp is not snapping vertices, but hull expansion just has a very hard time dealing with the off-grid vertices. 

Question:

Whent he error has occurred (you can select brushes) does the mouse cursor turn into a hand shape when you move it over the 2D frames?

If this is the case then all I can suggest is re-booting the computer, re-starting the editor sometimes works, try a different driver version for your graphics.

Its a known bug :( It used to happen to about 1 in every 10 times I opened the editor. 

no. whats weird is i can select brushes from the non 3D brushes, but it will refuse to ever select a brush or face of a brush with any tool in the 3D view window making it near impossible to do some things feasibly. i really wish i knew how to fix this bug. i wanted to get back into mapping so bad and actually finish a map but this is a pretty showstopping glitch. 

"filter textures" setting in the options? This essentially enables/disables hardware acceleration. Did I already say to try a different driver version for your graphics? 

I tried selecting brushes/faces of a brush in the 3D window with the setting obth checked and unchecked. I really didn't want to start messing with my hardware drivers though so I guess I'll just have to take the hint that mapping isn't for me. Thanks for the help though. :) 

<quote>obth</quote>

WTF?!?!

What kind of graphics card do you have? 

Aren't hull coordinates short integers? That would explain that. I remember reading something about it, but may be wrong. 

<quote>obth</quote>

i'm guessing both? ;)

I really didn't want to start messing with my hardware drivers though so I guess I'll just have to take the hint that mapping isn't for me. Thanks for the help though. :)

that's pretty rash. why not try a different editor? 

i have no idea. everything is from observations i've made and from what i recall reading from other, more code minded posters.

i've just found that when you have a bunch of sloping areas intersecting, you're tossing the dice as to whether it will be fine or not. sometimes you can have the most obscene brushwork and have it compile perfectly and sometimes the simplest junction, perhaps even just two faces, will explode.

this is where, i think, the whole 'don't overlap brushes' thing comes from. 

The same - it just tends to muck stuff up, but I haven't built a compiler so don't know for sure.

Where's AguirRe? 

what ever happened to aguirre's q2 work? he was doing an engine i think? 

rj/#10404

i really wouldn't even know what would be the next best editor or how to get it setup :( i thought hammer might but im not even sure. 

Haven't spoken to him in a long time. Last was to give notice of Willem's multi thread version of 'the' compilers. 

It sounds like you've got hardware troubles - don't give up. Everyone on the board has suffered them at one time or another. 

well there isnt really any way for me to get any dif hardware, and id rather not muck around with installing dif drivers for my video card :/ i could go with a dif editor like hammer if i knew how to set it up for quake :( some people said quark but they say itd be really hard to learn coming from only experience with hammer/worldcraft. they say its too different to learn once youve gotten to used to one or the other :(