No. I built a flight of stairs of 16 units tall each, but climbing/descending them results in a choppy movement, so I wanted to build a slope over it and make it invisible to smooth it. I've read that you can do that by setting a brush to nodraw. Besides, I don't seem to have a skip texture in my wad (I'm using Q.wad). 

Invisible solid brush?

8 unit stairs are smoother for ascending but I figured you intentionally want them beefy steps. 

Well, they were my first stairs and I wasn't sure about the proportions. I built one step and thought it looked good, so I went on with the whole staircase. Only after finishing did I realize the movement was choppy. I don't want to discard the whole thing because I spent quite some time on it and I really like how it looks with the texture I used, so I need an invisible slope over it. I'll build them steps 8 units tall next time. 

Yes, use a Clip brush that is paint the CLIP texture on your stair slope and it will be invisible yet solid.

Clip brushes are also handy to prevent the player from getting stuck on strange angles like pointy corners and such. Also, big stairs are fine I was just presenting an alternate form of them. :) 

Clip. Found it. OK thanks, also for the tip about getting stuck. It might come in handy for a future map I have in mind full of pointy things and weird angles. 

I compiled my map with a player accidentally intersecting with the ground. It works fine in a QS but in DP player is stuck. Additionally my map in DP is broken, health is stuck in the Vending Machine and walls flicker like crazy in a few places.

Player in a ground is my fault, but I wonder if there is a way to fix other shit. 

OK, built the clip brush and placed it. It works fine and the movement is super smooth, except... when I stand still on the slope, it makes me slowly slip downstairs. Is this normal and can I make the slope not slippery? 

Clip brushes are incredibly important, imo. It can be tough to notice at first, especially in quake with its janky movement code, but being able to move smoothly along a wall goes a long way to improving the feel of a map.

If you've got any small detailing or slight curves on your walls, it's advisable to clip it all off into a flat surface. Be careful, though. You don't want it to feel like an invisible wall. 

Try splitting the difference? Move the slope of the clip brush 8 units down. Bouncing will be less and the part of the step that sticks out will stop the sliding. 

As far as I know, this isn't something you can fix. With a gentle incline (i.e. stairs) it tends to not be very noticeable. Every slope has it, even the slightest one, to varying degrees of severity. 

Slopes will do that, Ranger slides on slopes.

You could create 8 unit clip steps in between the visible stairs as a work around. This way you still have your desired textured steps. Ascending and descending stairs is always choppy in some form. 

I tried that but I still slip down on the portions of the slope remaining above the stairs. Plus it makes the chopiness return. 

Man, that's a stumper. At least you got reasonably close to your desired effect.

In order for hitscan weapons to hit that custom trigger...I have no idea. 

My stairs are 32*16, so it makes, what, a 22.5 degrees angle? Anyway, there's gonna be action in that room so the player will be on the move and there's not much else to do on those stairs, so I doubt it's gonna be an issue 99% of the time. Thanks for the tip about walls. 

Well, the "chopiness" is supposed to be there. Gliding up and down steps without it will seem weird in Quake. It's not a flight simulator.

You can change to 8 unit steps or just use a ramp, either will work as players expect in Quake. 

I'll try that too, see which solution is best. Thanks again.

@Pritchard Who's gonna have the hitscan weapon, the monsters or player? If the latter, maybe you can add a shootable trigger that will activate the custom trigger? 

It truly does have me stumped. At the moment i'm thinking of various methods to steer the player away from using a shotgun, but obviously nothing can be perfect here either (giving them a weapon/ammo that uses projectiles so that people with game sense or autoswitch will probably be using it, but nothing to stop them switching back mid fight...)

Mugwump, unfortunately we've already tried regular shootable triggers. The issue with those is that, despite the name, monsters don't like to shot them.

A light has appeared at the end of the tunnel, although it is a weak and meager one. I might end up redesigning the playspace to put less emphasis on engaging through the glass, switching back to the traditional triggers perhaps and keeping the glass from being between the player and the enemy. It feels like admitting defeat, but at this point I think i'm ready for it. 

Use a Fiend, he jumps like crazy and has melee attack. Will break glass for sure :D 

Grinding over this particular engagement can lead to demoralizing and risk hurting the remainder of the map. Perhaps even come back to it later and see if anyone else can provide some insight! 

If your monsters don't use hitscans, there's no problem on their part. They can shoot directly the custom trigger. The shootable trigger would only be of use to the player if he uses the shotty.

OR... I know about a mod that turns the shotty into a projectile weapon. Added bonus, visible flying pellets. 

The extra clip stairs did the trick. Movement is as fluid as with the slope AND I don't slide one bit. Awesome, thanks a lot! 

Seems like I've spoken too fast! Apparently I tested the sloped version by mistake, so of course it was fluid. It's weird: even with the extra steps, it's as choppy as without. I also sometimes get momentarily halted by a step if I don't look up the stairs. I'm thinking it might be because I cropped 1 unit on the edge of my stairs at a 45 degree angle. 

The placebo effect in action with those stairs, I guess. I wouldn't worry about it too much, it's important to not get hung up on small imperfections like that. Massive time sink.

The issue with the hitscan-shootable trigger is that when it's between the monster and the player, the monster won't attack. At all. So having the custom trigger would be useless in that situation, as it would never get used.
I don't know about fiends, but I assume the same goes for them.

The projectile shotgun would be nice, but working that into Quoth sounds difficult, if only because I have no knowledge at all in that area of quake content. Would it even be possible?

Anyway, I reworked the entire area. The glass plays a much less important role now, but it plays it much better! I was able to switch back to regular func_breakable brushes, which was better than the hacky mess I had that would crash the game if it wasn't killtargeted as soon as it was triggered...

Now I have a new issue! Does anyone have a .fgd file for Trenchbroom that includes the definitions for the info_logic_* entities? The built in one doesn't seem to have them, and although it's possible to add the keys manually, it's a lot easier to get wrong and I'd feel better having a complete file regardless... 

As far as steps go, you are going to get that "step" feedback...that's just how Ranger's bounding box works. A ramp, as Rick suggested would be the ideal way to have that smooth feedback but then you got the sliding effect.

As far as I know, it is a case of this or that. 

This is EndsWithTen's FGD file. I used it for my base map so it has all of the goodies...plus models!

https://gist.github.com/ItEndsWithTens/200c881f2522af324767be1433c4391e