There's a little trick to make lightning flashes work with light cast from the sky.

void() skyl_stand1 =[ $0, skyl_stand2 ]{lightstyle(0, "z");};

void() skyl_stand2 =[ $0, skyl_stand2 ]{lightstyle(0, "m");};

The light from _sunlight and _sunlight2 etc is always style 0 (in any compiler I've seen anyway). So this will flash all non-animated lights. You might not actually want all your lights to flash - what about indoor ones that shouldn't be affected by the lightning?

Since you can't change the style of the sunlight, the trick is to change the style of all the other lights instead. Give every interior light in your map which doesn't have an animation the targetname "interior". Then make sure to never trigger that targetname. Hey presto, the lightning only affects outside! You can of course use extra lights that "count as" daylight by not setting the targetname on them.

To get the thunderclap, you just need to find a suitable sound effect - one that isn't looping. Then just add

void() skyl_stand3 =[ $2, skyl_stand4 ]
{
��sound(self, CHAN_AUTO, "effects/thunder.wav", 1, 0.01);
}

Lastly, you might want to try something like:

void() skyl_stand8 =[ $7, skyl_stand1 ]
{
��self.nextthink = time + 10.0 + (random()*5);
};

for the delay, so that it's a bit less regular and predictable. 

I'm a bit of a dummy so how would that get plugged into a level? If it's a quake.C thing that's fine but I like to make no assumptions on what someone can or cannot do that aren't using very standard editing setups.

Have you ever thought of writing a new progs.dat with the .fgd to cover it? A re-release of the game if you would. You understand the code at the level of Carmack and what you know probably shouldn't get lost in this little tiny slice of the internet. 

Those were intended to be modifications to the code that MadFox supplied with the model, they would make sense to nobody if you weren't looking at the QC file supplied. The step-by-step would actually be something like

* Get the qc file from MadFox's download
* Add it to a clean quake source file
* (Make the changes I suggested)
* Add skylight.QC to the list of files in progs.src
* Compile the mod

Not too bad, but you do have to get all the qc compiling stuff to do it.

I don't know how much you'd gain from rewriting the progs from scratch; you'd make a bunch of unintentional changes that would annoy people, and probably not get enough benefit in return. My plan is to keep posting things up on the blog to share any good stuff I come up with (and as a teaser I do have a fun bit of code in the works right now!) 

@quaketree - ever since I played the addon pack I had the feeling:
great, thunder but where are the skyflashes.

Now my knowledge lays closer to qc I can make that happen.
Great you give some feedback how to make that happen.
I'm just more dummy to understand how it works if I don't have the strings excact where they belong.

@Preach - Yes, that was the thing I'm looking for. Maybe had to ask it in the modelling post, but now I can tinker on with the code.

The lights were a mystery to me, but that's a neat fix.
I loaded the sound management from necros to see how to add sound, but my compiler failed.

Well, let's see how to make this lightning pak. 

You don't need necros' sound management in this case - that's for sounds that loop continuously without a pause (but that you can stop and start at will). The sound from the thunder can just be played each time the bolt strikes - the crucial difference is that it's ok for the sound to finish and go silent between lightning strikes. So you can just use the single line of code above... 

Right, the sound is great now, just lowered the looptime to 15 sec before it gets annoying.

I see the lightstrike is rather pale, and affects the light by dimming it.
Maybe I shouldn't worry too much about inside light, as long there are windows.

I suppose the light can't be brought back to not-lightned for an instance?

here is the file so far. 

though I think it would have been cool to have the lighting done as the lightning model used in the LG gun... Definitely a cool start though. Couple this with some rain fx (I'm sure there was a mod for that) and you could make a really creepy haunted castle/mansion map 

The line:

lightstyle(0,"z");

is what's leaving the lights on. The letter in the "quotes" is saying how strong the light effect should be. Some examples:

"a" is pitch black
"e" is quite dark
"m" is normal lighting level
"s" is brighter than average
"z" is as bright as you can go.

So in order for the lightning to not be permanent, you need always end on a
lightstyle(0,"m");
not "z" like the current code does. 

@fithelfant - making the tesslacoil I used a bold beam to reach the player. Not so easy to make it a split beam. There is a beamcode in the chtong map, but it excludes doors.

@Preach -I see,
great to see those parms, shouldn't know where to look.
Good to make it go from dimm to bright.
Still it feels a little bleached.

I dug into the SOA code,
it uses a lightning code that can make it fullclear for a moment.
"TheCrypt" has an example, where I expected such eyecandy.
Timing will be a cripple problem with a static entity. 

Updated the the weatherflash with blitz.zip on Quaketastic with sound and scattered light.

Although the framecycle for the sprite is 15,
in game it appears 17-32-47.
So there's a delay of 2 sec.

Trying to use progsref for adding a flash fails going out of pattern.
I think it's because the static entity is apart of the game engine.

Thanks for support, Preach! 

Quaketree - no bandwidth, it was hosted on PlanetQuake, so it took me time to do but no ���. No favouritism either, I didn't know who any mapper was. Just a straightforward desire to promote mapping that was equalling or improving what Id had done. It was a long time ago and I probably went about it in a fairly crude or tactless way but my motives were pure. 

Mechtech - Titan1 looks great, nice strong designs and funky details. I agree the frilly stuff is a bit frilly, I also think some textures could be toned down, but keep this one going for sure.
Titan2 is not my style, it looks like HL1 in the Quake engine. I can see some designs and ideas are cool but I think the style needs to be made more harmonious with Quake and it's monsters.

RingOfQD. Nicely detailed but please just go ahead and make a map!! 

...and this is what i have so far
http://i.imgur.com/5ceLd8F.png 

Those that have downloaded the test map. Let me know if it works. If anything is broken, if it crashes. The textures, lighting and layout are done. I am interested in game play breaking bugs. If it's done I'll finish the second map and be DONE.
The whole thing started with this level from Duke3d.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/hc4g06mwcm165ep/e2m1_01_small.jpg
That was amazing back in the 1996

beta map
http://www.mediafire.com/download/2vdtbb0ci47af46/titanbeta7.7z 

http://i.imgur.com/NbmPj7D.png
http://i.imgur.com/lRVU5yH.png
http://i.imgur.com/6cxOgwP.png 

Is this a Doom or Doom II wad? 

 

nothing better than the double shotty 

Greetings,

This will be my first public release, titled DARK CITY. It is intended to be a non-linear survival horror experience.

http://i.imgur.com/rx6SeRf.png
http://i.imgur.com/BWKdEQZ.png

Beta to follow in coming weeks, time permitted. 

Screenshots are a bit bright and washed out. Maybe tone down the lighting a bit?? 

But at least the map is true to its name. 

must need to change my monitor setting or something. 

Screenshots you take in game will always look stupidly darker when viewed later. Increasing the contrast and brigthness by about 15-20 tends to fix that. 

 

I should take both possibilities, that the map is too dark and that the screenshots are a misrepresentation, into consideration.

However, I might explain further that part of the non-linearity of the map stems partially from the need for players to activate electrical generators that turn on lights to reveal new areas. So in many cases I have to make sure that the light is dark enough that the player will not see or be able to access those areas until the have toggle the appropriate lighting. Perhaps this makes screenshots a bad way to go, lol.