what kell said. 

Yes, that makes sense. 

During polishing my entry to SM40, I moved a couple of brushes and now have a leak through a solid brush.

I have used the -nosortface option and no longer get a leak reported. Clip-nodes are not an issue as I had already made good use of clip-brushes. I have fast vised and it looks OK in-game.

What does -nosortface do and why should I not use it all the time? (You probably know why I am getting the leaks - you've seen the map before allbeit that it didn't have the SM40 bits in it)

Ah, I see from the time that you are probably building up the alcohol levels at present so hopefully I will hear from you sometime next year! 

Take a look at my Q1 ToolTips document at http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k (link bottom right). It contains among other things
explanations on some of the warning/error messages from the tools. 

-nosortface just disables the automatic brush face sorting before build. This is done to make builds more consistent, since some editors (e.g. QuArK) shuffles the faces around between builds.

Theoretically, the face order shouldn't make any difference, but it does (as you've already noticed). Apart from the consistency, the chosen order is also an attempt to improve build quality by putting faces on opposite brush sides next to each other. Don't ask me why this helps ...

Normally, I definitely recommend to keep the automatic sorting to avoid e.g. leaks popping in and out between different saved map versions. If you choose to disable the sorting, there's also another face order you can try (if the current doesn't help). Just use my ConvMap utility to reverse all faces in all brushes, e.g. convmap -r -i sm40. See the readme for more details. 

OK, thanks. 

Nice txt file by the way... q1 is lucky to have you. 

Q1 is even luckier to have mappers still creating new material. 

Hang on, what's the implication here? If the light entities are removed from the map (.bsp file), does this mean I can put more monsters in?

Where, or when, is the entity limit significant? Do the compilers baulk at large numbers of entites or is it just the engine? I have 597 fixed or modifiable entities in my version of SM40, of which 392 are lights. I would happily put more monsters in as I get the distinct impression that players like lots of opposition when playing.

I am just about to do a final, full overnight vis, so any answers today will be appreciated. 

... Light before Vis or Vis before Light? 

Really duzzn't mattah! 

All light entities are stripped out when the level loads, with two exceptions:

1) Switchable lights, because these need to hang around so that they can be "triggered".

2) Lights with models (torches etc.) However, these get turned into static entities, and therefore do not contribute to the edict count.

Bear in mind that there is nothing significant about light entities that distinguishes them from other entities. By this I mean (although there's not much point) you can give any entity a "light" field, and the light compiler will light the surrounding area accordingly. This is why most light entities are stripped out on level load; they just act as placeholders for light information, and do nothing else.

In conclusion, you could have thousands of light entities in your map, and it would cause no overhead if they all get stripped out at startup. 

for your responses. 

In conclusion, you could have thousands of light entities in your map, and it would cause no overhead if they all get stripped out at startup.

...that's comforting, ta mauch! 

What custom compile utilities exist for Quake 2 and what are their main advantages over the vanilla ones? Also, where would I go to download some good custom texture sets for Quake 2? 

if you can find the latest GDDBSP and GDDVIS, and ArghRad, those were the top of the line for Q2 last I knew, that being right before q3 came out, not sure exactly what GDD bsp and vis added, but arghrad has a ton of extras, including phong shading.

good luck on custom textures. weren't many sets, because q2 doesn't have .pk3 formats and textures aren't included in the bsp so they never caught on. 

on the Rust message board http://gamedesign.net/,
Tim Wright is still updating his Arghrad tool, famous for adding phong shading (it adds smooth shading to corners and rounded areas). Other tool links can be found there as well, though I believe in most cases the Quark tools may be the most current.

As for custom texture sets for Quake2. I would suggest hitting the wadfather (planethalflife/wadfather), and it may be helpful to know this as well: I have never known any Quake 2 enthusiest to have any apprehension in using the customized versions of the Q2 engine (like Quake2Max for instance).

The pallette for Q2 is more restrictive than Q1 IMHO. In other words, you can get away with using q3, Unreal or any other texture set without getting bitched at. 

oblivion textures: ftp://ftp.celephais.net/pub/textures/obtex.zip 

I did find ArghRad quite easily, but I couldn't find GDDBSP and GDDVIS. Could anyone provide a direct link or send them to my email if you have them on your PC?

Metlslime: thanks. 

Arghrad definitely.

As for the gdd compilers, i heard good things about them, but checked my old batch files and it seems i was still using qbsp3 and qvis3 when i last did quake2 stuff. 

http://home.insightbb.com/~gryndehl/q2compile/quake2.html 

Is there some way to mirror a texture using gtkradiant? For example a texture thats only half an arch. 

use a negative value for the X axis texture scale 

Im sorry but it seem that in the surface inspector there's no option for X axis texture scale. Only horizontal and vertical. Tried flipping the brush X-wise but the texture dont stick. Im useing ver 1.4