I think monster agressiveness varies a bit between easy, medium, and hard. 

I'm not sure what editor you're using but in Worldcraft, setting flags is a fairly simple affair. Screenshot...

http://www.suspenlute.com/stuff/objprop.gif

Look for something like that. 

I'm currently using QuArK 6.4, I'm sure that spawnflag is visible in the entity description, but I can't verify now what are the avalaible fields (I'm currently at my job office, not at home...). I don't know if skills can be set like Worldcraft, or if the required value are directly number (0,1,2 or others... ) 

Let you know,
I've got it up and running without any problems. It slows down in the first large open area, giving the Tenebrae Crunch, but other than that it plays smoothly on my GeForce2 MX series. Officially this system is 733 mhz (pIII) but it actualy clocks substantially better than that.
I have to run in a little bit but I'll be able to give you a full e-mail update this evening E.S.T. time. 

you're playing in tenebrae? jesus crap i didn't think that was possible!

aguire: i don't know what you mean, when you say FQ has problems with the map if you only allocate 29000kb of ram. if you allocate more, those problems vanish.

it also perplexes me why fuh can't load the map while normal glquake can... the original is better than the port? hahaha :D

---

and yes, i do know about the clipnode limits. :( i've run into problems with that already. although, that's not a problem because all you need to do is throw clip brushes on top of the detail geometry and you're fine.
i don't know about Nodes and leafs though...

and, if you have a big map, with an upper area that mostly is there for the sky (think, beginning of nesp09 at the top), if you clip the whole area, does vis not have to do calculations for that area or no? 

I think monster agressiveness varies a bit between easy, medium, and hard.

That's a little known fact. The time delay between attacks decreases each time the difficulty setting is raised, until you get to Nightmare where there is no delay at all. Try it. On Nightmare, if you stand under a ledge where an ogre can see you but not hit you with its grenades, it will keep firing indefinitely with no pause between each shot.

AFAIK, the only other difference between skill settings is the speed that Vore balls fly at. They fly faster and faster for each incrementally more difficult skill setting, until they are traveling faster than the player on Nightmare.

So, if you know how to exploit it -- and if the map is built in such a way -- Nightmare can actually be easier than Hard. 

The delay between attacks and the voreball speed only changes on nightmare skill. On all the other skill levels they are the same.
Exception is Chthon that has only 1 health on easy and 3 on other skills, and his fireballs try to lead the player on hard and nightmare.
Also, on nightmare monsters don't go into their pain animations more than once per 5 seconds 

I can't see any reason for any program to start consuming all virtual memory just because you manually haven't figured out the magic limit yet ...

As for clip brushes, they can only reduce # clipnodes, they won't affect the visible hull at all (and therefore cannot help vis). 

there's no way to tell regular vis to 'forget' about processing a certain area? would that be doable without changing the engine? 

I know is through manually changing detail world brushes into e.g. func_walls. It's without doubt the fastest way to significantly reduce vis leafs/portals, but it has some drawbacks (e.g. no shadow casting). See my ToolTips for more details.

Newer games have e.g. area portals or explicit detail brush attributes that help reducing vis times, but I believe they also need careful planning to be used effectively.

In theory, you could change qbsp's portal handling to automatically cluster small leafs to help vis, but I don't know how to do that. I'm not entirely sure that it wouldn't require specific engine support either. 

well, it was worth asking anyway ;) 

That problem is easily solved by placing a simpler poly go version of the func_wall object inside the func_wall to cast the shadows in its stead. 

<nt> 

but then you get like double the r_speeds... O_o that can't be good! :) besides, i don't really like wasting a bmodel slot for just details/reducing vis time when it could be better spent on a cooler door or something like that. ;) 

remember you can group all your func_walls into one within certain limitations. 

Did you get my 2nd attempt of the buzz73 report or was it also lost in SpamFilter County? 

It isnt showing any new messages from you; though it to be honest a lot of people I know have been having trouble this week getting their e-mail. I finally got Necros' and a few others last night.
Also, I don't filter the e-mail for any content except for virus protection though I can see how a filter may interpert buzz73 as a gratuidious drug reference though at the time I was looking for a simple word at the beginning of the alphabet for the file name.
I'll e-mail you and see if that goes through. 

Hello,

Thanks for those who helped me yesterday about monsters' skill settings: I found the stuff in QuArK.... :))
Now, my map is 99% finished, and a strange message appeared yesterday night in the Quake console at the game start during a building test: TOTAL_CHANNELS == MAX__CHANNELS ... What does it mean ??? I use FitzQuake0.75 and it's the first time I have this message (never encountered it before, even with other engine...). Does somebody know what's the problem ???

Thanks 

that means you have too much sound sources in the place. try either removing some monsters or ambient_sound entities... 

hmmm... I didn't set ambiant_sound entities yet... it can only comes from the default ambiant sound, water, lava, monsters, and func_door...
Does it mean the game is able to crash ??? Or is there a method to increase channel number to avoid this problem ?? 

it won't crash afaik, it'll just print that message on console until you exit the area with that many sounds... 

When i load my map in glquake i get this error, 'AllocBlock :full'
any ideas? 

hmmm i forgot how i fixed that, but try -heapsize 32000 first 

-heapsize 32000 didn't work. The map loaded in winquake, but it looks like a brush goes on to infinite. 

OK, I think it's possibly linked to the last hall, because it appears only once at the beginning of the game (starting from a test_player_start). I will check all entities' sound settings (if a field exists) to make sure nothing is missng...
Just one other questions: what is the effects during the game ?? I mean, I've noticed nothing while playing... so maybe this message is just informative ... and it's not usefull taking into account this message ....
Thanks