To clarify, youre attempting to load textures for Quake 2? Quake2 doesnt use wads so youre confusing the issue a bit.

https://imgur.com/TIdYr85

I set Q2 up and got it to work. Closed and restarted TB, still works. Did you perhaps make changes to the quake2.cfg in your trenchbroom/games folder? 

No just a quake 1 map using the q2tex00.wad, Ive used it before

only log message i get is

Could not load palette file 'gfx\palette.lmp': File not found: 'gfx\palette.lmp' 

all sorted, just had to reinstall it a few times, no idea what its problem is still. 

providing that error message wouldve been a massive help :D

you must have done some changes in your quake/id1/gfx directory that got rid of the palette. 

I'm making my first map in Trenchbroom. I set a light key in worldspawn just so I could see perfectly while testing some stuff. However, I now can't figure out how to return to default blackness. I tried both removing the light key from worldspawn and setting it to 0 but either way the world is still bright despite there being zero lights. Can I have some help with this? 

Are you running light.exe on your bsp? If not it will always be fullbright. 

Yep, I'm using light.exe. And have tried a few different exe's but nothing is changing. 

If your map has no light entities in it, the map will be fullbright. As soon as you add even one light entity, all the non-illuminated areas will become dark. 

Thanks! I had a feeling it would be something stupidly simple / obvious... 

Is there a way to make one specific room in a map look fullbright other than stuffing it with maxed out lights? I had this idea of making a funny "noob mapper" secret with blocky offgrid architecture and texture misalignments aplenty... 

Is your friend.

Check out my SM185 entry for a good use case.