Darn, well that's just as well, it works nicely that way, but was curious as to how flexible things can get with the custom fields, etc

Thanks once again, I've already learned a great deal in the past few days. I guess I should probably register here by now.

Hopefully this will all result in a new custom mission for H2, but we'll see. I've mapped for a lot of older games before, but mostly I made multiplayer DM/TDM maps, which are admittedly a lot easier to make since you don't need to worry about scripted events, puzzles, AI etc, and are always limited to one single map. 

Some trivia. The guy who created BSP was hired by Valve and has been there for 19 years. So BSP most likely landed him his job there. And I assume he worked on Hammer as he's a tools programmer for Valve.

I've used BSP a little bit here and there. The primitive shapes are very handy. 

That is pretty awesome. I haven't used the primitives much yet. I find the vertex-drag mechanic and clipping plane feature pretty cool.

Vertex-dragging in UnrealEd 1.0 (and even in UED 2.0) is pretty horrid and painful. :) 

So I've got the Frozen fever...

https://i.imgur.com/jwl7mPa.jpg

I'm having trouble with using the alpha key on the blocks of ice in Elsa's castle. For one its really difficult to light them with any consistency. Second problem is much worse, when one transparent brush is in the player's line of sight in front of another transparent brush, the brush behind will "bleed through" the first brush making it invisible.

Look at this image, the ice bridge is transparent, and the crystals behind it bleed through:
https://i.imgur.com/mct0Xa8.jpg

It seems like something from the Sega Saturn that couldn't deal with multiple transparenices... This is Quakespams v0.92.2. Any ideas?

Not too happy with how Frozen looks in Quake, but wanted to release this in the Christmas jam. 

Transparency depth is a problem that games can struggle with today even.

https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Transparency_Sorting

Most quake engines don't really handle it very well. 

transparency depends upon the engine, the qbsp, lightmap/surface sizes, texture order, view direction, entity order, etc

if you take the stance that overlapping is bad then an engine could draw transparencies as depth-only, followed by proper alpha blending with depthfunc(equal). This avoids all the above issues(except engine, obviously). FTE uses it for viewmodels and q2 powerups both of which its awesome for, but it'll look much worse where overlapping is actually intended.

you might want to try using separate func_walls for the different parts, as that should be a little more deterministic (instead of only one wall appearing infront, the entire thing will, yay).
Ultimately transparency sucks and you'll get different results in every single engine, so good luck with that.

the other option is to increase the (vertical) distance between the spire and the stairs, avoiding noticeable overlaps that way. 

I didn't realize how cumbersome and complex transparency effects were. Thanks for the info Pritchard and Spike. I do think increasing the vertical distance between the bridge and spire is a good option. Although I don't think an entirely transparent castle is feasible anymore, the bleeding is just too jarring.

I've already started making some new different coloured ice textures as an alternative, and I think it will make the lighting better, with the castle non-transparent, and perhaps only a few bits here and there semi-transparent for effect. Aagh, and it only took a few seconds to make the castle in the film... 

Those stairs are insane. Good stuff Redfield. 

What is the best tool for merging a few wads into a single wad?

I extracted a wad from all of the medieval-themed BSPs in Hexen 2. And since there are some textures shared across those levels, I'd need to overwrite any duplicates. 

I've tried "SLADE3" but it seems to crash when loading the 5th wad, and I could maybe get around that by combining them one at a time and saving the combined wad as I go, but it also doesn't seem to have a feature to remove duplicates. It has a feature to DETECT duplicates, one by texture name, and one by reading the data, but the "Remove duplicate textures" command from the drop-down doesn't seem to work.

Is there a simpler CMD tool that can merge WADs? (and also properly deal with duplicate textures)

I also tried something called SlumpED but it doesn't support H2 WADs 

Wally 

Alternative answer: TexMex

1) Open wad (or bsp, automatically converted to wad)
2) File --> Import --> select next bsp/wad
3) Repeat as necessary
4) Profit!

Works great on Wine too. 

Thank you :) I had a little trouble with Wally and being left with duplicate textures still, that's most likely my own fault, but was able to merge wads with TexMex

In case anyone uses this in the future for Hexen 2, the textures will display all muddy inside the tool (palette difference with Hexen2-Quake), but the actual textures are actually fine.

Thanks guys 

I learned how to compile Quake 1 maps by dragging and dropping the map file into the various different types of compilers. And yet this doesn't seem to work with the Quake 2 compiler tools I found after doing a bit of googling for them. How exactly do I compile Quake 2 maps? Is the process different than for Quake 1 maps? 

hey guys i was wondering if there are ways to copy geometry from other levels and put them in your level. For example,I wanted to make a arch (like the one from e1m2) and i ended up making a shitty one _here's a pic) https://gyazo.com/fcf78a8b2384b9e6598127d8f34fff2b
but i can't get any of the arch textures to align to it very well. also does anyone know of any guides on how to make complex shapes with brushes? 

In order to make more than just simple shapes in Trenchbroom it will take a lot of practice and good understanding of both clipping tools and vertex/edge manipulation. Make sure you read and understanding all the keyboard shortcuts for these in the Help Manual.

If you want to see an example of how to make a good arch, I suggest you download this Knave prefab set, which includes the Knave WAD.
https://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/kell.quaddicted.com/knave.zip

Look at the .map to see how the arch is made. I strongly advise you to re-create this arch on your own, using clips, or edge manipulation. Recreate the arch, and then create it again on a different size scale for practice. Make sure you can create this arch on your own, so you can make your own complex geometry.

Aligning the textures depends on if you are using a texture meant to wrap around the curve and/or if you use a texture with bricks on the same scale as each cut in your arch. You need to think and plan mathematically: What is the size of the texture? If it is a 32x32 brick, each cut in the arch should be at least 32 in length so you can fit a brick in appropriately, or each cut should be 64 so 2 bricks can fit, etc. Again, you need to understand the texture allignment tools in TB to play around with wrapping the textures.

Take a look at the .map in the file and practice more. Also you can find .maps in many Quake maps on Quaddicted. 

Basic intro to arches I made last year:

https://imgur.com/a/tmtmz 

Quark will easily make your choice for quake1 or 2. As will GtkRadiant do.
The one tricky thing is to make paths to tha compiler and game.
In quark there's a list where you can choose the game. Further it needs to know where the quake2 compilers are.

You can load the compilers here, as well as some more info about q2 mapping. 

One thing that will help is to know that a basic arch is just a semi-circle, and a circle's curves are symmetrical. In your arch, your first part of the curve goes "up 2, over 1" (that might be something like, up 16 units, over 8 units, I can't tell)

That means your LAST part of the curve (at the top of the curve, where it starts to flatten out, needs to be the reverse of that: Up 8, over 16. That should make it look better already.

Another alternative to above is you can start with a large solid block exactly the size of the texture of the arch, and start making horizontal splits/cuts when the arch texture requires that the geometry needs to start bending, keeping in mind that the cuts/distances should be symmetrical

I have not used Trenchbroom which I assume is what you're using but here is what I mean:

1. Block size of arch
https://i.imgur.com/jtyYfKy.png

2. Split block where bend starts
https://i.imgur.com/knieCHf.png

3. Clip away non-curved part
https://i.imgur.com/QZxlnsx.png

4. Split arched part horizontally, absolutely as close to the "middle" of the 90-degree arc is, and clip it away. The height and length of that clipped away part NEED to be the same distance. (Unless your arch is intentionally ellipse shaped)
https://i.imgur.com/McbpLYp.png
https://i.imgur.com/leaGWCJ.png

5. Subdivide (horizontally) the remaining blocks another time. Again make sure they are perfectly mirrored and the cuts are symmetrical, you'll see what I mean by color coding in pic. Then clip/vertex-edit them away
https://i.imgur.com/o1TYdP1.png
https://i.imgur.com/lmmFaw1.png 

Btw if the 2nd-to-last pic with the color coding isn't super clear, or if numbers are easier than pictures, then, in my arch, the numbers are symmetrical as such:

up 4, over 1
up 3, over 2
up 2, over 3
up 1, over 4

Obviously that's not the only configuration in the world to make a nice arch, but the point is that it's symmetrical (again, unless you're doing an ellipse/stretched arch)

You could have an arch with only 3 surfaces on the 90 degree arch... something like this would look fine too (but lower-poly)

up 3, over 1
up 2, over 2
up 1, over 3 

I already found that site you linked to and I downloaded those compilers. I just don't know how to use them with Trenchboom which is my editor of choice for Quake 1 and 2. 

and I do believe TB is a good editor, you could survive with Radiant.
It has a kind of same way using the view editor.

On the other hand, setting pathways is clearly provided. I think the only thing you need to do is change the Radiant paths with the trenchboom. 

are there any volunteers to beta-test my old map bod.bsp(2008)

some time ago i'm just happened to replay this map, and realize how bad and bland the lighting is
so i decided to rebuild the lighting, while re-building the lighting i've added a couple of new areas, nothing exeptional , just make the map a less corridor feel
yeah the map is still bad and i'm to lazy to fix all of misaligned textures 

Here is a screenshot. What I am doing wrong?

https://imgur.com/a/ZEG8z 

try removing the bsp file so qbsp is launched with just the map file as a parameter.