from http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/3239/

What is RTFM?

RTFM is not having to say you are sorry. RTFM is a big chromatic dragon with bloodshot beady eyes and fangs the size of oars. RTFM is me screaming at you as fireballs come out of my mouth to get off your precious no-good tush, march down to the local bookstore or MAN page repository, and get the eff off my back because I'm trying very hard to get some freakin' work done. Jeez.



RTFM - read the fucking manual ;) 

... I understand the stuff now... ;D 

Thanks for the last message re .map file problem (only just back to my desktop today).

Interesting. I did as you did and found it would now load. Looking at the new map though, the line that I had changed to 0000 now says 0001 and includes one texture on the following line even though the bsp.ini file clearly states that I do not want Favourites.

However, it works so I will leave well alone. I still don't understand why it inserted the blank line in the first place but if it happens again I will do a 'repair' and carry on. 

is it possible to make lava emit light as sky does? but w/o angles etc, just imitation of the loads of point lights ;) 

my esteemed russian friend means: surfacelight 

Heh, do you remember this:

AguirRe
#493 posted by {Vondur} [213.247.187.250] on 2003/09/30 01:21:59
is it possible to make lavalight?
i mean the light that generates by lava surface as it generates by sky, but with delay.

Vondur
#498 posted by {aguirRe} [62.127.45.40] on 2003/09/30 06:20:48
I guess lava light should be possible using a similar technique, but I doubt the extra coding and processing time would be worth the effect.

Lava is relatively scarce in maps (I'm not so fond of it either) and the lava light would be rather local and diffuse. That makes it very different from sunlight which is more difficult to simulate with point lights.

Hrimfaxi actually had the same suggestion a while ago. He also wanted the lava light to be slowly pulsating.

To add to that, the closest thing I can see is something similar to the 2nd sunlight which is also diffuse. However, 2nd sunlight is non-attenuated and generated by automatically positioned extra suns in a grid, the amount depending on oversampling level (-extra*). 

Its very easy with Q1rad, just set it up in the lights.rad file like this:

*LAVA1 255 255 255 50

As you see above, there's the texture name, the 3 following numbers are the RGB values of the light, and the final number is the brightness. 

aguirre: yeah, i remember i was asking u that but was not sure where to search for that :> okay.

frib: yeah i know that util, but i use aguirre's light cuz it's more advanced though ;) 

How trivial/hard would it be to port this feature from q1rad into your light tool? 

made any investigation, but I believe the lighting design is rather different so I don't think it'd be easy. If I understand it correctly, q1rad is based on HL's hlrad.

I have no current plans to include this functionality.

Vondur: Please try the new -gate 1 option as it really cuts down on processing time. 

The tools are fundamentally different, I imagine it wouldn't be possible to add any radiosity stuff into the existing quake lighting tools without a full rewrite of the code.

I'm sure it'd be much easier to integrate the advanced features into the radiosity tool instead, but that also would require a lot of work I'm sure (and in any case Riot has lost the code for Q1rad, so you'd be starting from scratch again). 

yeah i see it's rather complex task, then fek it. adding lava light manually isn't that bad in fact, you can make it more interesting.
off the laziness! ;)

aguirre, yah i tried it, but didn't notice any significant speed up (so far). maybe because the level is too small. 

The good thing is that you're mapping again!

And as for the Fade Gate, I can e.g. make a complete re-light of Adamantine Cruelty in just 2:20, or Nastrond in 2:49 ... 

regarding mapping: well, that doesn't mean i'll finish it ;)

regarding gate: eh? is the light quality the same as with -soft -extra etc? 

I used surfacelight for all the lava in my dm map "blood sweat & piss" (on my website - http://www.planetquake.com/dazdranz/ ) normal lighting for everything else, and dumped surface lights to the bsp with a program then lit it with arguires light.exe , worked a treat 

The quality is the same. The difference is measurable but not visible. I use it all the time now and in most maps, it speeds up light processing by 2-15 times. 

Is it possible to make a key move around in a level? I.E. I want a gold key "driving" on a func_train:) 

so make a small func_train, and put the key on top of it. 

Just place the key on top of the train...

�_� 

=) You're right... I am not familiar with setting up func_trains, so I ever placed the key somewhere else but not at the "real" (as it is compiled) top of the trainbrushes:\ Well, me < editor < Quake 

the train will begin its movement from the path_corner it targeted, so put the key under the train near that path_corner entity... 

i've met some troubles with shadows of sunlight2/3.
http://vondur.net/images/fitz0004.jpg
i tried every possible settings with sunlights, including sunlight3 usage. and cannot get how to make these shadows render properly.
maybe because they're too far from the sky? 

from just the shot. I assume you mean why the bright spots are there? One thing that normally isn't very good is the sun pitch of -90. Please try e.g. -89 instead and see if it works better.

Otherwise I can only think of that sunlight2/3 is actually generated by a limited number of extra suns arranged in a grid around the upper hemisphere, which means that they won't be able to reach every corner, especially not if the architecture is complex or very vertical.

The distance from sky shouldn't matter since sunlight is non-attenuated (like delay 3).

If you wish, you can send me the zipped map+wad and I'll see if I can find out what's going on. 

ok, the .map sent :) 

I tried something like that a while ago, and couldn't get it to work, can you tell me how you managed to use two lighting tools on one BSP? Bastid :D

When I tried it, I found that the last lighting tool used stomped all of the pre-existing lightmap data, but perhaps I was doing something wrong (or using the tools in the wrong order). I was using Q1rad and aguire's light tool, but I can't remember which one I used first.