What is the most elegant solution when building a staircase? A staircase creates a large number of triangles and shreds any adjacent faces even more triangles. But, because func_walls do not cast shadows, I hesitate to make every step a func_wall.

The solution I came up with is to have the wall and steps as regular brushes, but to include a sort of railing between them which is itself a func_wall. The stairs appear to be flush with the wall, but they are not. It also adds some nice detail.

However, depending on where the lights are placed it creates some bizarre shadows on the opposing side of the staircase. I had some success by creating a regular brush that hides inside the func_wall version, touching nothing but casting a shadow. But this is less elegant and more messy.

At this point, I�m not sure what to do. Is there a better way? 

Hey guys. I'm trying to use GtKRadiant for Quake mapping, but I'm having tons of trouble.

I got the vanilla id textures from Quaddicted and have GtKRadiant itself working.

I made a test box map and am compiling it with hmap2. That appears to work. But when I load it up in Quake, the textures I've chosen don't appear, instead just a placeholder checkerboard texture on every surface.

What am I doing wrong? 

When you export your .map file, you can open it in a text editor (i.e. Notepad), and at the top of the document is the Worldspawn information. There is also meant to be a line which tells the compiler where the .wad files are located. I would check that this location is correct. You can use full root loactions (i.e. "C:\quake\mywads\id.wad"). 

Excellent! Worked like a charm. Thank you :)

Just in case, is there any particular trick to using multiple wads? 

Separate the wad locations with a semi-colon.

Example:

"wad" "C:\quake\mywads\id.wad; C:\quake\mywads\mynexwad.wad; C:\quake\mywads\mylastwad.wad" 

It really depends on the complexity of what you're building.

And lots of triangles probably isn't as bad as you think if its in a closed in area.

Post a screenshot so we can see what you're wanting to do. 

With limits of 65000 triangles (or 32000 in really old engines), then a few stairs is not really a problem. Trying to over-simplify the architecture by lifting brushes off the ground etc seems like a good idea, but in reality it often creates more portals and clipnodes. 

Thank you guys for the quick responses. I'm going to keep working at it, and if anything significant turns up I'll return. :) 

just for curiosity(eheh)
What if I use progs.dat from Nehahra?
what implications could arise?(eg. one must have Nehahra installed to play my mod?)

I'm creating my own little progs(small changes such as bg-music,deleted weapons I don't need,..)
BUT really I cannot implement a damn working camera for cutscenes!
And I didn't suspect that Quake is so limited with text/message entities!
I need large portions of colored text viewable on screen at different times during my mod for briefing and storytelling.. suggestions please ? 

for that... you should probably ask at inside3d and get ready to learn csqc. :P 

necros what is csqc? what is that "cs" ?
-already asked at inside3d.. with poor results.. they waste time in minor useless code details but weren't able to explain what I need 

.. making a Q1 machinima in the vein of Nehahra(kudos and respect to it!).. but still missing a camera code and text entities.
Besides I'd prefer stick with my own progs.dat(so no Zerstorer,Custents,etc..) 

i dunno what the cs stands for. but it's special engine supported code (requires engines like darkplaces) so you can change the hud or add stuff like text and such. 

 

thanks :) 

one question.. have u ever used cutscenes in your map? 

i personally can't stand cutscenes unless they're like super short like a couple of seconds or something. 

I'm probably missing something obvious here but not having much luck. How do I set an ambient light level? Using QuakeEd3.1. 

'light' key 

oh sorry, on worldspawn. :P 

RMQ has a nice bit of cutscene capability, maybe some of those guys could help to point you? or...... Join us!!! 

Zerstorer is much smaller than RMQ or Nehahra and has cutscene code.

It is unsupported but does have documentation.

And yeah, another alternative is to join RMQ... 

In the "visions" map on Quaddicted.com is an example of things you want.
It's called the cck kit, a cutscene camera kit, with instructions how to change the screen ingame and centerprint messages controlling the camera to use a certain path.

It is a simple cck.qc and helps you to add the cutscenes by ways of a trigger_once for a perode of time. It's kind of slow but it works.

Play the map and you'll understand. 

pretty sure custents also contains camera code. 

custents has camera code though the progs.dat is a bit messy
my desire was to try and create my own cam but really I have to give up so I guess I'll stick with one of existing progs(custents,vision,zer,nehahra) :)