http://www.twitch.tv/ionous 

I think I would've made it in time, an extension now means that the more experienced mappers will have more time to make their maps even further out of reach in terms of quality. It is true though that I've struggled. I forgot about the imprecision of rotation, and I had things in mind to rotate and had to redraw them. I've never released a map before, only dabbled in 3D map design over the years. Because Quake is so primitive (Though I love that) even a 45 degree angled door needs both its angle AND lip changing. There are lots of bizarre things that you just wouldn't expect. Contrarily, I didn't realise Quake had some awesome stuff such as: trigger relays (sweet!), alsorts of other triggers, monster jumping, windtunnels also push grenades!, arbitrarily complex func_train, func_plat, func_door etc. I can do a lot more in terms of mechanics than I thought was possible. I reckon someone could make a soft processor using the trigs as gates. trigger_counter is an and-gate.

@WarrenM I think the popularity is due to Daz broadcasting it on his youtube channel. I never know when the Jams start - I only ever see Daz reviewing them. 

I think we underestimate the size of the quake community due to it just not being visible on this here board. 

get hype. 

I have always checked in and found that the jams were over already.I wish I knew about them sooner. Just knowing that one started via Daz's youtube channel was the only reason why I am working on a map. 

"an extension now means that the more experienced mappers will have more time to make their maps even further out of reach in terms of quality."

Yeah but, again, don't let that discourage you. There aren't any prizes, there's no judging ... it's all for fun. I won't have the best map in the jam but that's not my goal here. My goals are personal and the jam is a good vehicle for them. 

I'm getting totallights == MAXLIGHTS on light.exe :( I'm using tyrutils-ericw. I'm guessing it's because I've got a huge lake of lava with surface lights and _sunlight2 set. Is there a way around this? I don't think having a separate lava with the same renamed texture will work, as they will be seen as different by the engine and not align. What is the default MAXLIGHTS constant set to? 

Why is there even a MAXLIGHTS to begin with? I mean, I know it's legacy, but it sounds entirely arbitrary and should be removed. 

https://github.com/ericwa/tyrutils-ericw/blob/master/include/light/entities.h

#define MAX_LIGHTS 65536 

it's not arbitrary, it's a 16bit unsigned int 

Wrong word maybe. Point is, limits suck and aren't needed these days. :) 

OK, I am trying to get a platform to start from the top of a location then move down to the bottom. I have set the direction up and down with travel values, but all that happens is that the platform travels up to the location I have set, instead of down to the location I have set.

Negative values blow the map up, so I can't seem to get it to function as expected. Help? (Someone is going to chime in with a simple fix, but this is driving me nuts far more then teleporting monsters into the level so far) 

Holy turd! That's a lot of lights. I had _deviance on the surface light too - turning it off has made it work, but I was relying on deviance to smooth out the ugly discrete mess you get when lights are too far away. I'm guessing deviance splits each light into separate lights that add onto the totalights variable. 

Unless you only need a very simplistic platform, it's better (but a bit more complicated) to use a door. 

Yeah, plats kind of suck. Doors are MUCH more controllable. 

@ShoTro: func_plat is an odd entity, it's sole use is to make platforms that lift you upwards when you stand on them... you can't make them lift downwards.

You can make it a 'locked' platform, where it starts at the top of it's movement disabled, and then lowers down into the lifting position when triggered. You do this by giving it a targetname and target that from a func_button or trigger_multiple or something like that. You can only do this triggering once, after the platform is 'unlocked' by targeting it, it will stay at the bottom and only act as an upwards lift.

If what you want is to make a downwards elevator, what you want to do is to make a func_door that opens downwards, and then have it be triggered by a func_button or a trigger_multiple. That will make a brush that moves down when you trigger it, and then return to the top after it's "wait" value. If you want it to toggle between top and bottom positions, set the 'toggle' spawnflag, and put something like a func_button at the top and bottom of the elevator. 

@unbirthday: yeah, don't recommend using deviance lights willy-nilly. Like you found, they turn the 1 light into multiple lights. Best used for special cases rather than as part of a lava surface light. 

Doorlevators are great because you can enter them. Just build a full blown elevator made of brushes and turn the whole group into a func_door. A func_plat is triggered when you're on top of it only. 

Cool, that was the conclusion I was coming to. I thought I was just not getting something... nothing else hasn't worked without a small amount of tinkering. 

Glad you sorted the max lights problem. Having the limit is just laziness on my part, and it could be removed.

I'm disabling the _deviance feature for surface lights in the next build because it's overkill to use two different light-duplicator methods together. 

Necros, did you dirtmap? 

Heck yeah, I love me some dirtmapping! 

65,536 lights is a lot of lights!

If you set your grid to 256 and placed a light at every intersection (including up and down) in the entire player accessible area of a Quake map you would only use half that amount. 

yeah, what happens is the surface lights are already spawning arrays of lights, then each of those lights gets another array of lights. I ran into the same thing, but when you think about it, deviance on surface lights is only necessary if it is a single light (eg: a small wall texture), but not in the case of lava.

i wonder if you could track how many lights have been spawned as part of the surface lighting and if it is over a threshold, do not apply deviance lighting. just some internal tracking, nothing added to the actual map or anything.

because you would want to use deviance lights for small 32x32 lights, for example. 

sorry. should have posted that in the tyrlight thread... please ignore this. :)