nice page ericw. those comparison pictures are really informative. i'm not a mapper, but i'm seriously considering relighting some of the levels in my collection just to see how it would look like.
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warrenm is right monochromatic levels would be great. i've just recently finished naissancee and i was impressed. i would love to see something like that in quake. imagine it... black/white level and the only color would be red bloodstains.
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jakub 

I should redo White Room ... heh. 

I would like to make a map with all this, but at the same time, I'm too lazy to even make one properly. 

(Consider this a beta as only I have tested it, but it seems 100% bug free!)

I have created a .fgd file with all the new parameters for Ericw's compiler suite built in and some nice quality of life upgrades (rgb color pickers etc) for you all.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/quake4ericwTools.fgd

Let me know if you do find any bugs or confusing titles etc. USE THE HELP BUTTON AS ALL THE DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF EVERY NEW COMMAND ARE IN THERE <3 <3 <3 

New Jackhammer, new compile tools, new FDG ... truly, this will be the jam of kings!

Thanks DaZ! 

One quick thing in this new FGD ... monsters don't have directional arrows on them anymore.

Also, lights used to be colored sprites in Jackhammer. Now they're boxes. 

The monsters thing is really weird, I didn't touch any of that part at all!

As for the lights being boxes, I am sure there is a bit of code to tell the editor what sprite to use for entities but I don't know what it is :|

I will investigate! 

by directional arrows you mean in the 3d view? I thought you meant the direction spinner in the entity properties :P

Ok, I'll see where this stuff is so I can add it. 

* added editor models for all items that have a model
* added direction arrows to everything has a direction (direction arrows do not show when a 3d model is rendered in place of a solid box)
* Lights now have proper sprites and/or 3d models.
* entities now appear in the correct position when clicked into the 3d view (mostly)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/quake4ericwTools.fgd 

and thx! I think func_detail doesnt need the shadowself and shadow keys. 

I'm not sure how to remove just those two entries from a single func_* entity def. The new solid entity parameters are all inside the base solid entity class. 

the minlight also doesnt work on them. The whole ModelLight thing can be left out. 

Haha, awesome! I think this marks the first time that I've EVER had actual models show up in Jackhammer.

This is now the greatest FGD of all time. OF ALL TIME! 

* Additional options removed from func_detail as they don't work
* Re-added func_illusionary as somehow I deleted it :P

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/quake4ericwTools.fgd

Ok, I think it's there! Let me know if you find anything else. 

]@PointClass = info_notnull : "info_notnull (spotlight target)"

This line is incorrect, the correct usage for info_notnull is for "teh hax". 

* Spotlight angle renamed to Spotlight direction
* Spotlight angle (sets spotlight cone in degrees)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/quake4ericwTools.fgd

Sorry I had no idea I sucked so bad at this :P Hopefully this will be final version! 

Nah, you're a hero for making this thing. It'll make Jackhammer a lot more fun to use during this jam. You've got my vote, congressmen. 

Does the -lightmapscale command only work in the dev builds? 

that got cut, I guess. See the comment about lit2 in the top post. 

* Removed setting a default for Deviance as it actually forces the light to use deviance!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/quake4ericwTools.fgd

This can bring your light compile to a slow crawl so be sure to update if you are using this fgd! 

Any advice on how to prevent it from creating too much light and containing it at a small fade scale? 

I need to put some examples on the website for doing lava surfaces.

Here's one that uses two surface lights on the lava: http://i.imgur.com/FAmAZlM.png

delay 2, light 20 for the fill light
delay 0, light 200 for the direct glow

If you use "delay 2" make sure to use low light values or you'll end up with a fullbright room. 

If you are using my fgd file, download the latest version of it as it causes a bug where all point lights will be deviance lights (each light is broken up into 16 lights!)

Make sure to remove any _samples key/values from any lights you have in your level, as they will be left over even after downloading the bug fixed fgd file.

If you haven't been using that fgd file, then can suggest some settings for your surface light for lava :

wait 3
delay 2
light 100

you can tweak "wait" to have the light be smaller/larger but I've found these settings to be quite nice. 

Never actually considered that you can use two lights on the same surface :O 

How the surface lighting works exactly: if you look at the BSP surfaces in-engine with "r_drawflat 1", each surface with a matching texture will get a light copied in the centre of the surface, 2 units above it. However, if a surface is larger than 128x128, it's subdivided into sections no larger than 128x128, and the lights are placed above those sections. So, you can think of the lights as being tiled roughly on a 128x128 grid.

My lava screenshot above is ugly, so if anyone comes up with a good example scene for lava settings that you want to put on the tool website, that would be welcome!