Unless it's a coagula map then boxing it up is fine, but yes. Ahh many a day spent plugging up leaks to be saved by the box only to lose many more days waiting for compile time. Good times. 

Y'all need to put some elbow grease into it. Don't build leaky shit and consider having the patience to fix it if you do. Maybe I'm just not architecturally adventurous enough, but I rarely get leaks in what I build because I pay attention as I go. And when I finish working on an area, I seal up the loose ends and find all the little nooks and crannies and plug them up.
Much, much better than waiting 'till the whole map's done. And not that hard to do! 

Thanks Spike for the detailed explanation and the vocabulary correction. 

The thing is simple. I start playtesting right away. I am precise when it comes to finishing up areas, like you all what you would expext, sometimes I seal them right away and sometimes not, because I focus on gameplay and mood. Since I don't know what works and what not if I don't test it first.

If you are familiar with Unity/Unreal level design, you most likely do the same practice and it is the right way to it. So you ask why skyboxes? I don't seem to need them anymore it seems, but back then some older versions of those engines didn't liked to draw void and made testing out barebone layouts frustrating to look at plus it gave a lot of errors.

Now that I am more familiar with mapping, I can plan ahead a lot more, but I am not genious if you think I can create something just purely thinking about it and that works right away with testing. So sorry if I triggered mfx this time, but I will not change the way I test out things, since it is faster and wiser in the end. Only thing is, I need to be even more precise. 

This tool will batch-convert any PNG files in the current working dir to the Quake color palette and create a WAD2 file containing all converted textures.

https://github.com/maikmerten/QuakeTextureTool 

 

For some reasons I lost the source file of one of my map, hence I'd like to recover the map file by decompiling the bsp file.

I tried WinBspC 1.4, and it failed. It is working with some other map, but no with the one I am trying to recover.

So even though I am on Win7, I set executable properties to execute the file as in winXP (one of the possible options in the properties of any executable file), so that is not the problem.

I am just wondering whether the bsp file has to much complex geometry for the tool, and in this case what are the options to recover.
Is there any other available tool with better capabilities, etc.. ? 

Try and older version maybe. :shrug:

https://www.quaddicted.com/files/tools/winbspc12.zip

V1.2 is on Quaddicted.

Open up WinBSPC and go to Help > Help.

Read through the Help section. Namely Section 1. I believe No CSG would help if the issue is complex geometry. 

also, what error are you getting when you decompile?

I just tried to decompile ad_swampy and got an error for the map being in BSP29 mode. 

Got this message also.. tool is expecting a bsp v30, while the map is v29....

Need to retry in anyway. 

is there a way to find leaks in hte map? or do i just have to manually find them? 

When a leak is encountered from a compile, you can go to File > Load Point file and select your map.

Here a line will display and if you follow that line it should lead you to the leak. Of course a leak can happen for other reasons. 

First thing you want to do is to load point file. You can do this in editor or in game. It will show you where the leak come from. 

Thanks Bloughsburgh! i would have never found that leak on my own. 

Finally some good answers* 

Hey, Can i compile 2 maps at the same time?

Im compiling my main practice project at the moment and it will take me another 3 hours to compile.(i've been compiling for 4 hours now) 

Send the bsp to me, I can easily decompile it in seconds,
if the map is a clear bsp.

Use winbspc12 on winXP! 

The huge one? 

ups sorry 

Thanks, but it is not needed anymore: I found by luck an old CD-ROM archive on which I put the complete QuArK project of the map I have been trying to decompile... :) 

Thanks to someone how send me this link first time :
http://www.quake-1.com/wc16a-tutorial/
(btw one of the hardest things to google) 

Last evening i tried to compile my map and woke up this morning and it had compiled the map. it took 10 hours. I opened the map and at one point there seemed to be an invisible line that would push me into the void letting me see the whole map from a distance. Why did this happen? 

What tools are you using to compile?

It really shouldnt be taking hours to compile. 

ericw's compiler 

Do you have a very large open area of your map? Is the map entirely boxed in by a large cube brush?

Another thing to try is to select detail brushes (Like decorative columns, wall detailing, decorations in general) and make them into func_detail brushes.

This might help compiler time as well as 10 hours is very abnormal for what I presume to be a normal sized map.