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. 

will definitely try it out! 

func_breakable

Is their a way to set how long the rubble will last? I'd like to have a custom rubble model hang around a minute or two. 

It's a fixed duration in the code. Not offering a guarantee lets us reuse the entities creatively - like replacing some of the rubble early if there's an explosion of gibs nearby and packet overflow is starting to occur. 

Use a func_door, func_train or something for your rubble that should stay around. Ideally I'd use a func_emitter (Extras/RMQ) for this, because it lets you set the particles' lifetime among other things, but I guess with Quoth you're limited to what's in the package. 

@Preach: Yeah, that's a bug from the original TreeQBSP on which my util is based. Pretty rare, but much more likely to happen on a tiny, tiny map. Good job on the workaround though - spot on! ;) 

http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/184783/the_metrics_of_space_molecule_.php 

That's pretty cool. I've been scribbling similar stuff for years without really putting further thought into it or thinking about how to make such sketches a stronger development tool.

Thanks. 

That's a pretty good article, but it should have harped even harder about the most important thing: The graph is 2D but your level is 3D. 

good article. 

Hey guys, I'm getting this error:

Bad texture axes on face:
face point at (0.000, 0.000, 0.000)

what is this error referring to... this website has a description that indicates alignments, but most of the textures (at the moment) have zero shift in their alignment... http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/tooltips.txt

any ideas? 

Check for microbrushes maybe..
Did you use custom textures?
Which editor did you use? TB i guess.
Which light was used... Come on. 

I'm using the Egyptian textures from soegypt. I'm using worldcraft and am using TyrUtils Light v0.10

As for microbrushes, I actually don'r know what they are... 

try looking in the error report. You might find a bug 'texture axis perpendicular to face'. Just click the fix button.

Its sometimes caused by clipping brushes.

I dont think its possible to create microbrushes in wc. 

which are very small brushes, and a typical problem in quark and similar editors. 

thanks ijed, the error report fixed it...

sometimes the obvious answer is staring us straight in the face... another week-ish of polishing here and there and the map should be ready for consumption. 

Which bsp.exe is the one for me?

My current one: TXQBSP.EXE 1.12

What I need:
Support for small brushes. Small 16 sided cylinders get all messed up and end up more like 8 sided cylinders.

Support for liquid brushes that are one of the following: wedge shaped (4 or 5 faces), tied to an entity, completely or partially angled compared to the 3 planes (x,y,z), and/or micro-positioned (fractional units for a point like "263.4, 47, 18.9")

Specifically, doesn't think that there is a "Brush with duplicate plane on line: ####" when there clearly isn't!
Sorry Tyrann. TyrUtils v0.10 has these errors. It then proceeds to butcher my beautiful brushwork just like txqbsp.exe 

All compilers have some level of "tolerance" when it comes to whether a plane is duplicate or not, and the finer you make the detail the more likely it is that two planes you think of as distinct get merged for being "the same".

What rarely gets explained is why this is a good thing - why the compiler does it. Imagine that on the outside of your map - facing the void - you have two brushes which meet on angled faces. Because the map uses floating point to represent these planes, it's possible that the inherent imprecision of computer arithmetic makes one plane ever so slightly different to the other. If you don't have some way of treating approximately equal planes as being the same, then you get a leak between these two planes.

It's one of those things in engineering where there's a trade-off going on, and the compilers are configured to do the least bad thing. Like you could rebuild the compilers with the delta for equal faces being much smaller. But then you might have to rebuild your map so all the outer walls meet on axis-aligned joins...

PS: Check your map file in a text editor for line #### and see if there's another plane in that brush which is almost the same. If you can track it down, you might be able to slightly tweak the brush so that the planes are different enough to compile. 

Bottom line is: Quake is not the game (engine) for small, delicate geometry. 

If you really want those types of detail then map objects are the way to go. 

While working on a terrain map I found a strange outcome in my compiling.
Lots of polygons started scrambling their position.
First map in Radiant1.5 showed like
thus

Then after some days compiling I end up with
this

In Radiant the map shows no gaps, but in game it is mesh. 

You can have liquids as entities, actually.

As for small multi sided cylinders etc, I suggest using Darkplaces or FTE and q3bsp - the grid size goes down smaller than Q1 and you can compile mapobjects into the BSP.

Liquids not cuboid - this is down to trigger fields. You can make a liquid brush wedge shaped, but you'll get waterwarp/tint outside of water then. Instead, stagger your liquid brushes to create the shape you want.

Your qbsp exe is q3map2, pretty much.

http://spawnhost.wordpress.com/tutorials/q3bsp-for-quake-tutorial/

You can't use Worldcraft if you go that route though. 

The path to the file is:
C:\ Users\ *yourusername*\ AppData\ Roaming\ NetRadiantSettings\ 1.5.0\ *yourgame*

I'm using NetRadiant 1.5.0 here, change that if you use another version.
I also set the file to read only, just incase Radiant would like to overwrite it. 

Does:
mapobject = point entity
mapobject = brush entity
mapobject = point entity with a .mdl
mapobject = point entity with a brush model (as in the case of worldspawn)
all of the above??

Do you just mean any entity with a model? 

But usually with little to no functionality - decorative makestatics usually.