The more faces a brush has the less likely the map is to compile. Not for the brush itself but how it interacts with all the other brushes in the map.

The clipper is your friend! 

Quake players get to decide how to play the map.

Getting too obviously in the way of this is annoying for everyone involved. So just make the gap sufficiently wide that its obvious that you're not supposed to try to jump across. Then, if a player wants to spend 40 minutes lining up the perfect bunny sequence to jump across, then (a) he/she probably knows that they are not playing the map the way the mapper intended and (b) who are you to say this is less of an effort/reward ratio than the long route you had in mind? Dismissing an effort like this as "cheating" is almost insulting, imho. Ages ago distrans sent a nice mail to SDA about this sort of thing, search for "distrans" on http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/oldnews/03_jun20-sep05.html to read it.

OTOH, someone who types god, impulse 9 into the console and rjs across... well, screw em. That really is just cheating. 

Achievements.... I remember when I used to play wow, the most fun thing I ever did in that game was explore off-limits areas, or take monsters to where they weren't supposed to be to create havoc.

If somebody tells me I can't or shouldn't do something, it makes me want to do it more. You could even consider rewarding them for their out of order completion or challenging them spawn mobs that wouldn't be there had they collected a key or rune.... 

Mwh, enliten: You probably missunderstood my words, i consider cheating using the cheat codes, i do not consider cheating speedruns, strafe-jumping and bunny-hopping, as those involve tons of skills to pull them.
I still think that i have to prevent that the player reaches there, as that shortcut probably will avoid a big part of the map (i wouldn't mind if the shorcut wasn't so big). I won't prevent players to get there if they pull a good bunny-hopping or other hard to pull trick, but i will make it obvious that it cannot be reached with a normal jump or a strafe jump, if i finally put the chasm.

Ijed:

Have the player ride through the area in a func_train cage beforehand

I don't understand what you can achieve with this one. To have the player measure the place so he will know that he can't jump? Or to show him what he cannot reach?

or have votes spam magic at them from it from miles away.

I don't understand this one at all, all i get in my mind when i read it sounds so crazy. Could you explain it? 

"Overthinking" hits the nail on the head I think. 

I agree with mwh.

Map is a better map when it offers things that allow for increased replayability (aka replay value).

Don't worry if a player skips a big part of the map, because the player won't. The player will play the long route first time, then try the difficult shortcut in the future. 

I agree with what you say, ALL of it, as it is compatible with what i said. 

The two examples I mention are ways of making sure the player knows the area is important, but they're more complex than just leaving a hole.

Cage: This is done in one of the episode 2 levels where the cage goes through water. Basically drop the player into a cage (so they can see out) then move it through the area you want them to see. This means they look at it but can't interact with anything directly.

Vores: Players love monsters. They ignore everything else in favour of monsters, so if you put monsters somewhere then players will head directly for them despite everything else.

For example, if you've got a fork in the path and want player to take the correct route, put a monster in it.

If you put some vores (long ranged attackers) on the other side of your pit then players will know for certain that what's on the other side is important, even though they can't get there yet. They also have to kill the vores, which adds some nice dodge game play to your level. 

"You're not supposed to be here"

was a good command in one of the mission packs after rocketjumping.
So the developpers had foreseen these attempts. 

Terra - if you no-clip around a lot you get told off and made fun of. 

I've seen playtesters do all kinds of shit I'd never expect, tbh. It's true that they will go kill a monster if it's a threat to them, but they might as well go back and happily continue doing what they were doing before the monster came along - jumping on top of something, looking for loot, or whatever.

I'm always slightly hesitant when it comes to guiding players like that. Ideally, if you have a fork in the road, both forks should lead to something that makes sense even if the player takes the "wrong" one.

Like in DOOM. 

Thanks for the idea. I actually have a fork (which merges back together anyways), but on one side there is a weapon you can see, but I feel now I'd like to add a monster there too now. 

My latest map seems to be breaking compiler limits (I blame tronyn for wanting larger maps!) I know the models limit can be broken easily. The clipnodes I just need to be more aggressive with clipping ceiling space. The marksurfaces is black magic and can safely go up to 64k but I have not seen the face limit before. I can load the map fine but I was wondering if the face limit can be safely broken with Fitz engines?

(text from compiler window)
WARNING: Models 366 exceed normal engine max 256
WARNING: Clipnodes 35914 exceed normal engine max 32767
WARNING: Faces 35778 exceed normal engine max 32767
WARNING: Marksurfaces 42509 exceed normal engine max 32767 

Is a great example of 'follow the enemy road' since it's full of pointless loops that the player can take and get lost in.

I remember the chainsaw maze in one of the early levels that had lights flashing on and off - the whole thing was a giant time trap, but a fun one.

The player had two ways to know that they'd exhausted the area - the map and when there was nothing else to kill in it.

Since Quake doesn't have a map thanks to being 3d the player falls back on constant slaughter.

You're right in saying that players will do all kinds of mad shit (grappling onto scrags to swing across chasms!) but run away from monsters isn't a common one, assuming they're not out of ammo or on red health.

Which is something I'm experimenting with now - purposefully crippling the player to change their play habits. In other words, putting monsters where I don't want them to go. 

I got that In Hipnotic even when i wasn't cheating or trickjumping, probably because i like to look at everything to find new ways to go or secrets.

I remember getting that in the map where you see the mines for the first time, and thought that the way that was considered a cheat was more obvious to me than the one the mappper wanted the player to go. 

At least is was sowell maped that I could explore sideways without getting clipped. 

cthong 

What he's wearing under the lava.

And Mrs Chthon has to wear 30 bikini tops. 

I've been inspired to make my map by psp quake mods, and I was wondering how on Darkplaces I could get the texture filtering perfectly off so I can keep that pixel look inside my game.
Not being able to push the video setting under 1 (on filtering) makes me a sad man.. 

Have textured models show for entities in the editor:

http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/general-help/9998-how-do-i-see-actual-entities-gtk-radiant-1-5-a.html 

Are there any good tutorials to model/convert/and also program models for quake (with blender) ? 

The latest state-of-the-art blender conversion tool is this hacked together python-based thing:

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/standalone-fbxtomdl/

To use it, make your model in blender, and then export one fbx file for each frame that you want to use. Extract the files in the fbxtomdl zip into a directory, then place all the fbx files into a subdirectory. Add all the fbx files to the directory, and add any skins in bmp, pcx or tga format. Then run the executable

fbxtomdl -d directoryname

General advice: make your model entirely from triangles, and skinmap your entire model in the same uv mapping - quake doesn't support different skins on different sections of the model. Be aware that the quake model format is not very accurate, so don't go overboard on the detail, and try to make sure that the model occupies roughly the same position in each frame. 

Does anyone, anyone at all have the source code for Worldcraft 3.3? Or even Hammer? Has anyone snuck into Valve and snuck back out with the golden gem of all mapping codery, the Hammer Worldbuilder Source Code?

Oh please say yes.... 

Main drawback of worldcraft, it can't be expanded with new functionality due to its closed source state.

I've never come across the source anywhere. 

I've managed to hit a very obscure glitch in tyrann's compile tools (it may be in others too)

*** ERROR 08: Internal error: map.nummiptex > map.maxmiptex


This says that the number of textures exceeds the maximum possible number of textures. The maximum number of textures is calculated as the number of faces in the map. My map is a cuboid, so that's 6 faces and a maximum of 6 textures. I have three textures, one of which is static but switchable (so 2 frames) and two of which are both switchable and animated (4 frames each). This makes 10 textures...

If you ever encounter this bug, the fix is to hide a smaller cube inside your brush: it will get clipped away, but it will raise the number of surfaces in your map to 12 for long enough to get all the textures.