1. I think what youre seeing is the difference in "gamma" between Wally, JACK, and your Quake engine. (What engine are you using?)

2. Do you have qompiler in the directory that holds the bin/doc folders for erics tools?

For your first use, youll need to make a configuration by following the on screen prompts and entering the options you wish to use. Reference the doc folder for the various options you can use in Erics tools.

3. Im not sure why qompiler would be kicking quakespasm.exe? Its only set to manipulate files directly related to the compilation process. You mention using "dont run game" which is an option in JACK during the compilation process. So perhaps we should start from step one and see if we can spot where things are going wrong.

For starters get your .map file and qompiler in a folder with the "bin" and "doc" folders from Erics tools.

Perhaps call it "Qompiler"

So the hierarchy would look like this:

Qompiler:
-bin
-doc
.map files
qompiler.bat

Run Qompiler. If you dont have a config saved youll need to choose option 1 and follow the prompts. If you havent a clue what to enter here its likely you can skip entering ANYTHING and just hit enter through the various prompts Qompiler gives you.

You can reference the files in the doc folder for information on the various arguments you can pass to Erics tools.

If you didnt have erics tools, itd tell you. if you dont have any .maps..itd tell you.

When Qompiler is done running it puts your compiled maps into a folder named "maps" and moves all the source .maps into "qompiled" 

btw, i wrote Qompiler so feel free to ask questions specific to it. 

I've had this same issue a few times recently. The ideas aren't coming or I hate what I am attempting. One suggestion I'd make is play more levels you love and try to discover what it is you enjoy about them.

Another suggestion would be to try a jam. There was a Speedmapping Jam last week and there's a 100 brush jam going on right now that has a few weeks left. Working within limitations may be a good way to snap out of a creative rut. 

Thanks for the reply, and for Qompiler.

I was pressing [1], [2], [3] and [4] instead of [N], [L], [E] & [Q].

I still have random issues, but like usual when setting a new engine, a lot of hassles comes with it. Time to handle the tools.. 

Yes, I'll do that. I've played less and less as time went by, this is probably a reason I don't spontaneously have interesting ideas anymore, I need to get back into the game to get back into the right mindset.

I'm not a fan of contests, but I did one a few years back and it was a fun experience (size limite, make a map weighing 512 Kb or less), but my method when I'm on such tight time constraint is to shift through my folder of abandoned projecs and drafts and conflate a couple half-completed levels. 

Probably has a simple workaround, but say I have a monster I want to target a trigger_counter for a door and a path_corner for a patrol. How do I do this? Only one target field in an entity. 

Have a continuous trap spikeshooter attacking a func_button wih health tucked away in a box far off where the player can't hear it.

Put a func_wall blocking the shooter.

Add a killtarget to your monster that kills the func_wall.

There might be a simpler info_notnull hack but I can't remember one atm. 

Are you serious? Over 20 years of Quake mapping and no simple workaround for more than one target? 

but the id1 progs.dat isn't going to change.

If you include customs progs, then lots of them have supported target1, target2..... etc. 

I still know nothing of progs. Just figured out how to map with Quoth today so you can see how little I know of Quake mapping. How could I set up progs to add targets to entities? 

https://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/quoth/tutorial/multiple-targeting/ 

Thanks. I thought Quoth would have something for it. Preach to the rescue as usual. 

Preach's article makes no mention of how to actually use the feature. Do you just add the key manually to the entity or what? I tried adding target2 to my monster to the path_corner but it doesn't work. 

path_corner is handled differently to usual targeting - try just using the default "target" field for the path_corner and the extended "target2" (etc) fields for things that trigger on monster death. 

Thanks. Why or how are they handled differently? 

A target field can always trigger multiple entities that share the same targetname, right? I think the issue there is probably just with the path_corner... if it's not the first entity with that targetname that find() comes across, then the monster won't patrol.

I wonder if that particular multiple target situation would work even in id1 progs if you could guarantee that the path_corner was lower in the edict table. 

I posted that before refreshing to see the other two posts above.

More for sevin:

When a monster is first "initialized" in the QuakeC code (progs) that shipped with Quake, one of the things that happens is as follows. If it has a target specified, it looks for the first entity it finds that has that targetname. If the entity is a path_corner, it starts patrolling.

Later when a monster dies, if it has a target specified, it triggers any trigger-able entity that has that targetname.

So in the original Quake game code they didn't think about supporting the case where a monster is BOTH patrolling and is ALSO meant to trigger stuff on death.

It sounds like that in Quoth only the original "target"/"targetname" fields are used for that patrol behavior, but all of the new additional target/targetname fields can do other triggering stuff. 

When a monster is spawned, it checks to see if self.target is a path_corner, or something else. If it's a path_corner, it makes the monster start walking straight away, otherwise the monster is told to just stand, which is also the default behaviour if it has no target.

I can only assume (without looking at the quoth QC code) that quoth only does the path_corner check for self.target. This sounds reasonable because you do not need to target multiple path_corners, so there's no need to overcomplicate things. target2, 3 and so on are thus assumed to be regular targets, not path_corners. 

I posted that without seeing Johhny Law's posts above 

two ships passing in the night ;) 

This can actually be done in vanilla id1, at least for the given scenario- no map hacks needed, just some prior knowledge of entity priority. No idea how it'd work with other entities being targeted, but enemies can be set to both patrol a path and activate a relay or counter on death by simply creating the path_corner first, then creating the relay with the same name. As long as the path_corner comes first in the entity list, the monster will follow the path, but still trigger the relay on death.

Basically, the enemy should target two entities with the same name- a path_corner and a trigger_relay placed in the map after the corner (so be careful if you're deleting or remaking things constantly). If the relay comes first, the enemy will still activate it on death but won't patrol to the path_corners. Here's a webm of an example map (ignore the "holy shit I figured out how to get custom conchars working" kludged HUD) and here's the .bsp and .map themselves. The left and center Grunts have the corner loading first, with the leftmost Grunt also having multiple path_corners (it takes a while for him to get there, though); the right Grunt has the relay first so he just stands there like a dork. All three function properly for the counter. 

Because I just got ninja'd something fierce, goddamn.