Newhouse, try turning bounce lighting off and see if the func_illusionary with skip textures and shadow tag works then. 

 

Wait, the func_illusionary is textured with "skip"?
Updating your utils to v0.15.8 will fix that then!

Due to some things I changed in light (new raytracer), I had to handle the case of shadow-casting skip-textured funcs in a special way. The only limitation is, all faces of the func must be textured as "skip" for it to work. 

Yeah, to fix the walking issue you need to use a func_wall with a very small alpha key value.

ericw, what are the chances of that changing in the future? It'd be nice to have some of the "one sided" brushes in my map cast shadows. It's not a big deal if it can't happen, though. 

Pritchard, I think that case will already work as you expect.. (something like hanging vines with texture on one side only?) The normal textured face will block light. (the skip faces won't, but the back side of the normal-textured face will, so the result will be fine.)


(The only case I'm aware of that is broken would be very unusual: say you had a bridge using regular textures, with spikes extending out of it that were textured with skip, and the whole thing was a single func_wall with _shadow 1. The result would be the main bridge casts a shadow but the skip-textured spikes don't). 

I'll check my entity setup when I get the chance, I may have forgotten to set _shadow 1 on the relevant bits... 

Thanks ericw, I will update my tools*

czg "Monsters Can't Walk On Clip Brushes."

Is that so? So it means I need to use invisible brushes or func_wall with alpha always when thinking of monsters. Maybe I skipped that part where ever it was written down. 

Use noskip textures on a func_wall instead 

sorry, I meant skip textures 

Because not using skip textures.. possible makes some surfaces disappear when looking from different angles? 

I placed armor and health on elevator (func_train) which slowly goes from up to down.. when it reaches its destination bottom, I hear stopping sound and then items falls through floor..

Should I use skip there as well? I already tried clip brushes. 

Right now in my map I'm trying to create a little plant in a pot, like one of those shitty plastic ones you see in foyers or something like that. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to go about it? I'd be happy to just have a texture that's feasible to cut a shape out of with brushes, I've got some good ideas as to how to use something like that, but something better would be nice as well.

It's an AD map so although I haven't looked into it I think I can load arbitrary models, so that's another avenue.

What would be really juicy is a guide on how to get transparent textues working in Q1, if that's even possible (I doubt it!). I've got a .wad with a plant that I could use if this was made possible somehow, but it's on that ugly pink background and the details are far too fine for me to simply chop it out, even at the smallest possible grid size. 

Several AD maps use fence textures (vines in ad_swampy, broken windows in ad_necrokeep) so you could try that - add a "{" to the beginning of the texture name so it's something like "{plant", this will make palette index 255 transparent.

It's not a vanilla quake feature but engine support is good (QS, MarkV, FTE, latest DP) 

Skip = the compiler removes the textures from the visual plane, so there are invisible but solid surfaces the monsters can walk over like they was a smooth floor. It's preferable to make them func_wall, because then you can cover the whole gap. They can work as world geometry as well - however, then they can't touch adjacent geometry as that would cause their faces to become invisible as well.

Skip works in vanilla Quake which makes it the way to go, whereas alpha is only supported by a handful of ports. 

An apparent exception to the "can't touch adjacent geometry" rule seems to be if the brushes that are skipped are func_illusionary brushes. Obviously not applicable for creating invisible solids, but still an interesting exception. I'm using it to make a "catwalk" for my map: http://i.imgur.com/M5o1Dsa.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WUpcCxs.jpg

Also, is the "monsters can't walk on clip brushes" statement actually true? I ask because this guy seems to be doing just fine, granted this is in a mod, not the default game. 

monsters use pointcontents in order to avoid walking off cliffs. this means that they'll refuse to walk over gaps,
the exception is if they're already off the side of a cliff, in which case they're 'allowed' to just walk off it entirely, thus there's no issue if they spawn on it, but they won't step back onto the clip brush if they did find solid ground.
obviously you can trick the movetogoal function by adding in FL_PARTIALGROUND before each call to it, but you'd probably need extra triggers for that... 

I have a spot where monsters not walking on clip brushes is less than good. I've been avoiding anything not part of Quake originally, but would this "alpha" thing work on a moving entity like a door?

If so, is it done in the engine or by the compiler? 

a func_wall with only skip textures on it will be totally invisible (and not do nasty things to pvs+csg+etc), and yet still support monsters walking over it just fine.

however, your shots will also hit it instead of passing straight through, which is how come monsters will be willing to walk over it.
so pick your poison. 

The walkway is made of four bars. At first they are not extended. Later they move to the position here (lower right).

http://quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/Wish13_e.jpg

Sorry for the poor angle, but the screenshot is one I uploaded a while back.

Monsters do not move on to the walkway because of the gaps. I've used monsters that have ranged attacks, but it would be better if they would use the walkway once it extends. A func_wall or skip textured brush won't work because of the need to move. 

Would making a second overlapping func_door that's just a skip-textured box work? 

Skip textures work on doors? That was what I was asking. I didn't know, never use them.

Special compiler needed? I use txqbsp_xt

I was thinking to try the tyrutils as long as marksurfaces don't go up, but I would have to relight a lot of the map because there are parts that look a lot different from MH/BJ light. I think it's the lack of "soft distance". 

There is already a clip brush inside the bars to smooth out the "bumpiness" to the player, changing that to a separate door would be no problem. 

I'm pretty sure skip on doors will work fine with txqbsp-xt or tyrutils (I tested my version, probably the original works too). As spike said it'll block gunshots but otherwise it should be ideal. 

Does it really need to be func_wall only, when using skip textures? Just wondering because func_train is used in many places, and if ever decide make a floor about irons bars then there will be problems if monsters can't move over it. 

In general, for anything non moving I would use a func_wall. For something that moves along one axis only, func_door. If a complex path is needed, multiple directions, continuous loop, etc., that is what func_train is for. I don't actually use func_plat any more, too limited.