I tried replacing the water related sounds by mine, but it failed pathetically with a message claiming I was not using a registred version of Quake...
Actually I tried to add a sound/player folder in which I put empty files in place of some of the related water wav files, keeping the original name... I don't know wether it is like this you were thinking about sound replacement: can you elaborate how you would do it please ? 

replacing the excisting wav files by silent ones with the same name...? 

well, first, an important thing is to vis your map (using aguire's vis) with -noambientwater. this stops the engine from playing the ambient water sound.

next, make silent sounds for:
misc/h2ohit.wav
misc/outwater.wav
misc/water1.wav
misc/water2.wav
player/h2ojump.wav
player/inh2o.wav
for these sounds, just copy misc/null.wav (in pak0.pak) and rename it.

now, you will need to make some custom sounds for these:
player/h2odeath.wav (maybe just replace with a normal death sound)

player/drown1.wav
player/drown2.wav replace these with maybe normal pain sounds or maybe the doom3 vacuum choking sounds.

player/gasp1.wav and gasp2.wav... maybe can be left alone. 

are that real waves with data of silence,
or just files that have that name but consist nothing, like changing an empty *.txt file into a *.wav? 

they are just sounds that are very short and silent.

if you put a .txt file, it will not have the header information that denotes a .wav file and you'll probably at the very least get warning messages or even crash the engine as it tries to read the thing. 

Thanks, now it is clear ;) 

just make sure that you package it as a separate mod, like i said earlier, instead of dumping stuff in the quoth folder otherwise it'll mess the sounds up for maps that don't use water as vacuum. :) 

in any case this sounds very interesting :) 

Thanks a lot for all these good advices. I now have to build the mod for this, and start the map.. I have a rough idea about what I'll do, but nothing clear today... And if it gives idea to other mappers, it is even better ;)
Again, thanks a lot for your support :) 

S_FindName: out of sfx_t
at map loading.

o_O 

Apparently means that you've tried to precache too many sound effects. The limit is 512, which is twice as generous as for models. You have some lengthy conversations going on? 

thanks :)

how do you find out these error meanings? are you actually looking through the source? 

is that fitzquake? Seems like it should handle that more gracefully. I.e. if you haven't exceeded max_sounds, it shouldn't fail in other ways. 

well, it was quakespasm085.4
i'll try to remember to test it in fq085 tommorow. 

Yeah, it's often easier to google the error and find a result in a quake engine svn directory. This time it was easier because it's an error people used to run into in Sven Co-op. 

i guess i should try the self help a bit more eh? :P

it was just such a strange error that i kind of laughed and just posted it.

thanks! 

Huzzah !! Just experimented as per post #11382, and it works perfectly... Just remains to find sound replacement for drown1/2.wav !
It sounds I have found a good way to emulate wero gravity in space... now I can start to map my spaceship.... even if I do not have clear idea about what I'll do ;P
Again, thanks a lot for your help :D 

... I've found exactely what I was looking for.... :E 

i did a little bit of testing on this issue.

1. yes, it also occurs in FQ085.
2. it wasn't actually that the map had >512 sounds.

what seems to happen is that, when loading a new map, the engine doesn't flush the precaches or something. the reason it crashed before was because i was loading it from the console after another map had already been loaded.

if i start the map up first, from scratch, it's fine.
if i try to load another map that uses a large number of sounds, it will crash.

this sounds like not a big deal at first, but it means that you can't have a map pack with more than 1 map that uses many different sounds. :( 

and looking forward to see the map then, jpl. :) 

What would happen if you load a map with many sounds, then a map with few sounds, and then another map with many sounds?

Just an idea. 

eventually, if you, say, had 512 maps, each with 1 unique sound, it would end up crashing.

if, as i believe, the precaches are not being cleared, then every map that adds any extra unique sounds will bring the crash that much closer to happening. 

The problem is often masked simply because practically every mod to date has
a) offered no means to import custom sound into a map and
b) contains fewer than 512 sounds itself

So it's likely a bug that has long survived in practically every source port of the engine... 

i'm certainly not blaming anyone for not noticing it. 

Is there any way to have glass in current engines?