The http://www.quakeforge.net/ tools have hint, skip and detail brush support!

Please test those features and report if and how they work. 

Extra text from spirit's original post:

In case you missed it, there also is a multi-threaded VIS tool. Willem did the hard work and Tuna made a bugfix.

Download: http://www.quaddicted.com/tools/wvis_20100119.7z

<Vondur> hmm 7 minutes instead of 32, pretty nice! 

 

this deserved a news thread. :)

i did find one thing that i guess is an oversight:
_sunlight2 has no color settings. _sunlight2 isn't actually a sun, but sort of adds outdoor minlight by creating an array of suns (i guess) in a circular pattern. it would be awesome if this got a color setting like _sunlight does.
you could set a nice bright yellow _sunlight and then a blue _sunlight2 to better simulate outdoor lighting.

also:
tools have hint, skip and detail brush support!

where are these tools? i can only see a link to a custom engine or mod. and would i have to give up bjp_qbsp? 

Quite hidden on the downloads page (simply says "Tools"): http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/quake/quakeforge-tools-0.5.5-win32.zip 

Is this true? If so no map will have a VIS compile time > 15 seconds anymore and a new era of Quake mapping has started I guess. :D 

> _sunlight2 has no color settings.

_sunlight_color2 ;) 

re: 5

thanks for the link. i still don't see it on the main page. just 'downloads' which links to the mod and 'developer tools' which links to some weird stuff that i don't understand. so yeah, pretty well hidden imo.

re: 7

ah ok, i tried _sunlight2_color :P thanks :) 

Direct link to binary and source of this skip/detail/hint brush capable version please. 

Opened the quakeforge tools source, looked in map.c for "detail" to find my answer... The detail brushes are exposed to the mapper with an "am_detail" brush entity, in the same fashion as in the Quest Ed tools ( http://quest-ed.sourceforge.net/ ), as well as pOx's Mac-Carbon tools ( http://quake.chaoticbox.com/ ) It's probably the same codebase. The Mac tools are especially neat because the detail entities have extra flags to make them double sided and pass-through, i.e. func_illusionaries that don't take up entity count, or not detail at all, just inert brush grouping.

This tech came out 6ish years ago and the main reason it never caught is that, even then, the neat features were bolted onto primitive compilers. The Mac version is the most improved and was actually quite nice but still had some annoying aspects like a 5120 brush limit. 

how this is done because the fields in the map format of Q2/Q3A that hold the detail flag are missing in the Q1 format it seems.

So it works like triggers and other volume-based entities if I understand Grahf correctly. Anybody know what I need to do to get the option into NetRadiant? I guess clicking 'Brush > Make detail' won't magically do this, hehe. 

will have to make a small map to try this out... 

will detail brushes cast shadows? 

above! 

@dfsp: In most Radiant variants I have used, you can enter a nonstandard entity name in the entity name field, and it should create an entity with that name. Or you could add an "am_detail" entry to your quake.def.

@gb: The only thing these detail brushes do is cut down on VIS time, they do not alter bsp cuts like "real" q2/q3 detail brushes do (I did some tests a while ago to confirm this). They are created like entities, but are added to the world during qbsp. So yeah, they cast shadows.

@mh: back on topic... thanks! One of the last reasons to sometimes not use bjptools has been eliminated. ;) 

mh you did a fantastic job.. I've just tried them in worldcraft.. setup of colored lights is a breeze with _sunlight_color.. Q1 maps now come alive !

One doubt: .lit file must be always provided with the .bsp?

Quake engine with all these features added daily has just reached HalfLife standard !
Seeing my map with colored light.. thought have launched hl.exe by mistake ! 

Correct, yes. It breaks the BSP format if you try to include the new lighting info in it. 

..for a really handy feature

...anyway coloured lights rock ! 

too busy mapping.

:) 

coloured lights .., great!
I was waiting a while, because I had this "exceeded to many packages for vis" error.
It seems to be my map has gone to big.

mh - good work!
why not called it version 1.4? 

But who really created that ?
mh, aguirre, i'm confused about this..

Anyway my current outdoor map with such lights looks like Unreal (!)

..now if someone could tell me how to add colored volumetric fog _ 

Heh - you need an info_command entity to make fog.

If you type "0.2" on the console you will get thick fog.

If you type "fog 1 0 0 0.2" you will get red fog (R G B Density).

(assuming you are using a suitable glQuake engine)

You need a special custom entity to do it automatically in a level, called an "info_command". The easiest way is to use the Quoth mod. To make the entity for your own custom progs I wouldnt know where to start, but someone will ;) 

second line "if you type "FOG 0.2" on the console....... 

no info_command needed. 

hipnotic source should have that, iirc. Chapters, extras maybe as well.