If in doubt, update your drivers. Seems to be the TB rule of thumb! 

Is usually crap for Windows regarding hardware. They can be years off of the curve if they bother at all. I had a laptop that used a 2007 update that they never had in their update database. 

One update that partially disabled my laptop. Had to download the fixed update on another machine and use a pen drive to fix it. 

Having a slight issue with using this editor. When I spawn in a light, there's no obvious way to control the radius/strength of the light fixture. When I compiled the map, the entire room was made super duper bright. Is there some flag i'm supposed to set? I think i'm missing something. 

you need to add a 'light' key to the light entity and give it a numerical value, something like 100.

(the editor isn't very friendly to people new to Quake editing when it comes to the entities and some of the properties they may need or use. It's a work in progress)

also, make sure when you compile, you also run a light compiler. qbsp only generates the polygonal hulls of the map, you also need to run a light compiler on the bsp to generate the lightmap.

http://quakewiki.org/wiki/Getting_Started_Mapping may be of help if you are still confused! 

I used Darkplaces with RT shadows. :) 

I already know about the lightmaps generator, I just needed to know about what key to put in, thanks. 

These are Bengt's tools: http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/

Which are still the standard for q1 compiling; very dependable and the tool tips document on that page is full of useful information.

There's also Tyrann's tools, which are more modern / experimental and support detail brushes (more detail without longer vis times): http://www.disenchant.net/ 

Here's two sites given to me in this thread with all the info about the Quake entities:
http://www.quakewiki.net/archives/worldcraft/entity/standard/standard.shtm
http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/QDP/qmapspec.html 

I always notice that when i'm using Trenchbroom, there's the words "Smart Editor Not Availabe" on the window. Why is this? 

The Smart editors are a set of specialized editors for entity properties. Currently, the only smart editors available are the spawnflags editor and the color editor, which is shown if you select a spawnflags property or a color property, respectively.

There are plans for more smart editors for properties such as angle, angles, mangle and so forth, but these are currently not implemented. The editor shows the "not available" message when you select a property for which no smart editor is available. 

Can't stop playing around with it. Good job! I'm even considering dropping Radiant for Quake. There's only one thing I can't figure out. In Radiant, you have 2d views which I use extensively for clipping complex curves.

Trenchbroom doesn't have that and without it, I'm kinda lost on how to do it. It does show the coordinates but I'm really missing the grid. There's probably a viable technique for this but so far I haven't found it.

To illustrate my point and make my question easier:

http://kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/docs/images/view_management_normal.jpg

How would one go about creating that arch brushwork in Trenchbroom? 

I'd use the 3D clip tool and the vertex tool for this. It really does require some practice to create this kind of architecture in 3D, but it works. One thing that is really different from Radiant et. al. is that in TB, you have to move the camera around a lot.

Maybe necros and others can shed some light... in the long run, I hope someone will get around to making a bunch of tutorials for TB. 

As in snap to a fixed orthogonal axis and have a non-perspective view.

;P 

Not sure if this was reported, but the editor crashes if you snap vertices and then try to move them around. 

Hit 'C' to activate the clipping tool, you can then place up to three point to define the clipping plane.

V activate vertex manipulation, although it can cause microleaks if used as structural stuff and you don't use the snap to vertices action.

Use Tab to lock movement to X or Y axis, and hold Alt to switch to vertical Z axis movement.

With those you can easily make complex geometry fairly quickly.

Trenchbroom allows for much more freeform brushwork.

Which is where the grid mindset becomes hard to shake off. I've been using the editor for months now and still find myself constrained by the habit of thinking in front/sides/top grid terms.

It is worth unlearning that :) 

Could you create an issue on github? Please also add steps to reproduce. Thanks. 

Done. It looks like this doesn't always happen, though. I've given more information about that in the issue entry. 

Good and quick replies, thank you all. It was more a question in general. I'm having some difficulties finding the right words in English. Clipping and free form brush work is one thing, controlling the coordinates is another.

I made this in Radiant:

http://imgur.com/60ZuxN2

I was only able to do this by using some math in determining the grid coordinates to make all the curves out of brushes. That's something, as far as I'm aware, that I cannot do in Trenchbroom. I hope this makes sense.

Anyway, I can always build those parts in Radiant and convert to them Quake and import it in Trenchbroom. 

Maybe this will help then:

http://www.quaketerminus.com/hosted/happymaps/curv_tut.htm 

It looks like you're already basing your stuff off it. 

would it be helpful if you could place a grid plane to help you find the proper coordinates? Is the problem that you can only see the grid where it is already projected onto brushes? 

entirely in TB and I managed to get a lot of curve action going on. You can still apply a 2d grid mindset to working 3d.

You can make any of those shapes shown there in TB quite easily, you can just point the cam directly at it and use brush clipping with the grid enabled to get the same results.

The only thing I wasn't able to figure out was making curved pipes, I'm sure it can be done but I couldn't manage to figure it out. Someone should just make a bunch of prefab shapes to be honest. 

You mean a curved pipe like that? http://imgur.com/AQ7eRxa

I did this in TrenchBroom with the help of the grid. Granted, it's not the most curvy thing ever, but it gets the job done. :p 

... originally I was going to have my deck map have pipes leading into the different slime pits. but I scrapped the idea after several failed attempts at getting the pipe-work done (though there are some quite primitive pipes in the map in the final release).