so I have a map vising that finished today (this is bsp2 tools), and right after it said left 0:00, 100% as if it was done, it then said *********** ERROR portal not done. I haven't come across this before, uhh... does this mean the entire vis time was wasted and there's some kind of vis-killing problem in the map?

(that would only show up after its 100% done after 333 hours? lol). 

...Ouch :/ 

For 12 sided circles etc I think your angles are often 63.5 degrees (to the nearest half a degree) and 27.5 degrees. Scale for the textures on one of the diagonal sides is 1.06

Stuff I remember :) 

~0.71 is correct

0.75 is sometimes better to make edges align to grid. 

I had figured out the rotations for the 12-sided cylinder, but never the scale. Thanks for both, they're going in my own 'Mapping Tips' document. 

I ran into that error when vising my coag3 map with an older version of WVIS that had a bug with the state save function - interrupting the vis process caused unfinished portals to be left 'open' instead of resetting their progress altogether. BJP then sent me an experimental build of his VIS tool which had a -finish switch that would disregard such conflicting portals and force the vis job to complete.

Now, your problem appears to be different insofar as the WVIS bug was fixed in the final version and the BSP2 tools are based on that source. Or are they - can someone check?
Problem is that, presumably, BJP's new vis won't work here, because of the different BSP version and specifications. Still, you could contact him and see if he's got an idea. 

I doubt I will be able to contact aguirRe these days, though he formerly was one of the best guys to talk to regarding mapping. I'll try him but I'll also try RMQ team / mh who I think (?) is the major tools developer. It could be a very old, rare and gay bug. But I reserve the right to be formally offended to only find out that shit's fucked after 333 hours. It's like a relationship, except even worse (333 hours into a relationship ought to have bought you the notification that you're doomed - long ago!). 

I know the engine uses the serverflags to store information about if the player has the runes or not, what is the rest of the flag used for? Can it be used to store other information that can be used between maps? 

The rest is not used. And if the server does not cut the value of serverflags, I think it can be used 

The scale is the sine of the angle. Like Metlslime said, for 45 degrees this is 0.707. Instead of rotation you often actually need to do negative scaling. Try putting a texture with text (like trigger) or some other obvious left/right or up/down differences and you will see what I mean (also, it needs to be the same size as the texture you will actually use). 

Yes, it's possible. And apparently one can store more than you would expect at first glance if done right. Kinn, and if I'm not mistaken necros and Preach, talked about it not long ago, but I can't remember in which thread. 

Awesome, thanks for the reply, I was not 100% sure and I did search for serverflags in this thread but could not find anything. From my tests it *seems* to work fine. The things I want to remember across map loads affects every client so I am not worried about that. I know about the parm system but I am surprised there is not more use of the serverflag solution. 

yes, we did. :)
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=4&start=11760&end=11772 

Kind of mixed it up, and still had that one "meta hack" thing in mind, too.... Whatever works, right? 

I had never used the light key _anglesense for the light program (was not in my FGD for hammer).
After a bit of trisouping I found I had dark spots at the corners. _anglesense .1 cleared it up.
Good info thank you
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/guides/lighting-basics/

Some info on trisouping
http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/trisouping-bsp-brush-based.php 

Glad that was helpful. :) 

Negke, why did you use Netradiant?
Necros, why did you use Sikkpin's variant? 

At this point, i want to use netradiant, but I can't figure out how to load textures in it. :P

I really like Sikkpin's variant, but there is a critical bug somewhere which prevents me from making more complex geometry. Specifically, it is rounding off vertex coordinates when I do not want it to, which tears apart multi-brush objects I've built when trying to rotate them to non-axial angles.

Currently, I'm waiting for Trenchbroom. :) 

the vertex rounding may not actually be a bug, but rather intentional to prevent problems when compiling, but I think off grid vertices are not the cause of compiling problems which is why I don't consider it a good thing in the editor atm. 

I was attempting to load textures into netradiant when I asked 

:D

I tried all the obvious things like putting wad files in different subdirectories and extracting them as jpgs and such. Nothing seemed to work. 

At this point, I am preferring to just wait for trenchbroom instead of trying to figure out netradiant. I figure if I'm going to learn a new editor, it may as well be completely different. :P 

Currently, I'm waiting for Trenchbroom

sleepwalkr demoed it to me and now I am pretending to be a great mapper who so far only has been limited by the tools. I can't wait to stare blankly into a 3d editor and do stupid things with its face extrusion and non-sucking vertex editing. 

I've never had any problems with textures in Netradiant other than having to manually add the texture wads to the "wad" line in the map file.

I use PSP 4.0 to create and modify the images and convert to .bmp (using a Quake pallette file), then TexMex to add them to a .wad file.

Then just put the .wad files in the \Quake\ID1 folder. 

yeah... that works. it seems to ignore subdirectory selection in the wad key. :\

can you change that at all? I really dont' want to clog up my id1 folder with wad files.