damn this blizzard fuckers! argh 

Um...talking of both Chapters and FitzQuake...
Since there are a few skyboxes used in the chapters maps, is FQ 0.8 likely to be released soon? It would be unwise for players to be using 0.75 due to the skybug, but I really want to recommend FQ as the engine of choice for Chapters.

Von: I know. Bastards. Curse them for making addictive games! 

he'll never get his pool open at the rate he is going. My summer social life is screwed. Damn, Blizzard. Damn them to Hell. 

He'll be so into WoW in a few weeks, that he'll end up selling the pool on eBay to buy some rare item he needs in the game. 

well, maybe... i'm really close, but things are also going kind of slow. Maybe after E3 i can wrap it up. 

The pool is the only thing that gets the ladies to overlook my creepy outward demeanor that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. 

Jumping in with both feet to the fore, what is it the causes us to need to limit vertexes to 1000? I am also playing with models and have strayed over 1000 and the model is not yet finished (super-strength warewolf type creature who spawns from dead... no, hang on, can't tell you everything!) 

Just watched Indie do his 'leap of faith'
and I swear that rock texture is a Quake original :-) 

I suspect the rock texture to which you refer would be rock3_8. It is similar.

re: 1000 verts - I haven't hit a vert or poly limit with Q1 .mdl, though necros and I did exceed the number of frames limit.
I guess it's just another limit imposed by the structure of the file format and how it saves the information. Don't really know what to suggest other than using a composite model i.e. two or more models coded to act in unison like Armagon's torso+legs. Not an ideal solution for what you seem to be making I'm afraid. 

I just popped a 2333 vertex model (it was a wall torch without flames that I downloaded from a 3DMAX site and it looked rather nice)into FitzQuake just to see what would happen and it crashes with a 'too many vertices' message.

Have you got a 1000+ vert model to play or is the 1000 cast-in-stone? 

no 1000+ vert models - the highest I have are in the low hundreds. I doubt it's a limit you'll be able to exceed in anything other than DP or the like. 1000+ is well above conventional Quake size for a model. 

OK, thanks. Clearly I am going to have to hone my modelling skills by some degree - perhaps if I made SuperWolf less hairy or give him less teeth and claws, or somehow chunkify him...

Damn, he was begining to look so good. Mind you, I hadn't skinned him yet! And when I say good, I mean I am the only one who has seen him, and he is the first thing I have ever created, and my mum said my scotch eggs were the best she'd ever tasted when I knew they tasted like soiled carpet. So for good, read 'partly recognisable'. 

well, at 1000 verts I'm sure there must have been some quality definition to the model. But yeah, take a closer look at the id models if you haven't already and see how they represent physiology in as few polys as possible. It's surprising how much you can achieve with only the basics.

And don't scotch eggs always taste like soiled carpet...? 

I've just checked that if a model has more than 1000 vertices then it can't be loaded in standard glquake. (although oddly enough dos/winquake won't crash until about 2000). Lots of custom engines bump this up, as there are a few mods that were released pre GLquake with 1000+ vertex models that won't run in GL.

As for the theoretical limit in the mdl format, I don't really know. I suspect it's higher than 2000 simply because that's a kinda odd number to be limited to, you'd expect a power of two at least. And QMe can load models with more vertexes in, and saves them without difficulty. So if you're using a custom engine you can up this one a fair bit. Then again, if you're gonna use a custom engine you might as well use md3 instead.

So, what other solutions exist? Well, what has been done in the past is to supply two copies of a model, one that works in GLquake and a better quality one for use in custom engines/winquake.
Bit on the messy side though. If there's an obvious break in a model, like a seperate weapon or something you could make two seperate models and just use the QC to tie them together. This doesn't work well with player models, but you should get away with it on a monster.

If you do, make sure you make the attached piece walkmove with the monster rather than teleport it to the monster's origin each animation frame. Frame interpolation moves the monster smoothly between animation frames if it's trying to walkmove, and if you teleport it per animation frame it'll look jerky. If you teleport it every server frame it'll be smooth, but also it's probably less efficient.

Finally there's good old optimisation - from cutting out unnecessary bits, to only unwrapping parts of the model with the UV split method, doing others with the planar mapping, then stitching the two together in a nightmare of fiddling and pain. Don't do the second one if you can avoid it, but if you must, try using qme3.0 rather than 3.1. For some odd reason it's actually better when it comes to editing skins. 

glquake has the max verts set at 1024 and dos/winquake has them at 2000 i think. I recently switched fitzquake to 2000, but in all cases, the reason for this maximum is just becuase they wanted to load models into a fixed-size buffer and since they knew how big their own models were, they set the number to be just big enough. 

Is your email working? 

yes I will reply your mail this morning 

Thanks for all the comments.

I am not clear about the advantages of md3 over mdl: I am only talking Quake1SP and the only engine I use is FitzQuake. I have tried boning-up via Google but so many links I come across are dead. Is there a simple statement to highlight the advantageous use of md3?

Meanwhile, the mistake I made with the first Scotch Egg was that I left the shell on. I fared a little better on the second one but it was a real sod trying to keep the yolk in place while I closed the minced meat around it. But hey, one lives and learns. 

You left the shell on? That's classic. :)

Anyway, a legitimate and all encompasing question.

Where do people think would be the best place to head to start learning the basics of doom3 mapping? I have fired up the editor and it scares the bejesus out of me, and figured people here might know where the most useful tutes are to be found.

Keep in mind that apart from using 3dsmax the most advanced thing I have used for game stuff is probably worldcraft. :) 

Finish TronDM3 first. 

Md3 features over mdl:
Supports a greater precision in storing the animations.

Probably has higher max limits on vertexes and triangles and stuff.

Allows you to do a proper UV map without having to seperate the faces on the mesh.

Supports 24 bit colour skins - although using all the colours for a model for Q1 will probably make it look out of place.

Support tags - markers inside the model that allow you to attach, for example, a weapon model to the tag. The tag can be animatited, so it could follow the motion of a hand throughout the animation.

Support multiple skins for a single model - so you could skin the head and the body on different textures, one 256x256 and one 128x128 if that's a better fit than all on one 256x256.

Supports some complicated method of changing the skins using .skin files. It's like multiple skins for quake, but more complicated. Not very handy in my book, for most quake 1 purposes anyway.

I think that's all the big differences. 

Where do people think would be the best place to head to start learning the basics of doom3 mapping?

Get your info direct from the developers at iddevnet: http://www.iddevnet.com/doom3/

If you get stuck, feel free to ask the gurus on this board, or in #terrafusion. DOOMEdit is pretty easy to get the hang of if you've used similar editors. (It took me about a week or two to feel fully comfortable in DOOMEdit after making the transition from WorldCraft/Hammer). 

fitzquake does not support md3. 

That's settled, mdl it is then. 

http://www.doom3world.org/index.php

Is the place to race.

Don't listen to the nay sayers, check it out for yourself