Despite cavernous theme, put more light sources in? Especially along the main walkways. It's not lit well enough. Use delay 5 / wait 0.5 to make light reach further.

"Dark" doesn't work too well in Quake. You have to use pretty powerful light sources to get anywhere. In the end it is a game and the player has to be able to see something - it has to be functional.

Try using equipment as light sources, too - slipgate "powercubes", mobile light props, computer screens and so on.

Use spotlights.

You can also use e.g. candles and fire in base maps as light sources, you just have to make their presence look plausible. ^^

If all else fails, destroy the ceiling and let some sunlight in... only in certain places of course.

Crashed spaceship's thrusters as light sources / traps. Fire and debris. Burning barrels. Anything that gives off light (perhaps coloured) and looks plausible. A blaster test station. Laser traps. Car lights. 

that was posted by gb, @ zqf. Sorry. 

Is there a key for increasing the radius of a spot light? :E 

By radius I mean the radius of the cone they project :) 

angle? 

Doooh I'm a dumbass I tried _angle :p 

One tip which works from an engine point of view and is occasionally realistic too: you can make lots of your map dark and still playable if you light the floor. Entities like monsters take their lighting value from the floor below them. So if you need them visible but still want to create some contrasting dark areas of the map, make the floor the first thing you light. 

Thoughts? Still got a tiny bit of fog to make the tunnels look deeper :E

http://www.zealousquakefan.com/images/base_ep/zqfbase_ep9.jpg 

Hi, I'm wondering what's the optimal scale for a 1v1 QW map. E.g., Quake 3 would be 128 units wide, and Warsow would be 160 units wide. Playing QW maps in Warsow makes you feel like a giant, so I think it'd be pretty small. 

q3 scale is probably a safe bet. 

Alright thanks. Well I can probably figure this out, but what are the player dimensions, like width/height, jump height, jump distance, etc.? Also is there any other dimensions like this worth knowing? I looked up the LG is 600 units long, and the RL & GL have a 120 and 160 unit splash. 

64 units is the lowest ceiling you can fit underneath.

16 unit steps are OK, but 8 unit look better 

Yeah, I see a lot of 16 unit steps, what's the deal? I assume that's also the max step height? 

yes, a 17 step will stop you dead.

i think jump distance is like 220~ units? madfox posted them a little while ago, iirc. 

the largest gap player cannot fit through is 32 units wide -- this goes for holes in the floor and for doorway width

player eye level is 48 units off the floor

player can jump up onto a 40-unit-tall crate but not 48.

you can fall down from about a 256-unit drop without taking damage (assuming you just walked off the edge and didn't jump.) 

The minimum water needed to swim is 29 units, the highest ramp jump I've done is 128 units. 

Also, for steps, I found that monsters have stricter requirements than players, and smaller monsters (grunt) can walk up steeper stairs than, say, fiends. i.e. the step width also matters.

I wanted to make staircases that fiends/shamblers/etc. could chase the player up or down, and ideally the stairs would be as steep as possible. I'll post the metrics I found when I can fire up Quake. Not sure if this is common knowledge or if I was screwing something up? 

by width, I meant the dimension that determines staircase slope 

you should just play Aerowalk to get what scale works well in qw 

Horizontal jump distance is something you have to be careful of. The quake player physics allows you to go gain lots of speed through bunnyhopping and use aircontrol to speed up during the jump. So testing the jump by holding forward and leaping may not be enough. 

I'm using NetRadiant and trying to get started with mapping. I'm using the Darkplaces engine and have no interest in supporting other engines - what's the difference between choosing Darkplaces and Quake at the initial game selection screen?

Also, if I pick Darkplaces, where will the editor expect wad files to be located? dpmod instead of id1? 

wad files are only for editing maps. once you compile a map, the textures you've used get included into the bsp file. 

I found the safest dimensions for steps are 8 units high, 16 units deep steps: any monster should be able to walk up or down them.
12 units high, 16 units deep steps: grunts can walk on them, fiends can't. 

Fiends can't walk up 16 unit high steps? I know they get stuck easily from lack of height and width, but I thought everything could climb 16 unit steps. I've almost always used 16 high x 32 deep. 

But sometimes big monsters have problems if the steps are not broad enough (floor).