well, in response to Jago's comment on wc running terribly slow on medium to large maps, you said that you can use visgroups, thereby reducing the amount of stuff on screen.

the point i was trying to make was that gtkr doesn't slow down to a crawl as jago was implying so that, you can still map even on large or medium maps without having to use visgroups to overcome slowness.

in wc, you can choose not to use visgroups yes, but the implication is that the program will run too slow to map properly without them.
thus, you are, more or less obligated to use them if you want to be able to use wc without slowdown. 

No one has Worldcraft 1.6a up and running in Windows XP?

That sorta sucks :( 

and it would probably help if you described in more detail what was wrong with wc, instead of just 'behaving like a bitch' which tells us nothing. 

well, in response to Jago's comment on wc running terribly slow on medium to large maps, you said that you can use visgroups, thereby reducing the amount of stuff on screen.
I probably should have mentioned I havent had this problem since along time ago using my old old p3 550 box. Then again, these days I have a somewhat beefy cpu and lots of memory. Use what you want. I just see alot of digs against worldcraft for *rad, and almost all of them I've never encountered or seen. Maybe I'm just lucky.

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No one has Worldcraft 1.6a up and running in Windows XP?
Err, what? Lots of people do, myself included. What the problem is? 

I have windows xp and run it fine. 

My maps won't compile correctly under the Normal run map settings -- I finally got them working in Expert though :)

Also, do your toolbar buttons lose their images after a compile? Thanx. 

Yeah, don't compile through worldcraft. Open a dos box and run the commands from there. Its much better. 

Obviously you have to export to .map first. 

Any idea where to get the non-shareware version of WorldCraft (for Quake)?

Also - if I wanted to import a bunch of jpg files into Quake editor (WC) what would I have to do? Put them all into one pack using Wally or something? 

http://www.planetquake.com/texmex/

And just import. 

I made a test with GenSurf (not really impressive) and Nemesis' Terrain Generator (wich is really impressive...), but it generates me an amount of compilation errors (like textures/poly misalignment) during TxQBSP process that crashed the BSP elaboration... (no VIS, no Light...) so... so playable BSP...grrr...
I know that some of you guys (Mike Woodham for example if I remember well) are currently using Nemesis' terrain generator tool, so the question is: how do you avoid errors in order to build the BSP ?? Is there a turnaround (without making hand-made terrains) to be able to increase confidence for this tool ?? 

I have not experienced the errors you mention.

But given that NTG works on a grid system and in my editor (BspEditor) the imported NTG file always lines up with the editor's grid, I would suspect you may not have 'snap-to-grid' or something similar in your editor.

I don't see why you should get poly misalignment errors otherwise. I have had up to 32,000 brushes in the editor and although I have had issues, it has never been poly connected.

If you want to e-mail me a small section of a map that is giving this error, I will try it in my editor and see if I can spot anything? 

...although I am a fan of NTG as can be noted from previous posts and my recent releases, if the terrain section is only small, doing it by hand is fairly straightforward even if a bit longwinded ;-) 

I tried to compile the generated terrain only, and this kind of misalignement error remains... I'm using aguirRe's TxQBSP tool, and QuArK editor.
I know there is a snap-to-grid option for polys in Quark, but I didn't use it while I was supposing NTG generates a correctly "grided" file... Well, I have to check if NTG and QuArK grid-settings match at least.. This can perhaps explain why I had this problem...
BTW, is there a quick tutorial that explains all the NTG features somewhere ??? I found by myself how to create mountains and canyon, but I'm not really used with the others features (like smoothing options, etc...), so I need a little bit help.... ;) 

There are some tutorials on Nim's site but his site is still not accessable at the moment. He does not seem to know when it will be as it is an issue outside of his control: global_register PHP setting!

The tools do need explanation and I am not sure that I am the right person for that, but in the meantime you can use the Smoothing tool from the Tool menu at its default settings, and this will certainly get rid of the acutely angled brushes that can be formed using the Raise/Lower tool.

One word of caution though, if you use it on lower slopes it will allow the player to climb the terrain more easily - this may not be the effect you want as terrain is most often used as a barrier to the player.

Also, using generated terrain is any easy way to increase clip-nodes beyond standard limits. This will be dependent on the base triangle size (I use 64 and 128) but you will probably need to use some large clip_brushes in your map if the clip-nodes get into the high 20,000s and you still have standard walls, floors, ceilings to build.

The main thing I did wrong in the early days was to build a fabulous terrain - mountains canyons, water courses etc - and then try to build a map into it. I would suggest that a better course of action is to build the map first and then place terrain sections into it. Fmb_sm40 is a good example of this technique where the terrain is about 12 or so seperate sections. (Of course I use the term 'good example' with tounge firmly in cheek.)

Ummm, don't know if this helps? 

It helps for sure... while I already see that Nemesis web site is down... grrr...
For mu first test, I tried to create the terrain in one pass... even if I have a clear idea about what I need, it's now for sure a bad idea... well, "hierarchization" of the map will save me... I hope.... ;P I have to split the terrain in many parts...
Well, so for the moments, I have to find by myself which settings will be the better for me... Anyway, thanx for your feedback.. 

Is there a way to invoke/emulate a console command from within the game (without the player knowing) by perhaps using a trigger?

I want to 'play' with some ideas but dont want to get into coding. For example (and I dont actually want to do this), 'r_fullbright 1' followed by 'r_fullbright 0' could effectively flash the screen.

Any ideas? 

not without custom qc, no. :\
the hipnotic pack does have an entity for this, i believe.

what is the specific effect you want to achieve? there may still be a way to do it. 

Well, one of the things I am looking at is the use of fog. I liked the overall effect that I had in Fmb_sm40, especially in conjunction with the underground scenario, but I am aware that you can have too much of a good thing and also that it renders the sky/skyboxes as useless.

As far as I can see, fog in the Quake engines is global and you cannot use it regionally. But I noted that it could be switched on and off at the console...

So, to achieve regional fog I could set triggers in the map file and according to where the player was, trigger it on or off. Only I now know that I can't.

Marcher's sky wheted my appetite for skyboxes and I think I can develop the underground terrain thing a bit more.

But as I say, I don't want to get into coding (old dog, new tricks). 

Hmm, in Nehahra we could turn fog on and off, or even make it change (density etc). I remember testing it by making a hallway where the fog gradually builds up as you walk furhter into it (and vice versa).
Probably requires coding to get that working in any other mod I guess though... 

yeah, you'd really qc for that, sorry. :\
i'm pretty sure i could whip up a trigger for you that would change the fog density on touching it, but it would obviously need a progs for that... 

How to select brush faces in WC1.6 (shareware)? I remember that was done with Ctrl, Shift & mouse in newer versions of WC but it doesn't seem to work here in the old one.

And how to select stuff in 3d-view window? It doesn't seem to work. 

Disable Hardware acceleration in the options menu. 

Thanks for the offer. I'll leave it on the back-burner for now but if things develop further with my ideas, perhaps I might be able to call on you then? 

I made another test yesterday night with NTG, taking into account your advices, and now it works fine :)) It seems that I made too much manipulations with brush edges and faces in NTG, and TxQBSP (aguirRe's tool) find me many warnings (CuteNodePortals, HealingPoint), and then finally found me an Error in latest hull (ReachOccupant...)... Well, I solved the stuff restarting the terrain in a simpliest way, with much more care about edges and "volume" manipulations, and now it remains me only warnings (CuteNodePortals only BTW) so I can start to build other architectural stuff on the terrain...
Thanks for your help