z:/quake/id1/id.wad 

Do clip, skip and trigger textures affect lightmaps? 

Trigger textures certainly do - the map compiler has no idea what the classnames on your entities mean and has to assume that you want the option to render them (in fact some speedrunning mods have the option to show triggers in practice mode). Scaling textures that you know won't be seen by massive percentages ought to save some maps. 

skip does as well.

from what i understand, the skip'd faces are still in the bsp file, but they are moved to a point after a marker that tells the engine not to draw them, so they are loaded, just not drawn. 

skip and trigger generate lightmaps.

clip does not.

Theoretically qbsp.exe could be modified to natively understand skip; and then it would be possible to truly remove them from the bsp, reducing lightmaps and marksurfaces. But the current skip tools available merely hide them from rendering using a hack. 

 

Is there a Q1 compiler which works with func_group entities?

I am currently using TreeQBSP v2.05 (10/04/2007) modified by Bengt Jardrup, but it leaks if I have any func_group entities in my map. 

i know that aguirre's txqbsp does. just add -group to enable the support. 

I assume you are talking about this version of qbsp? (http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/)
The program (qbsp) tells me -group is not supported, I checked the readme file and it has no mention of it. Are you using a special version not listed on his homepage? 

the file you want is the txqbspbjp.zip which contains his txqbsp. This one supports -group.

it's only his treeqbsp that does not support -group. 

Ok that was confusing, I looked at the website and saw qbsp to be newer and assumed it was the correct one to download.

The txqbsp does not support -oldaxis and -transwater switches, I assume this ok? 

aguirre's txqbsp uses -altaxis and automatically builds transparent water (you can disable this with -nowatervis) 

why he maintained 2 slightly different forks of bsp in parallel. It's not as if there were any obvious reasons given regarding why we should use one over the other. I use Tx, for reasons that I can't actually remember now, but I'm sure were valid at the time. 

tx supports everything tree does, but also supports floating point coordinates. unless there's anything else, there's really no reason to use treeqbsp. 

that Tree supported floating point in exactly the same way that Tx does. That's what it says in the readme files anyway. 

oh maybe it's the 'etp' thing then? enhanced texture precision? 

supported in both, according to the readmes. In fact, going from the readmes, the main features list of both tools appear to be identical. 

geez, maybe they are then? the only difference would be txqbsp supporting -group then and different switch name for old/alt axis... 

More stable, from my experience. 

Tx has better dynamic memory management, which of course is completely irrelevant with today's computers. I think that internally they use different data structures. 

I did find it funny that there is a -kinn command line switch for the light compiler! :P

"Added new option "-kinn" which translates all delay 2 lights into delay 5." 

yeah, the story behind that is this: originally the only inverse square falloff was "delay 2", which I didn't like because the light level went to infinity as you approached the light source. This of course just meant you got a big flat fullbright circle around your light all the time, no matter what the value of the light entity was. I ended up modifying the formula so that it was still inverse square but the light level at the source was equal to the light entity value, not infinity. Aguirre liked this formula, so he included it in his version as "delay 5", but in my own custom version it's still "delay 2". 

thank goodness for that, i love delay 5! :) 

i'm using worldcraft 3.33 w/ quake adapter, and is there away to tell worldcraft not to use a specific color for the brushes? a lot of times they end up black, and its hard to see with the black background.

there is an option for white background, but with the grid being gray, its pretty useless. 

Try 'grouping' the brush. Thats my mid level solution. Always hated that too.