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 

Sounds good. Again, a word of caution when building architecture into an existing terrain: if you place your new brushes onto the existing grid and they bisect the terrain brushes, you are more likely to get errors. Therefore, try to keep to the same grid layout as the terrain i.e. in the top view of the editor you can see that the terrain is made up of pairs of triangles forming squares, so place your new brushes in the intersections of these squares.

Of course, you will also find that when you form a room or building in the terrain, the terrain will 'fill' the room. You then have the choice of manipulating the terrain brushwork (horror of horrors) or, and only if your editor can handle it, using subtraction.

Now, I don't have a problem with subtraction but I know a lot of mappers stay well clear of it. I suspect that this is borne out of
a) using an editor that can't handle it
b) a bad experience at sometime in their youth, or
c) a bit a mass hysteria

If you 'need' to use subtraction, I would suggest you experiment with a test map af a few brushes first, just to get the hang of it.

A final point. If you read any of the previous posts about terrain and its problems (I can't point you to the right posts as I think they are mostly in the News Archive, which is still not available) you wil know that generated terrain seems to create clipping errors during compile. These become evident in the game as invisible barriers. To minimise this, stear clear of acutely angled brushwork, only use subtraction on-grid, and avoid extremely small brushes - these are easily created inadvertantly if you use subtraction on terrain and you are bisecting those brushes.

Rock on!



Pun absolutely intentional:-)


Long post caused by lack of interest in the decorating that I'm supposed to be doing. Sorry. 

The story was I tried to make a very complex terrain into my first try, and so it was a nightmare to solve any problems. So I restart with a less complex terrain, having the same architecture, but with much more less micro-brushes, much more less polys, etc... and so it works...
My editor (QuArK... no comment please...) can't handle NTG, but it can handle multiple projects, so with a copy-paste, it's really easy to import terrain map file in the project, and so use substraction in order to "fit" with my "requirements" (I'm talking like I do all day at office... brrrr...).
Anyway, the good thing is that at least I have a good first try... and now only experience can improve the "process"...
For sure I will post some screenshot later, in order to give everybody an overview of the results.
Thanks again Mike for your helpfull advices.. 

Are you still looking for the Full version of Worldcraft 1.6? I can send it to you if you like. Having said that you would probably be better off using GTK Radiant, but if it is Worlcraft you want, I can send it to you. Just let me know

http://www.planetquake.com/worldcraft/index2.shtm
Have a look around there, you may find the info you require (selecting faces) etc. It's been a long time since I have seen WC, I wouldn't remember what it looked like 

or why not use the new hammer editor instead of wc? 

There's a link to the full version somewhere in the General Abuse section archive or here in Mapping Help, I think it still works it's where I got my copy from. 

Is there any tutorial how to enable Quake editing in Hammer? I downloaded the editor from http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?go=hammer
but I can't get it to work with quake maps.
I'm just looking for new editor - GTK Radiant somehow doesn't work on my comp :( 

Use TexMex to export your Q1 wad as a Half-Life wad3 - this can then be loaded into Hammer. I believe aguirRe's tools take care of the compilation from there, you'll have to read his documentation. 

I can create map files with Hammer now but I can't convert to Q1 map format. I have tried both convmap from aguirre and mapconv but the first one does nothing and the second one exits with an error. Maybe this is because in Hammer I only can choose Map Type: HalfLife. After exporting to map, the file looks like this:
( 0 -512 0 ) ( 0 0 0 ) ( 512 0 0 ) WMET1_1 [ 1 0 0 0 ] [ 0 -1 0 0 ] 0 1 1
( 0 0 -32 ) ( 0 0 0 ) ( 0 -512 0 ) WMET1_1 [ 0 1 0 0 ] [ 0 0 -1 0 ] 0 1 1
When compiling with mapconv the error is:
Exception EConverterError ... '[' ist kein gueltiger Integerwert.
Someone help please! 

Well sure you can send it but is it necessary? I have been doing pretty well with the shareware version so far. How does it differ?

And as for GTKRadiant - Yeah well I like the editor and I'm familiar with it but I understood that it requires some tweaking before you can make it Quake compatible. And I'm already pretty far into mapping my level so there's no need to change the editor at this point.

http://www.planetduke.com/msdn/ 

Has a brush limit of 500 I believe.

Eventually you'll surpass that, trust me. :) 

I'm at 416 now:( Shit...

I have been using IKBase textures with the shareware - if I switch to registered version will they still stay in the level? Would the switch be painless? 

I'm at 416 now:( Crap...

I have been using IKBase textures with the shareware - if I switch to registered version would the textures still stay in the level? Would the switch be painless? 

I've been using WC1.6 for all of my maps. No problem.

I you're planning to switch anyway, yes it should be painless. Export your RMFs to MAP for safety first though. 

And as for GTKRadiant - Yeah well I like the editor and I'm familiar with it but I understood that it requires some tweaking before you can make it Quake compatible.

Excuse me? GTKRadiant requires no tweaking at all to make it work with Quake. Just download, install and map away... 

The Shareware Version Of WC Has No Brush Limit.

Always did for me, huh... 

Mikko was probably referring to pre 1.5 versions that didn't support quake natively.

but what Gom says is true. the newest version of GTKR supports Q1 natively and i supposed to be quite painless an installation. 

Well then it seems that I have been reading old posts/news since I have been under the impression that GTKRadiant doesn't natively support Q and that you have to tweak it to make it support it (or convert the level into a Q map).

However I'll stick with WC for now at least with this level I'm working on right now. I have never built a level before with WC but I have with GTKRadiant so getting some experience is not a bad idea.

But anyways if the shareware WC really has a brush limit then I need the full one - so please someone tell me where to get it. And still - will the custom textures 'vanish' if I switch from shareware to registered? 

Well it seems that I've been reading old news/posts since I have been under the impression that GTKRadiant doesn't natively support Q and that you have to tweak it to make it support it.

However I'll stick with WC for now - at least with the map I'm doing now. I have previous experience with GTKRadiant but not anything serious with WC so I need the experience.

But anyways if the shareware version really has a brush limit then I really need the registered version in case someone knows where it is or can send it to me at mikko.sandt@satabaana.net.

Also I still would like to know that will the custom textures vanish if I switch from shareware to registered? My level is so far covered with IKBase textures - would I lose them during the switch?