But then how is the Dusk guy doing it?

I'd like to emphasize this for DP, can the HUD be entirely customizable? Last time I looked at a DP-based game the layout was the exact same as Quake, making me fear the HUD being hardcoded carries over DP. 

here are some games using DP:

SteelStorm

Blood Omnicide

Xonotic

Warsow

there are more out there including a bunch of smaller projects. 

Do the Warsow developers know they are using DarkPlaces?

That would be an interesting conversation. 

here:

http://www.moddb.com/engines/darkplaces-engine/games 

My mistake, it's qfusion. I could've sworn they were using DP at one point. 

Warsow used qfusion. 

Referring back a few posts...

If you really want to do brush-based mapping (or at least layouts) for a modern engine, http://hammuer.nte.be/ lets you import .vmf or .map files into the Unreal editor. 

Is my DarkPlaces favorite project:

http://www.moddb.com/games/retroblazer/images/screenshot1#imagebox 

Ohhh... I didn't knew it's on Darkplaces!
Sadly development died... 

and func is the only website that loads up because it's the most optimised and the connection is too shit to load anything else. 

Try loading the entire General Abuse thread 

 

after seeing those examples. I might use it afterall.

But one last thing just to be sure: is Quakespasm's way of filtering texture an usual one? Can it be replicated by DP? Can tyrustil's (and others) compilers be used for a commercial game? 

in theory yes.

in practice, I'd use unity. 

then I'd settle with DP.
But then I've seen that TB2 can export map files into wavefront 3d models, meaning they can be used by Unity as a single model, meaning using Unity *and* TB2 is possible.
The downside I see with this is the back and forth with converting files and testing maps. If the map I test in Unity is wrong in the original map files, I have to edit in TB2 and then convert it.

Is brush-based maps in Unity that buggy? Because I'm wondering how the guys behind Dusk are doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqUiJpITMS0

Another thing I'm wondering about TB2: since my game won't have a palette limit, can TB2 use .wad files (or texture pack files rather) that doesn't hold a palette limit? 

Try http://sabrecsg.com/ for brush building in Unity 

With a dumb conversion of .map to mesh, You'll have all sorts of lovely problems like sparklies everywhere because .map brushes -> mesh is just t-junction city.

Also, unless you caulk and automatically remove all the unseen brush faces in a conversion step, you'll be drawing all that too - which might not be a problem because it will be so low poly (I assume?)

If you want to go down the .map -> Unity route, I strongly suggest creating it as a Quake 3 .map, and then using q3map2 to process your brushwork into clean .ase meshes

You'll need to look into how you do collision. Are you going to just duplicate the visual mesh and use that as a collision mesh? Could be pretty unoptimal unless you are going for 1996 levels of geometric detail in the visual map. Manually creating optimal collision meshes will eat up a ton of your time.

You'll need to think about culling too - Unity has an occlusion culling system but you'll have to have a long hard look at that to see how it works so you know how to organise your map meshes - it's no good having the map as a single mesh, it has to be split into lots of seperate meshes so they can be culled independantly of each other. 

IMO, the iteration time between changing something in a .map, and then going through all the different steps to see those changes in your Unity game, will be such an insanely convoluted waste of time that you will have an incredible new appreciation for how easy and quick quake-engine mapping is.

Unity plugins like that one mukor linked might be worth looking at before you discard the Unity idea though. 

What are the benefits of brush-based mapping compared to mesh anyway?

I'm asking because at some point in the future I'll have to decide what to start with, and right now my experience = 2.5D mapping + a little bit of low-poly 3D model creation in Blender. 

Now that's what I'm talking about. I'll look into it and then decide between Unity and DP.

dwere -> brush-based mapping is by practice better to construct an environment faster, the downside being it won't look as organic as brush-based map, which is better fitted for natural terrain (plains and mountains to name a few), at least from my experience. 

A couple of things about brush-based mapping:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOBEy-zIotE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ubu76gEvM8

Got these from the YouTube channel of the same guy that I saw discussing HammUEr (that I linked above). 

Are you using Unity for your job? Or for personal projects? Interested in what you're up to with it, as i've just been going through some tutorials 

Are you using Unity for your job? Or for personal projects?

At work: Only started using it once all the decent games companies near where I live shut down and we all had to do skeevy pay-to-win shit for mobile. I am loathe to admit being involved in any of that horrible crap, but it brought the doughnuts in.

Personal stuff: All sorts...2d stuff, 3d stuff...A lot of proof-of-concept stuff that never really got finished, but some of it is interesting and I'd like to maybe do a write up at some point maybe but don't hold your breath. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5uf93s/ama_american_mcgee_pirate_jam/

For the next 2 hours with change. 

Ha, ah thats a shame. Well you do what you have to, eh. Unfortunately those are the companies that make money!

Write up at some point would be very interesting to me at least. I'm getting into it now, really only with an eye to do some silly little games or proof-of-concepts. Any good tips for communities / resources / reading? It seems like finding a shit-needle in a shit-haystack at the moment.